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Sam Daley-Harris: Reclaiming Our Democracy

What if everything you believe about advocacy is incomplete? What if the real work of changing the world isn’t just about fixing problems, but about transforming ourselves in the process?

That’s the heart of the work of Sam Daley-Harris, Founder and Principal of Civic Courage, and author of Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy.

This conversation reframes what it means to participate in democracy. It’s not just about agonizing or protesting or turning off the news. It’s about awakening to our own power and using empathy to bridge divides and build the kind of future we actually want. It’s about sharing personal stories, engaging in deep listening and conversation, and making bold asks of leaders and volunteers.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why sharing your “story of self” matters and how knowing your why becomes your anchor in meaningful leadership and advocacy.
What transformational advocacy truly is, and why it has the power to change both the issues and the advocates themselves.
The essential role of empathy in advocacy and the three questions volunteers ask when meeting with an opposing elected official that can turn conflict into connection.
Why leaders and organizations must move past their fear of asking volunteers to do big, bold things, because that’s where transformation happens.

“Transformational advocacy is where you’re trained, encouraged, and succeed at doing things as an advocate that you never thought you could do. When you do those kinds of things, you see yourself differently.” — Sam Daley-Harris

Episode References:

About Sam Daley-Harris, Founder, Civic Courage, and Author, Reclaiming Our Democracy:

Sam Daley-Harris started as a symphony musician and then founded the anti-poverty lobby RESULTS in 1980, co-founded the Microcredit Summit Campaign in 1995, and founded Civic Courage in 2012. The paperback edition of his book Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy was named an editor’s pick by Publishers’ Weekly BookLife. Daley-Harris has been interviewed on NPR’s Here and Now and on PBS’s Laura Flanders and Friends.

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Connect with Sam:

Civic Courage: reclaimingourdemocracy.com

X: x.com/samdaleyharris

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sam-daley-harris-b8bb796

Facebook: facebook.com/sam.daleyharris

Instagram: instagram.com/samdaleyharris

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. What if everything you believe about advocacy is incomplete? What if the real work of changing the world isn’t just about fixing problems, but about transforming ourselves in the process? That’s the heart of the work of Sam Daly Harris, founder and principal of civic courage and author of reclaiming our democracy, every Citizen’s Guide to transformational advocacy, recently revised, reimagined and named an editor’s pick by publishers. Weekly reviews have called it inspiring, persuasive and accessible, which is exactly how Sam shows up in the world. Sam didn’t begin as a policy expert. He started as a symphony musician and yet went on to launch results the anti poverty lobby in 1980 co found the global micro credit summit campaign, and later build civic courage to help leaders and volunteers become powerful, effective citizen advocates. His work has been featured on NPR and PBS, and his influence can be felt across countless movements and policy victories in our conversation, Sam reveals why sharing your story of self matters and how knowing your why becomes your anchor in meaningful leadership and advocacy, why he completely revised and released his book 30 years later, and what our current moment demands from us. He talks about what transformational advocacy truly is and why it has the power to change both the issues and the advocates themselves. He shares how organizations like results have seen real, measurable improvements on the issues they’ve championed. We then discuss the essential role of empathy and advocacy, and the three questions volunteers ask when meeting with an opposing elected official that can turn conflict into connection. And finally, we talk about why leaders and organizations must move past their fear of asking volunteers to do big, bold things, because that’s where transformation happens. This conversation reframes what it means to participate in democracy, and I hope it ignites and inspires you. It’s not just about agonizing or protesting or turning off the news. It’s about awakening to our own power and using empathy to bridge divides and build the kind of future we actually want take a listen. Welcome Sam to the empathy edge podcast. I was just telling you before we started recording that this episode is not just a bomb for my soul, but I think something that everyone needs to hear right now, in the current political climate that we’re in, and the role of empathy to help us be activists in our own comfort level, in our own way, shape or form. So welcome to the podcast. It’s great to be here. So as we do with all my guests, I would love to hear a little bit. We would all love to hear a little bit about your story and how you even got to this work, because I know that there’s an interesting turn you took, as folks heard in the bio, from a symphony musician to then an anti poverty lobbyist. So tell us about that journey and how you got here and now the author of reclaiming our democracy. Every Citizen’s Guide to transformational advocacy, tell us how you got here.

Sam Daley-Harris 04:06

So what I use to tell my story, and I tell it all the time, is a thing called the story of self, developed by Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz and it basically asks what happened in your life and What decisions did you make that got you to this commitment? So I always say when I’m telling my story, think about your what happened in your life, and what decisions have you made to get to this podcast for one so here’s mine. I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in music, and I played percussion in the Miami philharmonic orchestra for 12 years and taught high school music. And 45 years ago, I founded the anti poverty lobby. Results. A lot of times I’m asked music poverty lobby, what’s the connection when I look back in my life, there’s certainly. Experiences that start pointing me in a different direction. The death of a friend around high school graduation in 1964 and the assassination of US Senator Robert Kennedy around college graduation in 1968 got me to asking the questions of purpose. Why am I here? What am I here to do? What’s my purpose? Nine years later, it’s now 1977 I’m invited to a presentation on ending world hunger, put on by the Hunger Project. And I go to this event thinking, well, hunger’s inevitable. What do I know? I’m a musician. I’m thinking, well, it’s inevitable because there must be no solutions. Again, what do I know? Because if there were solutions, somebody would have done something by now. But I go to this event and it’s obvious right away there’s no mystery to growing food, clean water, basic health literacy. I’m not hopeless about the perceived lack of solutions. I’m hopeless about human nature. People will just never get around to doing the things that can be done. But there’s one human nature. I have some control over my own and my questions. Why am I here? What am I here to do? So I get involved in a big way. This is the end of the story. In 1978 and 1979 I spoke to 7000 high school students, classroom by classroom on ending world hunger. And before I went into the first classrooms, I went read some statements from Jimmy Carter’s commission on world hunger, calling for the political will to end hunger. And so I asked 7000 high school students, what’s the name of your member of Congress? I don’t want to know if you wrote them. I don’t want to know if you met. Just the name out of 7000 asked 200 fewer than 3% could answer correctly. 6800 over 97% could not tell me the name of their member of Congress. And results grew out of this gap between the calls for the political will to end hunger on the one hand and the lack of basic information on who represented us in Washington on the other. And let me just add these high school students are in their 60s now. Oh, wow. And so I always say I had a front row seat on the American slumber party. And by my little poll back in 1978 79 Wow.

Maria Ross 07:35

And what do you mean by the American slumber party?

Sam Daley-Harris 07:38

Well, let me say it a different way in the last election, in November 2025 in New York City, Zoran Mamdani was elected. It was the largest voter turnout in since 1969 and 58% of registered New York voters didn’t vote. And we’re we should rightfully celebrate that it was the largest turnout since 1969

Maria Ross 08:07

and yeah, and still it’s less than 50% Yeah.

Sam Daley-Harris 08:10

And a little more recently, in December 2025 there was a new mayor from Miami. It’s a first Democrat elected in 30 years, and the voter turnout was 21% that’s the American Slumber Party indeed. Yes. And so anyway, that’s what I mean. Yeah.

Maria Ross 08:31

I mean it is. It’s a travesty to me when we think about the sacrifices and people literally putting their lives on the line to get us the right to vote in this country, and the fact that people don’t go, and I know a lot of it is people feel jaded. They feel that they’re it’s voter apathy. They feel that it doesn’t matter the system is rigged. Or, you know, my one vote won’t matter, but it’s, you know, I often think to myself, do we need to become a country where it’s compulsory, like where we’re making everybody vote, but that just seems so antithetical to democracy, to really getting people to activate and understand the part they play in the larger fabric of everything that’s going on. And that’s really, you know, the work of empathy and compassion is sort of being self aware that it’s not just about you, there are other people and that you are part of a community, and you’re part of an ecosystem, and you don’t always have all the right answers, and so you know, really getting together and forming that collective. So I want to talk about your book, reclaiming our democracy. Now this is actually a rewrite, a revision, from a book that you wrote 30 years ago. So why were you compelled to update it and release it in the past year?

Sam Daley-Harris 09:46

I want to tell the story. I was interviewed in early 2024 when the hardback came out on a national NPR program goes to 350 stations, and I was totally blown away by. How vulnerable the host was, and I’m going to, I’ve memorized, I’m going to repeat his question to me, and then my response. He said, The passive nature to our politics today. You can feel beat down by it. This is national radio. You can feel beat down by it. I mean, this is my career, and I feel beat down by it. I don’t participate the same way others do, because I’m a political journalist, but I do have to pay attention. It’s a grind. It’s a grind. Sam, I mean, I know you know that, what am I feeling? What is the way out of that? I was so blown away by his vulnerability in that question. The first thing I said was, well, Apollo astronaut, Rusty Schweickart said, we aren’t passengers on spaceship Earth. We’re the crew. Well, are we? And if we’re crew, how does crew operate? And the same thing. Second thing I said was futurists and climate activists. Alex Stephen said, in fact, these days, cynicism is obedience. Well, yeah, if I’m cynical, I’m obedient to wasting I’m not going to do anything. Why would I? If nothing I do makes a difference? If I could add one more that I didn’t know at the time, I’ve since met this professor at Stanford, Jamil

Maria Ross 11:23

Zaki, yes, who wrote, familiar with his work, hope

Sam Daley-Harris 11:26

for cynics, the surprising science of human goodness. I love that title. And in the book, he says, Well, if you’re cynical, it’s like you’re playing poker, and you fold your hand before the game even starts. Well, if we’re civic Syndicate, cynics, it’s kind of like we fold our hand before the Congress is sworn in, before the first bill is introduced. So it was a great that’s my that interview was like in my face. Reason why I wanted to have the book rewritten and updated,

Maria Ross 12:01

yes and re released, yes. And you know, your main idea and your main focus is around transformational advocacy. So what is that? And give us an example from your book, because, you know, we’re going to connect the dots for folks here about how this links to strengthening your empathy, and why empathy is required, not only to navigate change, but to navigate disagreement and navigate conflict in a constructive way. So tell us what you mean by transformational advocacy.

Sam Daley-Harris 12:33

Okay, great, so I’m going to tell what it’s not. It’s not transactional advocacy. Sign the petition. Transaction complete transformational advocacy is where you’re trained, encouraged and succeed at doing things as an advocate that you never thought you could do, like meet with a member of Congress and bring them on board to your issue. And when you do those kinds of things, you see yourself differently. That’s the transformation and who you see yourself to be. And an example, let me see if I can remember this one great quote from her. I’m going to tell the story of Ellie sparks. She was a volunteer when she told me the story with Citizens Climate Lobby. Now she’s on staff. She said when she joined CCl, she was suffering from what she called Climate trauma. She would read Bill mckibben’s book Earth, and she would weep at home, and she would weep at work. And then she joined Citizens Climate Lobby, and she gets trained, and she meets, and there’s this one spade of four days where she meets with 20 congressional offices, and this is what she said, and this is a transformational part. She said, going into their offices was hard. I had to let go of a lot of emotional baggage. I could no longer judge them or hold hostility in my heart toward them. I had to let go of my fear of climate change and my fear that they wouldn’t listen to me. I had to center myself in love, releasing fear and centering in love. This is sacred and profound work. End of quote. Well, she started at climate trauma and she ended at Sacred and profound right. That is that transformation right of who she really saw herself to be in the matter

Maria Ross 14:33

well, and it’s amazing what happens when you empower people in big and small ways, is it changes their self view. It changes their ability to think they can’t to they can. And we see it in the workplace all the time, with workers who are not trusted to, you know, they’re told what to do, and it’s like, okay, I’m just going to do this and I’m not going to be engaged, because maybe this is all I’m meant for, versus workers who are like, hey, what’s the goal? Well, you figure it out. What are your ideas? What are your innovations, and how people light up when you give them the opportunity to be heard, when you give them the opportunity to see themselves in a different way, we lose so I feel we lose so much potential of so many human beings when we put them in environments where they feel they have no no option, no say, no autocracy.

Sam Daley-Harris 15:23

Well, if I could add this in the nonprofit volunteer world, I’m going to tell a story where it’s a little even worse than that. Yeah, talking to the head of organizing for a very large every one of your viewers and listeners would know the name of this organization, which I’m not going to say, net of organizing, said to me, we can’t let our volunteers write letters to the editor or op eds, because they’ll get it wrong and misrepresent the organization. Protecting their brand was more important than than training their members. And I always say, well, one of the groups I coach, I mentioned earlier, Citizens Climate Lobby, the year before covid, their volunteers had 4300 letters to the editor, op eds and editorials published in 2019 one group was saying they’ll get it wrong and misrepresent the organization. Citizens Climate lobbies, saying, Well, what do we have to do to help them get it right? Right? Yes, add to them. And as a result, they had those 4300 published pieces.

Maria Ross 16:31

This is very similar. I do some work with Moms Demand Action around common sense, gun safety and against gun violence. And I attended for the first time, an advocacy day at the California State Capitol last March. It was so empowering to be there and to be in those offices, and just the numbers, just the strength in numbers of showing up, and they train the volunteers that are the team leads. So you’re put on a team, and you go to a few offices with that team, and there’s a lead there that’s guiding the conversation. Those people are trained by the organization. They’re not political lobbyists. They’re not, you know, in this world, they’re just, they’re moms, they’re women, they’re people that have been impacted by gun violence, and, yeah, they’re us. And then the organization says, We’ll train you on how to run this, what to say, but they always stress the most important thing is you share your story. You share why you’re there. That’s going to matter more than any list of talking points that we have because they already know we’re there to support to ask them to support a certain bit of legislation. What they can’t replicate is the individual stories that will maybe touch that lawmaker in a way where they can be moved to action and they have the faith and the trust in the people that are volunteering without having to vet them necessarily, without, you know, it’s just like, hey, I just showed up. They didn’t know me, and they’re like, share why you’re here. Why are you even involved with this organization? Share that with the lawmaker, and I just thought that was such a what does this mean to you exactly, and I just thought that was such a great way to proliferate evangelism and also to create empathy of just tell your personal story about what this means to you and let them see you as a person, not a quote, unquote activist, not a rabble rouser, not, you know, an annoyance in their day, but as an actual person.

Sam Daley-Harris 18:26

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Maybe I could just let your audience know when I’m talking to a group. And in mid December of 2025, I did my 120/4 in person, or Zoom talk, not counting this kind of podcast, I always say, look for three things if you’re looking for an organization that’s working to deliver transformational advocacy. One, recruitment and community building, the organization brings new people in, not just to build an E blast list, but to form them into local chapters, so you’re not working alone, and the community building might include a monthly whole of organization webinar with guest speakers and Q and A and inspiration. So recruitment and community building too. What you were just talking about, training. How do you get the meeting with the elected How do you plan for the meeting? What do you ask for in the meeting? How do you write a letter to the editor? Two, training. Three, the organization encourages breakthroughs. Encourages you to move out of your comfort zone and do because that’s where confidence comes from when you’re encouraged to do things you didn’t think you could do. And in the book, there’s this drawing on one side, there’s a small circle labeled your comfort zone, and next to it is a much larger circle labeled where the magic happens. So you’re looking for an organization like you mentioned. Moms Demand Action that’s not kicking. You out, encouraging you out of your comfort zone, over to where the magic happens,

Maria Ross 20:05

for sure, for sure. And you know, obviously you’ve talked before and in the book about how we’re talking about transformational advocacy, and how it transforms the volunteers that are associated with these different causes. So what are some of the issues that results the organization that you created and other groups have worked on what have been some of the issues that have been improved by this kind of transformational advocacy? And I’m sure there’s a lot, so maybe just highlight one or two.

Sam Daley-Harris 20:34

Let me I’m going to give it. One example is results has worked for 41 years on child survival globally, where the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF, was reporting 40,000 child deaths a day around the world in 1983 and now we’ve worked for 41 years, it’s fallen by 66% the global child death rate now our current president, and Elon Musk brought a chainsaw to some of that work. But I want to tell folks about one example of a glimmer of hope for the fiscal year 2026 which is the bulk of the year. 2026 Maternal and Child Health was funded at $915 million and President Trump called for a 92% cut to 85 million. Will the House Appropriations Committee not the Democrat? The House Appropriations Committee appropriated the full $915 million that’s because citizens have spent years and decades educating their members of Congress on that, and now it goes to the Senate, etc. But I’ll tell you one other one of the groups I’m coaching is the United Church of Christ, climate hope affiliates, and they’re working on the Environmental Protection Agency. Well, the President called for a 55% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency for 2026 and the house called for 23% cut, and the Senate called for a 5% cut. Now most of us don’t know about that. Actually, this organization I mentioned, they only started in 2025 so they only have 11 chapters, so they’re mostly writing letters to the editor, urging the public to call their members of Congress and push for no cut or the 5% the President’s 50. So there’s those are examples, not only change that we can make, but some of the groups and the changes they’re working on making these kinds of issues

Maria Ross 22:49

so it’s so heartening, because we want to encourage participation by showing progress. And sometimes the progress is immediate, sometimes it takes a little longer. And I just want to talk about, you know, the role of empathy in this work, to me, is obvious, this idea of getting together, seeing other perspectives, so that we can find common ground and influence our lawmakers in whatever advocacy we choose to support. So when you’re coaching volunteers who are meeting with an elected official who opposes a bill, maybe that they support. You have them ask three questions, and can you share what those questions are, why they’re important, and an example of why they work?

Sam Daley-Harris 23:32

Yes, these are our curiosity questions. Okay, these are our deep listening questions. So I’m coaching a group. They’re going to go meet with a member of Congress who opposes their bill. Question number one, we know you don’t support this bill. What would it take to change your mind? And you’re listening for assignments. I’ll tell a little story in a moment. What would it take to change your mind? Two, Could you say more about that? Three, why do you think that is it’s basically a deep listening exercise. Yeah, I have a friend in Pennsylvania, and he is years ago, he was going down to Florida. He wanted to start a house Climate Solutions caucus Democrats and Republicans, and he was meeting with a Republican, and he said, What would it take to change your mind? And she said, Well, if you could get the Chambers of Commerce on board, there’s his assignment. And he did. He got letters from the presidents of the miami miami beach, Coral Gables, North Chambers of Commerce. He comes back with the letters of support, and the congresswoman says, Well, if you could get the mayor’s on board, here’s his compassion and action, because he’s listening to what she’s Amy did, Miami, Miami Beach, North Miami Coral Gables. He comes back with letters from these mayors. And so that’s an example of curiosity. What is it on their side of the. Conversation that they need, yeah, and then his compassion and action, doing something about what they said would help change things. And so, yeah, it’s quite astounding. And I’ll just say that when it was started in 2016 grew to 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. President Trump was elected the first time, and it fell to six and six because it was Noah’s Ark. A Democrat would only come on with a Republican. He grew to six and six because some had been defeated or retired at the end of the second year of President Trump’s first term. It had grown to 45 Republicans and 45 Democrats. And this is what group Well, this was the house Climate Solutions caucus. Got it helps of Representatives. Now, some of this was whitewashing and but some folks were serious these members of the House of Representatives. And, yeah, it’s basically a story of kind of doing the early spade work, right? No one thought it was possible, right?

Maria Ross 26:07

Well, we’re never going to cut through by shaming and blaming, right? Which, which feels good in the moment, to feel, you know, self righteous and attack a lawmaker that you don’t agree with, but it’s not going to get you anywhere. And so, you know, I write, I write my lawmaker a lot about different issues. And I’ve also written when he’s done something I agree with. And I’ve said, I know I often write you when I’m not happy with something, but I’m happy with this, like, this was a great move. Thank you. And remembering that, yes, whatever, some of them are motivated by greed. Some of them are motivated by their party, and maybe they don’t have and both sides the aisle, let me just be clear. Maybe they don’t have a moral center, but most people do. Most people get into public service. No one would want that life unless they were committed. And again, we know that different people have different motivations, but if we can remember to treat them with respect and with and as a human being like you were saying earlier, and those curiosity questions, again, empathy does not have to mean you agree with someone. It just means you make space to actually hear them out and listen to their point of view, so that you maybe can find common ground like, oh, to your point, you know? Oh, what’s stopping you? What was stopping me is, I don’t want to make enemies of the chambers of commerce, so I need to get them on board. Great. Let me find a way to get them on board, right, so you have a much more productive conversation. And whether you’re in the workplace or you’re dealing with government, it’s human dynamics of just getting curious about that other point of view.

Sam Daley-Harris 27:43

Let me tell this other story. In this whole scheme of things, in September 2025 the 25 volunteers with Citizens Climate Lobby had a three and a half hour hike with their Republican Senator John Curtis, who took Mitt Romney’s seat in the Senate. And it started in 2017 when he was a first year House member, and he announced an eight hour town hall meeting hike. And eight people showed up, six from this Citizens Climate Lobby. And the next year, again, it was a great turnout. I don’t know that I could do an eight hour hike, but anyway,

Maria Ross 28:25

yeah, not accessible to everyone, but yeah, personal hike.

Sam Daley-Harris 28:28

And on the first hike, someone said, What are you going to do about carbon? And he said, I thought, well, I was the mayor of Provo Utah. I never thought about carbon and, you know? And he said, because they didn’t attack me, right? And they just like, you know, I would take a baby step, and they would, you know, recognize that, etc. A couple of years later, he founded the conservative climate Caucus in the House of Representatives. In the end of 2024 that that Congress, and then he went to the Senate. There were 87 Republicans in the conservative climate caucus, yes, right, some of them BS, but some of them serious, right, right. We need to anyway. I just was, and I’ll add this, that hike was just miles six miles from where Charlie Kirk was murdered on that campus. And so here you have 25 volunteers hiking with their Republican senator for three and a half hours, right? And then you have the heinous crime six miles away within weeks of wow, yeah. So I mean, one gives me

Maria Ross 29:41

hope, yeah, and one is a cautionary tale. Yeah, we want to go Right exactly. So last question I have for you is that you often say that if you want transformational advocacy to work, organizations and their staff have to get over their fear of making big asks of. Volunteers. What do you mean by that?

Sam Daley-Harris 30:02

Well, let me say it this way, when I’m coaching an organization to start a chapter, let’s say there are 20 people in the room, and 10 raise their hand and be in the new chapter. They start with a four part new group training every week for four weeks for 90 minutes of training. If it’s a new staffer, they’re gonna No one’s gonna agree to four part new group training that’s asking a lot of people. I’ll just water it down or kind of slough over the Yeah, no, you need to make big asks of volunteers. And yeah, I just got an email last couple of days, this group that I’d mentioned just start their first 11 chapters. And this one chapter in Michigan, their congressional office had been shut down because of vandalism to the outside, and they had a meeting with the Chief of Staff, and they were only going to be informed where the meeting would be a few hours before they worried, would this really even happen, right? And then they meet with the chief of staff in the district office, and they’re blown away. He keeps them for an hour. He wants their input, you know? And this is in an office that so many others thought. They don’t respond, they don’t pay attention, right? They’re not responsive. Well, yeah, but they had this four part new group training, and they learned how to get the meeting, and they learned how to practice for the meeting, right, you know? And it just shifted things for them.

Maria Ross 31:36

And I think that’s like the call to action. And, you know, anything actionable you can share with us about how can listeners who do want to get involved but they don’t know what groups offer good training, what groups have those four points that you mentioned, and obviously they want to get involved with causes they care about, right? But I know people are often like, I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do, you know? So can you give us some action oriented

Sam Daley-Harris 32:00

I describe the groups that will feed you power, yes, and if people go to my website, reclaiming our democracy.com, and on the homepage of reclaiming our democracy.com, is a button to learn more. It’s really a sign up sheet, and you can let me know that you would like me to connect you with any one of five different groups, and I urge you to pick one, not five, right? Complicated that way, right? And if you go to reclaiming our democracy.com and click on Learn More, you’re going to then let me know you’d like to be connected with this group or that group. If you’d like me to speak to your club or whatever.

Maria Ross 32:43

I love that. I love that. And we should just add, you know, because I do have an international audience, we should add, we’re talking about the United States. Do you do any work out with organizations outside

Sam Daley-Harris 32:54

Britain and Okay, elsewhere. So there’s some other possibilities.

Maria Ross 32:59

Great, great. Well, Sam, this has been so heartening to me, and so a little spark of optimism and hopefulness and what are some dark times right now? And it all comes back to the way that we relate to each other as human beings, and how we can leverage empathy and making sure that that we’re coming into things with a assuming positive intent and not having so much of our own stuff or maybe our own bad past experiences with advocacy get in the way of moving forward with advocacy where we are now. So thank you so much for sharing all of this. I you know, I usually ask at this point, because we’re going to put all the links to what you talked about in the show notes, as well as your book, which, again, the name of the book, is reclaiming our democracy, every Citizen’s Guide to transformational advocacy, which was named an editor’s pick by Publishers Weekly, by the way, but we’ll put a link to that. But I know you have already shared with us that the best place to go is to go to reclaiming our democracy. If you’re interested in getting involved, click that Learn More button and Sam will connect you with an organization that you can feel good about and be empowered by. So thank you for your insights. Thank you for your work. Thank you. It’s a thrill to talk with you, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Marie. Up. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Ed Kirwan: The Most Effective Way to Build Empathy

What if empathy wasn’t something we talked about, but something we actually trained, practiced, and scaled?

My guest today, Ed Kirwan, is doing exactly that. Ed is the CEO and Founder of Empathy Studios, a creative education organization using the power of film to develop empathy as a real, learnable skill. He’s also the founder of Empathy Week, now the world’s largest empathy festival for schools, reaching more than 1.8 million students across 56 countries since 2020.

In this conversation, we explore why film is such a powerful catalyst for empathy, what Ed has learned from years of working with students around the world, why empathy is becoming a critical skill in the age of AI, and how developing empathy can boost well-being and help create a better world.

This is a hopeful, practical, and deeply human conversation about what empathy looks like when we stop treating it like a soft skill and start treating it like a core capability.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The emotional power of film to supercharge feeling and connection.
Why empathy and related skills are necessary to reap the benefits of AI.
How humans are adapting, seeking things that are real and authentic, and why making something look worse may actually be better.

“That’s the power of film. It can really supercharge emotions; it can supercharge feeling; it can supercharge connection.” — Ed Kirwan

Episode References:

Ed Kirwan: Empathy Week: Using the Power of Film to Build Empathy

About Ed Kirwan, CEO and Founder, Empathy Studios

Previously a science teacher in London, Ed founded Empathy Studios, an education and creative organisation using the power of film to develop the skill of empathy in all. A director, filmmaker, and educator for 10+ years, Ed also started Empathy Week, the world’s largest empathy festival for schools, which has reached 1.8 million students across 56 countries since 2020. Their framework for empathy development is backed by the University of Cambridge, and Ed’s team now works across teams and leaders in the business world to help develop and embed the skill of empathy – foundational to high-performing and thriving teams.

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Connect with Ed Kirwan:

Empathy Studios: empathystudios.com

Empathy Week: empathyweek.org

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ed-kirwan

Instagram: instagram.com/edkirwan

YouTube: youtube.com/@Empathy-Studios

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Ed Kirwan 02:49

Thanks for having me. It’s, it feels like yesterday, but we, I think we just discussed it’s been a couple of years. So yeah, things have changed, but it’s really exciting that, yeah, where we are in the world right now, in some ways, and in other ways, it’s just made it even more obvious that we need more empathy and leadership, and we need more empathy in the

Maria Ross 03:06

world, for sure, for sure. So refresh for folks that don’t know you, or folks that haven’t heard you in a while, tell us your story going from filmmaker to doing the work that you’re doing now, and tell us a little bit about empathy week and how it’s evolved.

Ed Kirwan 03:20

Yeah, amazing. So my background is, actually, I was a scientist. I studied biochemistry at university. I spent, actually a year in a lab. I was awful at it. They suggested that I did some work with outreach and kids I love that became a teacher and taught for a number of years in North London in the UK. I was a science teacher, and I left, and I just sort of picked up filmmaking as a bit of a hobby to start with, doing some passion projects and work, particularly around homelessness. And I saw and experienced the power of film. Even if I look back at my films, then I think, gosh, they were awful, but they still had an impact on people in various ways. And I kind of merged, over the years, merged my two passions of education and filmmaking together, and ultimately, since sort of while filming in 2019, all the way through to now, I’ve been making films that particularly around people’s life stories, cinematic documentary style, films that schools can use and educators can use to help students develop that skill of empathy. What’s happened since we’ve sort of spoken is that companies, organizations have picked up on it and said, Oh, can you do something with us? And I’ve trained leaders from organizations like the BBC to private healthcare companies, law firms, even alcohol and beverage companies, basically anyone that works with anyone, which is basically every organization in the world, right, clearly needs this skill. And I think what’s happened since we’ve spoken is obviously the, you know, a few years ago is the rise of AI, and I think that has kind of pushed forward this agenda of, actually, yes, tech is booming, but what’s left is actually the huge. Human skills. That’s what companies are hiring for. We’re seeing a mental health crisis in young people across the world, social media and the internet and addiction to phones and all of this sort of thing. And actually, what schools are looking for, what companies are looking for, is actually the same thing. How do we develop as humans? How do we be better for ourselves? How do we be better for other people? Essentially, all of our work now is combined around using film as the tool. Empathy is the skill we’re developing, and we are an education company as a whole. So that’s

Maria Ross 05:29

right, that’s where we’re at. I love it, and I know that you used some of this as an educator in the past, yes, and you, I recall from your story, last time that you had some great success with building empathy, and sort of that was like the seed of the idea of empathy week, and now it’s a global movement. But can you share a little bit about that personal story of how you leveraged film and then discovered the impact on behavior and on collaboration?

Ed Kirwan 05:57

Yeah, so obviously, when I was a teacher as well, I used video and film, and it wasn’t mine, because I wasn’t even a filmmaker. Never made anything, but I used film. Can get you from zero to 100 very quickly, more quickly than someone talking. I think even if you took the best speaker in the world, whoever that is for whoever, maybe it’s Nelson Mandela, for some people, for example, you could take his story, and obviously he’s been dead a few years, but you can take some of his work and his his quotes, and you can add music to it, make it cinematic, and that would have more impact than hearing him speak live for 10 minutes, potentially. I think that’s the power of film. It can really supercharge emotions. It can supercharge feeling, supercharged connection. And I used to use film with a group of young lads called that well, they were self, called themselves the you gang. They basically all failed their mock GCSE science exams. These are like exams in the UK when you’re 16 years old that allow you to progress really important exams. And they all got ungraded, or you, which, at the time, was the lowest grade, and they came up the stairs one day shouting, You gay.

Maria Ross 07:04

You gay. They embraced it, yeah,

Ed Kirwan 07:09

sweating at the top of the stairs. I was before then obviously I like, put an act on to try and tackle these young boys who were, you know, disenchanted with the education system, felt left behind, lot of anger, chip on their shoulder, trouble with the police, gangs, that sort of thing. But on the inside, were deeply emotional. Wanted to do well, wanted to be seen, heard, understood. I had the basketball connection. I’m six foot five. I’m quite tall. I play basketball which didn’t match up in their mind. Geeky science teacher, basketball, hip hop culture, bit of a clash, yes, but really good for them to see that. And I basically worked with them for a year, and I used NBA highlights videos and speeches, you know, Kobe Bryant and various ones as a reward, but also as a like, stop complaining. Like, get on with it. Yeah, your life’s tough, but and use videos to motivate. And started to hear them almost like jokingly say some of the quotes, but also realize that they were sifting in. Yeah, like you said, I took a few years away from education, well, from teaching, but realized that actually empathy week came about from my experiences of filming and my experiences of education. And really, actually sounds a bit harsh, but a lot of the education film material that’s out there is crap. It’s not very good, right? And it’s not entertaining, and it speaks too directly to the issue bullying. It’s basically someone saying, Don’t bully. You could hurt someone’s feelings the eye rolls the back of their head, right? Or it’s actually give them a story that doesn’t, that is about bullying, but doesn’t speak directly about it, or is about, I don’t know. It could also be about positive things, about following your dream and your passion, right? Or could be about health issues, could be about diabetes, right? Recently made a film about a Mexican filmmaker. He speaks about lots of things, from grief to passion for football to the culture of Mexico. The first sort of two minutes of the film, he talks about diabetes. And I’ve just visited school two months ago, just before Christmas, where the head teacher said that film allowed a young lad and who’d just been diagnosed with diabetes, to really come out of his shell and to understand and talk about his own diagnosis of diabetes with his classmates. And I think this is the power of film, and this is what I’ve realized from the seven years now that I’ve been using film. Yeah, it’s originally we were like, great, you’re going to develop empathy for the person in the film, and therefore you’re going to meet someone and see but actually, the real empathy building comes after the film, where people start speaking next to each other, and you’re either, I always say you’re either one of two people. You’re either Person A which is, my gosh, like, that is a bit of me. I. Feel seen, I feel heard. They’ve explained what maybe I couldn’t explain about my culture or my experiences, and the power of that is afterwards, I can talk about that. Maybe it’s something like racism or something that I’ve experienced that’s really bad, or maybe it’s something really positive, like passion for music or something, but I can relate to it. I can talk about that. What happens if I then feel more confident to talk about myself in light of this film, is that all the other people around learn about me? Yeah, and that is empathy. Is the building of human I call it like human data over time. So you’re understanding what, what makes someone tick. Who are they as a person, what’s happening for them. So that’s Person A, or your person B, which is like, my gosh, that is, I just have no insight into that person’s world at all. But now I’ve learned it, and I can now at least see what it’s like to be from Nepal, maybe, or from India, or from Mexico, or listing some of the places we filmed. But I can also see a bit of myself in that person as well. Yeah. And when you get these groups of students or people or leaders or senior leaders start talking about stuff, yeah, that’s the empathy building. And what’s amazing is that I walk around, especially in like, a corporate environment, I could show a film that is just like, nothing to do with anyone in the room. What does everyone start talking to talking about the film, they start talking about themselves. Oh, I once had a neighbor that, or my wife’s partner. Of my wife’s not that would be, not be her great, would it? My wife’s like, you know, parents, or where she came from, did this, or, you know, and then all these stories, right? I think that the trouble we have in the world at the moment is the time for that to happen, lacking the time for true empathy to really take place. But this is what we’ve been doing, and this is how we’ve been using film, and why I think it’s so incredibly powerful to build the skill of empathy.

Maria Ross 11:56

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve talked to my first empathy book, the empathy edge, the power of story and, you know, giving people full license to binge streaming networks to just take in other stories, take in documentaries or fiction or nonfiction. I recently heard a speaker talking about the fact that you’re able to actually make more points in nonfiction. This is coming from a former journalist about the issues, because people let their guard down when they’re reading fiction, but also, there’s power in sharing real stories as well with people of just to your point. It’s not so heavy handed, you know, it’s to your point with young kids and even adults, right? Like I clearly see what this is about and what they’re trying to make me feel or make me think, versus just telling a story about someone and framing it in a way where they can draw their own conclusions and also just get to know that person, they let their guard down a little bit. It’s really interesting. I was watching a few weeks ago, we had our son, who’s 11, watch the Martian with Matt Damon, based on the science fiction book about the astronaut who gets stuck on Mars because the team thinks he’s dead, and he ends up surviving for years. And I was not convinced he was going to sit still long enough for the movie, but he did, and this it was more powerful for him to learn the lesson of perseverance and resourcefulness from seeing in in the form of a story, then a video about you should be resourceful, and you should never give up, and you should you know what I mean, it’s just to your point. There’s the rolling eyes, but he’s getting that lesson in the context of someone’s story. And I think that’s what’s so powerful about the work you do. And I want to add, since we spoke a few years ago, after we spoke, I brought the empathy week initiative, which I want you to explain in a second, because it’s coming up again soon, to my son’s school, and the feedback was phenomenal. Some of the teachers didn’t implement it the right way. But now I know it’s you know. Now you’ve made it free, you’ve made the resources available, you guys have tuned and tweaked things so it’s really easy for teachers to implement. And I love that you’re now branching out into doing this work in organizations too. Because even as I was kind of experiencing it, I was like, oh, there’s so many organizations that actually need this, and now you’ve branched out to that. So you know, we got to experience it firsthand. Can you explain, for anyone that’s not familiar with it, what that initiative is, and then help us understand how it fits into your larger initiative of empathy studios,

Ed Kirwan 14:32

yeah, so since we’ve spoken, we’ve, like a lot of businesses, had to tweak change, you know, constantly grow. Essentially, empathy Studios is our mothership, our umbrella organization, and we are now empathy 365, and what we’re doing, well, we’re just about to launch it. We’re launching a platform like Netflix, like an empathy streaming, but original content, all of our original films, so that’s going to eventually be available for schools. And this is a decision to one make it. Listening to teachers. How are they using things like you said they weren’t. The teachers in that other school didn’t necessarily, some of them didn’t necessarily implement it. What has everyone used? Everyone’s used YouTube, everyone’s used Netflix or some sort of streaming provider. And then so we’ve basically user experience creating a platform with all of our content. So rather than five films a year you’re actually going to watch, be able to scroll and go through things and short so we’re creating this just like amazing platform of content which will eventually produce more and more. And now empathy week is our festival. So that’s our festival that’s free for anyone, anywhere in the world. And now what that does is it doesn’t have a full film program, but it does have film content. It has lessons. We now have training for teachers, so we have accredited CPD, continuing professional development training for teachers so that can be online, so any teacher in the world can access that. It’s saving schools money whilst delivering value. We’ve got one on AI and empathy, which is led by an amazing, amazing teacher called Scott Hayden in Basingstoke, which is town in England, and he’s kind of head of tech and learning at college there. And he just is phenomenal. His CPD got rated 96% score, and there was like 150 teachers on this and he’s coming back for round two, because obviously, things move so fast. And then we’ve got, like, the Ruth Strauss Foundation, they’re talking about grief and bereavement and how to teach us to support because teachers don’t get this training. So they’re doing an amazing session on that. And then we’ve got born free, which is an international wildlife charity talk about, you know, actually challenging some of the things that we do, especially in primary schools around animals and empathy for the planet, empathy for one so all of that’s free, and that’s just for teachers. We’ve got assemblies for primary students, and we’ve got on demand speakers, so we’ve got six professionally filmed, sort of Ted style interview of people from Rob who’s basically this producer in London. He’s produced songs for the 1975 I don’t know if they’re big in America or not, like they’re known sort of all over the world. He’s produced, like, loads of their songs. Holly humstone, other thing he’s just talked about, how did he get into production? And so rather that be like, you know, careers advisor at school or college. This is how you do a career. Do this test. It will tell you what careers you might like, Yeah, screw that. Get to this. This is a guy, and he’s like, to be honest, I don’t even know really how I got here. I did this and I did this, but this is what we this is what we’re trying to do. So that’s empathy week, and that’s free for any school anywhere in the world. Last year, we reached half a million students, which was amazing. We’re already at, I think, you know, going to beat that this year again? Yeah, we’re seeing this need. And really, so really, the whole the way this works is empathy week is really the gateway. It’s the entrance. It’s free, right, for schools and any educators to get involved. And in our platform with empathy studios, it’s ongoing, yeah, it’s ongoing, yeah, it’s the nitty gritty. You can then search things. But I think I want to make this point, we used to charge depending on the size of school and whether you were private or state or whatever. It got a bit confusing. We were charging anywhere from 600 pounds, GB pounds, all the way through to 1400 we have basically made the decision as a team to go the scale, and we think we can get lots of schools involved, but to bring the price down. So we’re charging 395 pounds this year for a year subscription. It works out at like 20 p per child for most schools. That’s the equivalent of, I don’t know, 4050 cents.

Maria Ross 18:33

Is that to the platform, or is empathy? Week is going to be free, empty weeks free.

Ed Kirwan 18:37

And what we say in our team is we are trying to make the skill of empathy equitable. Yes, because the OECD have basically said that the students that have the least amount of skills in social emotional learning are the most disadvantaged. Exactly when we spoke about disadvantaged students five years ago, we meant purely academics. Now it still is academics, but it’s also social, emotional learning. What’s the World Economic Forum just released? You know, last year, year before, the top skills for 2037, of the top 10, including empathy, human based skills, yep, so if the top organizations in the world are hiring for human skills. Of course, AI and tech is important there. They’re hiring predominantly for human skills, and the most disadvantaged students in the world are having lower levels of social emotional learning. How we say, as an organization, we are here to develop the skill of empathy and build the empathy generation. If we’re not making it equitable exactly conscious decision. We can’t do the platform free film is incredibly expensive, right, right, but we, this is our sort of mission, to sort of build it in everyone. And I think, yeah, come and join us.

Maria Ross 19:54

I mean, to your point, I mean, that’s actually all the research and the data that’s coming out around with the change. In AI. Number one, what’s required to help current workers navigate that change is empathy. That’s actually going to help catalyze people to adapt and be resilient in this change. But number two, and I’ve said this many times with AI, that is going to create an environment where leaders who are hiding behind all the doing and the tasking, and they sit in front of their computer and they don’t interact with their teams, they’re going to have nowhere to hide, because it’s going to lay bare the fact that they are not skilled at collaboration and innovation and motivating their teams and figuring out how to remove barriers and how to innovate. Those are the skills that AI can’t replicate. There was a study done by MIT about the five complementary skills necessary to reap the benefits of AI, and those top skills are very human skills. It’s empathy, it’s emotional learning, it’s resilience, it’s all of those. I’ll put a link to that study in the show notes, but that’s exactly your point. And when we’re talking about readying young people for the jobs of the future. Yes, we still want to teach them how to code. We still want to teach them how to do all this stuff, but AI is going to be shifting what they need to be proficient at doing. And I love that you’re taking the stance of if the people that are falling behind the most already do not have access to these human skills that’s just going to exacerbate the socio economic gap. And then they’re going to graduate from high school, graduate from college without the skills that they need to compete. Yeah?

Ed Kirwan 21:32

And then we’re going to see unemployment levels, right? You know, every 100% Yeah, everything that everyone’s fearing, yes, will come true. But I think what’s interesting about kind of AI is people think, oh, it gets so good, and then it will just take everything. But I’ve started to see, you know, I don’t know if you’ve seen the Apple TV logo. How that the new one? How it was made? They purposely decided not to use AI, and they did everything human. So they cut out the glass for the Apple logo. They did all of the effect they could have just made it in 45 minutes using AI and using tech and using digital. They decided not to Coca Cola. On the other hand, tried to use AI for their advert, and it flopped. And what’s interesting now is that the higher level from a company perspective and from a brand perspective, value is going to be, you know, value and how your brand, company is perceived, is going to be higher if there’s more human 100% Yeah, humanness involved in it. I’ve just seen at the weekend on Instagram a prompt about people are turning AI generated photos where everything looks like plush into realistic. There’s a prompt now to make it look realistic as if it was taken on a phone. Taken on a phone. So this prompt is now make it look worse, so it makes it look more believable, right? People are making people that I know purposely put spelling mistakes in their emails. Like we as humans are so clever and so adaptable, and everyone’s so scared about AI doing everything perfectly are taking over, but actually we adapt. People haven’t started to, you know, talked enough about how we adapt around this as well. And I think there’s this need to build the human skills is becoming more and more important. Because that’s, that’s, you know, the AI is going to take a lot of the hopefully boring dole stuff, right? And we are going to be able to engage more as teams and be creative and have the time to do that. I think if we look at it through that lens, yeah, it’s important, but the fear is we don’t have the skills to do that, because we’ve been doing too

Maria Ross 23:34

much, maybe right, right? Because we’re focused more on the on the technical skills than the people skills. And hopefully, with the dawn of, you know, with not the dawn, it’s already here, it’s the day of AI, we’re starting to realize that that’s where we have the hole in in proficiencies and in leadership, and in all those places. So the companies that get it are like starting already to prepare for that. And I would also submit, the school systems that get it are starting to realize this ahead of the curve and doing as much as they can. I would love you to take a moment to talk about the results that you in the past years you’ve been doing empathy week. What are some of the results your team has found? I know you had some independent entities that were doing some auditing of changes in behavior and changing changes in issues, just with the population of the kids that took part in empathy week. Can you share some of that with us?

Ed Kirwan 24:28

Yeah, so this was actually based on the program which would would essentially equate to the platform. But so it’s the lessons and the films, and we have a framework which is empathy for myself, empathy for others, and empathy in action. And that breaks it down into kind of three subsets that schools and teachers can focus on. And when we’re talking about then a story, or we’re talking about what’s going on in the world, we can first start thinking about ourselves. And why do we think the way that we think is that because of our upbringing, our culture, and connecting with that before then thinking, oh. Why does that person acting in that way, or why are they doing that to then what do we do about it? Right? And we’ve kind of used that framework throughout our films and throughout our lessons. And we basically did a pilot study in 2022 and then we did a bit more of an in depth study in 2023 24 and we had the University of Cambridge kind of come and look at what we’ve collected and found sorry and basically what we you know, Nothing’s ever perfect in this field of empathy and self reporting as well. And as a scientist, I know that, but we got, like, massive PR from what we basically put out there, which is what we showed that teachers reported improved behavior. After just five films and a set of lessons, they showed that students actually had more awareness of other cultures and actually also the self esteem increased. And I think it’s for me, it’s common sense if you spend time learning about other people, and if you do it in an environment where, like a classroom, where you get to talk and listen to other people talk about their lives as well as those people that you’re experiencing. You know, if I’m sat the back of a class and someone in front of me has just talked about, actually, they moved country and it was really hard for them, and they can relate to that story. Yeah. Am I less likely to throw this rubber at the back of their head? Maybe, yeah. My argument would be, yes, yeah. And what happens if you do that? What we found is that it has to be consistent. You know that this, it can’t be this, oh, here’s an empathy assembly. Yeah?

Maria Ross 26:37

It can’t just be the one week and then it goes away. Yeah? And it

Ed Kirwan 26:40

can’t be the one drop in the ocean, okay, this is a consistent practice of, you know, how are the people thinking? How am I thinking? And we have, for example, it’s not new to us. Lots of people have a feelings wheel, or emotions wheel. We put that before and after a film. So we do a check in. How are you feeling? Watch the film. How are we feeling now? And often those two things change. We do this with corporates as well. This is the great thing about what we do. It just works with everyone. Actually, everyone can do it. What are you thinking feeling right now, media, and that could be any media, it could be a book, it could be a thing, but we use film. And then what you feeling afterwards? Yeah, and the change between those two when you start asking questions. Okay, you don’t need to necessarily tell me, but I’m almost certain those two things have changed. You know, every now and then you’ll get a kid be like, No, I was bored before. I’m bored now.

Maria Ross 27:32

Mostly contrarian, yeah, yeah. Mostly

Ed Kirwan 27:35

you’ll have, oh, well, I now feel inspired, or I feel sad, or I feel hope. Okay, why? And then when you start asking why, they go, Well, this part of the film, or this part of the film said that. And then you start to, like, unlayer what this does. And if you do that over time, what happens is also teachers start to understand their students more. They understand maybe why that student hasn’t done their homework. So rather than coming in and being like, where’s your homework, you haven’t done this the second time in a row. They’re actually like, Hmm, single parent. They have to leave the house really early because their mum leaves for work. So they’ve got two or three jobs. They actually stand around in the cold for an hour before school. Yeah, don’t have access like you. Then start to go with using empathy and action, right? What can we do? It’s the second time. Second time in a row, your homework hasn’t been done, right? How can I help you? What’s going on at home? What’s happening? What can I and it takes patience, and it’s hard, and it’s, you know, it sounds so easy to just say, I’ve been there, I’ve been in the classroom. I’ve been doing 14 hour days. You don’t see light as a teacher in winter, I get it, but the more that you do that you build relationships, those relationships and trust and connection, and I always do, like this sort of kind of backwards circle framework, which I basically say, Look, we all want to have great well being. We all want success. We want to be productive, and we want to, you know, yeah, do well achieve. Now, if you go back a step, think about the best time in your life when you were like the happiest or, you know, where you didn’t have any worries and you felt good in yourself. I almost guarantee you had great relationships, right? You weren’t worrying about going home. Was that your relationships were in a great place, or you you didn’t have any arguments with friends at school or anything like that. What makes great relationships trust. Trust is built on connection, and connection is built on the skill of empathy. You can only truly connect if you understand someone, if you can enter a little bit into their world. If we develop that skill of empathy, you can build those steps, and you can build great relationships, and you can build a foundation for great well being, for productivity, for success. The key though is to connect that loop and continue to develop the skill of empathy. Because if you stop right, then you stop trying to learn about other people. You stop trying to like, build those relationships. Something happens and it all breaks down. I think that’s where companies struggle with change. Because change happens, and all of a sudden the system breaks. And, right, yeah, well,

Maria Ross 30:06

and I think it’s like, you said, it’s about consistency, and it’s about it’s a practice. So just like, you wouldn’t just go to the gym once and be like, I’m in shape now, right? You keep going back, you keep strengthening that muscle. You have your off days, you have your good days, and you have to maintain that. And so you have to be able to maintain that muscle of being able to ground yourself and be open to another person’s perspective and point of view. But it also means you’ve got to do some work on yourself. You know, my first two pillars in my empathy framework for effective and empathetic leadership are self awareness and self care. You’ve got to have that capacity. You’ve got to be constantly checking in with yourself on where am I today? Am I able to listen to Ed’s idea without defensiveness or fear, you know? And am I able to welcome a new team member who is neurodiverse and might work very differently than me? Probably not on a day where I got two hours of sleep and I’m starving, that’s probably not the best day for me to be to have that capacity. And so it’s equally learning how to take care of ourselves and continue to practice that but continuing to practice that muscle of curiosity and understanding and self regulation, right? Can I listen to your story without trying to interject, without trying to make it about me, without getting angry at how you see the world or how what’s happened to you that’s a muscle that it’s you don’t just you know, you don’t build the bicep once, and then you never work out again, right?

Ed Kirwan 31:40

And it gets unlike the gym, it gets easier, right? So the more you try and catch yourself, the more you actually are able to do it as well. I think that’s often missed. And yeah, is we always say, you know, the one thing to do to develop skill of empathy, increase the amount and the diversity of experiences you have, right? Like, there’s loads of other things I could say, but that is the one sort of line to the gateway into it and the continuation. So watch that different documentary, watch that different film, read that book, follow four different news outlets, not one

Maria Ross 32:13

exactly, all of these things well. And I was going to say this is where film and theater and books and music can help, because maybe you are in a homogenous community, and you’re like, but I don’t have access to all these different people. How am I going to understand them? Well, go find those sources. Go find the films, the videos, the documentaries, the books, all of that, and make that a practice of like, I’m going to read about someone whose life is different from me, or I’m going to watch a film about someone whose life is completely different from me.

Ed Kirwan 32:43

Oh, ask that call. I know people get a bit uncomfortable about this, like asking colleagues or friends or people about their backgrounds and things and like, oh, it might be too invasive. And I get asked this question, like, how do you ask this? I say because I sit and ask people in interviews, sometimes very difficult conversations, very difficult questions I’ve asked, for example, Pete, who’s now a friend, but I’ve asked him, did he feel guilty about finding notes from his dad after his dad took his own life? Imagine asking that question in a room, one on one, like it’s very difficult question to ask, yeah, and risky, but that you remove the risk by being human. I say, anytime you don’t know what to say, or you don’t know what to ask. You start with, I don’t know if I’m asking this in the right way, right? And you have all of the unlike. I’m coming from a place of good intention and wanting to learn, and it’s been on my mind. But I just wanted to ask, like, you haven’t really spoken much about moving here 10 years ago, how was that for you? Because obviously a completely different culture. But, yeah, different culture, but you can ask questions and someone might shut you down and they might be offended, but if you put it in the right way, they shouldn’t be offended. And that’s such on them, and you can there’s so many different ways to, like, learn about things and people. And on that note, part of what we’re also doing is we’ve put five six films now, of ours, which previously were behind paywalls, they’re now on YouTube. But if you want to experience some of the films that we’ve got, and again, increase the amount of diversity of experiences. Yeah, we’ve got Lipper, we’ve got Huss, we’ve got tendie, trying to think who else is on there. Now actually, 10 days film is now an International Film Festival, select for Vancouver, International Mountain Film Festival for 2026 which is super exciting as well. So yeah, if you’re like, oh, but film can it really and also, if you’re in a rush, all of our films like 10 minutes or less, and we’ve got versions for students on there.

Maria Ross 34:34

So Well, I want to mention too, for anyone listening, what I also loved is that you have age appropriate you have age appropriate films and age appropriate discussion guides, so it’s not like a kindergartner seeing the same film as an eighth grader. So I wanted to make sure people understood that it’s the same story, it’s the same person, but it’s presented in a way that’s age appropriate so that they can get maximize what they get. It out of it right, 100% and

Ed Kirwan 35:02

so that we can be a whole school. We’re not in early years. We’re not in under fives yet. But also, one of the things we have been asked in the past is, you know, or people said, Oh, gee, you know, could you do animations and things like that? And actually, we’ve been into schools and said they love the fact these are real humans. They get loads of animation, loads of Ellie, the elephants and Tony, the Tigers and pepper pigs, all of this stuff. They get loads of these animation things. And this is actually a real human, yeah, and I think that is the power of some of the stuff we’re doing. Okay, it might be super simple for the age, you know, could be money in Mexico. She talks about a passion for music and Mexican culture, and it’s two, three minutes, and it’s just, but the kids get to the five year olds get to see, oh, that that’s some Mexico. And that’s,

Maria Ross 35:49

well, they get to see a person that looks different from them as well, like, not just a cartoon rendition, but an actual person. And I think that’s they talk a lot about proximity, helping to build empathy and exposure, because if the more you are exposed to other people who are not like you, the more empathetic you can become, and more more understanding and curious. But I love that. It’s not, you know, not that animation and has its place. Of course, it’s done wonders. But also, you know, not dumbing it down for kids, they’re a lot smarter than we think they are now. Is everything age appropriate? Of course, not, but, but being able to show it, that’s what I’ve always loved about the work that you’re doing, is that there was something for a teacher at every grade, and there’s something for a student at every grade to be able to latch on to and say, Oh, I can. I can relate to the story, or I can understand something about the story. Or maybe this evokes something for me.

Ed Kirwan 36:46

Yeah, it’s exciting talking to after I realize how far we’ve come. And also, yeah, just the stories of teachers and I, you know, our ambition is to, at the moment, we’re producing like, five films a year. We want to up that to 1520, or maybe, like, you know, imagine one every two weeks, coming out, coming out. Yeah, and creating this environment where, you know, we talk about enabling everyone so they can be seen, heard and understood, yeah, because I do believe that if everyone felt truly, seen, heard and understood, there would be no

Maria Ross 37:16

war. We’d have a better world, for sure, Oh,

Ed Kirwan 37:19

for sure. Because, because everyone feels doesn’t mean we’d all agree. Doesn’t mean everything would be Hokey Pokey. It just means there would be connection. And as I’ve said, connection builds trust, and trust builds relationships, and relationships builds well being and the ability to connect better. So, you know, people, I think this is the thing in the corporate world and in organizations. You know, our mission, collectively, and of all the other people that are in this field, is we need to turn that dial of empathy. Is this soft, fluffy thing into this is a hard skill. Yeah, it impacts results. Yeah, it impacts results. It’s a practice. No one has mastered it. No one ever will fully master it. That’s exactly the reason why you need to work on it continuously. And if people dedicate their time to doing that, they will see these, what they would call previously intangible results become very tangible.

Maria Ross 38:16

Yes, absolutely. Amen. All right. I love it so much. We are going to have all of the links in the show notes so people can get to the YouTube page, and also the information on empathy week if they’re interested in participating in that. But for anyone who’s on the go right now, where’s the best place you want to send them?

Ed Kirwan 38:34

Gosh, I would say, get involved in the festival. Go to empathy week.org, and then if you want the platform, empathy studios.com, they’re quite easy to remember, hopefully Perfect.

Maria Ross 38:46

Well, Ed, I am so excited. I’m excited to try to bring this to my son’s new school this year, and I hope lots of folks listening will think about bringing this into their own organization or their own kids schools as well. So thank you so much for your time. More importantly, thank you for the work that you’re doing in the world.

Ed Kirwan 39:03

Thank you for having me and yeah, hope to hear from people listening soon as well. Thanks Maria.

Maria Ross 39:07

Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Julia Armet: Solving the Double-Empathy Problem to Harness Neurodiversity

Did you know that 53% of Gen Z, the rising workforce, identifies as neurodivergent? If that’s the future of work, what does it mean for how we lead, collaborate, and connect? It means if we don’t learn how to lead for the needs of neurodiverse employees, we could be facing a huge hiring and unemployment gap.

Julia Armet, people and culture strategist, workplace facilitator, and proud neurodivergent leader, is on a mission to humanize work.

Julia shares her own powerful personal journey navigating her own neurodivergence, and we discuss why relationship-building is the heartbeat of modern work. She debunks myths around autism and empathy, and introduces the concept of the “double-empathy problem” – reframing how we see inclusion and communication across differences.

You’ll also hear why listening to neurodivergent voices elevates everyone, why the outlier is often the source of innovation, not friction, and how empathy can activate systemic shifts in the workplace and beyond.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Different ways people exhibit and experience empathy.
Approaches to unmasking neurodiversity and empowering neuroinclusion.
What you may be missing/misunderstanding about your autistic coworker’s social differences.
The importance of planting new seeds and redefining modern leadership through empathy.
How to integrate your team’s outliers to unlock greater levels of empathy.

“Solving for empathy for the most marginalized populations is what’s going to actually benefit all populations.” — Julia Armet

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge podcast:

About Julia Armet, Founder of Higher Playbook

Julia Armet, PCC, ELI-MP, is a people and culture strategist, workplace facilitator, and proud neurodivergent leader on a mission to humanize work. As Founder of Higher Playbook, she partners with visionary leaders and progressive organizations to design workplace cultures where all people — and all minds — can thrive.

With a career spanning media, technology, and professional services, Julia brings deep expertise at the intersection of relationship-building, leadership development, and culture transformation. From scaling a mission-driven tech company to leading global leadership programs, she empowers organizations to foster psychological safety, unlock talent potential, and drive culture change.

Through experiential keynotes, leadership retreats, and high-impact workshops, Julia equips leaders with socially innovative approaches and relational strategies to cultivate inclusion and conscious leadership. Her signature programs — Unmasking Neurodiversity and Empowering Neuroinclusion — harness the power of empathy to activate systemic shifts in the workplace and beyond.

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Connect with Julia:

Higher Playbook: higherplaybook.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juliaarmet

Facebook: facebook.com/julia.armet

Instagram: @higherplaybook

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/higherplaybook

Check out her signature neurodiversity programming: Unmasking Neurodiversity and Empowering Neuroinclusion: higherplaybook.com/leadership-programs

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Julia Armet 02:51

Thank you so much. I’m really honored to represent neurodivergent leadership on the empathy edge, and I feel like so many neurodivergent leaders will say that they lead on the empathy edge, because it is just our natural capacity to really see and understand. So thank you for having me.

Maria Ross 03:10

Oh, absolutely. So before we get into all of it, I want to start where I always start, which is, how did you get into this work? What’s your story? What drives this passion?

Julia Armet 03:20

I think, to frame the conversation, I am a twice exceptional autistic leader in the transformational learning and leadership development space. So I feel it’s important to acknowledge both my educational journey along with my professional journey. In an educational sense, I am, like I said twice exceptional, but to clarify what that means, when you are twice exceptional, you are both intellectually gifted with a learning difference based on the state criteria. So if you’re thinking about a bell curve, you are on both edges and without that language, growing up, it had a very confusing experience. It was everyday challenge. When I was a elementary school kid, I was pulled out of class multiple times a week. Though, as I went through adolescence, I exhibited asynchronous development, and I ended up graduating valedictorian in my high school class. And so through that experience, I feel I developed the capacity to deeply empathize with those who are highly struggling, along with those who are highly successful and those who are both highly successful and highly struggling. So with that in mind, I ended up pursuing a non traditional educational journey in college at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, I was exploring identity and media and looking at this idea of, well, how do I pave a path that is authentic to me? Now, at the time, I didn’t realize I was autistic. A lot of women don’t get identified until much later. In life, and I’m very grateful, because at a very young age, I found an incredibly aligned opportunity to work in the relationship industry, which is where I could really deeply understand who people are. And by the age of 25 they promoted me to direct the operations, and as I was at the forefront of the gig economy, with hundreds of contractors working remotely. And I’m questioning, how do I serve this remote workforce and actually see them? We’re not really in the same physical space? I ended up creating relational spaces and operationalizing relationship building with the workforce, and through that experience, I started to see that true transformation happens when we really invest in the relationship building of people at work. And that was really the path that I followed ever since today I have my platform higher playbook, which is really looking at the importance of cultivating our relational intelligence and relational capacities at work, and empathy is very much one of the most critical competencies of a modern leader. Absolutely.

Maria Ross 06:11

Yeah, the data show, and several studies show that empathy is going to be the defining leadership trait for the 21st Century. And my theory is because our problems are more complex than they ever were, and we cannot solve them alone. And so the ability, like you’re saying, that relational intelligence, that ability to build connections and build bridges, and, quite frankly, do it quickly, do it with people that maybe you know, your team is being brought together to solve a particular problem or to go after a particular opportunity. How can we do that in the fastest way possible? So I’ve often talked on the show about the fact that with the coming of AI, these skills are going to be more important than ever, because those leaders who have struggled with that, who have hidden behind the work, won’t have anywhere else to hide, because the work, a lot of the work will be done for them. So what are you left with? You’re left with those people like you’re talking about, who have that ability to connect and engage and even see things from a unique vantage point, a unique point of view. So I love everything that you’re saying. I want to talk quickly about your standpoint on the social evolution of work, right? Like I said, we’re seeing all this data. We’re seeing all this research that humanity at work is shifting. Obviously, the pandemic accelerated. A lot of that in terms of, Oh, these are human beings that we’re bringing into the workforce. They’re whole people. And I know that you have said that there’s recent stats that have shown that 53% of Gen Z identifies as neurodivergent. So what does that mean for the Well, first, what do you think is behind that? And two, what do you think that means in terms of the evolution of work

Julia Armet 07:52

when it comes to visibility and the conversation about neurodiversity? What happened was a lot of these 90s kids had kids, and the language of neurodiversity became much more commonplace. And so we’ve always been here, and yet more and more people are using that term, and as we see with Gen Z, very clear on their emotional and existential needs. So what’s really significant about 53% of Gen Z identifying as neurodivergent is we look at the now in our modern workplaces, if 76% of neurodivergent professionals are not disclosing and 85% of autistic talent are either unemployed or underemployed. We have a disclosure gap and an unemployment issue that makes it so that if we don’t solve for the psychological safety of neurodivergent people, along with creating workplaces that are able to serve this rising generation who has very distinct needs, desires and aspirations, it’s going to be a mismatch between our workforce and our organizations and so ultimately, those divides are really the crux of where our relational skill set becomes more and more essential, and I feel as though solving for empathy for the most marginalized populations is what’s going to actually benefit all populations.

Maria Ross 09:31

I love that, and it’s interesting that you say that, because it’s almost as if we put this label on it as neurodivergent, but when it starts to become the majority, then really, what’s the norm?

Julia Armet 09:42

Yeah, right, it is the natural evolution too. Because if we are looking at the role of technology in this digital age and how it just has impacted our neuro development and just our neurology, it’s quite fascinating, because our attention goes many places. Our intention gets hyper focused. Focus. So we are definitely, as a human race at large, becoming more and more neurodivergent, in my opinion, as well. So yeah, we can bring various lenses to understanding this phenomenon for sure.

Maria Ross 10:13

Okay, this is, oh, there’s, so there’s, you’re giving me like, six different questions I want to ask you at the same time. But I want to talk about this, something you’ve turned or you talk about which is the double empathy problem, and how it explains why communication breaks down between autistic and allistic people. And maybe you can define those actual terms for everybody, but maybe take a step back, not everyone’s heard of this. What is the double empathy problem, and how do we account for it to keep our organizations and our cultures and our culture at large running more smoothly and having better connections with people.

Julia Armet 10:47

It’s a term that, while it applies to the autistic population, specifically, it’s universal in that in this day and age, when we have cross cultural communications, there’s often a breakdown of empathy just based on different social norms and different nuances existing within distant cultures. So when we are defining the double empathy problem, it was coined by Doctor Damian Milton in 2018 to describe how communication often breaks down between autistic and non autistic people, and in that it defies this myth that autistic people don’t have empathy. In fact, there’s various different expressions of empathy. So if we’re thinking about what the double empathy problem looks like in the workplace, if we have a autistic or neurodivergent professional, that is saying the lights are too bright in here, I can’t focus. That’s their reality. And they’re not putting blame or saying to somebody, turn off the lights. They’re just acknowledging their reality. And then the manager could say back, well, it has to be on. I don’t make the rules here, and it becomes a source of tension. Yeah, there’s often a misunderstanding of intention, though, if we are kind of zooming out and realizing that if we can start to learn to see each other’s different ways of expressing empathy in extreme cases like that, what ends up happening is, as we start to have more globalized cross cultural conversations, we’ve expanded our capacity to engage with individuals who might just come from different cultures or upbringings or any dimension of diversity, right? So at the end of the day, I brought in that language when I was messaging you online, because I realized we are to really solve for empathy, and we are the really expand our capacity for empathy. We need to name the breakdowns of communication that are happening and ultimately not put the responsibility on one person or another, but said, really acknowledge the relational responsibility.

Maria Ross 13:00

I love that. I call that, you know, that we it’s required for empathy to flow both ways totally. And so there’s a couple questions in there. One, can you help us understand and maybe even dispel that myth? A little bit about what you mentioned right at the beginning, which is that, you know, oh, autistic people aren’t empathetic. I know that there are some conditions that kind of prevent people from tapping into their empathy or understanding what that looks like. But can you give us, like a primer on what does that look like in terms of the difference in how it’s exhibited, and maybe educate us or dispel some myths around that fact or that non fact? I should say

Julia Armet 13:40

I believe everyone experiences empathy distinctly. Though, if we think about people feeling into empathy from more of a emotional or effective standpoint, that might not be everyone’s version of empathy. I experience empathy on a sensory level, and a lot of what I experience, you could actually kind of bring into the category of telepathy as well, because there’s a feeling not just into but there’s a feeling outwardly. And so just to be able to look at empathy individually and get curious around. Well, what is empathy really? Asking that question in itself allows us to actually see the limits of our understanding and the conditions that we’ve put on empathy. And ultimately, for me, I believe that the most fascinating thing is to understand every person’s internal phenomena, and that’s ultimately for me, what has allowed for me to be seen as the empathetic leader. I’m deeply, deeply interested in seeing people for who they really are, and I’ve come to define empathy in my own reality as the capacity to truly see in a. Understand another

Maria Ross 15:01

exactly, and I talk about that a lot, as you know, which is really just about, especially from a workplace context, what is really accessible for people is calling it the ability to see, understand, and where appropriate, feel another person’s perspective. And that also includes getting curious. Like the first step is I actually care that you might have a different perspective or point of view, so I’m going to get curious and ask about it, and just that acceptance of the fact that your point of view might not be mine, I feel, is the beginning of empathy. I don’t have to be crying on the floor with you when you’re upset, but that cognitive ability, we talk about differences between cognitive empathy and affective empathy, and you can access the ultimate act of compassion through either of those routes. And some people are more whether it’s autism, whether it’s just you’re more left brain, you’re more analytical, you’re more data driven, you might be able to tap into that curiosity of someone else’s point of view, from the cognitive standpoint, versus just I have a feeling, or I’m connecting with you, or I’m, you know, awash with all these emotions, and I think, and tell me what you think about this, my theory is that that misunderstanding is what makes people uncomfortable embracing empathy in the workplace, Because if they’re not touchy feely, they’re not intuitive, they’re not emotional. They’re like, Oh no, I don’t I’m not going to engage in

Julia Armet 16:26

it at all, totally. So I find that I’d love to bring up a story here, because I do believe that an open mind is the entry point to the open heart, and I feel this context is more of an extreme case, but it really highlights how it’s not just okay jumping in, get touchy feely, but it’s much more of a process of opening mind, opening heart. I was leading a psychological safety workshop for a group of about 115 leaders at a multinational, and this was an off site that brought together people from 100 different countries, and I knew, because this was in the financial industry, and typically we are going to have a lot less touchy feeling, is there? Yeah, that I needed to kind of have my hidden agenda embedded into this kind of list of competencies, right? And so what I ended up designing was a two hour experience with the first half being an open mind Strategy Session, conceptually thinking about psychological safety. And then by the second hour, it was all about open hearts and one round of relating at a time I moved them through interpersonal connection rounds that by the end of it, I literally brought up Alanis Morissette on the screen, and it’s playing empathy. And if you would have seen the crack, that’s all we need. Wow. We need to create that one crack, because when we can crack people’s hearts open, that’s what allows for the capacity building to really happen. As I looked out in the audience, I saw grown men with tears in their eyes, and at the end of the day, it’s sometimes a matter of Yes, bringing people in and rolling them into the empathy work, though, at other times it’s really leading people to the edge. And when we can bring people to the edge, and as empathy disruptors make that crack, I know that we in that crack can then plant new seeds and begin to redefine what it means to be a modern leader.

Maria Ross 18:42

I love that the idea of planting new seeds when things crack open is amazing. I love it. I love it. It’s amazing. Can you talk a little bit more about maybe, you know, even helping us build empathy for the experience of someone who is autistic coming into the workforce and people making all these assumptions about them. Can you give us a peek? I know you can’t represent every autistic person in the world, but maybe from your own experience. What do we need to know about that? What is it that we can do as leaders and as colleagues to meet that person where they are so that ultimately, we get the best out of that person. We get the best performance, we get the best innovation, because there’s so many gifts they have to give, but when they’re misunderstood, and even their empathy, intention is misunderstood, can you talk a little bit? I know there’s a lot of questions in there, but can you talk a little bit about what that’s like, and what are we missing?

Julia Armet 19:34

The whole question that you’re asking, for me, hinges on the challenges that arise when there are so many assumptions. Made because of the social differences that might exist between an autistic person and neurotypical person, though, if we actually just see autism as a symbol of social difference, any candidate, any professional, can enter into their. Workplace experience and be judged by the differences that they bring. It’s exaggerated if we think about a person who might have challenges keeping their communications condensed, or might have challenges because environments are too bright or the smell of the cafeteria is too strong, or there’s background noise happening as they work, and it’s impossible to truly focus and do the deep work that would be possible if you work from home. So at every phase of the workplace experience, it’s up to not just the people who are in leadership roles, but any person who is a part of a team or an organization to be able to recognize the opportunities that exist, if they are realizing, you know what, I’m recognizing, the person who sits next to me is struggling a bit and is always wearing their headphones, but there’s this always staying later because they can’t get their work done during the day. We all ultimately have to simultaneously question our assumptions, but also really be able to keep our eyes open and have expanded lenses to notice not just what’s happening within our reality, within our performance, but in the broader culture of the workplaces that we co shape.

Maria Ross 21:29

I love that. I love that I mean, and it’s so much about training ourselves and training our responses. You know, when I was younger and my my world was narrower. You know, it was like you’d work with different people, and your first judgment was, what’s wrong with them, right? Whether it was they have quirks about how they work or they just they don’t seem passionate about the work, just because they’re not necessarily as emotive or expressive as other people, right? And when you can train yourself to disrupt that thought of not what’s wrong with them, but what makes them tick, like, help me understand this person better, because they’re just different. I think we, hopefully we get to that as we get older, but it would be great if we could just, you know, do that from the start, and avoid a lot of conflict and avoid also just experiences that not only are detrimental to another human being, but if we’re looking at the organization and the organization’s goals, all the missed opportunity and all the missed contribution that the organization loses out on because they’re making an assumption that different is wrong, yeah, and, or they’re making an assumption that, oh, I don’t even want to know what the difference is, because I’m going to have to put all these accommodations in place, which, quite frankly, all of us accommodate every day, when we accommodate keyboard height and chair height and light, you know? So that’s a whole nother conversation.

Julia Armet 22:59

When you’re bringing this up, I would love to just say, in terms of really showing the simplicity of becoming more neuro inclusive, the reality of practicing open mind, that’s what I aim to cultivate. If, let’s say I’m going in with an neuro diversity training, I usually lead with unmasking neurodiversity, and the power of that is you have neurodivergent people sharing their lived experiences with people who wouldn’t necessarily identify as neurodivergent, being able to ask questions, and there’s genuine openness to dialog. And when people exit those experiences, they’ve been able to have shifts in their mindset that aren’t really learned through learn this skill, that skill, or that skill learn through the transformational power of conversation. So I’m a big advocate of not striving to check off all of these ways of operating so that you can serve the neurodivergent audience. I’m here to say, being open to actually see and hear the people who you work with, and creating those relational spaces can go a long way, because in every space, those micro level shifts that can happen. Have the capacity to change the way we hire, the way we manage, the way we lead, and that compounds over time to have very significant impacts. But it is quite funny, like, you’re very much like people. People ask these questions, like, well, you know, I want to be inclusive, but when people aren’t meeting deadlines. When do we draw the line? And those are questions that, of course, we are here to ask. Though, sometimes it’s less about thinking in terms of, how do we get people to meet our expectations? Instead, how do we evolve our expectations so that more people can. Succeed within our workplaces, our communities and our society at large, yeah.

Maria Ross 25:05

And to add to that, you know, I talk a lot about that being an empathetic leader doesn’t necessarily mean, quote, unquote, lowering expectations or being okay with bad work quality, right? But it’s like you said, it’s just a perspective shift of it’s not about you lowering down to a common denominator that’s not going to move your organization forward. It’s about what can you do to raise people up within their own natural capacities? And if you’re you’re thinking like a real, empathetic leader who’s going to drive change and results the shaming and blaming doesn’t get you what you want anyway, so, and it’s not about lowering standards or letting people slide, but it’s like, okay for that particular person to get the best that they can offer. What can I do to help them rise to the level of expectation in their own way? And that could be and we saw a lot of that through the pandemic, and unfortunately, there’s been a lot of snapback on this. But people work best in different ways. Some people work best in an office, in a crazy, Open Office environment with lots of noise going on. Other people need to be left alone. They need to be in silence. They need to, you know, be able to control their day and control their schedule. If the ultimate goal is not about you doing it my way, but doing it in a way that helps us meet the expectation, meet the KPI, if you will. Then that’s about a leader who’s seeing that something might be happening and then figuring out how to uplevel that person, not necessarily, oh, I’m not getting great performance out of that person or whatever, we’ll just lower standards for everyone, right or for everything. And I that’s another thing that I think scares leaders into thinking about their false narrative of empathy, is that, no, we’re not asking you to let quality slip. We’re not asking you to dial back your expectations. What we’re asking is that you have a mindset shift. Of my role as a leader is not to just like you said, check off the box and get things done. My role as a leader is to figure out what helps every person do the job we need them to do totally.

Julia Armet 27:12

And I want to add another layer, imagine if the leader’s capacity to empathize empowers that individual to break the curve and defy expectations. Because when we think about the gifted population, I’ve been acknowledging the autistic lens, but I really want to bring in the 2e lens, which is when you have individuals who are gifted, and when I say they struggle to exist within the confines and the reduction in this ways of these workplace structures, that gifted individual is often the innovator, the one who’s going to transform the whole organization when you allow them permission to have greater flexibility. And so that’s just one use case. I do want to add that, though, because what if the opening of empathy is the elevation of what’s possible for that organization? And I believe that sometimes the most underserved are those who have some of the greatest contributions to make.

Maria Ross 28:18

This is so good. I love that perspective, of not it goes beyond even what I’ve been talking about, which is you’re helping that person rise to the level of your expectations. But what if you create the environment to elevate the expectations beyond what you even thought possible? We don’t think that way, and I admit I hadn’t thought of it that way. So I love that perspective.

Julia Armet 28:42

I want to share a story, and I feel like it’s pleased. Is it just for people to be able to see it? I’m a twoy autistic. I struggle with a lot of things that people don’t see though. I’ve been over identified with my giftedness my whole life, and when I entered the tech industry at 24 the reason why I was promoted to be the Director of Operations of that organization as they scaled is because I generated 60% of the bottom line. And when I was tasked with the responsibility to make other people work the way I worked, I took it with a grain of salt. What I did was I created relational spaces, knowing that if we could have people feel seen and understood, those autonomous contractors would have vested loyalty and great motivation to bring their purpose, bring their best ideas, bring everything that they had within their hearts to serving their clients. And to this day, the people who I served in the industry that I was in, many of them remain matchmakers. Many of them have developed these careers, and I’d say many of them would identify as neurodivergent the whole. Whole thing is the front line and then the top of organizations don’t have to be at odds, but it’s up to the people who are the people leaders, those who are often the hinge to be able to empathize with both sides, yes, at the end of the day, when we can create those lines of connection, where we have empathy for our bosses and our bosses have empathy for our workforce. That’s truly where we can create transformed workplaces that have such incredible capacity to make a contribution to our world, and that’s what I believe we’re all after right now in this day and age.

Maria Ross 30:37

Absolutely, I think that that’s so important that we understand that it’s a skill that can be embraced no matter where you sit within the organization, and that the more we talk about it, the more we model it, the more we invest in it as an organization and as a leader, and the more vulnerable we are with the fact that we’re working on it, right? We don’t. I always tell leaders that I’m working with like you don’t have to do this in the shadows. Tell your team you are working on your emotional intelligence. Share with your team the journey of trying to be a more empathetic leader, because it doesn’t make you weak. You’re modeling a growth mindset for your team. And then they’ll start to think, oh, where can I improve myself? This is encouraged here that wow, the leader who I look up to is admitting they don’t know all the answers, or they haven’t developed all the skills. I can do that too, and you just open up and you unlock, like you said, you elevate everything, and you unlock more innovation and higher performance. And I think often,

Julia Armet 31:37

especially if you’re looking at leaders who are neurodivergent, or leaders who might not know they’re neurodivergent, but they are grappling with misunderstanding, and they deeply do care, and they want to show their workforce that they care. And yet, let’s say their workforce has built up animosity. I believe that sometimes the greatest leverage that a leader has, is showing up and sharing openly with the people who they work with. And if I feel like, let’s say, or the way I would say it actually is if I’m to disclose my neurodivergence and be seen in my truth and allow myself to be visible. What does that do for other people? What does that do for people’s openness to be more curious? At the end of the day, our capacity to disclose what’s happening within our inner world is at the crux of what I know can help people better understand each other and at the end of the day, work better together.

Maria Ross 32:44

What would you say if folks are listening who are working in an environment with a leader, or if they’re a leader working with an employee, and they suspect that that person is neurodivergent, but that person has not identified as neurodivergent yet, and yet, that person might be having difficulty with connection, difficult relationships. You know, they’re seen as as problematic. Quote, unquote, yeah. What would you advise? I mean, I don’t know so much. If a employee can do anything about a leader. Yeah. What would you advise that someone seeing this play out? What can they do? I mean, obviously you can’t just tell someone. I think you should get tested for

Julia Armet 33:26

but here’s where you’re pinpointing something really, really important. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, there was an episode that you did. It was like, fix the boss. And that was really cool, because this whole idea of who needs to be fixed, it puts the responsibility on the person. But let’s see this experience and realize that the true opportunity is introducing frames of reference. So the reason why I lead unmasking neurodiversity workshop, sometimes with ERGs, sometimes for the entire organization, and that is to introduce frames of reference, because if you have 20% of your executive leadership team who is neurodivergent, that’s going to create with the executive leadership team many breakdowns of communication, yeah, because of the double empathy problem, and at the end of the day, the more that we can normalize and really vocalize these concepts. Double empathy problem, twice exceptionality, autism, neurodivergence. This is the vernacular of the modern workplace. And when we can have that language and those frames of reference, the self compassion is where it begins, and then that self compassion ripples out into our capacity for empathy. So sometimes that leaders responsibility is investing in the workshop or L D program people the better understand exactly is versus putting their responsibility on one person, let’s say invest in their leadership development. Yes, we can all. All benefit from individual leadership development, but what we can benefit more from is the relationship building so that we are able to truly see ourselves in each other.

Maria Ross 35:10

So what I hear you saying, and correct me, if I’m not reflecting this accurately, is that if, let’s say you are a leader with someone on your team who’s having some difficulties with the rest of the team, and you suspect there’s an element of neurodivergence at play, but that person has never identified as that. Whether they know it, you know, they might not even know it, right? Are you saying that one way to approach this is that that leader can build some professional development within the team? Yes, calling that person out, but just, hey, we as a team. We’ve got a lot of different personalities here. We’ve got a lot of different points of view. Let’s actually approach this from a neurodiverse standpoint. Where are we all coming from? And then you’re not putting somebody on the spot to almost, like you said, quote, unquote, fix them, but it’s how can you sort of lead them to that by actually leading everybody,

Julia Armet 36:02

I have a great story around this. Is there time for the story?

Maria Ross 36:05

Absolutely, yeah. But first I just want to make sure was that what I heard you saying, it’s

Julia Armet 36:10

exactly Okay, perfect, great. So there was a leader who brought me in. The team was having a lot of silos. And when I received the overview from the leader, what was going on, it was a general sense that there was one specific person who really just couldn’t integrate and was having a difficult time relating. And I thought to myself, Okay, because that’s generally the indicator of we’ve got their neurodivergent person, a gifted person, but somebody who’s an outlier. I see that as the seed for transformation. I see that as the source of innovation. And my objective then becomes, how do I foster a psychologically safe space to integrate that person? So when I showed up for that day, my objective was creating enough safety in that room so that people could integrate. And what I generally do is I disclose my neurodivergence Very quickly, so that the person who feels all alone in their experience potentially knows they’re not alone. Finally, by the end of the day, that person had disclosed their neuro divergence to the room, and the level of connectedness that existed where the go to perception of this person being difficult was no longer the case, and instead, there was this real desire to get to know what this person’s reality was, and I believe that that probably created much more of an impact on the organization than if you were to just hire a coach to serve that one person. Yeah, yes, see the neurodivergent person as the empathy disruptor. And if you wish to lead at the empathy edge, invest in integrating the outliers on your team, by integrating the most misunderstood, you are truly unlocking the capacity for empathy within your organization.

Maria Ross 38:11

I love it. I love it about that idea of like, seeing that as a catalyst for change, seeing that as a catalyst for connection, and not a source of friction. But I just I love all of this, because I think we all have those stories. You know, as we grow and as we try to improve ourselves and expand our thinking, we all can think back to those stories of people that we had frictions with in the workplace and look back with much kinder eyes of saying I wasn’t equipped at the time to interact with this person in a productive way. It not that they were broken, but that I maybe I didn’t know enough to unlock that as a catalyst for change. And what I have found, which is really interesting, and this is why, early on, I never called it empathy, until I did a Strengths Finder and realized empathy was one of my top five strengths. But when I was doing brand workshops or client workshops with people, and I always loved inviting the person that was sort of the negative critic, the one that was like, I don’t know if we want them in the room, because they’re always, you know, stirring up everything, and they’re negative about everything, I was like, bring that person, yes, because, and what I would do is simply listen, because I had no preconceived notions. I had no baggage. It was like no let him talk, let her talk. And the shift in just their perspective, the shift in their interaction with people, simply from the act of being heard and not silenced for the first time, was huge. And what I would say is, number one, those squeaky wheels were usually the ones that had the biggest epiphanies that they shared in those workshops. And number two, they become the biggest evangelists of whatever decision that group is making, because now they’ve seen transparently how it was made, and they know they had input into it. And so all the. Sudden, they’re not the Negative Nelly anymore. They’re the biggest cheerleader. Yeah, and I never

Julia Armet 40:04

transform that energy. You transmuted it. Yes, that energy was always there. It’s about, how do we relate to the disruptor? Right? This is the moment where so many people can reimagine empathy by simply questioning the limits and conditions around their empathy, if they don’t empathize with the innovator or disruptor, then it really shows you that you are actually restraining yourself from being more of an empathetic leader, and potentially restraining the organization from making the impact that it’s here to make.

Maria Ross 40:39

I love this. I have a colleague, Parisa Bania, who I know. Vanessa Parisa, yeah, so she works with badass leaders. She that’s the ones that are seen as disruptors and difficult problem children, right? And that’s her whole point. Is, there’s so much innovation and creative thinking to be unlocked when we learn how to interact and kind of harness that energy a little bit, rather than fighting against it all the time or forcing that person to conform totally. So I’m putting I’m putting on

Julia Armet 41:09

those are the ones who often are so highly empathetic when I think about the child who I was growing up in the Massachusetts public school system, I had to walk across the stage and win all these awards, and people hated me. They didn’t see the girl who went home and struggled so deeply with self injurious behavior and self destructive behavior, because it was way beyond my social and sensory needs to be in that environment. And so it just shows you that the capacity that we have to empathize with the outliers is the opportunity that we have collectively right. And I believe that’s what’s emerging within our collective consciousness right now. Right when do we turn off our empathy? And how can we remain open to truly seeing and understanding one another, even when it triggers us, it bothers us, even when they wanted to really just throw me out because my voice was too loud. In truth, I was always that seed for change in every environment that I’ve been in, and whether you see me as the top performer, the innovator, who’s here to add value, or you see me as the resistance, right, it’s the same exact power, right? And it ultimately is important to question ourselves and really build our relational responsibility. So all of this is something that I could probably talk about for hours.

Maria Ross 42:41

I love this. I could talk to you longer for sure, and we will. We will have all your links in the show notes. And you know, of course, we’ll talk about, I also will put a link to your signature programs that you have available for folks, and you have one about unmasking neuro diversity and empowering neuro inclusion. But I know you have others as well. We’ll put all those links. But for anyone who’s on the go right now listening to us, where’s the best place they can connect and find out more about you, you

Julia Armet 43:07

can go to hire playbook.com hire like the sky playbook, like the sports playbook, and the programs are on the leadership programs page. But what I will say is, if you’re listening and you feel really seen going you might be recognizing your own neurodivergence, or you might hear the language twice exceptionality, and you never had that frame of reference. If this moved you and you’d like to contact me directly, you can email me directly at Julia at higher playbook.com, because it’s an honor to be that mirror who’s able to really shed light on so many people’s lived experiences, and it brings me a lot of joy to be that validating influence Wonderful.

Maria Ross 43:49

Thank you so much, Julia, for your insights and your time today. Thank you, Maria. I loved it, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Catherine Ducharme: Managing Up for Two-Way Empathy

Managing up is one of the most powerful career accelerators you can master—and it all starts with empathy. Not just empathy flowing downward from leaders to teams, but empathy for your leaders: understanding their pressures, challenges, and decision-making context so you can build trust, influence outcomes, and create mutual success.

Given multiple generations in the workforce, we need empathy flowing up for leaders dealing with added pressures and mental health issues right now. Today’s guest, Catherine Ducharme—Founder of Fluency Leadership, award-winning communicator, certified coach, and TEDx speaker—has spent over 30 years helping leaders and teams lead with heart, curiosity, and inspiration. She shares her own story of learning to manage up, the mindset shifts that change everything, and practical ways to anticipate needs, respond more effectively, and position yourself as a strategic leader.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How to shift your own perspective, rather than trying to change others.
Ways to hold your boundaries, while still meeting people where they are.
The team building skills you cultivate when you engage in everyday activities with coworkers.
Why is there nothing small about small talk or soft about soft skills?

“A little vulnerability goes a long way. And it doesn’t mean you’re pouring your heart out, your woes and everything to your team, but giving them insight to what you’re juggling or what’s on your mind will tip the balance toward compassion.” — Catherine Ducharme

Episode References:

Catherine’s article on managing up: www.fluencyleadership.com/2024/07/17/the-crucial-art-of-managing-up
Fluency’s Trust Breakout exercise: http://bit.ly/4lqTBun
Book: Seen: The Untapped Power of Appreciation – coming in 2026 – Find out more here
TEDx Talk: The Untapped Power of Appreciation

About Catherine Ducharme, Founder, Fluency Leadership

Founder and Principal of Fluency Leadership, a leadership + team development and coaching practice, Catherine is a certified coach and facilitator with 30+ years of professional communications and leadership experience. She works with leaders and teams to build relational skills, empowering them to lead and influence with heart, empathy, curiosity, and inspiration. She’s been recognized as Regional Leader of the Year by the International Association of Business Communicators. She’s passionate about the need for more appreciation in the workplace and did a TEDx talk on that topic.

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Connect with Catherine:

Fluency Leadership: fluencyleadership.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/catherineducharme

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Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Maria, welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Managing Up is one of the most powerful career accelerators you can master, no matter what level you’re at, and it all starts with empathy, not just empathy flowing downward from leaders to teams, but empathy for your leaders, understanding their pressures, challenges and decision making context so you can build trust, influence outcomes and create mutual success. Given we have multiple generations in the workforce, we need empathy flowing up for leaders dealing with added pressures and mental health crises right now, according to Gallup’s 2025 state of the global workplace report. Quote, last year, global employee engagement fell, costing the world economy 438 billion US dollars in lost productivity. The primary cause was a drop in manager engagement. Since the pandemic, managers have been asked to square the circle of new executive demands and employee expectations. We are starting to see the toll end quote, your leaders are dealing with a lot y’all today’s guest, Catherine Ducharme, founder of fluency, leadership, award winning communicator, certified coach and TEDx speaker, has spent over 30 years helping leaders and teams lead with heart, curiosity and inspiration. She’ll share her own story of learning to manage up the mindset shifts that change everything and practical ways to anticipate needs, respond more effectively and position yourself as a strategic leader, whether you’re in your first job or you are CEO reporting to the board. This was a great conversation. Take a listen. Welcome Catherine to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m excited to talk to you. We have been co conspirators for a while now on all things leadership and empathy. So welcome to the show.

Catherine Ducharme 02:44

Thank you, Maria. I’m thrilled to be here. A great opportunity to connect with you again. You’re right, co conspirators in a few things. So delighted to be on your podcast today, exactly,

Maria Ross 02:55

and you run fluency leadership, as we just heard in the intro. So tell us a little bit. I know today we’re going to really be talking about the importance of empathy and managing up. We talk a lot about empathy flowing downhill from leaders, and I know I’ve been part of the problem with that narrative for a while, until I realized, no, we’ve got to start talking about everybody embracing empathy for each other at every level. And part of what sparked this is you wrote an amazing article about the importance of managing up and understanding up, if you will. But before we get into all of that, tell us a little bit about your story. We know you’re a coach and a facilitator. You’ve worked with a lot of different clients over the years. How did you even get into this work, and what’s your passion in it?

Catherine Ducharme 03:39

Yeah, my passion is that early in my career, I had this fabulous mentor, great role model, leader. So out of the gate, I was blessed with this leader, and so learned a lot from him. Got my interest in leadership. There spent many years in corporate communications, marketing communications, but was always interested in the leadership development and how leaders really have that place where they can create a good environment from people. And my managing up story was also early in my career, because I had this VP that was sort of my internal client, and I just found him so difficult to work with, you know, an engineer, very process driven, very systematic, particular and I remember saying to my boss, like, Can I change the file on this? I just can’t work with this person. They’re impossible. I found him, you know, annoying. I would use words like that, and my boss kind of looked at me and said, Kath, you have to figure him out. Like that’s your mission. I can make it easy for you, but all through your career, you’re going to come across people who you’ll find it difficult to work with. So I made it my mission to figure him out. And. And I think one of the things that was a flip for me was realizing that I was looking at it from a very one way point of view. How is this person impacting me, instead of what this person needs? So that outward, so as you’re talking about, empathy is a two way street. So I made that my mission to figure out, well, what was important to him, what did he need to see? How could I build the trust? And so we finally got there like it was almost like, I, you know, I’m going to win him over. And I did. And years later, he became a CEO of a company, a biotech company, and he hired me, and so we were great. He became my mentor. I mean, this person was really important in my career. So going from I don’t want to work with him, to be my mentor was important. And even in that new organization, people would come into my office and say, you seem to have figured him out, like, what’s the secret? What do I need to know? And it was always about, this is what this person needs to operate at their best. And so that was a lesson.

Maria Ross 06:13

I love that. Well, I mean, that’s the whole thing we’re talking about when we talk about empathy. There’s, you know, it’s so often confused with, I’ve got to be crying with people, but it’s really just about trying to understand where other people are coming from and what makes them tick. And the Nirvana is when you both interact with each other in that way, where they care about what makes you tick. You care about what makes them tick. But we’re not always in that environment. So, you know, I get that question a lot from people I know you and I have talked about this of Well, what I do if the other person isn’t empathetic to me, and my response is always you are the only person you can control in the interaction. So tell us a little bit about that, because how did you can you share some advice about how you were able to set the tone for the interaction with him while you were gathering the information about him to maybe help him realize, hey, there’s another way to operate when you’re communicating with another person.

Catherine Ducharme 07:07

Yeah, and I think communication is really the key there. And so trust and communication are the elements. And I remember my boss, who had said, figure him out has said you need to build trust, and I think that’s a foundation for all leadership, and that starting point and the way you build trust is to get to know people and get to know them as the human beings that they are. So instead of looking at this person as the micro manager or the demanding manager, or whatever labels I was putting on it, I got to know him as a human being, you know, he was a father. He had, you know, all kinds of interests. And so you get to know the whole person and their style and their way around it is maybe a part of who they are that was so quick to label, you know, micro manager or my way or the highway boss or whatever we do, but that’s just a part of who a person is, and frankly, it’s a little judgmental. So it’s about meeting people where they are, and the more we got to know each other. And I leaned him with curiosity, what did you need? The more he, you know, sort of released a bit of that control, because that’s it. In the end, as you said, I have so many people in coaching that start off with, how can I get this person to change? Yeah, and it’s you can’t. All you’re responsible for is how you show up. So that’s what I made my mission and still do with people it. How can you see it differently? How can you shift your perspective to give them what they need?

Maria Ross 08:55

And how do you do that without becoming subservient? How do you do that while still getting your needs and your tasks and your boundaries met?

Catherine Ducharme 09:04

Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s not about tolerating things. And I think when you look at people with you know what’s underneath, what’s maybe driving the behavior, we’re very quick to judge other people’s behaviors, but what we don’t always look at, it’s what’s driving the behavior, and sometimes it comes from a fear of failure. They don’t want to get things wrong, or they may be getting pressure from other people. I mean, this guy was a VP, but he reported up to the CEO, and he didn’t want to get that that wrong, and so it is that that meeting people where they are, but also holding your boundaries. So it isn’t about taking it it all on. As you build trust, you can have the conversations with people around well, you know. Why don’t we look at it another way? Or have we thought about other things? So, you know, one of the tools I would offer is that tool of curiosity to help people shift, maybe shift, or at least maybe look at things in a different way, and then they come to know you, and then we’ll listen closely the next time?

Maria Ross 10:21

Yeah, I mean, you see so many parallels of how this goes both ways this goes whether exactly what you’re saying can apply to dealing with someone who’s reporting to you and someone you report to and having it flow in both directions. I’m curious to know, how do you control how you show up and respond in those situations, because we’re not all showing up in those situations fully formed, right, especially earlier in our career, but also later in our career, when we’re under pressure, when we’re under the gun. So what tools or strategies do you give to your clients on how to regulate themselves in the interaction where they’re trying to get to know the other person, they’re trying to also maintain their boundaries, and it’s just, you know, maybe it’s not going well. How do you help them figure out what they need to do to regulate themselves so they’re showing up in the way that they want to show up in the interaction?

Catherine Ducharme 11:18

Yeah, such an important point you bring up, is that self regulation, because we can be so easily triggered, right? We have baggage. We have things in our past that comes up. And so it really is. I think in those situations, the more present we are, the more mindful we are of what is coming up, because we always have that choice on how to respond. And I have been in situations where I feel you’re managing up, and people have crossed the line, and you know whether they come back at you verbally, where I have sort of taken that step back to say, why don’t we pick this up a little later, when you know we can both see things a little more clearly and so, and that’s hard to do, particularly when the person is, you know, senior to you, right, right? But you just can’t make progress, and you may even damage the relationship if you react to it. So it’s that awareness, it’s that pause, it’s that stopping, and often it’s a really good question that might diffuse things

Maria Ross 12:32

right, right? The power of asking a question versus making a statement is really huge when you’re trying to buy time. I always say, You know what I mean,

Catherine Ducharme 12:42

absolutely, yeah, lean into that curiosity. And thing about curiosity, and as a coach, I mean, it’s one of the key tools, and it for leaders too, because curiosity and judgment can’t hold the same space, and so we really are intentional about, I’m really curious about what’s driving their behavior, and why are they maybe getting upset, or why do they want it that way? Then there’s no room for judgment when we start coming up with our stories of why that’s happening. Yeah, that sort of impacts the relationship.

Maria Ross 13:19

Yeah, well, and I see what you’re talking about in terms of the relationship between that and building trust. And I’m thinking back to a really, really difficult boss that I had decades ago, and how much harm that person did on the team that was already a very high functioning team. And I think about my reactions and my responses, in my frustration, in my fear, in my anger, and even if I had gotten even if I had had enough presence to actually sit down with this person and say, what’s really going on for you? Why are you behaving in such a horrible way to all of us when we’re just trying to do our best? I don’t think that even would have been effective, because I hadn’t built the trust up yet for that person to respond in a way that’d be productive, right? They would have gotten defensive. They would have said, You have no right to ask me that you are subordinate to me. Whatever they could have said. But there’s something about this idea of building trust, and we talk about it a lot, about how it’s important to build trust. You alluded to it earlier, but what are some ways we build trust with someone who is more senior than we are? Aside from just part of building trust is do what you say you’re going to do and get your work done and perform well. What other ways can someone like think about the situation where they’re it’s a new boss and it’s a new relationship. What are some ways that that trust can even be built so that you can have those difficult conversations?

Catherine Ducharme 14:47

Yeah, absolutely. And I hear you right, like stepping in and asking that question, like, you know what’s behind this for you is, what are you coaching you have to be really, really careful about. Say that, and I find it requires that patience to build the trust, right? That just takes time. I remember I had a CEO who had hired me. I was part of his senior team, but he didn’t quite know exactly, you know, what it is corporate communications did. And so there was that resistance to it, like telling me what need to be done. And so I think if you recognize that, you deliver you meet them where they are, you deliver that, but then you also offer your counsel. So they, you know, often when we think people aren’t going to like or want to hear what we have to hear, we don’t say anything, but it’s really leaning into offer your counsel, and even if they don’t take your counsel right when it goes sideways, as it might do the next time they’ll listen to you a little more. So it’s kind of just, you know, step by step, building that trust, that accountability. How about we think about it this way? Yeah, what would happen if we change it that way? And then whatever the answer is, letting go of that you’ve done your job in offering your best advice, your best counsel. It’s not up to you to get people to do what you want to say. And I think if you you let go a bit, you’re more accepting of it, then they listen to you the next time, like, what was that you said? Right? And then with this CEO, we got to a point of, you know, anything happened in the organization? It’s like, have we bought in communications? Do they have a lens on this? Are we going to see that? But that took, you know, a good year, year and a half, to right, that point of trust. So, patience,

Maria Ross 16:56

patience, yeah, well, and I think the other important tip here is, like you mentioned earlier, is we’ve got to take an interest in people for who they are, not just our roles at work. And this is why, you know, some people say, well, there’s no time for that, or that’s nonsense, or that detracts from the work. No, it’s those five minutes at the beginning of a meeting or 10 minutes at the end where we’re talking about our weekends or our families or our vacation plans or what we’ve had for lunch, like that’s not nonsense. That’s not a waste of time. That’s what’s actually going to build trust and resilience within the team. And it’s those moments where, if I know that you see me as a human with outside interests and passions and worries and values, I’m going to be more inclined, and I don’t know what the scientific data is around this, but I’m going to be more inclined to want to hear what you have to say, and to be there for you and to you know, hey, you make a good point, but if I don’t even feel recognized or respected as a human being, There is zero trust there. So I feel like a lot of the times that we engage in these activities, and sometimes, you know, some companies do it as forced fun to get to know each other, right? But we need to make those individual investments even when it’s uncomfortable for us, even if we’re introverted or not, as you know, I’m just not wired that way. We kind of need to wire ourselves that way, because that is it. That’s such a principle of trust, even if you’re doing you’re ticking all the boxes, and you’re doing your job on time and you’re delivering. That builds trust too. Yet it’s not just about that. Do you can you explain that dynamic to us? Because I will bet you there’s someone listening going, but I get all my reports in on time. I do all my things. I blah, blah, why do we still not have a good relationship, right?

Catherine Ducharme 18:46

I check all the box I check all the boxes. Exactly.

Catherine Ducharme 18:50

Yeah, you raise such a good point, and the work has become so transactional about checking boxes, jumping on the Zoom call, jumping off getting to your next one. It’s relentless and on and on and yet to truly communicate, we need to connect and to connect. We need to be relational, and we’re losing that. The people that we work well with are people we know and trust and laugh with. In fact, I read that somewhere that a team who laughs together is a team who trusts one another. Yeah, and it is making that effort, and yet we dismiss that so easily. As I hate small talk. It’s not small talk. Small Talk leads to big conversations. Oh, I love that. That’s the way into people. When you understand what matters to people, what their values are, what drives them, then you’re able to see things from their perspective, right? And. And they know that you see them, and everybody needs to be seen, heard and understood, because whatever level you are at, you have responsibilities above you, and you have doubts and you have insecurities, that it’s the human condition. Yeah, so I think seeing the human being, that relational person, and having that balance of transactional and relationship is just so important,

Maria Ross 20:29

even if it’s the boss. This is everything I’m hearing you’re saying, and this is, I think, what the crux of, what we want to get to and offer some real action items for people, is it’s your job to create that relationship with your boss, as well as your leaders doing that for you so absolutely. Well, let me back up. Do you think there’s a generational twist to this? Because I know growing up as Gen X, when I entered the workforce, it was all about how you get ahead. Is you manage up, you make things easier for your manager or your leader? I don’t know if that’s true anymore. What’s your perspective on the generational expectations of managing up as we’re talking about it?

Catherine Ducharme 21:11

Yeah, and I don’t know. I mean, you know, I can speak from my kids, who are millennials and so forth. It is a little different. And I think exposure and to people, when you think of it, there’s people now who’ve been in the workplace a few years and have never experienced that in office, in environment, and so much of the literature out there is about, you know, speaking your truth and who you are, and what about my needs, and I want to be able to show up, yeah? And somehow we’ve lost, I don’t know if it’s generational, but somehow we’ve lost that, that two way street, you know, or we don’t have those mentors like I did back in the early days. Said, figure it out. That’s your mission. Yeah, yeah. If I had sat back and thought, you know, I want this to be easy for me, you know, I want an empathetic boss who understands me and wasn’t giving that back, it just have worked, right?

Maria Ross 22:17

Well, and I think that’s the important point here, is that it’s incumbent on all of us to be empathetic in both those directions, and just because your leader might have to be making decisions or doing things you may not like, it doesn’t mean you roll over. You know, if you’re being mistreated by your leader, that’s not what we’re saying. But have some compassion for the difficult decisions that they have to make. Have some empathy for trying to understand they’re managing multiple people, and you might only be an individual contributor, and you know, they’re dealing with the squeeze coming from above and the squeeze coming from below, right? So I think we tend to just write off the leaders that we don’t agree with as toxic. We’re so quick to label that as such when, you know, we’ve probably experienced real toxic leadership. But I feel like that term is bandied about so much by a lot of the younger generations in the workforce, and I’m their biggest champion. So don’t get me wrong, like I love the way they’re changing workplace culture, but so quick to you know, oh, because they made me work overtime one day this week because of a client crisis. I have a toxic boss, and we again, we’re forgetting that lens. So what’s the solution to that? What do you think is necessary, and what’s within the power of leaders to do, to bring those, their people along with them, to try to have empathy going upwards as well as downwards?

Catherine Ducharme 23:41

Yeah, it’s such a good question, and it’s such a hard question, and again, a lot of it starts with us, and throwing around those labels of toxic boss or micromanager or whatever labels we are is a rush to judgment. It’s just not seeing the humanity of people. And I don’t know if it’s the answer, but awareness is always a really big thing, and how am I showing up if we’re mindful that it’s a two way street, it’s how can I change how I see this particular situation, and what can I do? So it’s not easy. And I’m, you know, curious what you see on this, because it’s a it’s a tough question. Yeah.

Maria Ross 24:33

I mean, I think, you know, I think this is why I get the work that I get, is because I’m being brought in not just for leadership development trainings, but also for cross level conversations, so that it’s not just the onus is not just on the leaders to show empathy, but hey, I’m talking to everyone in the workforce today about how we can be empathetic with each other, whether it’s a colleague, whether it’s a client, whether it’s our manager or leader. And. I think that that’s something, you know, that’s where I get the requests sometimes from leaders of saying I give and give and give, and my team is constantly they don’t give back to me, and they shouldn’t have to. I am the one in charge. It is my responsibility. But, man, it would be nice if they could just take a little perspective and have a little empathy for what I have to deal with, the larger issues that I’m dealing with, the board that I’m reporting to, the CEO, that I’m reporting to, the shareholders that I’m responsible for. It’s like they almost say, like they don’t see that. They’re just seeing their little world. And so whether it’s leadership trainings whether it’s, you know, having someone facilitate a conversation about that at one of their strategic meetings. Sometimes we do need to get some outside help to come in if we’re not comfortable having that conversation. And there’s a lot of leaders who don’t want to admit they’re having that problem because they’re like, that sounds like whining, right? I shouldn’t need that from my people, but we all do.

Catherine Ducharme 25:57

Yeah, we all do because it’s a human condition, and as you’re saying, leaders often feel they have to have all the answers. They have to be the strong ones. They have to keep it together. And a little vulnerability goes a long way. And it doesn’t mean you’re pouring your heart out and your woes and everything to your team, right, but giving them insight to what you’re juggling or what’s on your mind, right, will open that sort of, you know, tip the balance in compassion, yeah? Because when we really understand people and that they’re human and they’re doing the best that they can. Yeah, and we have that compassion. I think we see people in a different light. Like to know that micromanagement might really come from a place of pain or insecurity. We can see that we can be a little bit compassionate. And then we get curious, right about, well, how can I help in this? So I think leaders, yes, can show a little bit more vulnerability within those boundaries. I also, and when you were talking about sort of practical things, there’s really good trust building exercise that I do in workshops. And I love it in workshops where there’s leaders and teams and everybody’s together, and it’s really simple, we break people into groups of three, and we give them a list of questions, and I’m happy to share this list with you. And some of the questions are more vulnerable than others. It might be about what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done, or what’s what are you most proud of? Anyway, they’re those kind of questions. And we invite people to pick one of those questions that they’re comfortable sharing within their triad, and we let them go off and they have the conversation, and then we do a bit of a debrief. And invariably, we have people saying, you know, I’ve worked with this boss for 10 years. So there’s a great exercise that we do when we gather teams together, and it’s a trust building exercise. And usually we’re going into a day of conversations where we want people to fully contribute. So we want to break that ice, so we put them into triads of three people, and everybody is given a list of questions, and some of the questions are more vulnerable than others, so people can choose what they want to share, but some of the questions are like, What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, or what was your proudest moment, or what’s a huge goal that you have for the coming year? So they’re quite personal, and we send them on their way, and they choose a question that they’re comfortable answering with the triad, and when they get back, we invariably hear, you know, I’ve worked with this leader for 10 years, and I found out something about them that I didn’t know that was just very human, and you can feel the shift, yeah, room, that they’ve had a conversation that they just don’t have in the day to day. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I love that, because it’s so simple and it’s so it’s something where we just don’t take the time to ask those questions of each other and to get to know each other on that level. And that’s why a lot of those I love that technique, because that is where we talk about taking time to ask and answer questions that we’re usually too busy to ask each other that some people might think are a quote, unquote waste of time, but those are the things that help humanize us to each other. So when you have a difficult ask, when you need to, you know, take someone to task for poor performance when you need to, you know, ask your boss or say something difficult you’re. Able to have that understanding of who they are as a person, and you’re able to say, I know this person is real, I can kind of let my guard down a little bit. I’m not just dealing with a persona. I’m dealing with an actual human being. And what’s so simple, yet we know it’s so hard about what you’re saying is, I think what stops us from getting to that relationship is the busyness and the pressure and, you know, it’s the KPIs and the goals and the objectives and this and the that and the quarterly sales, and we’ve got to make sure we’re making that time for those connections. And that’s why facilitated workshops or a training talk, or even just a strategic off site is so important to step away from the business so that you actually can have time to facilitate conversations like that? Yeah, absolutely. And then how do we bring that into the workplace? So it’s part of the rhythm we always talk about in one to one, like check in on the person before you check in on the work. Yes, and it doesn’t have to be the boss who does that. Yeah, you can initiate the conversation. Yeah, ask what the boss did on the weekend, or what’s lighting them up these days, or what book she’s reading, right? Whatever it is, but it says those moments, and it’s seen those moments as investment in the relationship. It’s a drop in the trust bucket, which, as we know, trust is built in drops and, oh yes, lost in buckets, and just knowing that, and to answer your question earlier, about, you know, is it a generational thing? What I would say is, if you want to accelerate your career, no matter what level you’re at, right? Because there’s always higher levels to get to, yeah, then be the person who makes the connections. Be the relational person, yeah, the communicative person, the curious person, because people are going to notice that they noticed when you’re being helpful, when you’re finding solutions, yeah, when you’re checking in on them. So your boss, who say, Take micromanagement, it’s usually about, are they doing the thing and are they doing it in the way? So anticipate that that’s a stress for them and take that off the table. Yeah. So it’s being that this could be a superpower for a person. It really could be

Maria Ross 32:48

well, and this is what’s going to lead to success in the age of AI, because it’s those relational skills, it’s those connection skills that leaders are going to be required to have, because we can get all the doing from the AI. What we can’t get is the trust building. We can’t get the listening. We can’t get the connection and collaboration and innovation and ideation. We can’t necessarily get that just from Ai. We’ve got to interact with each other, and those people skills are making us so marketable in the era of AI, and this is, you know, this is a song I’m going to keep singing as we go through this transformation, because we are not going to be able to just be the leader who hides behind our email to have difficult conversations, or be the leader who, you know, doesn’t get up out of their office, or be the worker who avoids interacting with their boss because it’s too hard, or they don’t understand me, or it’s too difficult. It’s about, what can we bring to the interaction and the conversation that no one else can, or nothing else can, I guess I should say, right?

Catherine Ducharme 33:56

So absolutely, it’s the humanizing that’s going to be the differentiator. Yes. I mean, AI like, it just doesn’t do empathy. It can, you know, maybe fake it, yeah, but it’s not real. And if we really take that to heart, that it is a relational element to build those relationships, to build trust, to have the conversations. They’re the skills, and I hate that they’re called the soft skills. Oh, I do. I do too, yeah, the soft skills are the hard skills, right?

Maria Ross 34:29

Because what you and I supposed to do, that’s our work, is we realize how it impacts the bottom line. And so they’re anything but soft, and they’re often difficult. So when we think about the word hard in terms of that, but yeah, I think that there’s so much what you know, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the show with various guests who are leaders in AI. There’s so much that is wonderful about AI, but ultimately the transformational aspect of AI, the impact of it, is a change management impact. It’s going to change. How organizations look, what jobs exist, what skills are needed, and all of those things are people issues, and we’re not going to be able to outsource that.

Catherine Ducharme 35:10

Totally agree? Yeah, what I’m hearing lately is don’t be afraid that AI is going to replace you. Be afraid that you’ll be replaced because you don’t know how to use the tools and the human skills that go,

Maria Ross 35:25

oh yeah, our how to use the tools and how to upskill your human relational skills as well.

Catherine Ducharme 35:30

Absolutely, yeah, because they’ll become more and more important as AI comes raging. Well, it’s here, but it’s here. And more so here even

Maria Ross 35:39

more so well. And I just want to take a little bit of a turn. Little bit of a turn, because I know your book is coming. Seen the untapped power of appreciation, again, another undervalued skill of gratitude and appreciation for yourself and others. I know we’ll have some links to where that’s available as soon as that’s available. But can you give us one final word of advice on the double flow of empathy and what we need to know as someone who’s reporting to a leader, and what a leader needs to know in terms of effectively leading their people, about how to get that two way flow going.

Catherine Ducharme 36:17

Yeah, I love that. I would say, from the person managing up, it’s to be others focus. It’s not about you. It’s that. How can I help? How can I understand? How can we move things forward, productively and for leaders, I would offer that it is being a little bit more vulnerable and showing your human side developing the relationship, because that’s also a two way street. So people see you as humans, understand what you need in the relationship, so others focus one way and vulnerability the other way.

Maria Ross 37:02

I love it well, and you can see how that’s a self fulfilling cycle there, because the more that leaders can be human and be transparent and be vulnerable, the less iconic they make themselves. And then that, in turn, builds trust for the people that report to you of understanding that you are a human being, and now I want to get to know you and understand where you’re coming from. And it kind of it supports the cycle. So yeah, I love that. Approachability. Yeah, approachability, exactly. Well, Catherine, this has been amazing. We are going to have all your links in the show notes, and I just want to thank you for sharing your insights. So much good stuff. I hope folks will continue to follow you and follow the work of fluency leadership. And for anyone that’s on the go that’s not looking at the show notes right now, where’s the best place they can learn more about you and your work,

Catherine Ducharme 37:51

fluency leadership.com. Perfect. I love it.

Maria Ross 37:55

Yeah, I love it. Well, thanks again. I’m glad we finally connected on this interview.

Catherine Ducharme 38:00

And thank you for having me, Maria, thank you everyone

Maria Ross 38:02 for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Jen Marr: Own the Awkward to be a Better Leader

Technology has always been a double-edged sword. As the workplace and culture shift, we as humans are seeing more collaboration, access, and the ability to communicate across borders. But, it’s also leading us to more stress, anxiety, depression, and social isolation. Those dopamine hits are no joke!

This all impacts how we need leaders to show up and lead. We have to upskill our leaders for more connection, conversation, and collaboration. AI will be taking over a lot of the drudgery, so leadership now looks different from what it did 20 or 30 years ago. And for some leaders, there is a big skill gap between intent and impact. Something my guest today calls the Awkward Zone as she helps leaders to Own the Awkward.

Today, Jen Marr shares the three forces behind our fundamental workplace shifts and how this has changed the role of leaders. She talks about that Awkward Zone and how to navigate through it. She shares the Barbell concept, necessary to build up healthy, productive employees. We have an interesting discussion about time – how leaders track it, spend it, and can find more ways to spend it on their people rather than on useless tasks. And Jen shares what may finally shake us up from the unhealthy ways tech has taken over our lives at the cost of real connection, and what that flashpoint might be for us.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The three major trends that are fundamentally shifting the workplace.
How to foster a healthy workplace with operational empathy and actionable steps.
Why actions, not nouns, frame lasting change so we can better handle our emotions.
How time tracking can help you be a more supportive leader.

“The awkward zone is that gap between our intent and our impact. Within that is a whole series of different habits, mindsets, and behaviors that get in our way.” — Jen Marr

About Jen Marr, Founder & CEO, Showing Up LLC

Jen Marr helps leaders Own the Awkward – the high-stakes moments that decide whether people stay or stray. As founder of Showing Up LLC, she built the first research-driven framework that turns relational skills into repeatable business practice. More than 150 certified facilitators now deploy her process across Fortune 50 tech, major-league sports, healthcare systems, and even the White House Leadership Program.

Her programs replace awkward and nuanced relational issues with clear, confident skills and conversation frameworks. Freeing managers’ time, boosting collaboration, and anchoring cultures where people want to stay and do their best work.

A former healthcare and business development executive, she blends three decades of frontline experience with partnered research. Her books—Showing Up and the new Lifting Up package, the playbook.

Jen’s message is timely and actionable: relationships run results. When leaders lift people, performance follows, and every metric that matters moves with it.

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Connect with Jen:

Showing Up LLC: showing-up.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenmarr

Book: Lifting Up showing-up.com/lifting-up

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Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Maria, welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Technology has always been a double edged sword as the workplace and culture shift we as humans are seeing more collaboration, access and ability to communicate across borders, but it’s also leading us to more stress, anxiety, depression and social isolation, those dopamine hits are no joke. This all impacts how we need leaders to show up and lead. We have to upskill our leaders for more connection, conversation and collaboration. AI will be taking over a lot of the drudgery. So leadership now looks different than it did 20 or 30 years ago, and for some leaders, there’s a big skill gap between intent and impact, something my guest today calls the awkward zone. Jen Mar helps leaders own the awkward the high stakes moments that decide whether people stay or stray. As founder of showing up, LLC, she built the first research driven framework that turns relational skills into repeatable business practice. More than 150 certified facilitators now deploy her process across fortune 50 tech, major league sports, health care systems and even the White House Leadership Program. Her programs replace awkward and nuanced relational issues with clear, confident skills and conversation frameworks, freeing managers’ time, boosting collaboration and anchoring cultures where people want to stay and do their best work. A former healthcare and Business Development Executive, she blends three decades of frontline experience with partnered research. Her latest book is lifting up the transformative power of supportive leadership today. Jen shares the three forces behind our fundamental workplace shifts and how this has changed the role of leaders. She talks about the awkward zone and how to navigate through it, and she shares the barbell concept necessary to build up healthy, productive employees, we have an interesting discussion about time, how leaders track it, spend it, and can find more ways to spend it, on their people, rather than on useless tasks. And Jen shares what may finally shake us up from the unhealthy ways that Tech has taken over our lives at the cost of real connection and our health and what that flash point might be for us. This was a great episode. Take a listen. Welcome Jen Mar to the empathy edge podcast. We have been circling around each other’s orbits, I think, for a few years, and I shared with you that for a while I thought you were a different Gen,

Jen Marr 03:23

there’s a lot of gens out there. What happens with social media?

Maria Ross 03:25

But welcome to the show. I’m so happy to be here, excited

Jen Marr 03:29

about this conversation. I

Maria Ross 03:31

am so excited to talk to you about helping leaders own their awkward and that includes their awkwardness around their emotional intelligence as well and their ability to connect with people. We’re not We’re not all skilled at being able to connect with people emotionally and connect with people from a care perspective. So this is going to be great. We’re going to dive in, and we’re going to talk about your books, including your newest one, which is lifting up the transformative power of supportive leadership. But before we get into all of that, can you share with us how you even got into this leadership work?

Jen Marr 04:08

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I this is not a path I had planned out to do. My background is business development, international business development, actually. And as I was raising three daughters, I had to take a career break because I couldn’t keep up the travel ended up being very close to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting tragedy, and where I was asked to come and help support that school. And four months later, was a half mile away from the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the bombs went off, and it put me on this deep dive into human suffering. And with my business development mind, I saw how we were really woefully inadequate as humans, responding to people going through hardship. And I just started every week at Sandy Hook, asking, what more do we need to do? I immediately really. Zeroed in on this area that I’ll call the awkward zone, that in that setting, everybody had empathy and compassion, absolutely everybody did. People just acted on it wrong. They weren’t. There were all these human behaviors that over the course of the last decade, I’ve been able to study and zero in on on what is that gap between people have incredibly good intentions, but the impact just always misses the mark. And so over the last 12 years, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve just dove into working with different researchers. Have done research studies with the New York office of mental health, worked with some great, amazing researchers from North Eastern University now working with Harvard flourishing program to really zero in on what are specific skills we can do to make sure that those emotions of empathy and compassion are acted on correctly, or even in the research studies we’ve done taken people with full on apathy and giving them the skills to do that cultivate the emotions of empathy and compassion.

Maria Ross 06:05

Wow, that is a lot, and I don’t think I knew that about your background as someone myself who’s very committed to ending gun violence and very supportive of Sandy Hook. Promise, it’s really interesting to hear you talk about diving into one of the most uncomfortable and awkward situations, right? So often, when those types of tragedies occur, we can have empathy, but it’s almost beyond it’s like we can’t even fathom what those people are going through and what that community is going through, unless we’ve, you know, sadly, gone through it ourselves. But what you’re saying is so important, this idea that, you know, I talk about empathy as innate to human beings, science has shown us that in, you know, barring certain psychopathies, empathy is innate to us as humans. But what happens is that muscle atrophies for certain people, if they’re in environments where it’s not modeled or rewarded or celebrated, and then you put these people with varying levels of empathy muscle strength in the same place at the same time, whether it’s at, you know, tragically in a community, or even just at work, and just the combustion that happens and the misunderstanding of people thinking They know what empathy is when they don’t. And that’s, you know, a lot of my work, but I want to raise us up for a little bit and just talk about this whole trend of empathy in the workplace, caring in the workplace. I know that when I started researching my book down back in 2016 people didn’t get it. And then the pandemic happened, and people started to understand like, Oh, we’re human beings at work, right? So there’s a lot of trends going on in the workplace, but what are, fundamentally, what’s from your vantage point, what’s changing in the workplace that we’re even having these conversations now, we’re having conversations about caring and mental health and all the things, and what do you think is driving that transformation?

Jen Marr 08:02

Yeah, I see three major trends coming together and shifting the way work used to be is you would go in, you would get your paycheck, and you would go home, go home to a supportive environment, a supportive community. And so work really was work, and school really was school. And you could have workplaces where the leaders would say things like, you know, leave your personal life at the door and, you know, send go to HR if you’re having issues. And that is the way many of us were raised, under that type of the workplace model, and that is all broken down now, and especially with three big shifts I see coming in. One would be the insanely fast adaptation to technology, with AI leaving hugely uncertain ways of knowing how to communicate, knowing how to connect, knowing what is your job, security, all these things so fast, so quick, and it’s resulting in enormous amounts of information throwing at us, but yet really poor interpersonal communication that people are being talked at but not talked with. And so that is number one. Number two, I would say, is the generational differences coming in so many, many changes in generational differences, a lot of which were also born out of technology. We can look at those generations as native analogs and native digitals. And just those differences just create cascading changes in the workplace. And the third area is just our world events, and every day is a new world event. Again. You can kind of even look at this as technology, because it it didn’t used to be the human body is not meant to be able to process everybody’s problems in every part of the world, and there’s constant division. And. And events and a lot of fear. So with those three things coming together in the workplace, we need to re look at what is an organization’s moral responsibility to their rights, and then also what is a leader’s role in that, and the old way of just go to HR with any of your personal issues, it doesn’t work anymore, and a leader has that role to be that guide through hardship.

Maria Ross 10:32

So many things in there, obviously, and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with a lot of these trends that are driving culture change. And you know what I wrote about in the first empathy book, the empathy edge was that these changes were already happening. This trend was already happening. It just got massively accelerated through the pandemic, because we were forced to right. But this conversation about demanding more respect at work, you know, seeing the whole person, all of these things, demanding work, life, integration was all happening. It’s just it’s happening a pace so fast that I actually have empathy for the leaders who are like, wait, what? Like, how am I supposed to lead? Now I was told to lead this way, and now I’m being told to lead that way, and it’s almost like we’re pulling the rug out from under them, but for very good reasons, right? So I have a lot of empathy for them, too, and this is where I really believe, like, what’s going to get us through this change? As true for any change is a growth mindset. We’ve got to be able to willing, willingly say we don’t have all the answers we don’t know, and put our ego aside to say, I’ve got to learn a new model, because this old model is not working for me anymore. So I love what you’re talking about here, and then you know the idea of AI, and kind of, I feel like the point you made about a fast adaptation of AI, and also this desire to kind of throw people issues on HR, just has to do with this whole desire to outsource empathy and compassion to other things in the organization, whether it’s to AI or whether it’s to HR. And so how do you help? How do you help redefine the role of a leader? Because, you know, we’re you and I are out there talking about, like, yeah, you got to change. You’ve got to adapt like, I’m sorry, but, but not sorry. So how do you define the changing role of a leader? What? What should we expect from a leader, and what should leaders expect to deliver? Now, that was not true before.

Jen Marr 12:35

Yeah, it’s such a good question, and I think what I want to do is take it a level up, because I think leaders aren’t even going to have the desire to change if they don’t understand the shifting narrative of the employee and over whenever we work with the organization, we go in and we do pre surveys, so we really kind of dive underneath the engagement surveys that are done with the HR department and really to understand what is the culture the temperature read. And over the last eight years, what we found is what we’ll call the 580 percents, right? That just is human behaviors that are happening in the workplace right now, and that is anywhere between 80 to 85 sometimes up to 100% in certain industries. People will say, I can tell when people are struggling, really pointing at like you said, your innate ability to have empathy and compassion. But yet, when we talk to employees then and say, where, where do you feel least cared for and supported in an organization, it will come back and at least 80% no one gets what I’m going through. So I can see you, but no one sees me. And then we ask them, Well, do you share your hardships at work? 80% no. But then the next question. So up until this point, you still could have that old model leader leave it at the door. But we ask them, do you wish you could, and always, over 80% I wish I could be more open with others, but I don’t feel that I can, right? And then that last 80% I have no idea how to navigate this space. I don’t know the boundaries. So we move from that into what we would call the barbell. That is, you know, how do we look at wellness as in general, for the workforce and for our organizations? And, you know, the two heavy ends of the barbell, I believe, have been very much built up over the last couple decades, which is excellent the right side of the barbell, let’s just say clinical care. So that is your clinicians, your counselors, things like that, through your EAP, you know, mental health resources. That’s not what a leader’s job is, right? That’s one side of the barbell. The other side is what we would call self care, and what we would call the individual’s understanding of EQ, like you might say, it’s what we would call inner work, right? Understanding my emotions, understanding how to take care of my body, take care of my mind, and when we are looking inward, it pretty much. On us. So these two ends of the barbell, if left alone, the barbell stays on the floor, but the barbell has a hand, and so that’s supportive care. I differentiate very much between looking in inward and understand your emotions and understanding the skills to act outward to other people. Mm, hmm. So the bar the hand of the barbell would be those outward facing supportive skills that someone needs. Otherwise it’s all on the employee. Otherwise it’s on the employee. Okay, I understand my emotions. I have to hire a coach, I have to hire a therapist. I’ve got to pay for all those things. I’ve got to do it on my own time. And guess what? The organization gets off scot free. And not only that, but it’s also it’s our moral responsibility to help people through hardship. So the role of a leader then has to say, if I can’t help my employees through hardship, I’m not going to have a productive team. I’m not going to have a cohesive team. I’m not going to have a team that stays together. So in a nutshell, then number one, understanding what’s happening in our organizations, also from an employee’s perspective of how they feel cared for and supported. Number one, two, what are the boundaries then that a leader has? And then number three, we can dive into that awkward zone as to what is holding you back, right, all those difficult conversations you need to have, right?

Maria Ross 16:19

Right? Well, it’s funny, because with the the latest book, The Empathy dilemma, I wrote about the five pillars to help you be an effective and an empathetic leader at the same time, and the first two are self awareness and self care, because we have to get our own house in order, in order to do exactly what you’re saying. Now, how can I now? How can I make space and be grounded enough that I can help someone else, or I can even see what someone else is going through. And the interesting shift that we’re seeing is leaders still clinging to like that’s not my role. My role here here is to get the job done, increase productivity, get results, drive growth, and that’s why you know, folks like you, folks like me, are out here also talking about the ROI of being an empathetic leader, because it does drive bottom line results. And, you know, it’s, it’s funny because you mentioned, you know, it’s our moral imperative to to help people. And that was actually what got me down the train of this was that I saw that the moral imperative wasn’t enough for some people. So I was like, Okay, we’re going to speak their language. We’re going to talk about data, we’re going to talk about research, we’re going to talk about bottom line results. And now I think that’s more of a conversation than it was before, where people actually, I think the most recent 2025, state of workplace empathy report said something to the effect of, and I might be quoting the stat wrong, 83% of CEOs see a link between financial performance and empathy. It still doesn’t mean they’re good at it. Within their organization, there’s still a huge gap, like you were talking about, but I don’t think that’s a finding we would have seen like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, when it was like, No, that’s not my job. My job. My job’s over here in this little box. But I think a lot of that had to do with us forgetting that these assets were human beings. And I’m using air quotes for people that can’t see me. But so I think that’s, I mean, do you see, I guess I’m getting to a question here is, do you see an awakening and an acknowledgement of the fact that, you know, we as humans are not capital expenditures that you can just, you know, capital assets that you can just burn out and replace, but that we’re really investing time and energy. Have you seen that shift with a lot of leaders that you’re working with? I think, slowly, slowly, yeah.

Jen Marr 18:41

I mean, everyone’s throwing the data out there. I mean, there is so much data on their ROI of this work, right? I don’t think there’s any shortage of data. And I think people recognize it. I think it, what it boils down to is just timing. And unfortunately, I think it’s going to get worse until it gets better. However, there are some people, you know, the people that are into this work right now are really either on the front end of the curve, you know, they’re the trendsetters, they see it, they get it, or they’re the back end of the curve that, literally, it’s going to, they have to have this work done, or they’re going to their their teams falling apart. So somewhere in the middle. And also, you know, working with a lot of college campuses that they understand students really need this, this work. And so I think it’ll get there. I mean, one of the stats that I love to share, the two stats I love to share is, one is the UKG study, where to 70% of workers, their boss has the biggest impact on their math equal to their partner. I think you know that one and the other one that I love is the Oxford study that came out earlier this year. I think pretty sure it was January, maybe January 2024 where they surveyed, like 46,000 workers in 233, organizations, and said, If you just do. Self initiated acts of interventions. Does it enhance well being? So these are things like, if basically giving it to the employee to take care of you understand your EQ, you go do stress management, you go do resilience training, and and we as an organization are scot free. If it’s all individual LED interventions, there is zero evidence of an improvement in well being like, it’s a massive study, and so if we are going to keep our organizations healthy, the consensus was It’s Dr Fleming out of Oxford, that it has to be the organization and not the worker. So I think as these things come out,

Jen Marr 20:47

ultimately we

Jen Marr 20:48

just have to stay the course, and someday it will be mainstream. I think we’re going to look back on this time, kind of how we looked at the fast food industry, like, wow. We had no idea what kind of junk we were putting in our bodies. Same with this? Yeah. No idea the kind of diet that screens and isolation and disconnection are having on our social health. Yeah. So we just stay the course. Maria, we’ll get there.

Maria Ross 21:11

I’ll stay the course. I’ll stay the course with you. That is just fascinating, because, I mean, that’s the thing it’s about. You can’t just hire your way to a caring culture or an empathetic culture, because it’s just like putting healthy seeds in bad soil, like, if the environment of what the organization and what the leader is providing doesn’t Foster, it doesn’t nourish, it doesn’t encourage it, then that’s what people see. Is they see, oh, that’s not how I find success here. How I find success here is this other way, no matter what the poster on the wall says about our values and our mission and our vision, right? So I think that’s such an important point that it’s about, how do we make this actionable for people, and how do we help them operationalize empathy in ways that are both sort of emotional, you know, affective empathy, but also cognitive empathy. How are we enabling our leaders and our people to just see things from another perspective, from another person’s point of view, and be willing to do that like that, right? There is the first step to empathy, right? So I want to talk about this because you mentioned this earlier about and we talked about how awkward it can be, and we’re acknowledging that, right? This isn’t easy work. It doesn’t come naturally for some people, but they are going to need to upskill. So how do you define the awkward zone and help leaders navigate through that when they’re like, Oh, this is all a little touchy feely for me. I’m going to feel fake if I ask people how their weekend was, you know, whatever other excuses they’re making, what is that awkward zone? Well, the awkward zone is

Jen Marr 22:48

that gap between our intent and our impact, right? And in within that is a whole bunch of series of different habits, mindsets and behaviors that get in our way. And so, you know, it’s a great little four square. Everybody loves a little four square, and the top two squares would be emotional barriers that they just stay in our heads, and the bottom two squares are when we’re actually in front of people, and we get our in person responding behaviors wrong. And in all four of these boxes, people will walk away saying they have no clue what I’m dealing with, right? Like they don’t get me. So it’s closing that gap between I can see people when they struggle, but no one sees me, right? So the top two, if you know of someone that’s dealing with something, you’ve got someone on your team with a bad project, or this or that, and you’ve not reached out to them yet, they have no idea you’re even thinking about them. These are what we would call emotional barriers. You will either be very doubtful, driven by fear, like, don’t think I should bring it up. It’s not the right time. I might just make it worse. I’m not sure. La, la, la. It’s that is, you are you’re caring, but you’re fearful that you’re just not gonna it’s not, I’m not the right person. It’s not the right time. I shouldn’t be doing that, so that that would be the doubter. Or in our workplace, we have a lot of deflecting. The deflector is like water off a duck, like, I don’t have time for that. That’s not my role. That can go to HR, I got my own problems. I can’t take that on. Yeah. And so it’s one of those two buckets. And so there are absolute skills that can be applied to either of those buckets to help people understand, I’m deflecting. All right, if I’m deflecting, this is what I

Maria Ross 24:29

should do. So on the bottom two those are barriers.

Jen Marr 24:34

We’re together, walking down the hall, in the elevator, in the parking lot, whatever person walks away, saying they have no idea this person will have either been a fixer and tried to overdo it, jumping and do this go there, you know, Vice giver, yeah, without really allowing that person to share, or you will have just completely avoided it face to face. I see you, Maria, but I’m not going. Bring that up, we’re going to just talk about things, and you completely avoided it. So, you know, in a nutshell, the top the four squares are either under thinking or overthinking or underdoing or overdoing. And so we develop a language to that that can be assessed. We have an awkward zone assessment. We also with that is a a time audit, and always just helping people to understand what stops me, what can I say? What can I do? How should I look at my time? And so in that we we help people through that but, but there are specific skills associated with whatever that is, and also to help people understand that we’re all going to fall into all these buckets. There should be no shame in it. And just like you said before, like you’re going to fall into different buckets on different days, depending on your season in life, depending on your relationship with this person. And that’s why it’s just, yeah, I’m going to be a deflector sometimes, I’m going to be an avoider. Sometimes it’s just who we are. So if we can normalize this language, I think it’s one of those situations where we don’t talk about it enough. Yeah, and if we if we have these concrete actionable skills, it’s with the research that we’ve done. It’s all based on verbs, not nouns. It’s all based on actions, not emotions. And so I think if we can give the actions, we cultivate the emotions, which is really what is to get people to to cultivate empathy when they’re maybe not even thinking about

Maria Ross 26:36

so true. And I just love all of this, because you’re absolutely right. It depends on and this is why, you know, self care is a pillar in in my framework, because if our capacity is low, we can’t make that space. We can’t we’re in self preservation mode. We can’t take on another person’s stuff or even show interest, because we’re like, oh, I don’t have time for this. I don’t know where this conversation is going to go right? And so I think that part is so important, and also about helping them understand that it’s not like you said. It’s about verbs, it’s about actions. It’s not always about the feeling. And this is where, you know, cognitive empathy can be a really valuable access point for certain people that are maybe more left brain or more analytical. They can practice things and practice habits that get them to you know, what we all want the outcome of empathy to be is compassion, which is empathy and action. And so if we can get there through our head, we might be able to bring our heart along too, but we can still get there. You mentioned something that was really interesting to me, in terms of your work with leaders, and that is helping them do time tracking. Because I I do see that a big excuse to the supportive workplace leader is there’s not enough time, there’s not enough time, and and I get it, people are overwhelmed and they’re overworked. So can you talk a little bit more about about the concept of time tracking and how people find time to be a more supportive leader. Yeah, it’s really interesting. And I think also, you know, back to the self care and being a leader. A lot of times we feel like if I don’t take care of myself, I can’t help others. But in all the work I’ve done over the years, there’s a lot of people that just can’t take the initiative themselves, and they need leaders to lean in. Like, don’t make me lean out. I need someone to lean in. And so sometimes, even if I am completely depleted, I need to know as a leader, if I help that person, it’s going to re it’s going to re energize me, and it’s going to bring us more into equilibrium. And so I think sometimes there’s a really important balance we have to make between understanding, yes, sometimes I need to care for myself first, but almost always, people are in need of connection, and a lot of times, if we’re focusing too much on ourself, it’s taking us down this isolation and this awkwardness that becomes harder to be around people. So I’ll just go there. But both I love that the whole barbell is needed, so don’t so don’t get me wrong on that. And so with the timing, really what we want to what we focus on is how, how are you spending your time

Jen Marr 29:23

all during the day on things that are not work related, especially on things that weren’t even around 10 years ago? So what? What happens right now, Maria and technology, is we get so stressed, and I think you can relate to this. We’re constantly we’re just done, we’re we have zoom fatigue, and we have information thrown at us, and it’s slack, and it’s email and it’s texts and it’s this, and it’s that we go to our phones and we’ve got six notifications on. And what we’ll do for relief is it’s just like, Oh, I’m just going to go play my saduko game. I gotta get my I gotta get my mind off everything, or let me scroll my LinkedIn feed. And what we’re how. Actually doing is we’re going for the quick dopamine hit instead of the relational oxytocin. And the quick dopamine hit is taking us down farther and farther of isolation. And so what we have to help leaders understand is you have a lot of these hours that you actually you know, don’t look at your LinkedIn feed. And here’s the data. The data is, most people, this is not even work related. These are things that weren’t even around, whether it’s gaming or, you know, Netflix and all these things. And don’t forget, like all of these things we’re doing by ourself. Now we’re even the TV used to be a group sport, right? And so adults, most adults, will have somewhere between 35 and 40 hours of screen time in those areas. And when we ask them how much time they could give up, people know, I’m spending too much time scrolling. I shouldn’t be doing that. I i get a notification of the news, and I go read the story, and it scares me, and I get stressed, right? All of those things are not necessary. And so if most people will say they can give up 12 hours a week, 12 hours a week, and not only that, their mental health is better when they’re not so scared about a new news story coming out. So we tell them to, you know, pull the notifications away and and just take five minutes a day to touch base with your key people and do this and do that like, it’s a lot of little things that build up that trust. So that’s kind of what we dive into with the time audit.

Maria Ross 31:36

I love this because I’ve, I often have said, when I’m doing talks about, you know, people saying, well, it takes too long. And I’m like, well, first of all, it’s that’s like saying, I don’t want to work on strategy because it takes too long. I’m just going to jump straight to tactics. But it’s also about, well, then you need to look at where you’re spending your time, because this is the stuff of leadership, and if you’re not spending if you don’t have enough time to do that, you need to look at where you are spending your time and prioritizing your time. And I love the fact that you’re, you know, you’re calling us out on really, are you, are you spending your time on the most productive things, or would it be more productive to put the phone down and have some conversations with the people on your team? Because that’s that’s your role. That’s what leadership is about. It’s all about health, too. I mean, the quick dopamine hits are hurting us. If they’re hurting us, and

Jen Marr 32:33

anybody will say, if you start having more conversations, there’s so much research out there, yeah, when I reach out to you that not only makes you feel better, it makes me feel better. Yeah, and that oxytocin is what overpowers cortisol, our stress hormone, dopamine, won’t do that. It almost adds to it in a certain way. And so if we want to get over exhaustion and burnout, we have to recognize that that’s going to be a key to do it.

Maria Ross 32:59

I love that, because that’s it’s funny, because that’s personally been my instinct in, you know, the last year, is when I’m sort of getting down or I’m getting depleted, I’m like, let me reach out to somebody. Let me, let me text a friend. Let me call a friend. Let me see what’s going on for them, and get the focus off of my little pity party I’m having for myself. Now, I do want to say not everybody’s, you know, issues are just little pity parties. They’re serious and they should be taken seriously. But I, for myself, have noticed that when I do reach out, it sort of gets me out of my own little hole. Yeah, a little bit more, because then you, like you said, you get energized by the connection. I love that. I love that.

Jen Marr 33:40

And all of those, you know, they’re all deposits in the relational bank account. And when our relationships are strong, our productivity is strong, our teams are strong, our health is better. It’s just, we’re just gotten a little off track that we can work on getting back. I have kind

Maria Ross 33:57

of like a off track question, but not, not Not really. It’s related to what we’re talking about here. But it’s kind of a big question. Do you have a perspective on when all of this technology and stimulus on us is going to come to a head, like, when are we are we ever going to get to a point where it’s like, we’re going back, we’re getting rid of the smartphones we’re going like, do you even ever think about what, what might be that, you know, flash point for us? You know, I

Jen Marr 34:30

heard a really good podcast last week. I don’t know if you ever listened to Guy Roz and how I built that. And he had on Justin McLeod. McLeod, I don’t know, the CEO of hinge. And his whole thing is talking about, he started this off saying, we’re an app we want people to delete, yeah, people get together and date, but then we want to be off screens. And he was talking about how 70% or 80% of interactions that we used to have together with. Friends has been moved to a screen. It’s, it’s alarming, actually. And he was asked that question, and he said, I don’t think we can ever go back, but he’s the one that said what I referenced earlier, I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a health revolution, whether it’s the same as the gym craze or, you know, the health food you know, we now know how bad health food is for us. And I think it’s starting people are going to recognize that screen time has to be limited, that being together with people is really needed. And I think there’s going to be some point where AI is going to take up a lot of this frustrating time right now, and it’s going to we’re going to be pushed into needing to be more human again, because AI is going to do all the drudgery work exactly, hopefully free us up so these human skills that we’re going to need to redevelop to bring back to the forefront, to be able to be more innovative and collaborative and Being together, we’re just going to have to really pull people out of it and help them understand why it’s needed and how it’s needed, and especially these native digitals that have such social anxiety that they won’t even go to a bank teller or won’t go up to a counter. Everything is has to on a screen because it’s just so socially awkward. We’re going to have to really help

Maria Ross 36:22

to pull them out of that. Yeah. I mean, I have an 11 year old, so I 11 year old boy, and it’s, it’s challenging, and I’ve often said that too about AI like empathy and those social skills, that emotional intelligence is going to be more marketable and necessary than ever, because the leaders hiding behind the drudgery right now to prove their value, will have nowhere to hide when, when AI starts automating all that, the only thing we’re it’s going to be left for leaders to show their value is how they’re motivating the team, connecting with the team, listening and respecting and innovating With the team, not with more stuff they can do on their laptop. You know, I had a really

Jen Marr 37:05

good example of this yesterday. I was flying back home after a week, a weekend away, and it was terrible storms, and I was in an airport with just so many delays, and the gate agents, the customer service counter, we’re just getting bombarded. And we’re getting, you know, thrown notifications on our screens like they’re trying so hard for technology to do everything, where people are just screaming, I just need someone to talk to that can help me, that can see me, that can do this. And I would envision five years from now where technology can handle a lot of it. And the humans that are on ground will be those empathetic voices will be those people that you know. In my book, we train people how to have that supportive conversation. How exactly do you have it? How do you display that empathy in a way that you know, where even I will say, there are a lot of people they they’re they’re having the worst day of their life, they can’t tap into empathy. They need to be able to say, if I do these skills, I am being empathetic. And so, you know, those are the kinds of things that I think that we have to find that balance. There are things that AI can do. AI could have helped a lot of people yesterday, you know, through all of these delays, and the people on the ground could have then just been good, compassionate voices to hey, we’re helping you through it, whereas right now they’re still bombarded with so many details, they don’t have the capacity to do that. So everybody in the airport was frustrated yesterday, yeah, I think that’s kind of where I would envision it, hopefully going,

Maria Ross 38:40

hopefully we can hope. We can hope. Well, this has been so great to finally connect with you and get your perspective live on all of these things I see you post about in social media. I just want to remind people the name of the book is lifting up the transformative power of supportive leadership. And this is a follow on to your book showing up, right, which is great, so I hope folks will definitely check that out. We will have links to that in the show notes as well as, can we get a link to your awkward zone assessment, something we do in workshops? Oh nevermind. That’s something we do in workshops. So you’re gonna have to contact her, but we will put all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s listening to us on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work? Yeah, probably the

Jen Marr 39:24

best place. Maria is showing up.com but it’s showing dash up.com or follow me on LinkedIn at jenmar.

Maria Ross 39:32

I love it. And my my PSA always for LinkedIn is make sure you tell her that you heard her on the show so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Yeah, I love it. I have a hyphen website too. Red dash slice. So I feel you that showing dash up, showing hyphen up.com. Jen, thank you so very much for your time and your insights, and I hope we stay in touch Absolutely. We will. We got a lot of work to do. We do. We got a lot of work to do. It and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Jamie Lee: Rewire Your Brain with Empathy to Better Stand Up For Yourself

What if the key to self-advocacy wasn’t being louder—but rewiring how you think, feel, and connect with empathy?

Today, I’m joined by executive coach and podcast host Jamie Lee, who specializes in helping women and underrepresented leaders rise through the ranks without compromising their integrity.

We dive into how empathy and neuroplasticity form the foundation of effective self-advocacy — and how rewiring internal narratives can lead to greater confidence, deeper connection, and clarity when speaking up. Jamie shares evidence-based techniques for regulating the nervous system so you can show up with presence and poise in high-stakes conversations. Plus, we touch on the six types of intelligence you can access to build connections and ask for what you want.

If you’ve ever struggled with self-advocacy or want to communicate with more impact and empathy, this episode is for you.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Defining self-advocacy and neuroplasticity in terms of empathy.
Compassion as an action is the key to rewiring your brain.
Ways to access your parasympathetic nervous system in your thinking brain and get out of your automatic stress response.
Leveraging mirror neurons with empathy and compassion.

“The brain adapts. The brain grows. It changes according to the practices that you expose it to. Compassion is the missing link that helps us be able to access those self-advocacy muscles for ourselves.” — Jamie Lee

Episode References:

Book a free hour-long consultation for 1:1 coaching with Jamie: https://www.jamieleecoach.com/apply
The Empathy Edge podcast: Dia Bondi: How to Ask Like an Auctioneer
Melissa Tiers’ Anti-Anxiety Toolkit: https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Anxiety-Toolkit-Melissa-Tiers-ebook/dp/B0073HU3EG
James Tripp’s website: https://www.jamestripp.online

About Jamie Lee, Coach, Trainer, Podcast Host

Jamie is an executive coach who specializes in women and underrepresented leaders who are “allergic” to office politics. She focuses on helping them get promoted and better paid without compromising their integrity or throwing anyone under the bus. In her practice, she blends proven self-advocacy strategies with evidence-based neuroplasticity tools.

Over a decade, Jamie has trained thousands of professionals in effective self-advocacy at leading organizations, including Citi, Unilever, Association of Corporate Counselors, American College of Cardiologists, UC Berkeley School of Business, and Smith College.

She’s also the host of the Risky Conversations podcast, where she has honest talks with thought leaders on topics often considered taboo or “too risky” at work — negotiation, mental and reproductive health, office politics, social injustices, and unconventional ways smart women navigate their path forward despite a flawed workplace.

From Our Sponsor:

Keynote Speakers and Conference Trainers: Get your free Talkadot trial and enjoy this game-changer for your speaking business! www.share.talkadot.com/mariaross

Connect with Jamie:

Jamie Lee Coach: jamieleecoach.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leejieunjamie

Instagram: instagram.com/jamieleecoach

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Maria, welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. What if the key to self advocacy wasn’t being louder but rewiring how you think, feel and connect with empathy? Today, I’m joined by executive coach and podcast host Jamie Lee, who specializes in helping women and underrepresented leaders who are allergic to office politics rise through the ranks without compromising their integrity. Jamie blends proven self advocacy strategies with evidence based neuroplasticity tools to help clients lead with confidence and clarity. Over the last decade, Jamie has trained 1000s of professionals at top organizations like city Unilever UC Berkeley and Smith College. She’s also the host of the risky conversations podcast, where she dives into bold, honest talks about negotiation, leadership and navigating the workplace on your own terms. We dive into how empathy and neuroplasticity form the foundation of effective self advocacy and how rewiring internal narratives can lead to greater confidence, deeper connection and clarity when speaking up, Jamie shares evidence based techniques for regulating the nervous system so you can show up with presence and poise in high stakes conversations, We also talk about how to be a more compelling communicator and presenter by understanding how mirror neurons work to create connection and how great leaders use them to influence with integrity. Plus, we touch on the six types of intelligence you can access to build connection and ask for what you want if you’ve ever struggled with self advocacy and trying to be empathetic, or you want to communicate with more impact and empathy. This episode is for you. Take a listen. Welcome. Jamie Lee to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you here. You are a coach. You are a podcast host, and I love that you bring this aspect to your coaching around self advocacy that’s really based in science and brain science. So we are going to have such a great conversation about the link between empathy and neuroplasticity and self advocacy and all the things. So welcome to the show.

Jamie Lee 02:57

Thank you so much for having me. I’m genuinely so excited to be in this conversation, because I think Maria, You are the embodiment of all of that right, self advocacy, empathy and neuroplasticity. I love your story of how you bounce back from a brain aneurysm, right to become an advocate for empathy in the workplace.

Maria Ross 03:20

Oh, thank you so much. That means so much. I love it. So I want to hear a little bit more before we dive into all the topics around what is self advocacy and what is the role of the nervous system in helping us emotionally regulate. These are all aspects that I’ve talked about in the past that are really important to having the capacity to embrace empathy and to be more of a human, centered leader. So before we get into all that, I want to hear a little bit about your story and how you got into this work and what makes you so passionate about it.

Jamie Lee 03:52

I am really passionate about this topic, about self advocacy and the overlap of self directed neuroplasticity, because I struggled so much with it myself, and my failure has become the impetus for the work that I do today. About two decades ago, I’m dating myself. I was working at a hedge fund as a junior analyst, and I was very wet behind the ears, and I didn’t know how to advocate for my professional value, and I didn’t know how to speak up and engage in conversations, especially when I was the only female in the room, and also a minority, right? A double minority female, but also Asian. And so I found out in this job that I was making 50% of the going market range. And that was the moment I realized, wow, I had a stellar education. I had a stellar liberal arts education, but I didn’t know how to speak up and engage in conversations that are. Strategic to my career growth, and it really blew my mind when it finally dawned on me through, you know, studying negotiation, self advocacy, career growth, it really blew my mind when I realized the missing link was reframing empathy, right, seeing your self advocacy as an act of service, as a way to help business decision makers make better decisions, and that’s when I realized I needed to share this information with as much people, especially women and underrepresented people, because We want to see diversity. When we have more women, more underrepresented people in leadership suites, they make better decisions. The business does better, right? You’re nodding your head. I’m preaching to the choir. I love it, so yeah. And so I got really curious about how to help my clients, first, how to help myself, and then help my clients reframe self advocacy as an act of service, and I saw that the missing link was helping them see that it is through empathy, and it is also through self compassion, so

Maria Ross 06:14

much to unpack in everything you said, I love it all, and I love this idea of reframing Self advocacy as an act of service, because sometimes people misinterpret self advocacy as bragging or being too pushy or being too aggressive, and usually these are words reserved for women or underrepresented groups, not usually straight white men, but that idea of understanding that you can advocate for yourself, you can speak up, You can use your voice and you can embrace empathy while you do it at the same time. And if you do you will open more ears and more hearts by doing it that way, instead of sort of trying to ram the truck through the concrete wall, which I feel like some people swing that pendulum to the other side of like, oh, I have to advocate for myself. That means I have to just, you know, cram my way through, and I have to just, you know, forget how I’m treating people or how I’m showing up. And I love that you marry those two things. And I love this idea of the fact that so much of what you teach and what you coach on is based in science, is based in neuroscience and brain science and all of that, because it gives people a very tangible way to approach it. It’s not super Woo, woo, right? So let’s just get into it. I want to talk about empathy and neuroplasticity as the foundations for self advocacy, and so let’s do some definitions here. First, first, what do you mean by self advocacy, and what do you mean by neuroplasticity for people that might be unfamiliar,

Jamie Lee 07:44

so self advocacy, I mean a way of communicating to stakeholders and decision makers the value of your ask. And when I coach my clients to advocate for their career growth, I always challenge them to think about, what are the business benefits? How does what does the business get? What does the organization get? The board members, whoever it is that you are advocating with, you, want to think about it through their perspective, right? So that I know you touched on this in empathy dilemma in your book, but that’s cognitive empathy, thinking about the ask, but from a different lens, not from the lens of, oh, what I want is selfish and greedy, but what if what I want actually helps them do their jobs better, right? Right?

Maria Ross 08:38

I mean, it’s a very marketing way to look at it. We you know, I’ve been a marketing executive my whole career, and it’s understanding that you want to look at things from the other person’s perspective, because people are always wondering what’s in it for me, and so for them to be it’s not enough for you to say, I deserve this, because I deserve this. But if you really want to have an impact, it’s I deserve this, because this is what this will do for the company. This is how it will impact performance. And I really feel like, you know, like I’ve tried to do with empathy, is make the business case for empathy, not because I’m trying to make it cold and calculating, but that’s how you influence people. That’s how you reach people. That’s how you you get them on your side. Is for them to understand that it’s a win win, and that there’s something in it for them. And I would be remiss if I didn’t reference here an interview. I’ll put it in the show notes I did with one of my colleagues, dia Bondi, who is all about helping people make big asks and get it. And she talks a lot about what is the offer behind your ask. It’s not just you asking something because you want it, but how do you create an offer that actually benefits both of you because of your desk? Yeah, you two should meet. Oh my gosh. So then explain to us a little bit about how you define neuroplasticity for people that are unfamiliar. And then I want to talk about those empathy and neuro. Plasticity as the foundation for self advocacy.

Jamie Lee 10:03

Yes, so self directed neuroplasticity is something that I teach my coaching clients, and neuroplasticity, you know, in plain language, is rewiring or changing your brain, and it’s something that we do innately. Another way to think about neuroplasticity is being able to have different internal associations and access your meaning making abilities, which, again, is something that we do all the time. And the reason why I teach research back self directed neuroplasticity techniques is because we always operate from the default mode. If you know a little bit about neuroscience, like I do, right, you’re familiar with the concept of the default mode of the brain, right? And in the default mode, we’re always repeating our habituated patterns of thinking, feeling and doing, and often, when I work with high achieving leaders who don’t have a strong track record of having advocated assertively for what they want, usually they have habituated patterns of feeling anxious, nervous or worried or anticipating rejection, as opposed to anticipating, hey, this is going to be a great, juicy conversation for all of us, right? And this research that came out of Max Planck Society in Europe very about 10 years ago, and what they did was they trained a group of women, 30 women in their version of empathy training, and how they interpreted empathy is your ability to share or to perceive other people’s suffering. And so their version of empathy training was showing these participants very sad, traumatic videos of people experiencing something difficult, and then they measured their brain activity, and they saw that the pain receptors, the parts of the brain that’s associated with pain and negative emotions, were lighting up, which is, of course, that’s what you would expect them to do, because they’ve been trained to feel the pain and the suffering of the people in the videos. And then they took the same group of people and they had them do compassion training. And compassion training is something that they adapted from the contemplate. I’m going to mess up this word, the meditation practices of, let’s say, Buddhists and other faiths. And what they found is that once they did two weeks of compassion training, the areas of the brain that are associated with reward, affection, love, affiliation lit up because they were training to cultivate the sense of friendliness, and then they had the same group of people re watch those sad videos and they didn’t feel as bad. They still were able to access this feeling of compassion. And so what this shows us is that the brain adapts. The brain grows. It changes according to the practices that you expose it to, and compassion, I think, is the missing link that helps us be able to access self advocacy, those muscles for ourselves. And the reason why I say that is because often in our culture, and especially for women and underrepresented leaders, we have a tendency to associate empathy with feeling bad.

Maria Ross 13:44

Yeah, it’s and it’s not sympathy, it’s not pity, because you can have empathy for someone that’s going through something wonderful as well. You know, you can be excited, just as excited for someone who is super excited about something or so happy. So I think we always forget that. We think that empathy is always associated with sharing the feelings in a negative way, right?

Jamie Lee 14:04

But with compassion, you’re able to light up different areas of the brain that are associated with motivation, with proactive care. And I think compassion is something that, as you said, you know, empathy is something that you can do for self interest, and sometimes you can generate empathy from the outside in. And I think compassion is something that we also do really for ourselves, right? Because when we cultivate compassion, it helps us feel good, and when we can feel good, we can extend that good feeling towards others, yeah, and helps us to be able to address even thorny topics, even difficult topics, even negative emotion, and be able to take proactive care.

Maria Ross 14:52

So talk to us a little bit about how that works in like, Give us an example of how that works in self advocacy. Yes.

Jamie Lee 15:00

So in my coaching practice, as I said clients, I work with high achieving women underrepresented leaders, and often they got to where they are because they’ve been beating themselves up partially, you know, they’ve been setting themselves up to a perfection standard and working twice as hard as other people, and it doesn’t feel right to direct compassion towards themselves. I’ve had a conversation with a leader in the finance world a coaching session, and she was feeling a lot of imposter syndrome. She was feeling nervous and anxious about achieving an ambitious business goal. And in that coaching session, I paused her and I said, Hey, do you know what compassion means? And she’s like, what is that? It was a foreign concept to her? Wow, yeah. And so when I introduced the concept, and I helped her reframe her situation, her actions, through the lens of compassion. What happened was the pressure eased, and when the pressure eased, her performance went up. And when her performance went up, she was able to reconnect with the sense of purpose that she had for the project, and she ended up raising 100 million dollars for a new fund.

Maria Ross 16:22

Oh my gosh, that’s great. I mean, that is so telling. And, you know, I often talk about compassion being empathy in action, and you kind of hit on that as well as compassion is the action piece, it’s that now I’m motivated to do something, and not that empathy on its own is a wasted emotion. I would hate to call it that, but there’s sort of a there’s another side to that, where it’s like, Okay, now that you’ve connected with that person and you’re seeing things from their point of view, what are you going to do about that? What are you going to do with that information? And it doesn’t mean you have to do something big and bold. It could just be listening, it could just be holding space for someone, it could be all these different things. But what I’m hearing you say, and correct me if I’m wrong, is I’m hearing you say, it’s about understanding that you can bring an act of compassion, even in the midst of making an ask, even in the midst of advocating for yourself. Am I kind of getting that right? Absolutely.

Jamie Lee 17:19

I love how in your book empathy dilemma, which is a great book, an award winning book, I like, how you break down empathy into cognitive and emotional, right? We can cognitively understand the business wants to make more money, save money, right? And we can also feel the emotions of other people. And I think compassion is a subset of that emotional empathy, where you feel the emotion, you feel that affiliation and the positive feelings of love, affection, and you take proactive care,

Maria Ross 17:51

yeah, okay, great, all right, so we’ve talked a lot on the show and in my books. As you know, when I talk about empathy, has got to start at home, and we have to get our own house in order before we can make space in our brains and our hearts for empathy for others, we have to regulate ourselves and be able to respond rather than react out of just knee jerk reactions, right? So talk to us a little bit about the role of the nervous system in that self regulation, and tell us what’s actually going on there and how you interrupt that pattern Absolutely.

Jamie Lee 18:26

So this is something that I often teach when I do self advocacy trainings and coaching sessions with individuals. It’s only natural for some people to associate stress, conflict, confrontation with speaking up for themselves, if they’ve had past experiences where they were reprimanded or rejected, or, you know, they were told that it wasn’t the time and the place and so that can leave a mark on their nervous system. An example of that is, if this is something that I have coached my clients through, if you notice some things that are not being communicated well by certain leaders, and you speak up about it without as much grace and nuance as you would hope, and then the reaction is like, you get shut down, right, right? Or you get shoved away or pushed out of the project, and that leaves a mark on your nervous system, because we take our work lives very personally. Yeah, we care deeply, right? And so some people, they come to me and they tell me, they freeze up when they think about even speaking up again, even if it’s a new environment, new team, new set of people, right? They still notice their nervous system freezing up.

Maria Ross 19:46

Yeah, it’s like once built and twice shy type of situation.

Jamie Lee 19:49

Yeah, right. And so what’s happening is that your sympathetic nervous system, which is the nervous system that’s associated with stress, stress responses of by. Fight freeze that is being activated, right? And there are very simple techniques that scientists have and neuroscientists have generated, that help us access the parasympathetic nervous system, which is associated with rest and digest, and also a brain state that’s more associated with compassion, empathy, presence, being in the moment. And I don’t know about you, but I always do my best thinking, best negotiating, best advocating when I feel that I am present and connected in the moment. So really, really simple technique that I can demonstrate right now is something that I have learned through my teacher, Melissa tears, and it’s written in her book The anti anxiety toolkit. It’s a great little book with all these very simple, short, brief techniques to help you access the parasympathetic nervous system in your thinking brain, and this one is so simple, all you have to do is simply soften and diffuse your visual focus, like pick a spot. And if people are listening, they can do it right now. Just pick a spot, look away from the little iPhone screen or your Android ski Android screen, just pick a spot and then just soften and diffuse your focus and engage your peripheral vision. And if you wear glasses like I do, you immediately start to notice the fuzzy frames of your glasses or the two walls that you hadn’t noticed but have been there all along. And also, when you do that, you also notice that you can sense more of the ambient noise. You can almost feel the temperature of the room, right, yeah. And every time I engage my clients in this very simple, brief exercise, they notice that the chatter in their mind quiets down. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So if you are in a high stakes conversation, maybe you are gunning for that promotion to managing director, and you’re speaking with your supervising manager, and something gets a little heated in the moment, and you notice that you know that stress response coming up, it’s something that you can do and still be completely present in the moment,

Maria Ross 22:30

is that also because, for me, it’s deep breathing. For me it’s like because I notice I hold my breath when I’m anxious and stressed, and my even my the pitch of my voice gets higher because I’m not taking enough air in. And so I will sort of like, take a moment, take a really deep two or three belly breaths to re engage that parasympathetic system. It sounds like this is something similar, but almost like from a visual perspective, right? Of like taking, almost taking a deep breath with your eyes. I don’t know if that’s like a thing, but I’m gonna call it a thing. I love that, that idea, and thank you for explaining to us why it works. Like why is it? Because I think we do. We get so into that phase of stress or anxiety, and all kinds of physiological things are happening to us, and we have to, we have to first notice it. I think that for me, that for me, that was the biggest thing of noticing what when my body was doing, and seeing what was happening before it escalated, and then interrupting that pattern. That’s right. And why do you think it is so hard for people? I mean, notwithstanding that they don’t know some of these tools, but there’s so many moments we all have where we regret our reaction later, but in the moment, what stops us from interrupting it in the moment? What’s your theory?

Jamie Lee 23:50

There’s so many things I mean in this day and age. First of all, we have so many interruptions, distractions, phones, screens, data, input, and I think it can be a little bit more tricky to Yes, these are self directed neuroplasticity tools. So ultimately, I teach my clients so that they implement these tools on their own time, and they practice and then generate a new neural pattern, a new neural network. But it does help to work with someone, because we’re not able to see the contents of our own brains. Yeah, like, I can’t. There are always things happening outside my conscious awareness, right? Our conscious awareness can process up to seven to nine plus or minus two bits of information at any given moment, but our subconscious is processing up to 11 million bits of information per second. So it’s still more impressive than any AI, yeah, and it sustains a little. Organism, right? Excuse me, reading and digesting and all of it, so memorizing and remembering. So it does help if you notice that you continue to repeat habituated patterns that you want to stop. It can help because you just don’t have that perspective. Yeah, third party can have

Maria Ross 25:18

absolutely and I think also, like kind of, I can’t reiterate it enough, and it’s why self awareness is the first pillar in the new book and empathy dilemma. Because if you don’t even realize it’s happening, if you don’t recognize that behavior as a habitual pattern, it’s a lot harder for you to break that cycle, because you don’t think anything’s going on. You don’t recognize that anything’s going on, but if you can start to pay attention to your heart rate, your palms, like your voice, just where you’re feeling it in your body. A lot of people think that’s super Woo, woo, but I think it’s really practical, like we need to understand what fear and anxiety feels like in our body, we need to understand what me about to, you know, unleash a tirade on someone before I do it, what it feels like in my body and what’s causing it, because otherwise we can never interrupt those habitual patterns.

Jamie Lee 26:15

Absolutely, I think you’re spot on. And this is something that I learned from my mentor, James trip. And what he did was he categorized, he organized the different types of intelligences we have. And there are six different types of intelligences. The first is, of course, cognitive, which many people, most of us, tend to engage in right when we’re typing email or writing up a proposal, or, you know, sitting in a meeting. We’re almost always engaged in cognitive intelligence, but then we also have episodic intelligence, being able to recall memory. We have metaphoric intelligence, right? Because we use language, and so much of our language is in the form of metaphors, almost all of it, yeah, metaphoric, right? Yeah. And then there’s also the somatic intelligence, the intelligence of holding your body, like when you straighten your back and you take a deep breath into your belly, right, sudden you feel a shift, and that is accessing your somatic intelligence. But also there’s interceptive, which is accessing your inner senses, like the root of that word is to be able to connect with your gut. So sometimes, when you ask somebody hey, what does your gut say? Yeah, how do you feel on the inside? Right? That’s accessing interceptive intelligence, and I think all of that culminates into social intelligence, right? And I think that’s why what you’re talking about, empathy, being a business driver, is key, because when we’re able to access all the different types of intelligences, it culminates into greater social intelligence.

Maria Ross 28:00

I love this so much. Can you cite his name again for us? James, James trip.

Jamie Lee 28:06

James trip R, i, p, p. He’s a great he teaches people to be change workers. I love it.

Maria Ross 28:11

I’m going to put a link to his work as well as Melissa’s in the show notes. So let’s talk a little bit about mirror neurons, because it’s really interesting to me. When I first started my empathy research, back in like 2016 obviously, I came across all the studies and research about mirror neurons first, and this idea that, you know, we are wired biologically with these mirror neurons, and they’ve done studies with babies where it’s if they see something, they’re going to mirror it, right? So you see someone crying, a baby might start crying. You see someone laughing, a baby will start laughing. And it’s this idea of how we as humans connect with each other is through these mirror neurons. So talk to us a little bit about how skilled communicators, whether they’re self advocating or not. How do they I don’t want to say you leverage mirror neurons to be so skilled and to communicate effectively.

Jamie Lee 29:10

I love this question because this is something that comes up often in my coaching sessions, and when people really understand it, it’s like they’re able to see the world of communication through a different lens. We all know that influential speakers, what they do really beautifully is they read the room, right? They don’t just listen to the words, they don’t just notice the faces that people are making, but they also listen at a deeper level, where they can notice what is in this room, what is the energy, what is the emotion in this room, right? And when they do that, they’re also able to do this thing really well, which is pacing and leading. And pacing and leading is often the that one little crucial communication skill that’s not. Missing in a high achieving leaders skill set that could really make or break how well what they advocate for lands with the other side and so really simply pacing and leading leverages mirror neurons, because what you do is you pace, you reflect back using their precise words, or the key words and the key expression that they’re showing right, to show them, I’m here with you, right? You don’t force a horse to water. You pace and then you lead the horse to water, right? It’s the same thing that you do in communication. You want to be able to read it, and even if you don’t completely agree with everything that they’re saying, right? If there are key phrases, hot phrases, key metaphors that people are using, it’s almost like those words are associated with a specific neuronal network. And so you want to say it back to them, and then follow, well, follow it up with a question that asks, okay, and what happens next? Or tell me more about that, right? So you pace them, you meet them where they are, and then you direct the conversation. So that is a way to leverage mirror neurons, because when people see and they can hear that you are meeting them where they are, they are more likely to follow your direction.

Maria Ross 31:36

I love this so much because I, you know, I’ve been speaking for a long time, but not on stages. I used to have to do lots of presentations in my 20s, when I was coming up through my career, and I think about how I always enjoyed it, but a lot of it was just, I was just there speaking, and I didn’t learn how to connect with the audience. That actually, where I learned that skill was through acting, was through being on stage and being being able to read the room and the energy in the room and try to either get something from it, or try to, like, do something with what was going on on stage, to re engage the audience. But even, you know, I think back to some presentations that I gave, you know, years ago, decades ago, and I’m like, Oh God, that must have been awful. But now it’s very much I you know, if I can tell they’re excited, I’ll match their excitement. If I can tell I’m losing them, I might slow down or pause or ask a question, and learning how to do that when you’re so concerned with the content you’re delivering. And let’s not even forget, you know, just your own self consciousness of being up in front of a room of people, it can be really hard, but I’ve found that I actually make myself feel better the more that I can connect with the audience and meet them where they are. It actually, in a weird way, takes away my self consciousness, because I know that I’m getting a reaction and I’m getting through, I guess I’m trying to say I

Jamie Lee 33:02

would not be surprised if they took a functional MRI of your brain in that moment when you are making that connection. It’s probably a lot like that research I cited where the areas of the brain that are associated with love, connection, affiliation, reward that’s lighting up. Yeah, yeah, your brain is like, I can empathize, but I also care about their experience in a proactive way. In other words, it’s compassion and

Maria Ross 33:31

action, yeah, well, and actually, I find that it also helps me be more impromptu. You know, some people, sometimes we’re so afraid to let go of the script, or we’re so afraid to let go of our talking points, but when I’m able to connect, it almost doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what my talking points were. If I’m able to tell a story in the moment that I wasn’t planning on telling because I’m having a connection with someone, it just creates a more organic conversation. And I love that you’re explaining to us why that’s the case, from sort of a neuroscience perspective, it’s that it’s almost like we’re building an affinity with the person that we’re talking to, and we’re less, we sort of become less concerned with what they think of us and more concerned with how they think and feel, and if they’re on board, you know, it kind of gets us out of the ego a little bit. That’s right, yeah, I love that. That’s fascinating, fascinating. So I love all this stuff. What’s one last thing I know? You know, sort of the topic of your podcast is risky conversations. Which I love that name so much. How do you handle all of this advice and all of these concepts you’re talking about, where they really get tested is when you’re having those risky conversations and you’re having the difficult conversations, right? It’s one thing for us to have a conversation where I’m giving an excellent performance review to you, right, but when you’re having I call them crunchy conversations, right? How do we how can we remember. This advice in those moments where the self consciousness and the self doubt starts creeping in, especially if it’s a difficult conversation and we don’t know how the other person is going to react, or if they’re going to react positively or negatively.

Jamie Lee 35:13

So a couple of things, what I do in coaching is help my clients engage all the different types of intelligences, right? So right off the bat, cognitive level, I always encourage my clients to remember, if it feels awkward, you’re doing it right. And in fact, what we do know from neuroscience is that when new neurons are being connected and fired and wired together, it feels weird. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re learning and growing. And I just coached a client this morning who is aiming for a promotion and she wants to improve her sales performance, and she engaged in some strategic conversations with the hope of leading to a sale. And she’s like, Yeah, I don’t know. I think it was a six out of seven, six out of 10, because I felt awkward. And I said, Wait, but did you meet your objective? She’s like, Yeah. And you felt awkward. I think

Maria Ross 36:11

you did it, right? Well, no one promised it was going to be easy. This is the thing I always say, is like, yeah, when, even when you’re practicing empathy or practicing any new skill, it’s like, going to the gym for the first time, it’s going to feel weird and you’re going to be sore, and you might not think you had a great workout. You might not, you know, it might be really ugly to watch you working out, you know, in that moment, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It just means you’re practicing it. And practice practices, there’s a reason they say practice makes perfect. Like, practice isn’t supposed to be perfect. Practice is supposed to be where you make the mistakes and where you feel uncomfortable and where you, you know, take the risks. So I love that. I love that you’re like, yeah, if it feels awkward, you’re probably doing it right. Yeah, yeah. And I was just going to add something real quick, because you’re sparking some things for me. You know, you mentioned my story of recovering from my brain aneurysm and in my rehabilitation when I was working on my cognitive deficits, none of that was comfortable, and it was because my brain was fine. Now you’re telling me I’m understanding now it’s because my brain was finding new ways of doing things that I’d done automatically for so long, things like vocabulary recall, or, you know, keeping up with a conversation, or, you know, any number of things that I was working on when I first got home from the hospital. And it was so I don’t know what the word is like, not painful, but it was just very jarring to be like, I know, I used to be able to do this with no issue, and so it was painful, and it did feel awkward, until I built those new strategies, and I built those new neural pathways up, and now people go, Oh my gosh, you seem like you had a miraculous recovery. I’m like, you know, kind of but also, it wasn’t easy. It was painful to get my brain, just like any workout, right? To get my brain to operate in a slightly different way than it had before. And so I think that’s a really great message to tell people. Of if you’re not used to doing some of this for yourself, or practicing empathy, or anything that we’re talking about here, it’s okay. You’re not doing it wrong, just because it’s uncomfortable, right?

Jamie Lee 38:22

And there in lies the compassion, self directed compassion, which is so closely linked with self directed neuroplasticity.

Maria Ross 38:32

I’m going to throw you a curveball question I would just love to hear about. Do you have like a most or one of your most memorable clients, and can you share a little bit like before and after of work? I know you’ve shared a few stories with us already, but who sort of stands out in terms of like, when they came to you, this is what they were facing, and then after working with you, or as they worked with you, this is what they were able to accomplish.

Jamie Lee 38:55

I have a client who reached out to me because she felt like an imposter. She knew she had an experience of building her own business. It had its success, it had its ups and downs, but she was now working inside an organization, and she felt she was being put down. She also happened to be the only indigenous woman in that team, a person of color. And she wanted to be able to build up her self confidence and advocate for a promotion for race. And she wanted to just feel better, become more confident under her own skin. So I, you know, coached her, taught her self directed neuroplasty, plasticity techniques. And again, we arrived back at self compassion. How do we direct compassion towards ourselves so that we can be even if it is just a team of one, believing in ourselves, believing in our. Potential, believing in what we’re capable of doing. And then as soon as it clicked for her, she realized she can do way better. I mean, she negotiated, she got a pay raise, and she’s like, No, actually, I have potential. I can do way better than this. And she set up her own consulting agency, and literally, within weeks, she was fully booked with seven figure contracts.

Maria Ross 40:28

Oh my gosh, wow. Talk about getting out of your own way, like,

Jamie Lee 40:32

exactly she got out of her own way, yeah. And she became the CEO of her own agency, yeah, and she was just able to connect the resources that were already within her to opportunities that were in front of her, and that’s how she was able to generate that result.

Maria Ross 40:50

You know, I’m just hearing this theme of basically getting you out of your own head, which is so applicable to empathy, right? When we’re too caught up in our own stuff. Again, we have no space for empathy for other people, because we’re in survival mode, and so much of it, what you’re talking about is when you’re coaching people who are suffering from anxiety or self doubt or imposter syndrome, that’s them getting caught up in their own stuff, and it doesn’t leave room for them to have the connections when they’re having the conversations because they’re too and not I don’t mean this in an egotistical way. They’re too self focused because they’re again, they’re in survival mode. But when you’re able to open up and you’re able to sort of settle those voices down, that’s when you can practice empathy effectively with other people and leverage that to meet your goals, leverage that to drive impact and results. Now you’re outward focused versus inward focused and not outward focused in I’m going to deplete myself by doing what other people want. What I mean by that is you’re so well grounded and present in yourself, you are able to be outward focused and able to connect with empathy for other people.

Jamie Lee 42:06

Yes, because you are able to direct that empathy towards yourself, yes, first, and then it goes outward 100%

Maria Ross 42:14

Oh my gosh. I love this so much. I can talk to you so much longer. We are going to have all your links in the show notes. And also, I know you have a fantastic offer, which I will put in the show notes to book a free hour consultation with you for one to one coaching so listeners take advantage of that. Jamie is in demand. And I just want to thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today, and your techniques and some really actionable things that people can take away today.

Jamie Lee 42:40

You’re so welcome, and thank you for being the living embodiment of what self directed neuroplasticity can do when it meets empathy.

Maria Ross 42:49

Thank you so much. I will remember that on my low days, because we all have low days, so I will take that with grace. Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place you.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Annalee Hagood-Earl: A Founder’s Masterclass in Values-Driven Velocity

If you’ve ever wondered what it really looks like to lead a fast-growing business or team with heart, humor, and humanity, today is your masterclass.

Annalee Hagood-Earl is the CEO and co-founder of Bash Creative Inc. Under her leadership, Bash has become a magnet for some of the biggest names in the world—not just because of its stunning creativity and flawless execution, but because people can feel the company’s values in every interaction.

Annalee’s not just talking about values—she lives them. She’s led her team through seasons of explosive growth and through moments when, as she puts it, “the bottom dropped out.” And she’s done it all while staying grounded in empathy, transparency, and joy.

In our conversation, we dig into building a thriving business while investing in your team’s self-development, what it looks like to lead through uncertainty, and how to redefine success by what your team feels while they’re producing, not just what they produce. We also dive into some golden leadership lessons: the difference between values and ideals, why Annalee insists on hiring people smarter than herself, what she learned from her worst managers, and why she and her business partner went through a kind of leadership couples counseling to make their company stronger.

It’s like she ticked every box in my Five Pillars of Effective Empathy, and the results on her culture, retention, and revenue speak for themselves.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why reinvesting a headcount into developing your team means they can grow instead of relying on past experiences and traumas
Why you should consider counseling with your business partners, your C-Suite, and other leaders
Ways you can walk the talk and model self-awareness, joy, and learning
Why allowing your people to be who they are means they can get further, faster
How communication and transparency will take you a long way on so many levels

“We take a lot of time to interview and recruit. We’re looking for aligned values, not aligned ideals. I want people with different perspectives on my team. I want to learn from them.” — Annalee Hagood-Earl

Episode References:

Follow the Founder: https://followthefounder.co/
The Empathy Edge podcast: Claude Silver: Leading with Heart at Vayner Media

About Annalee Hagood-Earl, Founder & CEO, Bash Creative, Inc.

Annalee Hagood-Earl is the CEO and co-founder of Bash Creative Inc., an agency known for designing world-class events and experiences for global brands. Guided by both her company and personal values, Annalee has led her team through seasons of explosive growth as well as times when the bottom dropped out. Under her leadership, Bash has attracted some of the largest companies in the world as clients — not just for its creativity and execution, but because its values-driven approach creates trust and a culture people can feel. This commitment to values has even inspired clients to reflect on their own, discovering alignment they hadn’t previously articulated. Annalee speaks internationally on values-based leadership and how aligning values with action inspires resilience, clarity, and lasting impact.

From Our Sponsor:

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Connect with Annalee:

Bash Creative: bash-creative.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hagood-earl-annalee-78848a6

Instagram: instagram.com/bashcreative

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. If you’ve ever wondered what it really looks like to lead a fast growing business or team with heart, humor and humanity, today is your master class. My guest, Annalee Haygood Earl is the CEO and co founder of bash creative Inc, an agency known for designing world class events and experiences for global brands. Under her leadership, bash has become a magnet for some of the biggest names in the world, not just because of its stunning creativity and flawless execution, but because people can feel the company’s values in every interaction. AnneLise not just talking about values, she lives them. She’s led her team through seasons of explosive growth and through moments when, as she puts it, the bottom dropped out, and she’s done it all while staying grounded in empathy, transparency and joy. In fact, bash’s values driven approach has inspired clients to reflect on their own discovering alignment they hadn’t even articulated yet. Anneliese speaks internationally on values based leadership and how aligning values with action creates resilience, clarity and lasting impact. A woman after my own heart, and let me tell you, she’s got the receipts, her company has achieved double digit year over year growth by prioritizing people and purpose right alongside performance. Yes, you heard that right. An events company that lived and thrived through the pandemic, talk about the ROI of empathy in our conversation, we dug into questions every leader should be asking, how do you build a thriving business while deeply investing in your team’s self development? What does it look like to lead through uncertainty and high pressure seasons without losing your humanity or your humor? And how can you redefine success, not just by what your team produces, but by how they feel while doing it. We also dive into some golden leadership lessons, the difference between values and ideals, why Annelie insists on hiring people smarter than her, what she learned from her worst managers, and why she and her business partner actually went through a kind of leadership couples counseling to make their partnership and company stronger. It’s like she ticked every box in my five pillars of effective empathy, and the results on her culture, retention and revenue speak for themselves. This episode is living proof that empathy isn’t a nice to have, it’s a growth strategy. So grab a pen, grab a mug of coffee or a warm beverage, because you’re about to learn how empathy, when activated through values, can create unstoppable momentum for your people and your profits. Take a listen. Welcome Annalee to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today as a wonderful case study in building a business and in building a team that is empathy first and people first, and showing how it can be successful, talking about all the great ROI that I always talk about, but you’re actually living it. So welcome to the show.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 04:00

Thank you so much, Maria. It’s really wonderful to be here, definitely preparing for this podcast. I was able to listen to a lot of episodes, and you’ve had some incredible interviews, and I feel like just in preparation to be here to talk about how we embrace empathy, I learned so much. So I really appreciate this podcast and having an opportunity to speak on it, and hopefully some of what I have to say resonates

Maria Ross 04:22

amazing, amazing. So we’re going to start where we always start. As you know, we’re going to start with your story. So right now, you know you are CEO and co founder of a creative agency that puts on World Class events and experiences. But how did you get here, and especially, how did you get to where you are in terms of your leadership and CEO philosophy around running the company the way you do

Annalee Hagood-Earl 04:45

so, I think to understand a little bit about the level of curiosity that I have about human beings is to just quickly go back to my upbringing. And I was raised by two parents. My father was a recruiter for. Are tech executives back in the 80s and 90s, and my mother is a psychologist and a family and marriage therapist. So right from the get, I had an opportunity to be curious about human beings and how they worked. So for me, it very much was, you know, my mom would love to dive into deep conversations about behavior, and then I think my dad just modeled and just offered the curiosity level that I had growing up, so that, I think was the base, because I’ve been obsessed with the way people work since the very beginning, and that parlays directly into the fact that I now own and run a company that is protecting and promoting human to human connection through events and experiences. So there’s some a bit in between, you know, the more technical bits as I’ve made my way from Southern California, where I was born, where I was admittedly very much in a bubble, so I didn’t have a lot of exposure to other types of people, people with other upbringings, people from other countries, like just differing perspectives. So I think I was seeking that kind of ever since I left home and I found a career in events, in recreation and hospitality, which just came out of wanting to go into business because I had no idea what I wanted to do. And I was actually pretty terrible student, to be very honest, but

Maria Ross 06:23

I made it, you’re proof they can succeed. Yeah, exactly. I’m proof that

Annalee Hagood-Earl 06:27

education isn’t necessarily for everybody, for like, a level of success. But I went to Cal Poly. Shout out to them. They do an amazing job, and most of their education is through learn by doing. So I had a lot of exposure there, and then I made my way to San Francisco, and I happened to be there for 16 years and through the tech boom. So like, oh yeah, being in a place where I got to watch, I mean, regular conversations on the bus were about starting companies, or, you know, start or creating a product. So like, just being in that space of curiosity just continued to allow myself to blossom, and so that’s essentially kind of how, like I personally, got to where I got but hospitality has always been a through thread. I worked in hotels for a long time. I, you know, plan events. I’ve been a part of communities, so on and so forth. So all of that together got me where I am. I am today,

Maria Ross 07:19

and now you’re running your business from Mexico City. So are you a remote first business?

Annalee Hagood-Earl 07:24

We’ve always been a remote first business. So working in hospitality, working in hotels, I mean, I had to show up in a suit and stockings. So like I when I left, and I left, definitely out of a moment of desperation. I was overworked, undervalued, and just really like, not feeling like I was a piece of myself. And I think, you know, your listeners can probably relate to that, whether they like, in any of their jobs, there are moments in which you like, don’t feel like you’re really representing yourself at all, or the person you would like to be. And I think that was the beginning of me really leaning more into empathy and like, How can I find that in my everyday when I’m stressed out of my mind and everybody is expecting everything from me, and because I’m a high performer, I kind of punished for it. So if that drove me out to start my own thing, both my parents were entrepreneurs at some point in their lives. Dad was quite successful in that, and so I always had it as an option. I don’t think a lot of people look at it as an option. And actually, I have a side passion project called Follow the founder, where I do actually share, like, Everyday Stories of founders. So like, Oh, I love it. Make it more accessible as an option if working for somebody else or working underneath an organization just isn’t for you. But all in all, whatever I have to say today can be applied towards you starting your own thing, or, like, as your own business, or you creating your own intrapreneurship within a larger organization.

Maria Ross 08:51

Okay, so much in there that I love No, don’t be sorry. It’s amazing. First of all, we’re going to put a link to follow the founder in your show notes so people can check that out, but I think you know this theme of what you’re talking about is exactly why I do the work I do, and it’s we’ve got all these people with potential, all these human beings that because of their work environment, because of the way their leader is leading in a negative way, we don’t get the benefit of their innovation, of their passion, of their engagement. And I often cite this study by catalyst, which was a study done a few years ago where they interviewed 1000s of employees and they separated them into the employees that said they had an empathetic leader and those that said they didn’t. And my listeners may have heard me talk about this study before, but it’s related to your point, because they asked them the same questions about work life integration, about could they be innovative at work? Did they feel like their environment was inclusive? And the deltas between the group that had an empathetic leader and didn’t are startling, and the one that always gets me from a very pragmatic point of view. Do is that I can be innovative at work was about it was over 60% for the people that were in the team that had an empathetic leader, for those that didn’t have an empathetic leader, it was 13% and I’m thinking, what capital asset would any shrewd investor only want to be getting 13% of the value out of right? So like when we talk about empathy, having an ROI and empathy, having a bottom line, your story exemplifies that because you are a high performer, you’re now, you now run your own company, and you left an environment because you were overworked and undervalued. And so culture matters and leadership matters. And I’m getting on my soapbox with you, even though I’m preaching at the choir. So tell me a little bit about I know. How do you How have you intentionally built your business? Given that philosophy, can you give us a few strategies or even tactics you’ve put in place in your business model and how you run the company because of that philosophy of putting people first.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 11:06

Yeah, I absolutely can, you know, I’m a firm believer in seeing in the everything trickles down. Like, regardless of if you want to have a flat organization, it’s still just, like, never flat. So what I both my business partner and I actually had really not great examples of leadership or mentorship or management prior to starting this company together, and so our motivation initially was to just build somewhere we want to work

Maria Ross 11:38

that wasn’t what they did. Was not what they did.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 11:41

So my first tactic was to take everything that I didn’t like and figure out what the opposite and or what the counter was to that. And I mean, it sounds simple,

Maria Ross 11:53

no, but like, what are some examples of that? Yeah,

Annalee Hagood-Earl 11:56

in that, you know, no idea is a bad idea. And I’m always open and willing to listen. You know, I can be sold. My mind can be changed. I am not rooted only in what I believe is best, because I’m a huge believer in hiring people that are smarter than me. So, you know, people that can influence me. I you know, once you get to a certain level of leadership, you don’t have as much time for your continuing education or learning on the job like it is, you’re learning from other people, so making sure that I’m always I always admire the people that I bring on to my team additionally. And that was when we started expanding. I think initially what we did when it was just the two of us, and even adding a third and a fourth was my business partner and I, we set up counseling in the beginning, like it was marriage, like we we had a life coach that was quite transformative for both of us, that we shared, and we decided to do sessions together so that we could better understand, like, what are each other’s triggers? Where do we both feel insecure? So, you know, and it was uncomfortable, but I had to say we were the type of life coaching we work with. There’s a little bit of, like, a trance aspect to it, and like, I had to really say, the deepest, darkest fears I had in front of my business partner. And some of it was maybe not even complimentary, but at least it was out in the air. So, you know, starting with a transparency to a degree, I think honesty and honesty is more what I mean when I say transparency. There’s definitely a level of transparency that you need to like not do at work, but that was huge in the beginning, and then we took that care and understanding and empathy for each other, and then had that for each of our employees as they joined us and as well as our contractors, as well as our vendors, as well as our clients, like we don’t treat anybody differently, like you’re not on the inside necessarily of bash creative. We’re all in this together, and that’s what allows it all to seep out. I love it. So those are kind of the beginning. I’d say currently, to ensure that we do bring in the right people, we go through inter we take a lot of time to interview and recruit great we’re looking for aligned values, not aligned ideals, if that makes sense. I want people with different perspectives on my team. I want to learn from them, and that was early, because I know I don’t know what I don’t know, right?

Maria Ross 14:29

And that’s what makes you an empathetic leader. This is speaking exactly to the first two pillars of my five pillar framework in my last book, which is self awareness and self care. And the self awareness part, I mean verbatim, you were talking about what you went through with your your counseling experience with your partner, which I think is genius, because it’s a relationship. You might need relationship counseling, but this idea of being aware of what not just your strengths and your weaknesses, but what are your emotional triggers, and what are the things that. You need to recognize are coming like be able to have that moment of pause and that moment of response to say I’m I now know what that insecurity or that emotional trigger feels like in my body, and I’m feeling it coming up. So I can stop myself, I can pause myself. That’s so important for understanding what we bring to the interaction. You know, when people complain about their teams, it’s like, okay, well, the common denominator there is that you are leading the team and you’re interacting with everybody. And could, is it really possible that they’re all bad workers? You know, is that really reality? No, there’s probably something there, and the fact that you are open and curious, and you do the perfect thing that I talk about all the time, which is you have to put ego aside to embrace empathy. And show me a leader who thinks they have all the answers, and I’ll show you a leader who’s irrelevant, because to your point, there’s always something new to learn. And the fact that you you know so much of your foundation, of your company, this is why I love this story is rooted in how the two of you were interacting with each other first, before you brought on a team, before you expanded, before you you started hiring people. And I know not everyone’s in a position like they might think, Oh, it’s too late, but it’s not. You can take the time to do that for your team, for your business partner, if you’re in business with someone, if you’re an executive, maybe the C suite team needs to go to a little counseling together to figure out how they complement each other.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 16:32

So it would be so helpful to do that. I mean, seriously, we got to talk about each other as people. And yeah, you know what? Your relationship with money, your relationship with your family, your relationship with conflict, like all these things are real in your entire life, and they are amplified in business. So like, if you don’t have if you have insecurities, or you’re coming from a place of scarcity in any of those areas, it’s just gonna seep into all of your conversations, the way you show up, like what your trauma responses are. And I think what’s so interesting that I learned a long time ago, but was recently reminded of, is that honestly, in leadership, there’s a lot of fight or flight moments like I don’t know what I’m doing all the time, and especially being a founder, this I’ve never done. Almost every day I’m doing something I’ve never done before, and when you freak out and you go into fight or flight, you lose 70% of the ability to use your brain. Yeah? So like, you only have 30% left, and that 30% is very concentrated on getting rid of danger in any way. It’s concentrated on survival, yeah, yeah. And it’s not the best route. Usually, that’s not usually you don’t show up your best self in that. And so learning what that looks like and what those triggers look like, especially in the people that are leading with you, or the closest in in your organization, is, I think, such an advantage, because then you can show up for each other. Yeah, we’re all gonna get there. We’re all gonna have these moments.

Maria Ross 17:57

It’s funny because I, I worked in in Silicon Valley during the first tech boom and bust and then the second bust. And it’s just so funny, because the way that people try to solve problems of performance is, you know, throw more sales people at it, or introduce a new product, or, you know, spend more money on advertising. And I’m not saying in all cases that some of that is not valid, but the first place we should be looking is culture and leadership, like what’s going on in the company. And I feel like boards of directors miss that opportunity, and they’re looking for a quick operational fix. Oh, if, if that, if we do this, then sales should go up next quarter. If we do this, then we’ll cut our costs next quarter. But sometimes it’s just a leadership problem, sometimes it’s just a culture problem,

Annalee Hagood-Earl 18:49

or the team needs a little reset, and instead of investing in a new person, invest in someone coming and doing a sound bath, like, give your team some rest, exactly. That’s so much cheaper than an additional headcount, and you know, giving giving your team tools to manage their stress, giving your team tools to communicate more effectively, giving your team training and tools and investing back in them. Take that one headcount and invest back into your team, and like they you are now allowing them to actually grow, instead of just rely on their past experiences and traumas well, and

Maria Ross 19:25

that was actually the next question I was going to ask you, is, how have you built the thriving business? And you know, you You’ve talked a lot about deeply investing in your team, so it sounds like those are some of the ways that you think about it. Do you invest in continuous learning? Do you invest in, like, what kinds of, what kinds of benefits, or great benefits that your team appreciates for their own mental health and their own, their own, I guess, just desire to be seen and heard. What can you give us some examples?

Annalee Hagood-Earl 19:55

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we so. I. My company has gone through some serious peaks and valleys in the last couple years, considering the pandemic many have but as an example, just for like context, we plan events that are 400 to 5000 people, and in for a year and a half, over 500 people was illegal in most of the United States for gathering. So we had, we had to figure out ways to just keep our team sane and busy, regardless of the work and, of course, the stress that was going on. And so we actually started introducing the first thing that we did was we introduced crappy Hour, which was during the like heat of the pandemic, and it was a safe space outside of their current like surroundings that they could come, let let go, get things off their chest, no judgment. We could just, you know, talk about the things we were worried about. Talk about things like it was just a safe space event. It turned into doing silly things together. I think doing silly stuff together in any capacity is super important. People need moments of levity and work, regardless of the work. You can be a scientist. You could be a salesperson, like you need moments of levity. And so being silly with your team and letting that wall down and not worrying about how you show up makes you more human, makes them respect you more. So we infuse, at least once a month, a virtual because we’re completely distributed team. We’ve never worked in the same office or together, and we do virtual now. We do team time, and depending on what’s going on, because our businesses can be very seasonal, we will bring in either we will use that team time to be applicable to what the team or the majority of the team is going through. Can’t meet everybody’s needs all the time, of course, majority right? Yeah. So you know, in moments where they’re working insane hours, we will do, as I mentioned, a sound bath like, because they’re probably not going to take that time for themselves, like, they’ve got other people to take care of. They’ve got other things on a long list that they’ve been ignoring. So like, forced time, not forced, but

Maria Ross 22:12

encourage, very encouraged, very

Annalee Hagood-Earl 22:15

accessible time. Yeah, that’s to take and just relax. Or we brought in, we’ve brought in a hypnotherapist to talk about self soothing techniques and moment of stress. Or we bought, we brought in somebody to talk about resilience, and what are some, some characteristics of that, and then also ways that you can practice it in your everyday life. And then sometimes we’ve done like a murder mystery, where we’re all assigned characters

Maria Ross 22:42

and oh my gosh, I love it.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 22:46

And sometimes we just get on and have no plans, and we talk about our favorite things from Trader Joe’s so like, it’s the but it is a time that everybody can come together and drop everything. And I think that’s probably the easiest thing you can do. But especially in this increasingly digitized world, increasingly dispersed. You know, teams, there is nothing more important than coming together in real life, and you can do that virtually, but I really highly recommend together in person. So you can actually, like, use all of the senses of a human right, and connect with people and do silly thing, yeah,

Maria Ross 23:29

and you can be strategic, like, status meetings. Don’t need to be in person every week, but, but this is, this is a whole other rant I have about the the art, you know, return to work mandates. And I get it. I am an extrovert. I get the need to be around people, but let’s be intentional about it. We can be strategic. So it sounds like your company is very strategic about when you bring everyone together. Is that true? Is it yearly? Absolutely every quarter. What’s your cadence?

Annalee Hagood-Earl 23:54

We we do a year. So because a lot of our team does get to work together per project when we’re on site for an event, yeah, they do have inter, like inter personal interaction, for sure, but what we want is a time that’s dedicated to giving them learnings, as well as giving them respite as well as giving them some levity. So we do that at least once a year, and we’ve done that. I mean, even when you know cash flow wasn’t necessarily there, we prioritized it, because immediately you can see the results. I mean, immediately people step higher into leadership positions, immediately they use the relationships that they’ve created. And if we also incorporate some workshopping of, you know, working on the company versus in the company, they feel a sense of of ownership and accountability, of the trajectory of this team, of this company, of the success,

Maria Ross 24:50

of course, yeah, well, that’s how you get the buy in, is if they’re part of it, that transparency, transparency of decision making. You know, decisiveness is one of my pillars in the. Model, and that doesn’t mean you’re a dictator, it just means you’re transparent about how decisions are made, and you’re open to input, and even if you end up making a decision that not everybody likes, because there is no decision that will please everybody. Can you explain it in an empathetic way? Can you say, you know, Annalee, we really liked your idea. Here’s why we couldn’t go with it. But please keep those ideas coming, because it sparked a really great conversation for us to think about. Now at least you’re in a position to disagree, but commit, because you know your opinion was fairly factored into that decision. So I love that, and thank you for validating the fifth pillar of joy, which was one of the pillars of empathetic and effective leadership, because that was the secret sauce. When I was writing this, the second empathy book, that I was like, what’s missing? I had four pillars initially, and I was like, no interviewing all these people and trying to deconstruct the recipe. Something was missing, and it was levity. And that’s when I say joy. It doesn’t mean you’re the funniest team on the planet. It just means there’s camaraderie, there’s levity to your point, our brains operate better when they’re not under stress and fear and anxiety. And so back to the point I made earlier about do you want people operating on all cylinders, to come up with creative solutions and to come up with innovative products and services? Yes. And so some some some leaders who have thought that that’s a waste of time. You know, that’s nonsense. That’s actually where the magic happens, and that’s where you get the creativity and you get the competitive edge. It solves so

Annalee Hagood-Earl 26:32

many problems, honestly, also helps with just communication in general, across teams, yeah, the more opportunities they have practice get to practice get to practice that in a really respectful and safe environment, the more they’re going to take it upon themselves. So yeah, I mean, we practice brainstorming for our work together a lot collaboratively, and I think that sets the stage also for like, no idea is a bad idea. We can all. We all have a voice. We can all come to stage. I think another big piece as a leader, though, is that I’m in it with them. If we’re learning something I’m at the training I’m learning too. I’m allowing, not allowing, I’m encouraging the facilitator to pick on me. You know, in front of them, I don’t mind not knowing something I don’t right. In fact, I want to learn alongside of them. I share my failures often, and I talk a lot about how what I learned from them, and I also participate in all the brainstorming, like, there’s no piece of the work that’s below me in any way. There’s there are pieces of the work that I am more valuable at right, of course, but I still participate wherever I can. I think it’s important because, yeah, you know, a bad idea can or a non useful idea can spark a great one.

Maria Ross 27:47

That’s sometimes where the epiphanies happen, right? It’s the like, this is crazy, but I’m going to throw it out there, right? Or you get the person who’s really skeptical. This used to happen in my brand strategy workshops all the time. The person that didn’t actually want to be there was the person that ultimately had the big idea, right? So, but what you’re seeing is so valuable for and I really want listeners to pay attention to this, because you can talk about all these things all you want, but if you don’t walk the talk and you don’t model it for your people, it doesn’t matter what you say. And we’re talking about everything from it’s okay to make mistakes to you really need to take care of yourself and take your time off. But if you’re a leader who’s working 80 hours a week that doesn’t give anyone permission to say, I can take my time off, you have to model that for people. And another beautiful thing you’re modeling for your people is that self awareness piece around. I need to do some work on myself and see how I show up. You’re encouraging them because you’re showing them a model of, oh, this is how you find success here. And they have permission. So instead of you just saying, you know, you should go to the leadership training, or you should go take your time off, or you should, you should attend that fun event. When you’re there with them, it speaks volumes. You have to show up.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 29:07

Yeah, you have to show up. There’s so many organizations, so we plan events, you know, internal organization for internally for them, and, well, I can’t name drop many of them. You can go to our website and see many of them, but you know, we’re talking about global organizations with 180,000 people cover 36 countries like, you know, we work with some of the biggest names, and one of the biggest challenges they have is getting leadership to the events. And so these companies are spending conservatively, millions of dollars on the events, yeah, and all the people really want is an opportunity to, like, shake the hand of the VP, or to be able to see the VP look like a human and acting like a human. And I understand that it might feel like a waste of time, but like. Just them seeing you in the space has a ripple effect. And if I could encourage every single one of the clients that we work with in any of the future clients we work with, to be able to do that, you know, you’re going to see so much more loyalty, so much more buy in. And so just showing up is really important. Yeah, I do want to go back to really quick when you talked about working so many hours, because I actually think this is a really big challenge for leaders. And I do agree in modeling behavior, but I think some of the modeling can be just self awareness, because your job is different than everybody else’s, and it’s interesting because me and my business partner, we’re opposites, which is wonderful and then also difficult at the same time, but overwhelmingly wonderful, and she has to work a lot in what she has to do. She likes to work a lot, although that’s getting a little bit better with the longer that we’re in this, in these roles. And I don’t like I tap out. I know for myself that you give me eight hours in the day like my brain. I’m not giving you valuable work in return after that, right? She can be on hour 16 and just nailing it. So we’re just very different in this way. And it was something that we had to come to terms with when we became partners was that look, it’s not going to look the same on each of us. What that translates to to my team is that we we model two different approaches to working, right? And I think if you’re that person, because I’ve also met plenty of entrepreneurs or plenty of executives that they actually really enjoy work, like, work is literally their hobby. Yeah, yeah. I personally do not understand this, but you know, it is for many and and who am I to cheat them of like, doing the thing they like to do? Yeah? So I think you, just as a leader, need to explain to your team, to give them the knowledge, the insight, show them that you’re self aware. Saying, hey, you know you may see me sending emails in the middle of the night, but like that works for me, and I want you to also have the autonomy to do what works for you. So while what I’m doing specifically may not work for you, you can also find your own path to like where your zones of genius are when you’re you know your peaks of energy are and as a leader, you not only have to do the work to lead the team, but you have so many other responsibilities. You’re wearing many hats, so it’s understandable that you would have to work a lot of hours. I think that’s a really hard thing for leaders to come to terms with. Is that it’s okay that you’re working a lot. You just need to make sure your team understands what your expectation is.

Maria Ross 32:39

You need to communicate. Yeah, I’m really glad you brought that up, because that is true, and I think it’s about transparency and communication. And you’re absolutely right. This is where the self awareness pillar comes in. What works for you, and let’s have a conversation about it versus assumptions, right? I’m going to assume you’re not working eight hours, Anna Lee, because you’re lazy, because you haven’t told me whatever you know, whatever script or narrative you tell yourself, or I’m going to assume I’m not allowed to take a weekend off to be with my kids, because the CEO is working straight through the weekend, and I’m getting all these emails at all hours. There’s so many things that just communication and clarity, another pillar can solve for us, and you’re making me think, and I’m going to put a link in the show notes. A year or so ago, I got the opportunity to interview Claude Silver, who is the Chief Heart Officer at Vayner Media, and she is actually coming out with a book called Be yourself at work, which I’m very excited. I’m going to be interviewing her again about that, but she talked about, you know, the fact that their CEO, Gary Vaynerchuk, who people may know from the internet and know from his media companies, he is a workaholic. And she mentioned this in the interview. She said he loves the work like he’s doing it all the time. And she has had, you know, sessions with employees who are killing themselves to try to be like Gary. And she always tells them you don’t have to be like Gary. Like we didn’t hire you to be Gary. We hired you to be you. So what works for you if leaving you know, to go coach your kids soccer game at 4pm two days a week is what you need to do. All you need to do is communicate that to us, right? And so it’s not about modeling, but they’re very open about that, and they’re very emphatic about making sure that people understand there’s more than one way to show up and that you have to do what works for you. So thank you for reminding us of that again, because, you know, sometimes I use that example as a blanket example, but I think it has to do with being able to communicate and not assuming people know that that they can be who they are. It’s being emphatic and being deliberate about letting people know they have permission to do those things. So thank you for bringing. That up. That’s awesome. Absolutely Okay. I want to get to brass tacks for a second, because, not for a second, for a couple minutes here, because we’re talking about all these wonderful things and all these amazing things you do, and you’re describing a workplace that everybody wants to work in. Let’s talk about the actual ripple effects on performance, on bottom line, and how you measure it. So you’ve been leading the company in this way it is, you know, it sounds like a it’s a very entrenched philosophy. What is that meant to your company, in terms of performance, in terms of, you know, whatever revenue percentages you want to share with us, and in terms of retention and engagement, can you share anything about that with us?

Annalee Hagood-Earl 35:38

Yeah, I definitely can. And I would say about ROI in a smaller company, we are less I mean, we are data driven, but we don’t have to prove ourselves as often. You’re not reporting to the street, yeah, I’m not reporting to the street. Yeah. I mean, I can see it in our bottom line, in the sense that, you know, our team outside of outside factors, completely taken control of maybe a moment in time for us, but not forever. Our team has been able to double our revenue year over year every year. That’s great, if not more. So do we get some more team members in there? Absolutely. But you know, for the most part, my team is only 11 people, and we handle massive books of business. We do about 20 engagements a year, and like I said, with that team, we’ve been able to grow it year over year. So bottom line wise, it’s a pretty simple answer. We keep going up. And it is not because I’ve had the one same one salesperson the entire time. So yeah, it’s not like my sales team is getting much bigger. In fact, it used to be mostly me selling, again as a small company, but now my salesperson has over 80% of the book of business, which is insane, amazing. It’s really good for me. She’s had an empathetic leader, so it’s really helped her grow. Yeah, things off. But, you know, I actually went back to my team yesterday to ask them, because while I have no problem representing what we’ve done, you know, I want to know from them what they see empathy as, and what they feel is there is the output in relation to that. I love this because to me, empathy shows up in two ways. Is kindness and curiosity really, like, that’s the way I display empathy. I think you can display it in a lot of different ways, but that’s how I do it. So curiosity is really, really part of it. It’s the

Maria Ross 37:36

number one trait of empathic people. Just so, you know, great. So so somebody don’t guess what someone’s thinking, you ask. And, you know, and, yeah, curious, right?

Annalee Hagood-Earl 37:49

I used to make a lot the me who loved analyzing people previously used to make a lot of assumptions. And it wasn’t actually, really, until the pandemic and where everything became quite polar that I realized that, wait a second, I don’t know anything. So now I so I went and side Tanner became a digital nomad for three years to gain more perspective. And that it came was driven from my curiosity. So, you know, kind of the key call outs that the team came back to me with which, thank goodness they they validated a lot of what I already think, but yeah, is that having curiosity for different perspectives allows them to be more creative, so they aren’t just finding, like, you know, what is the quickest route to the deliverable or the outcome, but what is the most effective? What’s the most efficient, what’s the most fun, what’s gonna you know, what they’re looking at from different perspectives. And because we do events, you know, we have a very wide variety of people that are attending these and it’s absolutely necessary for us to consider what’s every type of person’s experience will be there, so that we can anticipate for them. So this curiosity of learning is really important to them, and so they really just expand their minds and are more accepting people. Each person is allowed to be who they are and show up their own way. And we do things like disc assessments or we used insights previously to try to understand people more at a core, but we also allow them to talk about, you know, what they resonate with that and what they don’t, because at the end of the day, it’s just a test. But you know, everyone being able to show up in their own way means that they don’t have to try to be me, they don’t have to try to be my business partner. They just need to try to be themselves. And we just give them. We’re a sounding board. We are the bumper lanes. We give them opportunities and options, but we’re not dictating like you must show up this one way, and so I think that gets them further faster, because they’re not they’re not fighting against who they I

Maria Ross 39:56

was just gonna say, yeah, they’re not fighting against a way that’s constricting. Them, they’re going with their flow, in other words, right?

Annalee Hagood-Earl 40:02

Yeah, and they’re learning self awareness. And so with self awareness comes into play and communication with others. It comes into play with understanding, what are your superpowers and what are your areas of opportunity? In fact, at our last retreat, our last two retreats, we’ve done full sessions on your superpowers and your areas of opportunity, not only from what you think, but from the team observes. And so, you know, working on self awareness, you know, it allows for them to seek continuing education. We don’t have to mandate it. So that’s really great. You know, they’re looking to build the holes of knowledge or experience or skill set, and then bringing it to the table to us. So that saves me literal time and literal money on making the wrong decisions and then building trust. We not only can build trust internally, but we have to build trust with people immediately, yes, often, because, you know, one one show can be 100 new vendors. So and they and we are actually just very experienced project managers. At the end of the day, we are not delivering literally anything except when we are managing all the deliverables. So we have to have these people trust us and want, yeah, for us, and so teaching our team how to build trust and what trust really looks like to them, allows them to then have effective and efficient relationships that are in delivering our end product. So that’s massive, and that translates in actual negotiated savings for our clients, so much so that we often, we often are able to cover all of the cost of us by negotiated savings, because these vendors and venues love working with us, even if it’s a brand new city we’ve never been to, never worked with them before. That’s amazing. And so you know, the ripples go out so far. That’s why I think they’re so incredibly difficult to measure. Yeah, in a in a way that’s holistic. I can only really talk about how it’s affected our finances. But when we’re able to send 10 save 10% off the top of the line of a multi million dollar show, that’s not small amount of money. No, you know, no. So that’s phenomenal ways in which it works, for the most part, for us. I mean, I could give you many other examples, I

Maria Ross 42:25

know, but I’m so glad, yeah, I’m so glad you asked your team that question, and this is directly from them, and what enables them to do what they do and work their magic. And some of that is, you know, numerical, but some of that is anecdotal, and some of it is, is knock on effect as well. And that’s why, you know when, when I talk to companies and I speak to audiences, you know, one of the questions, one of the most popular questions I get is, well, how do we measure empathy? And I say, Well, you actually shouldn’t be measuring empathy for empathy sake. You should be adding empathy as an ingredient to increase the KPIs you’re already tracking. That’s actually what it’s about. You still have to you still have to grow, you still have to deliver, you still have to make money. In the end, that’s your organization, unless you’re a nonprofit, right? But measure the things you’re already measuring, and add empathy, as you know, light lighting fuel like ignite it, and see what happens, and then do your before and after and see if there’s a difference, if that’s really what you care about. Yes, you can measure in pulse surveys and engagement surveys. You know, do I feel seen, heard and valued? Do I feel like this is a welcoming, inclusive environment? Those are all important to the empathy equation, but it doesn’t mean you throw your KPIs out the window, or

Annalee Hagood-Earl 43:41

your bottom line? Yeah, not at all. And I think the what, how it affects the KPIs more so is that if you create the safe environment in which communication is open because empathy has been used, then your team’s likely going to flag much sooner, when you’re not going to make your goals. And so you have the ability to pivot, or you know, or correct. So that’s massive, you know, and, and, and these teams like the retention too. I mean, shout out definitely to my team who has been through it with us. I mean, we’ve hit the bottom twice in the last five years and then reinvented ourselves so but, like, we needed a lot out of them. And I will say that, like, although I’m sure plenty of people use pandemic stories, but this is, like, very special is that when we lost all of our revenue in one day, and we had just hired a few people, this is May of 2020, oh God, and we were just, you know, quite honest, and they showed that, you know what we were going through, and that’s where the empathy was was, I didn’t try to placate them and tell them everything’s gonna be fine, like, I was like, Right Stuff is bad right now. It’s not great. And here are the things that we’re doing to try to fix it. Yeah, here’s how we’re correcting as leadership. But we just need. Need you to be kind back to us, because we’re figuring this out. And like this is, you know, 100% we don’t want to say it unprecedented. So there’s, I know that word, but

Maria Ross 45:13

take another word we can use, yeah.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 45:17

And in return, what was most beautiful was we had a good handful of people that work for us that came and said, I could, I can afford to volunteer for you for the next couple months. I can afford to work full time at half pay. I can afford to go on unemployment and still do projects for you, like, right? We had people trying to help solve the problem with us when, right? You know, I mean, I was in fight or flight, I was probably less of my brain available at the moment, yeah, and that was massive for us, but that’s what happens made us want to fight

Maria Ross 45:53

for them, yeah, and that’s what happens when you build that foundation. I spoke to a C suite leader for the book who talked about the fact that, you know, he spends the time, and he’s a very analytical, data driven guy. He’s worked for CIOs, he’s, you know, been in programming, and he worked his way up to the C suite, and he said, I spend the time on on the joy, on the camaraderie, on the how’s it going? What do you need? On the clarity, on the communication he goes because then when I make a big ask, they know I’m asking for a reason. They can trust me. And that’s when you get loyalty like what you experienced, because it’s not something you don’t add the empathy in the crisis. You build the foundation of it. You build that kind of culture so it can be resilient to the crisis. So what a powerful story to share that, because that’s the kind of thing you get, you know, and we can talk about like the research studies that show that people would, you know, work more hours for less pay if it was for an empathetic leader. Not that we want that to be the ongoing norm, but the fact that they will what you know, if, if you’re in a crunch time, if you really need them, that’s where people will go into battle for you. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I love it. I love it. Well, do you have a final parting thought for maybe, maybe what you’ve done that you wish other people would do within their organizations, big or small.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 47:24

I I mean, it’s hard to get it all into one. I think the thing that resonates with me the most is to just drop the ego. It’s so it’s so much easier. And on the other side of letting go of the ego. I mean, look, I think that a little bit of my imposter syndrome has done me real good on showing up as a whole human and not been able to let go the ego, because I don’t have it. But get rid of that. Because if you can lead like as your whole human self, and you know that’s the practicing what you preach, like really believing in what you’re bringing to the team. Like, start with yourself, work on yourself, do what you need to be better at home, better at work, go to therapy, like, whatever it is that will all I mean, I don’t, I don’t work by frameworks. I don’t work by I don’t think, I mean it’s nice to have as, like, an anchoring point, but I don’t think it’s necessary personally. Like, if you can just continue to try to make yourself a better person, it’ll just, it’ll show up everywhere, you know, and you’re going to mess up, and it’s okay, and, you know, tell people hey, I messed up. Like, just have accountability to it. It’s people are very, very forgiving and they want to work for people that feel like them.

Maria Ross 48:49

I love it. What a great way to end this. This has been so good to just hear this. You know, case study in action about, thank you, about the ROI of empathy and how you know, effective leadership leads to good things. It will lead to all the things that you want if you can embrace human, centered leadership. That’s what that’s what my work is all about. So I appreciate having you here and sharing your story. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes, but for anyone that’s on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your company’s work.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 49:21

So I think both going to follow the founder, because that’s a lot about who I am as a person. My you know, who I am out of our company for bash creative, often for much more than just me, but or, you know, find me on LinkedIn. I would say it really helps to put a little note in there, because I do get solicited a whole heck of a lot. So like, just say, Hey, I heard you somewhere. You know what I mean, like, just something, I heard you on the empathy edge, and I will absolutely connect

Maria Ross 49:50

with you. You stole my PSA, because that’s always my PSA. When people give their LinkedIn, I say, send her a note about where you heard her so that she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 49:59

So I mean. When you have founder and CEO and your title, you are just a Yeah, yeah. But I would love to connect with people absolutely

Maria Ross 50:09

right, right? And I will just give the company a shout out, bash, hyphen, creative.com, and again, we’ll have the all the links in the show notes for you, if you didn’t get a chance to write them down. Annalee, it was such a pleasure to have you on today and have this conversation and hear about all the great work you’re doing. I really appreciate it.

Annalee Hagood-Earl 50:27

It’s wonderful. This is something I’m passionate and I really appreciate being able to talk about it and share a bit more of what we do.

Maria Ross 50:33

And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Scott Trumpolt: Beyond the Paycheck: Strategic Compensation Through an Empathetic Lens

When it comes to empathy at work, there are a hundred different ways to infuse empathy into your operations and systems – in real, practical, non-emotional ways. One of those ways is to look at compensation strategies and professional growth and development.

Today, Scott Trumpolt talks about empathy in compensation that leads to better employee engagement and more strategic growth. We discuss both the pitfalls of pay transparency leading to a dead end, but also the upside in how it catalyzes your company to reflect on and improve internal practices. He talks about how compensation is more than just salary, and the overlooked piece of career architecture – a concept that supports the Clarity pillar of empathetic leadership. Scott shares why programs fail, but culture shifts succeed, the #1 element to think about in determining competitive compensation structures, and why empathy is vital to ensure that compensation is about a one-on-one conversation and not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Scott also shares how HR leaders can strengthen credibility with business leaders and move the needle on company growth.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Driving solutions aimed at employee engagement.
Why compensation is not a one-size-fits-all solution and needs to be tailored to your employees and organization.
Balancing pay transparency and directing packages and compensation for the individuals.
Why job titles and compensation matter.

“There’s a reason why compensation is not in finance. Yes, I use a lot of numbers, but we do it in a completely different way, and we are impacting the individual directly.” — Scott Trumpolt

Episode References:

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
The Empathy Edge: Rhonda George-Denniston: Why Betting on Your People Leads to Market Domination

About Scott Trumpolt, Managing Director & Compensation Consultant:

Scott Trumpolt’s career is defined by a seamless evolution from corporate leadership to independent consultancy, reflecting over 30 years of expertise in compensation planning, HR leadership, and rewards strategies. For 18 years, Scott excelled in the corporate world, holding leadership roles in HR and Compensation across the United States and Germany. In 2012, he launched Trumpolt Compensation Design Solutions (TCDS) to provide bespoke solutions tailored to the unique needs of organizations worldwide.

Scott’s corporate experience provided a solid foundation for mastering market-based pay structures, sales incentive plans, and job classification systems. Transitioning into independent consultancy, Scott has spent the past 12 years leveraging this expertise to deliver innovative, client-focused strategies. This blend of corporate insight and entrepreneurial innovation allows him to navigate compensation challenges from both perspectives, creating high-impact solutions that drive organizational success.

Scott’s global reach includes projects across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America/Caribbean, reflecting his adaptability to diverse work cultures. He is a Certified Global Remuneration Professional (GRP), holds a master’s degree in Human Resources Management, and has maintained an A+ Better Business Bureau rating, underscoring his commitment to excellence and client satisfaction.

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Connect with Scott:

Trumpolt Compensation Design Solutions: hrcompensationconsulting.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scott-trumpolt-m-a-g-r-p-257a6b317

BBB profile: bbb.org/south-east-florida/login/page/0/?li=1

Scott’s Book: The Defragmented Consultant: https://www.amazon.com/DEFRAGMENTED-CONSULTANT-Transition-Independent-Consultant/dp/B0G53SY2Y7

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

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Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

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Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. When it comes to empathy at work, there are 100 if not 1000 different ways to infuse empathy into your operations and systems in real, practical, non emotional ways. One of those ways is to look at compensation strategies and professional growth and development. Today, I talk with Scott trumpholt about empathy in compensation that leads to better employee engagement and more strategic growth. Scott brings more than 30 years of expertise in compensation planning, HR, leadership and reward strategy, after nearly two decades in corporate roles across the US and Germany, he founded trumphold compensation design solutions, where he spent the past 12 years helping organizations worldwide craft tailored, high impact pay strategies. A certified global remuneration professional with a master’s in HR management, Scott blends deep corporate insight with entrepreneurial agility to share complex compensation challenges across cultures and industries. We discuss both the pitfalls of pay transparency leading to a dead end, but also the upside in how it catalyzes your company to reflect on and improve internal practices. He talks about how compensation is more than just salary and the overlooked piece of career architecture, a concept that supports the clarity pillar of empathetic leadership. In my book, Scott shares why programs fail, but culture shifts succeed, the number one element to think about in determining competitive compensation structures and why empathy is vital to ensure that compensation is about a one on one conversation and not a one size fits all proposition. Scott also shares how HR leaders can strengthen credibility with business leaders and move the needle on company growth. So many great points in this one, take a listen. Welcome Scott, to the empathy edge podcast. I am really excited about our conversation today, because, as most of my listeners know, my work is really about results driven practical empathy in an organization, and I talk a lot about operationalizing empathy in ways that people don’t think of as empathetic. And today we’re going to talk about empathy in terms of compensation and recognition strategies. And this is going to be something I really think that our listeners, especially our listeners in HR and team leads, will get a lot of benefit from. So welcome to the show today.

Scott Trumpolt 03:17

Thank you, Maria, and thank you for the opportunity to address your audience, your listeners, your viewers, appreciate

Maria Ross 03:24

it. Love it. Okay, so before we dive in to all the things, we want to know your story. How did you get to this work as a compensation consultant? What was your

Scott Trumpolt 03:33

path? Well, my path really was. I was initially after college, I was working in a different discipline, just for a few years, and I decided to get my master’s degree in Human Resources Management, and when I did that, it just so happened that they created an opening for me in the company I was working for, and I had a wonderful opportunity to be mentored by several folks within that organization, real mentors that tried me out in it was like a dream job, because although it was very entry level, they tried me out in all different aspects of human resources, and then they saw that I really had an aptitude for compensation, very raw, very rough, but nevertheless an aptitude, and that has taken me forward for the past 30 years, 18 of those years were in the corporate world in various compensation planning and design roles. And then for the past 1213, years, I’ve been on my own, and what I have really focused on as an independent compensation consultant is how to link something that’s viewed very much as a black box. It’s kind of in the shadows compensation. And how do you turn that into a way that supports the idea of employee engagement, in a specific way, that supports the business but also supports what the actual employees are looking for? For, yeah, to get at the companies that they’re at. So that’s really been my mission. I’m certified as a compensation professional, and I have all these years of experience, but what it ultimately boils down to me is working with clients that really want to get beyond just the basics of compensation and to really drive solutions aimed at employee engagement, right,

Maria Ross 05:21

right? And you know, you’re making me think about years ago, I read a book called drive by Daniel Pink, and I’m going to put it link in the show notes, and it was so eye opening to me, because it was all about The Surprising Truth that motivates us. And so often when we think of compensation in our minds, we think more money equals the incentive for people, right? And people are driven by different things, and there are studies that show the state of workplace empathy. Reports that have been done by business solver of the last 10 years now show that people are willing to work for less pay and even sometimes more hours, if they’re working for an empathetic leader, and not to say that we want to, you know, make everybody work for the least amount of money. But I find that very telling about there’s a thinking out there that money is the only motivator, and it’s the only element of compensation, right when it’s really a much more holistic view, and it could differ from person to person. So just because I might be motivated by money, the person I’m hiring might be motivated by flexibility or mental health benefits or something else. So talk a little bit you have this concept called Career architecture that I think ties into this. Yeah, talk a little bit about

Scott Trumpolt 06:37

that. Yeah. Well, one of the things that people need to understand out there is that when you look at compensation, as you alluded to, it’s a big range. Potentially, it’s not a one size fits all pay level for an employee, and employees all want to get paid fairly. But how you get paid along the spectrum of a range for a job depends on a lot of different factors, and one of the factors that companies really want to zero in on is this idea of career development and that links to career architecture. Career architecture is simply the idea of linking both business needs and employee skill development. Career development needs to market based pay. So for example, if you’re hiring an accountant, well it’s not just a matter of hiring an accountant. You might be hiring a cost accountant. You might be hiring a tax accountant. You’re not just hiring an intermediate an accountant, but it might be an intermediate level accountant. Might be a senior level. Might be an expert accountant. All of these pay differently. And so what career architecture opens up is the opportunity to provide a vision to an employee coming into an organization, saying, this is only a starting point with your pay. Okay? What’s more important is how you progress along that pay spectrum and what it means. It doesn’t mean just staying here year after year, grinding out. It’s the idea of acquiring new skills that support the business need and stimulate your interest as an individual. Now this gets into the point you talk about some people, people spend a lot of their time working in an organization, a huge bulk of their time, they want to feel that they’re part of something bigger, yes, than themselves, and they’re not just a mere cog. So the closer that an organization can kind of lay out a road map of saying, Look, we’re not, we’re saying that different jobs pay differently with the organization. You don’t have these skills right now, but these are skills that we’re going to need in the business, and you’re interested in doing them, we want to grow you to that next level. So pay becomes a really a living thing. It’s not, for example, we see that nowadays, employees are very interested in pay transparency, so the companies, a lot of states, are mandating put out the pay range for the organization. That’s all well and good, but it’s kind of a dead end, because all it is is a set of numbers. The employee may look at it and say, well, this ask is making me ask more questions than I’m getting answers. Do I get the top part of the range? Do I get the middle part of the range? What exactly, and it can actually be a little bit deflating to an individual. What an individual really needs to understand is that pay is a living thing, and you grow with that, and the more we can make that connection between career development. This is what career architecture is. All about specific career development, but not just about things that you want to focus on as an employee, but also things you want to focus on an employee as an employee, but that are linked to business needs, right? It may mean. Is you need to get your skills in a different department within the organization that you come into to then come back. Sometimes you have to move sideways to get the skills that you need. And all of these are linked to pay different compensation levels. And if we can get that right, if we can provide a future for employees, and not just a static snapshot in time that’s going to lead to employee engagement. And the interesting thing here is, and here’s the empathy piece to all of this, we need to rely on human resources. Can develop this career architecture. They can link all these different opportunities to pay for employees, but it needs to become the one on one conversation between the employee and their immediate manager. We’ve done a great job over the years managing, teaching managers how to discipline employees or to follow various compliance but one of the links that I believe that can promote the idea of empathy with employees is having that direct manager who’s so important, this has been proven time and time again, is so important in the idea of employee engagement, that relationship, yeah, we can foster that relationship by providing say, Hey, you’re here today, but That doesn’t mean you’re going to be there tomorrow. Here’s the pathway going forward for you, and it can even start in the hiring process. We’re not going to lay out the whole career pathway for an employee, but if we can convince employee, prospective candidates out there beyond the pay range, that this can be a ladder that leads to other things within the organization and can expose you to different functions. Is, for example, if you work for a global organization, you might be able to entice employees by saying that, you know, we have opportunities in other countries. For example, when I worked in corporate I worked overseas for a while in Germany. So and I wanted to do that because it allowed me to learn a lot more about global compensation, and not just the US perspective, but for an incoming employee that knows, hey, I’m here today, but I might want to focus on other areas in the future to show them the overall career architecture that a company has can be a way of drawing them into the organization, and then once you have them in the organization, be able to develop that one on one dialog between managers, and I think that can help in the area of empathy. Absolutely, you can get into real

Maria Ross 12:37

specifics. Yeah. And also, you know, we talk about, I talk about in my work now in my book, clarity is one of the pillars of being an empathetic and effective leader. And I mentioned to folks in my workshops that career progression maps are a form of empathy for people, when people know what’s possible and they know what’s coming, and they know the direction they’re going in, and you can hold them accountable to here’s what’s expected at each of these stages. We can’t hold people accountable to expectations we haven’t set. So what I love about what you’re saying is you’re creating a picture of getting companies and HR teams to think beyond the one job they’re hiring for, and to really think about painting a picture for people of where they can go within this role, but having that one to one conversation of, does this even interest you? Right? What are you interested in, and where can you go with this there? I’m sure you’ve seen the data out there that talks about what Gen Z wants in workplace culture. Yeah, is not necessarily more pay. They want career development. They want professional development. They want to join a company that’s going to invest in them, even if potentially they might leave in three, 510, years. And I’m going to put a link to another episode in here, when I interviewed the chief learning officer at TBWA, Rhonda George Denniston, their philosophy at that global ad agency, that global media company, is, we know you’re not going to stay here forever, but it doesn’t mean we don’t invest in you while you’re here, so you’re performing at your peak capacity while you’re working for

Scott Trumpolt 14:16

us. Yeah, not only that, though, it promotes the culture, yes, of what you’re talking about. Because even if they leave, and I’m sorry I kind of interrupt you, but this is very important point that I wanted to stress on your point, and that is that even when people leave, other employees in the organization can see that kind of dynamic happening. Yes, it’s modern, there can be visibility to it. They’ll see someone moving. And I worked in an organization when I was in corporate that did this. They would take someone from the logistics area, and they would slowly move them into a different area of the company, much like when I started in my career. So you get providing models, and that strengthens the work culture, so it’s not a loss when they’re going

Maria Ross 14:57

out the door, right, exactly, and all of that. But it sounds like, in your view, all of that is wrapped up in compensation.

Scott Trumpolt 15:04

Yeah, yeah, it’s all it’s all directly linked. Because this is the thing, again, that people it’s not a question of paying everybody exactly the same. Human beings are all different, and they bring different skills and competencies to the table, as well as the potential to learn, and that can be part of the interview process up front is understanding, not only are they really good for this job, but do we get a sense of their long term potential? And that’s where the career architecture fits in. And again, it’s not something we’re making up. It directly links back to the market today. You are an intermediate tax level accountant. How do we get you to the point where our business needs we need you to be an expert level tax accountant within our organization. What kind of skills do you need? And again, who’s going to foster that? Their immediate manager, their immediate manager is not going to know all the business needs for the next 10 years, right? But they should have a pathway, at least for the next few steps, because management are supposed to be strategic, and they’re supposed to be proactive, and we are investing this money in their most important resource, they’re deployed. So that’s where I think the empathy needs to be totally geared. It’s the immediate Manager. You can have the CEO stand up and give a motivational speech and all that good stuff, but the really good piece is going to be that dynamic between the immediate post management.

Maria Ross 16:33

Well, people join companies, but they stay or leave based on their leaders, based on their immediate managers. So I would be remiss if I didn’t kind of get more curious about your perspectives on pay transparency, because as a woman, there’s a history of inequity with certain groups being offered different levels of pay, and so my initial reaction to your perspective is no Pay transparency is good because we need to all be playing from the same playbook so that no one can lie to me and say something different to somebody else, or whether I’m black or brown or Asian or gay or whatever. So tell me a little bit about how you view that in the context of being transparent to avoid bias and to avoid inequity, but also to your point, making sure that we’re gearing packages and compensation to the needs and the desires and the goals of the individual. How do you see that balance happening?

Scott Trumpolt 17:33

Well, let me tell you, this is a great question, and I’m glad you asked it, because I said at the beginning, I talked about pay transparency, and it kind of being a dead end and static what I was referring to. And I do believe that, but only to a point. Here’s the point I want to make about that, how they’re delivering pay transparency, the mechanisms I understand people were concerned about pay transparency, so the simplest and most obvious thing that they could do was require states to post the pay I’m saying that can be a real negative. But here’s the positive about the pay transparency laws, where it’s a good thing when you’re putting out these pay transparency when you’re putting out these ranges, it’s forcing companies to look inwards at their own practices, and they are more and more for a number of years now there are companies, and they are doing exactly that. They are looking through their pay equity issues, not market equity issues, but internal equity issues. So I’m giving some kudos here to companies, because one of the things that I do as a consultant is I help companies look at, okay, we’ve got this female population. Are they underpaid for this role? They’ve been here this many years? How do they compare to a person making more money? So these type of equity analysis that I’m talking about, they were being done, but now they are being accelerated because of these pay transparency. So while I may think not much of the mechanics of the pay transparency in terms of motivating right, meaning that on the flip side, the good news is that it is forcing a stronger internal commitment, and I’m seeing it in companies. Here’s the good news, just saying. Why is this? Why is this so part of my job as a side more of an administrative exercises. For example, I will get a list of employees, and the first thing I will do is I will look at, okay, because job titles can be misleading, right? Are they in the same job, regardless of what they’re calling them? And I have ways to find this out. You know, documentation, okay, what is the performance level been? What are the years of experience? What is the pay disparity? Are there any specific reasons? Are they part of a protected class, and if there is not something that can be grabbed? Gone to this is what is pointed out. So whether they’re doing it internally, which a lot of companies are doing, or if I’m helping, the bottom line is, this is the good aspect of the laws being posted down. Not all states have them, but it’s generally moving in that direction. In the past year, a couple more states like Minnesota and a few others, and I think that will continue the trend. I don’t know how many states it’s up to. There’s some variation in the states in terms of how they do it, but it’s not just, you know, California is often a leader in this regard, but it’s happening in a lot of different states and different geographic regions of the country. But that’s my view on the good part of pay transparency.

Maria Ross 20:40

I love that you said that, you said that, and that’s why I wanted to get curious as to the different dimensions of that. Because I think that going through that, you know, for whatever catalyst creates a company, you know, forces or urges or motivates a company to go through that exercise, it’s so important because I think a lot of it could be happening at these lower levels. But it’s not until you get all the data, and you look at everything all together and say, Oh, wow, we didn’t realize there was a pattern here. We didn’t realize that this was going on. And I had to laugh a little bit about your comment about titles being different, because I’ve worked in Silicon Valley for a long time, you know. And you’ve got, you know, people who are just out of college who want a vice president title, right? Yeah, and they get it just because, you know, it’s a startup, they’re like, we can give anybody any title we want, but it’s kind of meaningless sometimes within certain organizations, of, what are you actually directing? What are you actually the vice president of? Oh, you don’t actually have a team, but you’re the vice president of whatever. So I had to laugh at that.

Scott Trumpolt 21:43

Yeah, yeah. This is another pet peeve I have, is and I go on and on about this, I train companies about job titles and their value, and I say, look, you’re setting yourself for a fall. I understand that job titles are free and you feel nice in giving them, but if you have a director and they’re making $60,000 a year, you’ve got a problem, and it could come back to bite you. And so I try and explain that again, going back to the idea of compensation, it’s market based, and I can tell you right now, in the market, real directors do not make $60,000 unless they’re working for a very small nonprofit somewhere, that type of thing. But if we’re talking about jobs, and in defense of the director title, there are certain things that a director must do in the market in order to qualify for that pay. So they’re paying the job, perhaps, right? The real job throwing a title on it, and it can be very disruptive, right? And also could land them in some trouble. So, and the other thing that you said that’s very important is that human resources, oftentimes, managers, will make individual decisions that make sense at the time from a pay perspective, but they’re not seeing the big picture, and that’s where we in human resources can help them to step back and see, yes, I know you did this at the time, and it made business sense. It wasn’t anything that was hateful or trying to be deceptive. It just made sense at the time. But we’re here to say, look, in the collective here is where the issues lie.

Maria Ross 23:16

Yeah, I mean, it’s just so important. And also, you know what I see, especially from you know, the vantage point of being around a lot of tech companies is when you throw around those titles, you actually don’t create the career path for people to be able to prove themselves and advance and have somewhere to go, right? You bring someone in right, out of college at a VP level, where are they going to go? Right? So, and then, what are those milestones? And so a lot of leaders that I know that have come into organizations where that stuff was done willy nilly are spending a lot of time sort of revamping and creating equity among the pay and among the market and among the titles, yes, and it, you know, it can lead to a lot of resentment, because now these people have an unrealistic expectation of what their title should do and what they should be paying. But it’s about it’s a lot of them call it a leveling exercise of just like coming in and going, what has happened here? What it was Frankensteined the way it was done, to bring in the right people, like you said, in one off specific situations, but now you’ve got a team of five VPS that don’t actually have any direct reports, right? That makes no sense. Yeah. The

Scott Trumpolt 24:29

good news is it can be cleaned up, but it does become very problematic once a company grows to a certain level. It’s fine as a startup, I understand why they do it, yeah, but I shouldn’t resent it, because it provides me some work. But on the other hand, I do understand when employees get confused, and it does get a little bit beyond the pale that yeah, something that needs to be addressed.

Maria Ross 24:57

So can you give us an example of working with a client where. You created, you helped them revamp or integrate their compensation strategies, and it drove employee engagement and career development. Can you give us kind of a even if it’s anonymous, can you give us a real world example of like the before and after? Sure?

Scott Trumpolt 25:15

One of the most important ones was I was actually I mentioned nonprofit earlier, but I was working for a very large nonprofit, and they had one of the things about human resources often, well, it’s not a profit center, so you can’t really measure if you’re having a success in a certain area, but actually you can, and that is in the area of employee engagement. So they ran employee opinion surveys, and they asked specific questions about employee engagement, and what were some of the areas that they were concerned about, and they mentioned compensation and career development. So we ended up putting in a career architecture that was directly linked to market. And when you want to talk about pay transparency, we did not post the pay ranges of all of the employees. What we did do was provide them a vision of career architecture and showed how market based pay is directly linked to their job. And then we did some follow up, and a couple years later, they asked the same questions, and we had moved the needle specifically on compensation. So that is an example of moving the needle in a positive direction that took a lot of work over a couple of years, but it was something that was generally verifiable and believable, because the most important thing about any program, though, is to not just put together a program. It’s you’ve got to make it part of the culture, yeah. So it has to be renewed. And as we talked about earlier, there needs to be real modeling. There needs to be real models that people can see. That’s when it changes, just announcing, well, we have a pay structure, and it’s linked to career development. It’s not enough. Yeah, we put all of the materials out on a intra net where employees could see within, and they could see, well, I could move in this direction, again, it’s getting beyond their immediate job. And they could see what other departments do, and do I have skill sets that transfer into that area, right? So this is the kind of thing. You have to make it part of the culture and not just program. It won’t work, right? That took me some time to understand. I was like, early on in my career. Well, if I just do this, and I just do this, yeah, yeah, and it will be all and then it sits there, and it looks very nice on paper, totally, but in terms of practical application, yeah, I didn’t really do anything, sorry. It can make all the sense in the world on paper, yeah, but if people aren’t buying into it, and so that’s why I got into consulting, because I was spending too much of my time on program maintenance and not enough time, as I saw it, in creating something that can help move the needle, I could do my part in employee engagement, which, again, feeds in, I believe, into empathy.

Maria Ross 28:08

So real quick on that project you were talking about, did they ultimately see an uptick in employee engagement because of what they put in place?

Scott Trumpolt 28:15

Yeah, they let me know. Because sometimes you put in a project and you finish it, and then you That’s it with the client. But I have some of my clients stay with me for years, and so since they were they could actually report back to me. Hey, made a difference.

Maria Ross 28:33

That’s great. That’s great. Well, and I was going to make a point earlier, when you were talking about both transparency and career development and putting those things in place. A lot of my background, after management consulting, my background was in marketing and branding, and that is what actually led me into the empathy work. Was empathy to connect and engage with customers, but also being able to walk your talk on the inside of the organization. And I can’t, you know, we can’t ignore the fact that, when you do this internal work, what an advertising it is, what a great brand look it is for your organization to attract top talent. When you’re putting these kinds of things in place internally, it can feel like, Oh, well, what are we doing to communicate out there? But if you have this. It says so much about your employer brand and your ability to recruit and retain top talent moving forward in terms of like, this is what the company does on the inside. And given our transparent world, people know what’s going on and how you’re doing things. How transparent you are with compensation, how committed you are to career development, how clear you are with career architecture. Those things are a banner for your company to help it build its brand in the market. Well, think of it this way

Scott Trumpolt 29:53

when you’re talking about branding, absolutely you’ve heard of the top 100 companies to work for. How do they become a top 100 companies? You. Well, or one of the things is about their employee engagement results. And those employee engagement results can often link back to the idea that they have a culture in place about pay. They have a culture in place about career architecture, not just a program, right, but a culture. If I ever wrote a book, it sounds like a very simple title. I’m sure someone’s written a book about it, but it would be a culture, not a program, right? But that’s how they get to be these top 100 companies, which is branding, but there is some reality behind it, that they are doing things from the employee engagement perspective, that are resonating with I love it.

Maria Ross 30:37

I love it. I love it. Okay, so let’s leave off with some tools and strategies that you know, if anyone in HR or even the C suite is listening and they’re they suspect they may need to revamp their compensation culture and structure. What are some starting points you could advise

Scott Trumpolt 30:59

to identify their issues, certainly if it’s coming up in employee engagement surveys. If you have to be careful, though, with this next one, with exit interviews or reasons why people leave an organization, they will often say pay. Because now I’m not saying it always, but when you really go through the weeds. A usually comes out seventh on the list. You know, not first or second. It’s easy to say, because it’s not personal. It’s just more a reflection on the

Maria Ross 31:31

company well, and they can’t argue with it. It’s there’s no rebuttal like, Oh, you’re leaving because you’re making more money at the place you’re going to Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Scott Trumpolt 31:40

So there are those kind of warning signs. What I usually encounter is it’s coming from the front lines, from the recruitment team that is tasked with hiring the right individuals. And it’s not just about getting people in the door, but they might say, for example, I’m hiring. The recruiter is hiring for a manager role, speaking of directors, and they’re getting all these wonderful resumes through the man and these in the and the job pays $95,000 and the people are saying, This is crazy, this this job should pay 140 $150,000 your compensation. Is all wrong. The reality is, is job we have open as a manager, the person applying for the job for whatever reason has been a director, a real director, and now they’re trying. I don’t know if they think that that job will be easier for them, because it’s a lower level than what they were. Yeah, but that’s kind of the disconnect. So if recruitment is sending some warning signs, either difficulty hiring or difficulty hiring for certain jobs that they’re getting candidates that are over or under qualified, that could certainly be a warning sign. Okay, as I said, employee engagement surveys. But some companies are small, they may not run employee engagement surveys, right? So I think that’s a touch point. Now get with your recruiting team and see if they’re having struggles for parts of the country, for some of the reasons that I mentioned.

Maria Ross 33:06

And then does is the first step to take different for every company? Or is there one sort of clear if yes, you know, you know, Houston, we have a problem. What’s one small step? Does it? Does that differ by company.

Scott Trumpolt 33:21

It can differ differ by company, because sometimes the chief executive officer or the Human Resources leader will get anecdotal information over time, not data driven, but nevertheless, wanting to see a lot of companies don’t a lot of the companies, though, to be honest with you, it’s not that their current structure is failing them. They don’t have a structure because human resources, because, again, it’s not a profit center. When it comes to funding the right type of information system that they need, or having the right pay structure. They don’t have the infrastructure, because they don’t have the budgets for it. And again, working with an independent consultant, not just myself, but others that are out there that can provide that at a much lower cost than a large firm. There’s many, not many, but there’s big, large firms that do what I do, but they have a lot of overhead, and they don’t give you customization. So that’s the biggest warning sign that I see, is just that they get to a point where they’re so big they can’t manage things effectively, right? Excel spreadsheets. They need something more. And so that’s when they will reach out to me. It gets to a point where, yeah, they’re not meeting their goals, right? And the business is wondering why human resources is not meeting their goals. And Human Resources will move heaven and earth often to meet their goals with stone knives and bear skins, type of stuff to support them. Yeah, yeah. And I understand where the business is coming from. Um, but at some point, if you want them to meet their goal, so that that’s when there’s the fundamental disconnect, right? And that’s when they usually will call me. And so I hope that is answering you.

Maria Ross 35:09

It does. I was thinking more, what are the first steps they can take, versus the warning signs. But I think the warning signs are an important point to make. I want to ask this one final question. Have you ever worked with a client who thinks they have a compensation strategy issue, but it’s really more of a deeper issue of how they value people as an asset versus as an expense? And the answer could be no. I’m just curious if you have ever come across where it wasn’t just about the compensation. It was about how they view people as a fundamental investment.

Scott Trumpolt 35:45

Oh, sure, but the difference is, is that I experienced that in my corporate career. What? How I avoid that now, and why I say no, that’s not an issue for me. Is I’m only looking at it from my consultant perspective, because while my clients are checking out me, I’m checking out them, and one of the things that I do is I ask very probing questions about the leader of the organization. How do they feel? How do they view the role of human resources? Do they view it as personnel and transactional, or do they view them as a strategic partner? And there are different ways to answer that question, and if I don’t get the answer that I want, I feel like, even if they approve the budgeting of this project just to shut up their human resources folks, it won’t become a culture, right? And that’s what I drive it. So I try and stay away from those. But are there people that think in those terms? But if, depending on their view of human resources, which I’m a part of, right, there’s a reason why compensation is not in finance. Yes, I use a lot of numbers I generate, but we do it in a completely different way, right? And we are impacting the individual directly.

Maria Ross 36:51

I think that’s a really important point about why compensation should live in human resources and not make

Scott Trumpolt 36:58

a difference. Sometimes I’m working on a sales plan design with a financial analyst that has to provide a certain perspective. And we’re talking two different languages, yeah, even though we’re looking at the same numbers, I’m looking from the human motivational perspective, right, and looking at it from the business. Neither one is wrong. They’re both correct in their own context, but we have to meet in the middle. So my answer to that question is very much the viewpoint of human the role that human resources plays in the organization, and as to how much they value people. Because I’ll tell you this, some CEOs that are fantastic. They really do get the connection. Yeah, those are the ones that I want, I want to find, and those are the ones that I want to work I don’t want to sound snobbish, but I’m a, I’m a one person organization, and so the projects that I pick, I have to feel that that’s part of it. Yeah, absolutely, because we’re all getting older, and you’ve got to work on things that engage your interest level to your full potential. It’s not just about the employees. It’s about me too. I’ve got to be engaged well.

Maria Ross 38:09

And also your projects are going to be like you said. They’re going to be more successful in an organization that truly values its people and and values people like I said, as an investment and not as an expense that can just be cut right? So such a great conversation. Scott. I could talk to you so much more about this, but I really appreciate the very practical perspective of where empathy fits into something, as you know, operational as compensation strategies and compensation structures, because this is exactly the whole crux of my work is trying to show that empathy lives in all these nooks and crannies. Oh, there’s an organization. Yeah,

Scott Trumpolt 38:46

there’s a connection on right? Yeah, no question about it, but it is very detached compensation. It’s like I say, it’s very much in the shadows, very much in the black box. I’ve been living that for 30 years, but we are moving in that general direction, and I think linking it to empathy in a constructive way, yeah, that can be very positive, is like one of the next challenges

Maria Ross 39:09

for sure. Well, thank you so much for your insights today and your time. We’ll have all your links in the show notes for those who are on the go, where’s the one best place they can go to find out more about your work.

Scott Trumpolt 39:22

Best place is my website, HR compensation consulting.com

Maria Ross 39:26

Perfect, perfect. HR compensation consulting.com wonderful.

Scott Trumpolt 39:31

Newly revised, ready to go.

Maria Ross 39:35 Great, great. All right. Well, thank you so much, Scott and we appreciate having you on Thank you, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. You. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Heather R. Younger: The Art of Self-Leadership

What if the key to leading others with empathy… is learning how to lead yourself first?

Today’s guest, Heather Younger, is here to show us how self-leadership isn’t just a personal development buzzword — it’s the foundation of truly impactful, caring leadership that achieves real ROI. As a global expert on active listening and workplace culture, Heather has helped Fortune 100 companies transform the way they engage employees—starting from the inside out.

In this episode, we learn about Heather’s journey as a culture bearer and customer experience professional, what self-leadership is, and why it matters – why doing the inner work helps you lead with grace and drive results, and why treating employees with care isn’t just a moral choice but a business strategy that drives innovation and performance. She shares powerful examples and offers actionable first steps to help you lead more effectively, take ownership of your career, make smarter choices, and advocate for yourself.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

What self-leadership is and why it matters.
How can you change your office culture to an empathy-driven culture?
The power of getting curious within yourself.
The power of giving and receiving feedback within your sphere of influence.

“Take back your own power to lead yourself in the way you, intuitively, already know you’re supposed to be doing.” — Heather R. Younger

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About Heather R. Younger: CEO, Keynote Speaker, Author

Heather R Younger, J.D., CSP, is a trusted contributor to leading news outlets, like Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, NBC, and ABC, and one of the world’s leading experts on Caring Leadership® and active listening at work. She is the visionary Founder and CEO of Employee Fanatix, a preeminent employee engagement and workplace culture consulting firm for Fortune 100 companies. Employee Fanatix conducts annual research on workplace culture, relying on employee voices for what is relevant now, to help companies redefine their culture strategy. Heather has personally read over 30,000 employee surveys and facilitated over 100 employee focus groups, including her signature “Art of Active Listening Sessions.”

With over 25 years of successful management of teams, she has worked in customer experience, sales, and large account management for multi-million dollar accounts and multiple industries such as tech, staffing, healthcare, professional services, the public sector, and the financial sector. She’s a renowned keynote speaker, drawing insights from current data and putting into practice what she teaches in her Caring Leadership Transformation Model™.

Heather is an award-winning leader in the area of Employee Engagement, as recognized by Inspiring Workplaces, is a LinkedIn Learning course partner, a 3-time bestselling author, a TEDX speaker, and the host of the popular Leadership With Heart Podcast.

Connect with Heather:

Employee Fanatix: heatheryounger.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/heatherryounger

Facebook: facebook.com/HeatherRYounger

Instagram: instagram.com/heatherryoungerofficial

X: x.com/HeatherRYounger

Her new book: The Art of Self-Leadership

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

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Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

What if the key to leading others with empathy is learning how to lead yourself first? Today’s guest Heather younger is here to show us how self leadership isn’t just a personal development buzzword. It’s the foundation of truly impactful, caring leadership that achieves real ROI as a global expert on active listening and workplace culture, Heather has helped fortune 100 companies transform the way they engage employees, starting from the inside out. She’s one of the world’s foremost experts on caring leadership and active listening at work. She’s the founder and CEO of employee fanatics, a consulting firm trusted by Fortune 100 companies to transform workplace culture through employee driven insights. Heather has personally read over 30,000 employee surveys and led more than 100 focus groups, a now four time best selling author, TEDx, speaker, LinkedIn learning instructor and host of the leadership with heart podcast. Heather brings 25 years of experience across multiple industries and delivers practical tools that leaders can use to build more engaged, compassionate teams. Her latest book is The Art of self leadership. Discover the power within you and learn to lead yourself. This practical guide empowers professionals to take control of their career trajectory and workplace experiences by developing a mindset of self advocacy and leadership. In this episode, we learn about Heather’s journey as a culture bearer and customer experience professional, what self leadership is and why it matters. Why doing the inner work helps you lead with grace and drive results, and why treating employees with care isn’t just a moral choice, but a business strategy that drives innovation and performance. She shares powerful examples and offers you actionable first steps to lead more effectively. Take ownership of your career, make smarter choices and advocate for yourself. This was a gem. Take a listen. Welcome Heather younger to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today about self leadership and the role that empathy plays in making that successful for people and getting them the ROI that they deserve. So welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Maria. Yeah, it’s really great. And I would love for you, as I do with all my guests, to start with sharing your story and how you even got into this work. I know you have some interesting twists and turns that have happened in your career. So can you share that with our audience, briefly? Yes.

Heather Younger 03:24

I mean, from stage, I share, like, the beginning story. I’m not going to go that way back. I’m going to just talk to you about the kind of the corporate part, and that is, I was working in an organization, leading customer experience at the time, and it was an organization I was going through a merger of five companies, and the culture, like most murders, they’re not very fun for the people inside in most cases. And this one was particularly not going well. And so I felt my own self, not, you know, like my mindset wasn’t great. Everybody around me was wondering was going to go on layoffs felt impending. It was just a lot of fear. So I went to the head of HR in the office and I told her, like, something’s got to change. We got to do something. I felt like I just needed to own what the change I was seeking myself. And so she said, You’re right. You should go do something about that. And I’m like, I should go do the way what I’m leading customer experience. I’m not in HR, like, yeah, and it was because I’d already acted like an ambassador, or someone who uplifted others kind of this culture bear, really, to be honest, my whole life, I was just always that voice for other people. I started in the customer space when it seemed space, went into employee space, and so I brought people from the different companies who already kind of expressed desire to do something about it, to be to make the merger a success. And we started to do things that broke down the walls of his trust. Really just started to gather people together, and it started to work. We could see that more people listen to one another, the more that people feel valued and heard in the process, the more they were more willing to lean in to make the merger happen. And then there was a layoff that was like 200 people. I was in that first round of people, but in that moment, I realized that I was that kind of intermediary. I was the voice between the people, customers, employees, back to the leaders who could do something about the experience. That was taking place, and I could do it in a way that spoke their language. I understood that at a kind of a deep level, and so it helped me be on my journey to where I’m at now. But, you know, there was a lot tied up into that, like title and having that job. And, you know, as a leader, I’d been leading teams for over 20 years, even at that point, and I knew that leading people was my thing, kind of going back to this empathy idea. I knew it was because I could always, I could sense where their shifts and things were and and then I would act appropriately. So that’s kind of how I got on the journey to the work I’m doing now. Yeah,

Maria Ross 05:35

well, it makes a lot of sense. I was in change management early in my career, right at the beginning, and the culture piece is so underestimated in terms of making anything successful, whether it’s merger, an acquisition, or even just catalyzing growth. And you know, we talk a lot now about culture being the biggest competitive advantage you can have, but I still believe that there are leaders who don’t quite understand that, and they don’t understand what to do with that information. So before we dive into our topic, given your work and given that experience, what do you think leaders don’t understand about catalyzing culture for bottom line benefit? I

Heather Younger 06:15

know for sure that they don’t understand the power they possess, and I mean the power to uplift or the power to put down, the power to create kind of a flourishing culture, or that want to really like damage it. So I truly believe, based upon all the years of research and working with organizations and teams and focus groups and surveys and oh my goodness, all the research, that it’s that culture is a byproduct of the leaders that are in the organization, and what we allow them to do, and how they behave towards others, and how they make other people feel in the environment. So culture, very generally, is kind of like how people feel inside the walls, behind the team screens or the zoom screens based upon the behaviors we allow the things that we recognize, the things that we compensate. And so it’s an elusive thing, but boy, it’s felt so deeply when it’s done well or not. So it is our behaviors that form the culture. Yeah. And leaders start off. They’re the ones who start it. They start the wave of whether it’s positive or negative. They start it, yeah, one of the biggest reasons why I just have focused so much on leaning into them. How do I continue to fill them up? How do I pour in the dim? How do I help them undersee and understand their choices? That how their choices drive culture well,

Maria Ross 07:32

and they absolutely set the tone right. And I talked to a lot of teams where they say, but, you know, if we want to build an empathetic culture, but who are we? I’m not the CEO, I’m not a VP, and I do talk about the importance of create, of being a leader within your micro culture and within your own sphere of influence, you can create that team that outperforms and people will start to wonder what’s going on over there, right? So there’s a way to do it from a grassroots level, but man, is it a lot easier when you’ve got the role models, and you’ve got the folks at the top. And I love that you said it’s also about the behaviors, because when we’re doing a lot of this work, we have to. We can’t just have these pretty values that are bullet points on a poster on the wall, but when we talk about culture, it’s, you know, how does work get done here, and how do we treat each other in the course of doing that work, and that’s where you can get unique and distinct cultures. But to your point, what are the behaviors that represent the culture that we seek, and how are we operationalizing that? What are the policies? What are the reward structures? What are their hiring guidelines? How are we making that real for people? And I think that’s where a lot of leaders struggle of, oh, it may just be this feel good thing, so if I’m just nice to everybody, then that means I’m creating a good culture. And we’ve got to make it deeper than that. So let’s take a step back and talk about, you know, your work around self leadership. Just a reminder to folks, your book is called The your latest book is called The Art of self leadership, discover the power within you and learn to lead yourself. Because like you, I really believe that all of this starts at home. We’ve got to get our own house in order before we can even open up to leading, influencing, empathizing with others. So tell us in your world and your work, what is self leadership, and why does it matter?

Heather Younger 09:22

It’s really like an inward journey to shine more brightly, reveal our brilliance, more brightly externally to others. And it’s and it kind of spirals up to self awareness and resilience. And I think, you know, one of the things about self leadership, and this is so interesting for me, because I Well, it came out in this year started, obviously, wrote it last year, and it became an epiphany for me, like all things do through my human interactions, whether it’s through, like, quantitative research, qualitative research, or just kind of like, you know, being around people and audiences, and it is really hard for us to have the strong foundation of leadership. Leadership, where people really are attracted to us, that like they want to follow us, they’re attracted to our journey what we represent, if we are not leading ourselves well with, again, that strong foundation of self awareness and resilience and empathy and all of those things that are embedded in just being good humans. And so what I noticed over the years, as I was speaking audiences or even in focus groups, that people who, even who we think of, are those who have authority at work, the managers, directors, kind of middle level, feel the most hopeless, yes, in so many cases, because they don’t kind of the scenario you just presented. I’m not the CEO. I’m not the CEO. So what can I do? I’m feeling like my hands are tied, right? And so I say that not to be that’s a lack in empathy, as I say it, because I’ve been there, done that. I was a director level for the majority of my manager and so I often felt like my hands are tied. And I would be the most frustrated when I kept giving my power away, when I would keep saying things like, well, they’re, you know, the executive team is not going to allow that. The budget doesn’t allow that. The this that. And so when I became very much like a victim of the circumstance, is when I lost my edge. It’s when I lost my ability to lead in the most powerful way possible. So this whole idea of stop waiting for someone else to be your green white, stop waiting for somebody to give you access. Stop waiting for someone to say it’s okay at your time or validate who you are. Is where the self leadership bug was born in me, and now I’m really trying to pass it out. I’m just saying, like, you know, yes, there are limitations, yes, there are real things that are in the workplace that might serve as barriers, and what are we going to do about it? And now that’s where I’m at, I’m kind of like, stop giving yourself excuses. And I’m saying this to me. So I’m saying this to me too. But yes, for the longest time, I waited for someone to tell me it was okay to take more time for me. I waited for someone else to tell me it was time for me, it was okay for me not to accept as many speaking engagements or so many this and that I would wait for that. And finally, like in fact, my son, who now we just dropped off last week to the United States military Naval Academy at Annapolis. He said that he would say to me, like, why are you coming back home in between all your gigs? Like, why are you doing that when it makes no sense, when you’re going from one place to one place, we don’t really recognize you’re here anyway. Why are you doing that? And I would always feel guilty. I have four kids, and, of course, and I I would want to be come back. And finally, I’m like, yeah, why am I doing that? So then, like, why, at that point he was 14? Like, why am I waiting for a 14 year old to give me permission to do the thing that’s best for my own physical right? But this is the kind of thing we all are doing, like a lot, we all find that whatever it is, yeah, we’re waiting for permission for something. So self leadership says, Take back your own power to lead yourself in the way you intuitively already know you’re supposed to be doing it like, Why do you have to wait for someone to tell you to listen to your team members in a way they that makes them feel heard? Why do you need to have somebody tell you it’s okay to show care and concern for your team who’s looking to you for guidance every day from like somebody who’s not even inside your space every day. Why are you doing so? These are the things I’m wondering prompting people right is having them really reflect on the choices they make, how it impact their own mental, physical, financial health, all of it, and how that then extends out to people outside of them?

Maria Ross 13:15

Absolutely. I mean, we’ve got to break those unconscious patterns that for whatever reason, whether it’s our upbringing or workplace we had before or negative role models of leadership. We don’t have to accept that. That’s the paradigm, and in fact, that’s what the culture and the workplace and the incoming talent generations are demanding of us now, is we’ve got to let go of those old paradigms and think about where they came from. What I hear, what I the common theme I’m hearing across all of what you’re saying is we’ve got to be conscious, and we’ve got to be intentional, and it’s okay for us to question why we’re making decisions the way we’re making them. Yep, the level of

Heather Younger 13:50

evolution, or, like, I call it today, I call it a metamorphosis. It really does make me think of that for myself personally, and I’m hoping to get, like, to take people on that journey so that they can get there too. But as I say, some of these things, I think, you know, on one part of me, because I’m like, empathy is my biggest strength. It’s like, it’s massive relatability, all those things, right? And as I say, one ear says, Oh Heather, you’re being too hard on them. Oh Heather, you’re, you know, make sure that they know that you’re not perfect, or that you also and I did this thing with, like, hearing one side and letting that one side stop me from saying the things that actually needed to be said, Yes, still from a place of care and concern, but I would take a little bit more of that hard edge away, right? And I think again, the last couple years, I realized number one, I needed my own tough love, so I needed to get my own stuff a hard edge, and also give people permission to say, Sure. I mean, this might be more of a one that woman thing, but I do. I know that this resonates with men too, which is, which is, sure it’s okay to, like, hear that side and kind of make sure that we’re relating to the other people on the other side, and make sure that they understand that we’re human too. And so the vulnerability and the relatability and empathy is so important, and at the same time. I need to draw a line. You need to draw a line that says I understand, and it’s no longer good enough, right? That’s what I can be. I’ve realized that for me, the metamorphosis for me was other people had already been seeing it, this whole ability to be empathetic and compassionate and also hold such a strength and presence about me, yes, but what I was doing is I was kind of ignoring that second side for the side that I thought was more me, was maybe more valued, like all those things, right was so it ended up being a little bit more externally focused. And I thought, yeah. And I realized, yeah. How the hell Heather, did you get through all the things you’ve had in your like, backstory as a child, growing up, and then having the kids and all the things, Yeah, how’d you get through that? Was it always empathy and compassion? Heck, no, it wasn’t. It was not. It was having a strength of resolve, yes, having the resilience and sticking to skin, having a vision and values that are strong and unshakable, like I had those things, but I was really downplaying those. Yes, absolutely, I’m saying so my own metamorphosis and growth is where, like, the books I write, the things I speak about, are all I’m personally living them. This is not something like, like a theory tell you about this thing that I’ve never done. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Integrity is a big value of mine. So for me, I have to be aligned, yes, and

Maria Ross 16:19

the alignment is so important, I think so there’s so many things that you spoke about. I’m like, yes, yes. You know, my work is about getting people to get rid of this either or leadership paradigm. Like I’m either empathetic or I’m high performing. I’m either empathetic or I’m holding people accountable. We’ve got to get to a place where it’s integrated, just like we are as human beings. We’ve got to be able to balance both of these things to be true at the same time that you can be empathetic and be a high performer, and you can be empathetic and make really hard business decisions, including having to let people go, if that’s what needs to be done, but you can do it in a way that aligns for you. You can do it with compassion and with preparation and with intention and with respect for their humanity. And so, you know, it’s funny, because I always talk to leaders about being an empathetic leader. Is not about lowering the bar for your team. Oh yeah, it’s about supporting people to get to the level you expect. That’s what we mean by empathetic leadership. It doesn’t mean letting everyone slide, because that’s people pleasing. That’s not empathy, and it’s not leadership, right?

Heather Younger 17:24

It’s not, it’s not, in my word, it’s not caring leadership. Because caring leadership means that I don’t want you to flail like you’re going to flail if I give you no direction, if I expect nothing from you, if I don’t hold you accountable, and then the team on the outside is watching me with you, going, where did they get all this treatment from this special treatment? How come there seemed to be so much bias towards that person. So then it’s you’re not showing caring leadership towards the people that are looking outside of that interaction, that relationship. So yeah, there’s a lot of balance to be had, but it is interesting how, even how the leaders are generally just having that balance. There is just a hard one for sure.

Maria Ross 17:59

So the balance is key. And like you pointed out earlier, you know, it’s that middle level that’s those are the people I wrote the last book the empathy dilemma. That’s sort of my love letter to them. It’s they’re the ones being squeezed from both ends. They’re trying to balance the demands of the business with the demands and needs of their people, and they often feel like they can’t win right, especially whether it’s having to execute on a strategy or on a decision that they don’t personally believe in, right? Sometimes they have to do that as part of leadership because it’s the right business strategy for the organization. Which

Heather Younger 18:32

can be hard, which can be hard, I teach a lot about when I talk about inclusion, I’m talking about using a voice of people and to help us drive strategy so that in most cases, or if you can over index on the listening or including voices in your decision making, those decisions are going to be way more grounded. Oh, and if the people that gave you the input were felt that they could be truthful in the process, even better, because that means, like when they’re giving the feedback, your strategies will be grounded in reality of the people who are actually serving the customer or serving each other, right, or serving the mission, yeah? And so, yeah, I think there’s just, like, there’s so much complexity in just what we do in the workforce, for the workforce, right?

Maria Ross 19:13

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s also about, you know, this is why inclusion, diversity, equity, all of that, the fuel that makes that run so you can get all the benefits out of different points of view that can help you make better business decisions is empathy. Because if I don’t have empathy, then I’m not going to value your life experience, I’m not going to value your perspective. I’m not going to value your point of view, because I’m still going to think that I’m right and my way is the right way, right but, and you’ve, I know you’ve been privy to the data and the research that shows that we do make better business decision when we have decisions, when we have more points of view looking at it, right? You’re looking at it from a different angle, and you’re saying, I see a risk you don’t see, or I see an opportunity you don’t see. And so it’s all goodness for the bottom line, you know, we talk about, you know. Why it’s not just, you know, you mentioned what in our pre call, why it’s not just a moral choice, but it’s a business strategy. So talk more about that, and maybe some stories from your work about companies proving the ROI of both self leadership and leading with

Heather Younger 20:15

care. Yeah, it’s so interesting because Gary Ridge, he was the CEO of the WD 40 company, and I can think of him as a strong self leader and a caring leader, for sure. So when he first took over, I want to say they were like 300 and something million in revenue, and something clicked in him where he realized the way that he was leading and that the leadership team was leading was first and foremost, just not the way he wanted to be led from a from kind of like a moral, human dignity, like prospect, connection, relationship perspective. But at the same time, he realized it wasn’t making great business sense to do what they did. They weren’t very human centric and more process focused. And so what he did, this is kind of a strong self leadership trait. He took it upon himself to go back to get us to get, like a master’s in leadership, or something like that. And he ended up being taught under Ken Blanchard, who is, like the one of the foremost people. And, you know, oh my gosh, I’m started down this road of leadership. And he said, like, I realized through all of my learnings that there was a better way that we needed to really meet people where they were at. We needed people to feel seen. We needed to elevate people. We needed to uplift. Like, his view of how to lead really changed, but he initially had to take it upon himself to say, I know what I don’t know, and it’s probably hurting us, right? And that’s the strong self leadership component of like, the self awareness of understanding. I got to go do something different. So he goes and does this, gets his masters, and then starts to go with his leadership team. Like, here are the things we’re going to do. Here’s going to be our new pillars. And within, I don’t know, with by the end of his time, I’ll say he served for like, 20 years as a CEO and I they, he left the company as like, a $3.5 billion market cap organization, and he truly believes it was what he would do. So he would do things like, as a CEO, even come down in the morning, greet people as they’re coming into the employee entrance, and like, tell him, like, have a great day. And he’s Australian, so he has this good day, and he has a certain accent and stuff, but he just take it upon himself to do the things that made people feel seen and valued and instrumental players on the team, and it was a huge ri for them. And then there’s a small, much smaller company. Daniel McCollum is a great leader, and he’s somebody who same kind of thing. His epiphany was like, I don’t think, I don’t think I’m looking at this leadership thing right. And again, it wasn’t like, here’s my strategy to have more money. It was, again, more about humanity, 100% I’m supposed to. Like, he was more mission. They felt like a mission. And he did tech consulting, so he ends up being, like one of the bigger Salesforce tech consulting kind of companies and around the world. And he started doing all these other things that were mission oriented. And he had all kinds of, like little minuets and stories of where it was a turnkey point for him, yeah, but when they made the decision, when he made decision to focus on helping people find their personal mission and the connection the work that was to be done at in the tech consulting firm. And when he really started to lean into that focus for people and individuals, same exact thing, they grew like leaps and bounds, still growing amazingly, because he this particular leader, decided to take on that different angle, made a conscious effort, and then made sure his leadership team follow along, and then they would do things, you know, to value, to evaluate, and then to value that for the leaders as they went along. So and as we said earlier, all you know, the leader has the leaders at the top. Have to get it, but it has got to be operationalized. It has to be proceduralized. It has to be, you know, what are the things you recognize? What are the things you penalize? What do you fire for? What do you hire for? You have to ask yourself those questions. That’s how you get to the bottom of how we change the culture to an empathy driven culture, to a caring, focused culture, to whatever those things are, right? It has to stop and start at the top, but it’s to be operationalized, for sure. These

Maria Ross 23:56

are great examples, because it’s also, you know, we’ve got to change the paradigm that any of this is coddling. We’re not coddling when we’re taking care, let’s be frank, when we take care of our assets, right? When we charge up our phones, when we, you know, invest in capital expenditures in a warehouse and make sure that we’re doing maintenance on our machines. We know what it means to take care of our assets and our employees our greatest asset. They’re our greatest competitive edge because of the innovation that we can unlock in their minds and their ability to creatively problem solve. And so taking care of your assets is not coddling. And again, it doesn’t mean you’re not making tough business decisions. It doesn’t mean you’re not holding people accountable, and it doesn’t mean you’re making decisions that everyone’s going to love and be happy with all the time. And that’s the thing. I work with a lot of leaders who, not only, you know, the ones that are skeptical about empathy, but the ones that over index on empathy to the point that they’ve now left empathy, and they’re they’re dipping into people pleasing. Yeah. And we’ve got to find that balance of you know to your point. And I believe this is why I love your work so much. So much of it starts with you. It starts with the internal game of you being grounded enough and secure enough and present enough that you can take on other points of view without defensiveness or fear, and you can only do that when you’re, you know, in your terminology, when you’re practicing self leadership.

Heather Younger 25:27

Yeah? So it’s an inside job. It’s an inside job 100% within like 80. Like I said, this is an evolution for me, yeah? Just so, just for those who are listening, it’s like, understand that. I think I’d always been talking about our choices. So, you know, her message was always like, we get to choose how we show up for others we get to but what I really wasn’t diving in nearly enough is how the choices that we get to make for ourselves, yeah, and it is so critical. And so when we talk about empathy for others, care for others, like, yes, it’s important. Again, that was like 80% of my body of work is there, yeah. And then I realized, wait a second, we got I’m going to do some backpedaling here, 100% because I don’t think I went deep enough to tell people, number one, how valued they are, how worthy they are as humans. Because if we have a lot of hurt, broken, scattered leaders in the world, and now they’re going to the workplace, and we’re saying, Go care for other people. Go show more empathy. Yeah, and we they haven’t even figured out how to do that for themselves. They don’t give themselves enough care. They don’t understand what their values and the strength their values. They don’t understand how to receive feedback in a way that helps them learn and grow. They don’t, you know, they don’t understand that grace and excellence and progress are more important to perfection. Like there’s just these are some of the components that are embedded in self leadership. But once we start to evaluate what those are, and we can, you know, lean into those and try to work to get better at them, because we’re not going to get perfect. I mean, this is the whole point. Here is that we’re all on a journey. We have choices. We’re going to make some bad ones. We got to we understand that we’re just on a journey of learning and growth, right? And people around us when we give ourselves grace, as much as we give other people that we are learning to be better, to do different things, and we give it to other people, and they see our change happening, they’re much more likely to do those same things and to buy into whatever kind of vision or journey we put forward for them, because they can see we’re people who are constantly in this learning, growing phase, open to feedback, open to change, and that means they’re going to be We’re just all we’re doing is showing them the way Exactly.

Maria Ross 27:24

And when you put the ego aside and you adopt that growth mindset, no matter what level in the organization you are, you’re not only doing it for yourself, and you know, don’t do it behind closed doors, like tell your team you’re working on your leadership skills, you’re improving. What an example to say you’re never done learning. And even though I’m the leader and I’ve got the title, I know I have more to learn as well. You are motivating everyone on your team to adopt that mindset, to not get so fixed in their mindset that at this point I know everything there is to know. That’s not how you get innovation, that’s not how you get creative problem solving. That’s not how you get new ideas that are going to lead the market. It’s that curiosity. And what I love about your work is it’s about showing curiosity in yourself, like getting curious and getting intentional. Yeah, why am I making this decision? Why do I believe this narrative? Why am I acting this way? What’s triggering me about this one situation or this one person, and getting curious about your responses so that you can respond rather than react

Heather Younger 28:25

to everything. So absolutely, I love it. Yeah, I love that. All right, let’s

Maria Ross 28:30

talk practical. Let’s talk about some actual ways that people can they improve their relationships, they can advocate for themselves, but also take ownership of their leadership style and their careers. I mean, I would keep you here another three hours if I could. But can you share some highlights? Can you share maybe yes, two or three of the things that come up over and over again for you and your clients,

Heather Younger 28:53

I would say the first thing is understanding the role that our values play in everything that we say yes or no to it’s critical. So when we think about projects that come across our desk, this became real for me when I had come out of a year was my busy speaking year, and I realized that I wasn’t home that much, and it was part of that conversation I had with my son, right? But I wasn’t home as much, and I have four kids, and I’m the only child, but I can’t. I do value being around for them, and I do value, you know, when I’m here, I do want to be more present. It’s not just being here. It’s about being like, present when I am with them, yeah. And so I realized, like, family was so important and integrity was important, but it wasn’t as important as I thought it was because media originally, right? Like, because of my actions. It was like, right? You can say integrity is your value, but what do your actions say? In comparison, you could say, family is a priority, but what do you do? And so I would say for people to do a values audit and to say, like, what are my top five values, and then start writing down and jotting down, what’s the evidence that those values are real or not just? Something I aspire to, right? And then where are the gaps? Because I feel like that self leadership process for me, I can’t even tell you how of a big wake up call it was for me. And I like, I remember going to this retreat. I’m going to the retreat, and I everybody else the retreat. They’re like, oh, and I want to have so much more business. And they’re like, writing all these things out about scaling and all these things. And I’m like, hell no excuse my French. Heck no, Maria, I am not trying to do like, more, yeah. I’m actually trying to maximize the current and make sure that I that family relationships, the things that really, truly are important, end up really elevating in this mix. And then I, then the world and my life just started to move in that direction. It really did, because I, because once those things my values became clear, I would say no to a whole bunch more, and I also wouldn’t fight for things that I knew that weren’t really the thing I wanted, right? It’s very this is like, this is it’s critical and it’s hard critical, yeah, it’s really hard work. It’s hard work to say no, but it’s like, then, once you’re in a situation where your boss, a team member, a project, something, whatever it has happened, where you’re faced with, do I do this? Do I do this? Just to show that I’m doing this, do I do this? Then you can say, you know, no. And actually you could sleep well, and you can feel good. And the other thing is, one of the things I talk about is like, oh my gosh, the thing that happens with all of us, with the comparison, holy smokes. Like we just, if we could just get off social media, I think then it would all go away. It’d be much better. Yes, right? And so, but what would happen is, once I started going through this values exercise, now, when I would see, so I’m a speaker, and once I would see, like, all these people are speaking, and they’re so busy, and I’d be like, Oh my gosh, I’m a failure. Like, this is what was happening in my brain. This Is What Happens all of us, depending on what you’re wherever you’re tracking whatever it is.

Maria Ross 31:44

And leaders are the worst too, because leaders are in that Echelon where they’re comparing against other leaders. And totally, yeah, yeah.

Heather Younger 31:50

Which projects are they on? And how many, like, whatever, have you hired 25 more people to scale this thing like, this is the thing that’s always happening. We’re watching from afar. And so I was watching, and then when I made, when I kind of decided based upon the values and the priorities that I had. Now, I could look at other people and be like, good for them, yeah, and not be like, and I want that. I’d be like, hey, and I would celebrate them more, and I would find myself like sending them voice notes, like congratulate, and just really feeling good for them because they were doing whatever their wheelhouse was or whatever, and I was in mine, and now I could live in my own brilliance. And when I did that, my team would be like, Oh my gosh. Like, she’s really elevated. Like, this is her, and I love this, and now I’m inspired to do this too, right? So now I’m leading in an entirely different way, right? Right, right? So I think that values is a big one. The other thing is, the role of feedback, giving and receiving feedback, 100% is so critical. Like, you know, I remember when I got my first 360 feedback. Here it was. The funny thing is, like, it was from my manager perspective. He had, I think, six or seven direct reports, and I was the best of all of them. And I was still, like, an F so, like, we all were F spotted, like an F plus, it’s just gay, right? And I see the feedback, he was a whole nother specimen, let’s say, but when I see the feedback, it was him. And I see colleagues, I see people and I and the whole time I’m like, Oh my gosh. Like, who said that? I wonder, because this manager, anybody else, right? Who said that? Right? And then I sold for three months. And then, like, I want to say, like, at one point, I pick it up again, in three months, I look at it, and I’m like, Okay, I could take this in now, yeah, take it in. Take it how much of this do I want to actually take it in and, like, operationalize inside my own gut? Like, if I am, do I want to change things right? Right? Or how many things I just need to throw away? Because really, do they even know what right? And so I had to start to evaluate what it was that was being said, and then take those truths, there were some truths there, and then act upon those truths, right? And so feedback has has been, and will continue to be, I think, the greatest thing that leaders can give. And then, of course, you know, to receive and then give to others, yes. And in a way, that’s not over coddling, you know, feedback

Maria Ross 34:02

and isn’t vague, you know, like this is the thing. One of my pillars is clarity, because it’s not just kind it’s empathetic. When you help people understand where they stand. So you know, you’re doing a great job. Is great to hear, but what exactly are they doing, or you’re missing the mark? Okay, where exactly am I missing the mark? How can I improve upon that? So we’ve got to bring that clarity into the feedback. But I love what you’re saying, because I’ve often talked about one of the markers of being able to strengthen your empathy as a leader, as a human, is to be able to accept feedback as a gift, and when you look at it not as a threat to you, but as a perspective that someone’s bringing when you can show empathy and grace to that of of more like curiosity, like wow, Heather, I didn’t know you saw that in me. Tell me more about that. Why do you think that I didn’t care about the project? Why did you think that if I can be in a place where I can stand strong enough to take. That feedback on, then I can improve, then I can then I can act on it right? And I it’s free market research, like just accepted, whether it’s from, you know, and I’ve come from a brand strategy background, not everybody that this is your brand or your company is a hater or a troll. They might actually have something valuable to say. And so again, it’s putting ego aside and saying, What can I learn from this? What is this person trying to tell me, especially if you see a trend, right, especially if there’s not just one person saying that, but yeah, multiple people, it’s like, okay, not everybody can be wrong.

Heather Younger 35:36

So trending and take a look. Say this to me recently, because I tend to take in feedback. And I because listening is the foundation of, like, pretty much all of my work, listening to me, listening to others, it’s the foundation. It really is the crux, like it is extremely valuable understand how to be curious and listen and present and all those things, right? And so as I’m thinking about listening, then that means I’m listening to other people, and I’m a little bit of a OCD about receiving feedback. So I asked for feedback a lot. I get feedback. I just think it’s extremely, extremely important, right? But one person, a couple people, lately have been saying, Well, you know, I get you, but be careful. Like, be careful who it is you’re receiving the feedback from, and how much you are internalizing it, right? And so that one’s helped me yet again, like, at a different layer, yeah, understand. So from a self leadership perspective, yes, feedback is critical. Contemplating a rec, you know, just thinking about who it is that you’re receiving it from, and how much should some be weighted versus the others, right? This is all work that we have to do. We have to do this work as leaders, whether we are leaders in our family, our community at work, it’s not about title in this regard. No, yes, those who have title have authority. And so oftentimes I’m speaking audiences of people who have authority, but I’m also speaking people who don’t have that formal authority, but they should still be learning to lead themselves better. Yeah, yeah. Somebody’s looking to you for guidance. Somebody is somebody’s looking at you. You have, yeah,

Maria Ross 36:59

you have a sphere of influence, whether it’s peer to peer, whether it’s you know, it again, it’s not about that title, and that is such a short term perspective on getting compliance right. Getting compliance from your team is not necessarily getting the best from them. You might be able to do that because of your title. You might be able to make them follow you because they report to you, but the goal is to get them to want to follow you. That’s where you get you crack open the best work from people when they actually want to be there. They’re actually motivated, whether they’re motivated because they don’t want to let you down, whether they’re motivated because you give them opportunity, whether they’re motivated simply because you see here and value them, that’s where you’re going to get the best results. And you know, you and I both talk about the ROI of all of this, and sometimes you have to be a little crass and say, hey, you know, leader, do you want to make your bonus? Do you want to get your bonus this quarter? Here’s one way to do it, empower and care about your team that will actually help you get your bonus, and then when you do it and you achieve the results, you’ll realize that that’s actually a much better way to operate, because that carrot that you know the stick isn’t always it’s very short term. You can get people to comply with command and control, but even military leaders I’ve spoken to on this show will say the military actually thrives on empathetic leadership, because you’re asking people to lay down their life for you. Totally. So yes, command and control works in a crisis, but if you are leading 24/7 with command and control, you are grinding people down.

Heather Younger 38:36

So true. I’ve done the same thing. I’ve been speaking to a couple of military folks, and I one of the things that’s really hit me is, is how much they rely on the caring leadership principles I teach. It’s actually tough. And I was like, wait to say, wait what? Because, you know, you’re not expecting it. No, I did it. I was like, and what now, because everybody always uses it as this, like command and control, and it’s not the way to lead. And I’m like, Well, what I’m hearing from these people who are in it for 20 years, for 20 years is, yeah, that’s not exactly all

Maria Ross 39:04

true, right, right? And they’re used, you know, a lot of leaders in business are using these military leaders or figures or quotes, and it’s like, you’re taking that out of context.

Heather Younger 39:15

Yes, that’s so true. Yeah.

Maria Ross 39:19

It’s like, well, or like even, you know, I talk about elite coaches, sports coaches in my book, and I tell the story of Steve Kerr who’s created a championship NBA dynasty with the Golden State Warriors, my favorite team, but he didn’t do it through command and control. He actually says one of his core values is empathy, and I’ve got to get to know everyone on my team and what makes what motivates them, what makes them tick, and I have to adapt my coaching style to what those players need to be, the best versions of themselves. It’s not about do it my way or the highway. It’s about I’m here to serve you and enable you to be the best team you can be. And. Right? He’s winning championships with that philosophy, right? So it’s like, I think someone you know who runs an accounting firm or who’s a consultant or who works for a software company can probably apply those lessons too well. This has been delightful. I want to spend way more time with you, but unfortunately, we’re out of time, so we will have all the links in the show notes for you and your work and your book, again, the art of self leadership, discover the power within you and learn to lead yourself. But for anyone who’s listening to us on the go, where’s kind of the one best place they can find out more about you and your work,

Heather Younger 40:34

I’d say LinkedIn, yeah, you just go to Heather younger you’ll find me there, and that’s probably the better place just you’ll because I’m just always there. So, yeah,

Maria Ross 40:41

yeah, absolutely. And I will give my PSA I do for all my guests that mentioned LinkedIn is, if you’re going to connect, send a note. So Heather knows you heard her on the podcast and you’re not trying to sell her something, please. Yes, thank you, or just follow you right. There you go. Yes. Well, Heather, this has been wonderful. I wish you the best, and I hope we can stay connected Absolutely.

Heather Younger 41:05

Thank you, Maria for having me. It’s been amazing. And thank you everyone

Maria Ross 41:09

for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate, review and share with a friend or colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive, stay well and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place. You.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Sharon Steed: Empathy in Communication and AI

Many leaders come to empathy in their style and communication based on their own challenges. Today’s guest shares how vulnerably sharing her story led her down the path of teaching and training on empathy, and how you can boldly leverage vulnerability as an asset in your communication, leading to stronger connections and better results.

Sharon Steed is a keynote speaker, author, and empathy expert specializing in communication and collaboration. As the founder of Communilogue, she helps organizations build more inclusive, connected teams through the power of vulnerability and empathy. A stutterer since childhood, Sharon uses her personal experience to illustrate how embracing discomfort fosters growth. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, tech leaders, and global organizations, delivering impactful talks and workshops. Sharon is also a LinkedIn Learning Instructor with multiple courses on empathy. She hosts a weekly live podcast on LinkedIn and YouTube on empathy in the age of AI called Empathy In Automation. Her work empowers professionals to lead with authenticity and compassion.

Sharon shares her powerful story and discusses how to be vulnerable and communicate with empathy in productive ways—ways that influence and ignite your team, customers, and other stakeholders. We also had an interesting discussion about the intersection of empathy and AI and how to keep humanity in a tech-driven world.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why curiosity is an empathetic power.
What it means to communicate with empathy and how to overcome communication barriers.
The power of setting your conversational intentions out loud.
The importance of empathy in the age of AI.

“Everybody swears that they are terrible at communicating. And (I say), well, no, every single time you enter a room, you are communicating.” — Sharon Steed

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge podcast episodes:
- Dr. Michelle Zhou: Empathic AI is Real and It’s Here – But We Need Everyone Involved!
- Chris L. Johnson: When Leaders Pause, They Win

About Sharon Steed, Speaker and Founder, Communilogue:

Sharon Steed is a keynote speaker, author, and empathy expert specializing in communication and collaboration. As the founder of Communilogue, she helps organizations build more inclusive, connected teams through the power of vulnerability and empathy. A stutterer since childhood, Sharon uses her personal experience to illustrate how embracing discomfort fosters growth. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, tech leaders, and global organizations, delivering impactful talks and workshops. Sharon is also a LinkedIn Learning instructor, with courses on Communicating with Empathy and Driving Inclusion with Empathy; she hosts a weekly live podcast on LinkedIn and YouTube on empathy in the age of AI called Empathy In Automation. Her work empowers professionals to lead with authenticity and compassion.

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Connect with Sharon:

Communilogue: communilogue.co

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sharon-steed

LinkedIn Learning Course: Communicating With Empathy

YouTube: Empathy in Automation

LinkedIn Newsletter: linkedin.com/newsletters/7107818443042656256/

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Sharon Steed 02:52

Yeah, I am so happy to be here and have this conversation today. I

Maria Ross 02:56

know. I know, and I don’t even know how we originally got connected. I think it was through a conference or something that we were both on years ago, maybe a virtual conference? Yeah? Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. I know it’s like that sounds right. How we’re connecting with people, and meeting with people is so different than it was like a decade ago. So so tell us a little bit about your story before we kick off into this topic of vulnerability and empathy and communication and empathy in the age of AI, before we go there, what got you into the empathy world?

Sharon Steed 03:28

So I have a little bit of an unusual background. I’m a person who stutters, and I had sort of come to this point in my life when I was so afraid of just like talking to people like that, I was beginning to, like avoid conversations entirely, right? And so I had gone through like, all of my youth and all of schooling and college, and I was able to sort of just skate by on, like avoiding some conversations and like only, like including myself in things where I felt more comfortable and confident speaking. But then, you know, you graduate from college, and then you get out into the workforce, and all of a sudden, you know, I have to be able to, you know, confidently speak about all of the things that I’m capable of and the things that I want to do and to accomplish. Well, I was so intimidated, like, by this whole idea of just like, having to talk to people, that I was sort of avoiding a lot of situations where I was going to have to talk to people, right? And so I remember, like, attempting to go to like events, to, you know, connect with people, to network. And I would just be so terrified that, like, I would be, like, in the corner and like, I’m not going to. Able to say my name and like stuff, and so, yeah, I was talking to a speech therapist like that I was seeing at the time, and she suggested that I try public speaking. So I said, Yeah, okay, cool.

Maria Ross 05:16

Well, I was like, did you really say yeah, okay, cool.

Sharon Steed 05:20

But yeah, I was like, we’re, you are completely bananas. There’s no way I can do this. I’ve avoided having to do this my entire life. And you want me to get in front of a room full of people and talk like you’re what? No, absolutely not. But then, you know, it sort of like came around to this whole like, idea of like, okay, like, if I am afraid of something, I think the only way that I’m going to be able to really, like, conquer this fear is if I just pace it in the most, you know, over the top way possible, right? So I thought, like, I’m just going to give one or two talks, and I’ll be cured, and I’ll never be afraid that, obviously, is not what happened, right? However, what did happen was a lot of people began to really come up to me and say, hey, you know, I really appreciate you talking about vulnerability and empathy. And I thought that was really interesting, because, like, I don’t even think I said the word empathy in my talks, but I think it just came through. And so after hearing that several times, I decided to just explore this concept and really research this topic, and sort of create content around insecurity and vulnerability, and like how those things can help us be better connectors, and how they can help us to be a little bit more understanding, a little Bit more empathetic at work specifically,

Maria Ross 07:01

wow. And I’m curious if, like specifically diving into empathy. And the answer can be No, I’m just curious, is it because you felt sometimes that people weren’t being empathetic with you, or even just seeing people not be empathetic with anyone who’s different, or anyone who might have an issue? Like, was that part of it of diving deeper into empathy, or was it did that just come through from the responses that you were getting to what you were talking about? So I

Sharon Steed 07:29

think it was twofold, right? Yes, like it came from what a lot of people were like coming up to me and saying, but also I am an incredibly sensitive person. Like, I feel things very deeply, and I feel like I’ve always sort of viewed situations and like viewed other people and like how they are going to feel in a specific situation, and I’ve always related it back to like, how it would make me feel. And I think a part of that is like being a person who stutters, I, you know, always like, wanted to talk to people like, but I didn’t want to be like, the center of the conversation, and so I was always asking follow up questions as a way to, like, sort of continue to like be in the conversation, like, but to avoid talking. And so I spent a really long time just being, like, really curious about other people and just like constantly, like trying to find questions that I could like pose to them. And I think that as a result of just like always asking questions, I was able to better see, you know, how like people think, how they like come to the feelings like that they have. And that combined with just being like a very sensitive person, yeah, just really, you know, just lament itself, yeah, you me eventually talking about being empathetic, yeah, yeah.

Maria Ross 09:15

And we both know Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. And so just, and I love that, because you know that concept of, like, when I do this too, where if I don’t want to talk, or I’m feeling like my tank is low, I’ll tend to ask more questions, or if I’m uncomfortable in the situation, because then it gets the other person talking, and the focus is off me, and then they’re like, that was the best conversation I’ve ever had, because they’re talking about themselves the whole time. That’s the trick, right? Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about communicating with empathy. So that is what you train on. That’s what you speak on, is helping people understand how to communicate and get their point across. And you know, like with my work, as you know, with leaders, is helping them still hold people. Accountable. Still have performance expectations, but communicate with empathy so that they can actually accomplish more, and they can actually optimize their people for peak performance. So I would love to hear what your definition of communicating with empathy is, and what do you see as the reasons why some people are unable to communicate with empathy.

Sharon Steed 10:22

Well, so like, off the bat, I feel like every time we are opening our mouths to, like, have a conversation with someone, we are actually, you know, engaging in an act of incredible empathy, and we probably don’t even know, right? Like, if we are in a conversation and there’s, you know, like us and another person, like, just the act of listening to them is supposed to be an incredibly empathetic act, right? And so, you know, when we are listening to people, our goal there is to really just understand where they are coming from and to just hit another perspective, right, like that’s the entire point of listening and like those two things are really foundational communication and empathy principles. And so, you know, I describe communicating with empathy as putting understanding and perspective at the center of every single conversation. And you know, we spend a lot of our lives communicating, right, having conversations, like talking to people, and as a person who spent, you know, her entire life being so concerned about, you know, how I’m communicating, you know, I was really able to sort of focus on, you know, how do we continue to really impress upon teams and companies that when we speak, we should always be coming from a place of, you know, yes, I Want to get my point across however, you know, I want to really understand where you are coming from as well, because it’s going to help us, you know, one, create better products, and two, just be a lot better at collaborating as well.

Maria Ross 12:38

And so, what do you when you’re working with teams or people? What are some of the biggest barriers they have to communicating with empathy?

Sharon Steed 12:44

I think that the biggest thing that I’ve seen, and I constantly hear this, is that people are just very intimidated, like, by this concept of communication. I don’t know if you have seen this as well, like, where everybody swears that they are terrible at communicating. And I’m like, Well, no, every single time you, like, enter a room, you are communicating, right? Yeah,

Maria Ross 13:12

whether you’ve opened your mouth or not, yeah, exactly.

Sharon Steed 13:15

And so I think that, like, I think that a part of the reason, like my talks are so effective is because, like people you know, see that, like I do, have a physical, you know, challenge with communicating. However, I am still articulate, and people can, you know, really connect with, you know, like my content and like the things that I’m trying to get across and so, you know, like I am attempting to show people like that, even if you think you are terrible at communication, you know, you’re not. Because if you are able to, like, go into a conversation, you know, you speak, the other person speaks, and you can come to some sort of positive conclusion where you can both and Co Op, and you know, like, do the things that you have to do as a result of that conversation, then you are a good communicator. And so the biggest you know thing that I have to sort of convince people of is that you are not bad at communicating, right? And then the other challenge is just explaining what empathy you know should be in terms of behaviors, right? Like empathy? Is this really cool concept? However, a lot of people don’t really like completely understand, how can we go into a conversation and focus on being empathetic? And so those are the two things that I really sort of um. And hone in on when I’m giving a talk, right?

Maria Ross 15:05

Yeah. And so when you’re working with it’s funny, because you’re talking about these leaders who don’t think they’re good communicators, and yet, there’s lots of leaders who think they’re great communicators, and they’re not empathetic at all, right? And it’s almost that I always talk about, ego kills empathy because it your self awareness is not there, and you’re not aware of what you’re bringing to the table. You’re not aware of what you’re bringing into the interaction and how it might be impacting somebody else. And it’s only when you’re willing to see how something impacts someone else that you start to change your communication right? For some people, whether it’s modulating your speed or your tone, whether it’s these people need a little bit more direction and guidance and these people need a little bit more. Just give me the bottom line. Tell me what to do, right? That’s actually communicating with empathy. When you adjust and adapt to the person that you’re talking to, it’s not, I always say, it’s not just crying on the floor with your employees. Empathy shows up in these ways that we actually do without thinking sometimes, if we’re interested in effective communication, I should say, right? Oh, yeah for sure. But what about the people who are trying, who are communicating and saying, Well, I and there’s research that bears this out, there’s a lot of executives who go, well, empathy has no place in the workplace, which boggles my mind, because empathy has a place whenever humans are interacting with other humans. But how do you work with clients like that, who are saying, you know, this isn’t the time or place for empathy.

Sharon Steed 16:29

You know what I I always have to begin, like with, how is this going to make you money, right? Like the ROI of empathy? Yes, exactly, right. And so, you know, a thing that, like, I explained to people is that, like, if you are beginning a company, or if you are creating a product, right, you are doing that because, like, there is some sort of cap in the current consumer marketplace like that requires your product to be created, your product or your service. And so you know, when you are creating this product or you are creating this service, you are thinking about, okay, like, what does my ideal customer. Why would they use this product? How are they going to use this product? How can I get this product in front of them? Like, so it can improve your life, right? So you are going to do like, a lot of testing, right? You are going to talk to your customers. You are going to like listen to their stories, and you are going to have conversations around the reasons why you know they are going to use this product, how it’s going to benefit their life and these situations, you know, where specifically they are going to, like, insert that product into their like, day to day experience, all of those things I have described are 100% empathy, right? And so imagine would sort of transpire if you, like, had that same approach on your teams in internally, right, like, if you have a co worker, or if you have a direct report having a hard time, right, like they feel uncomfortable sharing their ideas or or their opinions, or they’re just struggling to really keep up with their teammates. Well, what is their experience on this team, you know, like, in a day to day basis, you know, how are they approaching their work? Like, what steps are they taking? And, you know, why are those steps, you know, like, not effective in, like, either productivity or communication or, like, good collaboration. So, you know, anytime a company comes to me and says, Hey, like, I don’t see why this is important. Well, you know, you, you know, used empathy to create this company in the first place, and you are going to have to have empathy in order to keep your employees in, you know, your company, and to continue to, you know, create, like, good, effective products. And so, yeah. Mean, it really is a, you know, you have to hold up a mirror and say, hey, yeah, why are you here? Okay, all those reasons why you are here are the same reasons why you need to focus on your internal operations as well as your external operations,

Maria Ross 20:21

right, right? Yeah. I mean, I talk a lot with my clients about the business case of empathy and giving them the data and giving them the research that shows how it boosts innovation and engagement and performance and collaboration and then the external benefits of being an edge in the market. You know, the bar is so low when it comes to customer service that when you treat people with empathy, and you’re only able to treat your customers with empathy if your employees are being treated with empathy, otherwise, they’re operating in fear and anxiety and stress, and that’s never going to be a good experience that they’re going to share with your external customers. So I love that it’s about the business case. Yeah. So can you give us a little taste of some of the tips and some of the strategies that you share with your clients around how to communicate with empathy, especially if they’re struggling to tap into their own empathy, if they struggle with connection, if they struggle with you know? And it could be a struggle based on neurodiversity, right? It could be a struggle based on just their own upbringing or where they come from. How do you what are some tips that you give them on how to better communicate with empathy?

Sharon Steed 21:27

Yeah, for sure. You know, I always begin with sort of the foundational things, right and like, the foundation of everything that you know we are going to be doing as people. It begins sort of internally, right?

Maria Ross 21:45

Starts at home. Gotta get your house in order, right?

Sharon Steed 21:48

Absolutely, in order to do that, you you know first are going to have to be incredibly patient, right? And I think that we sort of view conversations especially as like, Okay, I’m coming into this conversation, I’m going to talk and then I’m going to wait for my turn to talk again, and then I’m going to talk again, right, right? And that is the that’s not helping anybody, right? Like, the entire point of communication and having a conversation is to, you know, get perspective on, you know, another person’s experiences or just another person’s opinion, right? And so, like, I like to say, you know, you can make your world larger by making another person’s world better, right? And so you create, you know, a good experience for another person, like by just listening to you know their stories and their vulnerabilities and the the things that you know, like they have experienced. And it’s impossible to do that if we don’t first focus on again, being patient. And so, how do we be patient, right? And so, you know, I have to break these things down in a way, like, where it’s you know, how do we turn these, like, really great concepts into like, yeah, into like, things that you can, you know, physically do right. And so like being patient just kind of comes down to stopping right. Like we live in a world where we are constantly being sort of bombarded with a ton of content all the time, right? There is social media, there are text messages, there’s a 24 hour news cycle. There are tons of things that we are like constantly consuming. And so it can be very difficult to just, like, stop and to give this person in front of you your entire attention, right? And so, yeah, I mean, like, we just focus on, like, okay, like, you know you are going to have to pause, and I know that it’s really hard, but pause and just focus on this person in front of you, and then another thing that I like to talk about in patients is the physical act of listening. You know, we are in these conversations a lot. Of times, if we are listening to another person, you know, we are sort of trying to, you know, hear what they like have to say, so we can sort of pass a little bit of judgment on it, and it isn’t on purpose, right? Just you know when we, you know, are talking to people and like, their words go into our brains. It sort of like, goes through a filter of, like, our own opinion. And so when we are listening people we should be focused on, you know, how do I keep my assumptions and my biases and my opinions as low as possible. And so like that could mean like, Hey, could you repeat what you said? So, like, I can get clarity. Or it could mean like, hey, so I heard you say, you know, like a, b and c, yeah.

Maria Ross 26:20

Yeah. Can I get that right? Reflective, listening is so key, and I love what you’re saying. Like, just to jump in here, I love what you’re saying because it’s this idea. I’m going to put a link in the show notes to another episode that I did with Dr Chris Johnson, where she talked about the power of the pause. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her work, but her work is great, and she talks about both, like physically and mentally, the things you can do to kind of make yourself take the pause like it’s deep breathing. It’s like clarifying what you you know, taking a second to reflect back what you heard before you launch into whatever you think you’re going to launch into. And it’s just that concept of listening to understand and build your own knowledge versus listening to talk to what you’re what you were describing earlier. And I know I, I struggle with it too, right? And I’m, I’m interviewing people all the time, and I’m talking all the time, but it’s amazing when you just get rid of the stuff in your own head and you’re able to say, like, right now, I am going to be present with this person, and I want, and my intention is to hear what they have to say so I can learn something from it, just even, like, out loud, setting that intention for yourself, maybe before you go into a meeting, or before you go into even a contentious conversation. Like, let me take some time to figure out what that other person’s perspective and context is before I go in guns blazing with you know, here’s why I’m right and you’re wrong, and we can just tell ourselves that I know someone who always tells me there’s power in saying it out loud, like it’s almost as a mantra. If you say it out loud and you hear yourself saying, like, I’m going to go into this conversation to understand, not just to talk about my opinion. Just saying that out loud is really powerful, because your ears hear it, and then you’re able to, sort of like, use that as a grounding for yourself. Of this is, you know, or I need to stay present in this conversation, and it’s okay to say it out loud. So, yeah. So, yeah, you know what?

Sharon Steed 28:25

I think that, like, you know, it’s so easy to just, like, go into conversations with this whole like, you know, one I want to get my point across. And, like, I want to make sure that this other person, like, really gets everything that I’m trying to say right and how, but I mean, like, that’s sort of how we view effective communication, is how we speak, how we present, and I think that a part of The reason why a lot of people resonate with this sort of talks that I give is because I sort of, like, turn that on its head, right? Like, I talk about how, like, I spent a lot of time, you know, being so concerned about how I sound and how I feel and how uncomfortable I was, but I really didn’t get to, like, properly and sincerely connect with a lot of people that I was having conversations with. And so, yeah, you know, it is so important to sort of go into these conversations from a, you know, you and me perspective, and not a perspective.

Maria Ross 29:47

I love that. Okay, let’s switch gears a little bit, because I know this has been a hot topic. I’ve been out talking about, you’ve been out talking about, and that is empathy and AI, and I know you have a LinkedIn course. I. Not only do you have a LinkedIn course about, you know, communicating with empathy, but one about empathy in the age of AI, and I’ve waxed poetic on that, but I would love to hear your perspective on the role of empathy in the age of AI. And do we need it? Do we not is it more important? Is it less important? Talk to us about your perspectives on that?

Sharon Steed 30:21

Well, one, it is more important. So like, let’s get back that was

Maria Ross 30:25

a leading question. Yeah,

Sharon Steed 30:28

empathy in this very highly, highly technical age, and I have had a ton of conversations about this with people from a lot of different industries and the over what overwhelming sort of feeling is that, like you know, these technologies, these programs, these softwares, are only going to get better, right? And so you know, a lot of the things that you know we, you know, have had to do in in the past, you know, we aren’t going to have to do those things anymore. And yes, you know, AI is going to take a lot of things away. However, it’s also going to give us a lot more space and a lot more capacity to really connect with other people, you know. And so when I’m having these conversations, I’m always sort of blown away by how, you know, almost every single person is like, no, no. We need to focus on, you know, being human centered in this, you know, tech obsessed world, and, you know, AI is going to give us an incredible opportunity to just focus on, how can we, you know, build stronger, re relationships. How can we get more perspective? How can you know, hear more stories? You know, I think that you know, there is, for sure, a place of poor empathy. Age of AI has everything that you know we are doing, you know, is going to continue to be, you know, done and used and created and scaled by people. So as long as we as people are involved in all of these processes, we’re going to have to really focus on being empathetic. Yeah, I always know what you think about this.

Maria Ross 32:43

Well, yeah. I mean, I love this, because my feeling is, when AI takes over the tasks that many leaders have relied on to keep themselves relevant and busy, all we’re left with is leaders that are really good at their human connection skills. That’s where they’re going to add the most value. And those leaders that have hidden behind the doing and not the leading, and not the people, part of the leading will have nowhere to hide, yeah, because we’re taking away the thing that keeps them, you know, behind their desk and not interacting with their people. And so I, in my view, and maybe, you know, I know it’s a little biased because of the work I do, but that emotional intelligence and that empathy as a skill for a leader is going to be even more important, because that’s the thing it can’t replicate. And if you’ve been hiding behind the doing as a leader and not the being as a leader and the connecting as a leader, you’re going to need to upskill like now.

Sharon Steed 33:40

Oh, yeah, for sure. And then I think that also, you know, this is going to force companies to really, you know, like, put their people first. I was talking to one of my tech friends who is a software developer, and he was saying, like, you know, I don’t want AI to, like, have me be 10x productive. I want AI to give me, like, a four day work week. I want AI to, like, do a lot of the works so, like, I can, like, go home at 5pm right? And take my kids to soccer, right? And so, you know, as we get, like, just, like, incredibly, you know, like, tech obsessed, and, yeah, automating things away. You know, I think that a lot of companies are going to have to figure out, like, okay, like, what is the balance of I want you to be as productive as possible. However you are a person, and like, all of the top talent is like, Look, I know what AI can do, so you’re going to have to give me a little bit more here. Yeah, I can just go to another company, like, that’s going to respect like that. Yeah, you know, I. I know exactly what AI is capable of. I know what I’m capable of, and kind of have to give us a little bit more, right,

Maria Ross 35:07

right? Well, and they, you know, they’re finding that the sweet spot blend of really maximizing AI is AI combined with human intervention. And you’re still going to need domain experts. You’re still going to need people to populate the learning models you’re still going to need. And even when we’re talking, you know, I speak to a lot of founders on the show of empathic AI, or people that are in the field of empathic AI, and you can’t outsource something, you can’t program something that you yourself don’t understand, yeah, and you yourself haven’t mastered. So, you know, it’s about, and I’ll put a link to Michelle zhao’s interview. She’s the founder of Juji, which is a empathic AI solution. And she said, You know, it’s about having those people that can actually populate the technology and populate the learning models, and then there’s always still going to be a need for a human element. It can’t effectively. We’re not going to get all the efficiencies and all the benefits of it by just sort of outsourcing everything we’re not good at to it because it won’t know what to do with that. It’s sort of like outsourcing a process that you haven’t optimized yourself and now you’ve just put something that you’re not good at on somebody else. Yeah, it’s the same thing. So, so we need that ability to build our own capacity for empathy and our own capacity for connection in order to continue to refine and tailor AI to be the partner, the thought partner, the process partner, that we need. But it doesn’t give us an excuse to sort of check out 100% Yeah.

Sharon Steed 36:43

As long as people are at the center of, like, creating these products, which we probably are going to be for a while, at least, I would hope you know, we’re always going to have to, you know, have some capacity for that understanding and that perspective taking in order to continue to create these products, because consumers are people, and they are using your products as well. Absolutely, absolutely.

Maria Ross 37:09

So this has been such a great conversation. Sharon, thank you so much for your insights and for being with us today. I want to remind people that you’ve got your two LinkedIn courses communicating with empathy and the the one about empathy in the age of AI. So people can go check that out. We’ll put links to those in the show notes. We’ll have all your links in the show notes. But for people that are on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about your work, you can definitely

Sharon Steed 37:35

just go head over to my LinkedIn. It’s just my name, I feel like I’m probably the first one that’s going to come to come in the search, yeah, yeah. And so yeah, I have a newsletter on there that I update one to two times a month, depending on how things are going. Yeah. On vulnerability in the workplace, and then I also do a LinkedIn live on empathy in automation, where we Wow talk about empathy in this very like tech Hocus worlds, and I usually do that three times a month. So yeah, all of that information is on there. Wonderful. Yeah, I would love to connect with all of the people and meet you. I

Maria Ross 38:33

love it. And as I always do with my PSAs is, if you connect with Sharon on LinkedIn, make sure you put a note that says you heard her on the podcast so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Sharon, thank you so much for your time and for the work that you’re doing in the world. We so appreciate you.

Sharon Steed 38:49

Oh, thank you. I had an incredible time, and I loved our conversation.

Maria Ross 38:56

And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Sam Daley-Harris: Reclaiming Our Democracy

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Ed Kirwan: The Most Effective Way to Build Empathy

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Julia Armet: Solving the Double-Empathy Problem to Harness Neurodiversity

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Catherine Ducharme: Managing Up for Two-Way Empathy

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Jen Marr: Own the Awkward to be a Better Leader

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Jamie Lee: Rewire Your Brain with Empathy to Better Stand Up For Yourself

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Annalee Hagood-Earl: A Founder’s Masterclass in Values-Driven Velocity

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Scott Trumpolt: Beyond the Paycheck: Strategic Compensation Through an Empathetic Lens

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Heather R. Younger: The Art of Self-Leadership

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Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Sharon Steed: Empathy in Communication and AI

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The Empathy Dilemma Free Resources

Brand Breakthrough Story Course