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Stacy McGranor: When You Can’t Control the Scoreboard, Master the Customer Experience

If your team is losing, will fans still show up? In sports, you cannot control the scoreboard. So what separates the teams that thrive from the ones that see empty seats? Here’s why it matters to whatever industry you’re in: if great customer experience can drive revenue and loyalty in an industry where you literally cannot guarantee the quality of your core product, imagine what it can do for leaders who actually can.

My guest has spent more than 15 years answering exactly that question. Stacy McGranor has led revenue-generating marketing, ticketing, and retention functions across MLB, MLS, the NBA, and made history in the NHL by building the league’s first-ever customer experience function.

Stacy shares why controlling the controllable is the real competitive advantage in any industry. We get into how to design for a multitude of customers, why it matters that most sports executives are making decisions in empty venues, and she shares two stories about salads and sundaes that you will never forget. We also dig into why collecting data and asking for feedback is not enough, and how AI can help you navigate to the right insights faster, but your human skills make the difference.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Designing for multiple customer personas
Controlling the controllable and making it the best you can in spite of those uncontrollable items
Focusing on the experience around your product, not just the product itself
Using data to augment and improve your customer or fan experience

“The emotion is the thing that is actually going to bring people back because the emotion is what creates fandom. It’s not how much a ticket cost, it’s how much fun they had in your building.” — Stacy McGranor

Episode References:

Jobs to Be Done Theory by late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen: christenseninstitute.org/theory/jobs-to-be-done

About Stacy McGranor, Founder, Blueprints & Playbooks, and Head of Customer Success & Implementation, SwitchBase:

For more than 15 years, Stacy McGranor has led revenue-generating marketing, ticketing, and retention functions across Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the National Basketball Association. She later made history in the National Hockey League by building the league’s first-ever Customer Experience function, establishing a new standard for how teams engage and retain fans.

As Founder and Chief Experience Officer of Blueprints & Playbooks, Stacy partners with sports teams, leagues, and sports technology companies in both fractional and advisory roles. Her work focuses on refining high-impact moments, reimagining end-to-end customer journeys, and building customer-centric strategies and operating models from the ground up.

She recently joined the SwitchBase team as the Head of Customer Success & Implementation. SwitchBase is the operations platform that runs everything that business platforms don’t and, from Stacy’s perspective, is the only SaaS out there that is a true driving force in teaching operations teams to think and work in an experience-centric way.

A native of Columbus, OH, and based in Salt Lake City, UT, Stacy holds a BA from The Ohio State University, along with an MBA and an MS in Business Psychology from Franklin University.

Connect with Stacy:

SwitchBase: switchbase.com

Blueprints & Playbooks: blueprintsandplaybooks.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stacy-mcgranor

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

Stacy McGranor 03:08

I’m so happy to be here, and I’ve been wanting to get on. So this works out perfectly. I’m so excited to have this conversation.

Maria Ross 03:15

Amazing. Okay, so we are going to talk about the task of marketing in a field where you cannot control the quality of the product, and that is why you want to, as much as you want to, right? And so that is why I’m excited to dig into this because empathy, as you and I have talked offline a billion times, plays such an important role in this. So before we get going on that topic, I’d love to hear. I’d love for you to share your story and how you even got into this work and this world because I know some people are like thinking this is the coolest job in the world.

Stacy McGranor 03:46

Yeah,

Maria Ross 03:47

how did you get here and what are you so passionate about?

Stacy McGranor 03:49

Yeah, so it goes all the way back to the 1900s, is what I say. So my senior year in college, I had I was serving just kind of as a side job, and one of the women I worked with. She did freelance production assistance with ABC Sports, and she got a call to help with the Rose Bowl. So it would have been the 1997 Rose Bowl, and she was allowed to invite a friend. And so she said, “Do you want to go? And do you want to help out? It would be for the Rose Parade, but we will have media credentials for the Rose Bowl, which it just so happened Ohio State was playing in, and so I said, “Well, yeah, absolutely.” It felt like a really easy way to make a few 100 bucks and get a free trip to Southern California. So off we went, and we did in fact get media credentials and sideline passes for the Rose Bowl. And I will never forget how I felt in that moment. I mean, this is 30 years ago, and I still remember the goosebumps and the adrenaline and looking around. And I actually said to her very quietly on the sideline because she can’t talk down there. But I said to her very quietly, like, “Do you think we could do this? Do you think we could get paid somehow?”. Bring all of these people together like this for sporting events, and like that could be our job. And so she said, “Yeah, I kind of do think we could probably do that.” So she and I took off. We wound up meeting in Nashville the next year for the baseball winter meetings that used to have a job fair attached to it. Oh my gosh! We found business cards for the then Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and we as a stack of business cards, and we called and said, “Hey, what are you hiring for?” And they said inside sales, and we both were lucky enough to get hired, and that was the start of beginning to be able to pack. I mean, not the Rose Bowl per se, but at least different stadiums and different arenas around the country, and actually around the world now, full of fans and bringing joy and driving smiles and community and empathy all over the place. And I’m I’m so fortunate to do it. I’m I’m so fortunate and also so grateful.

Maria Ross 05:57

Well, and some of the I mean, let’s talk about some of the teams you’ve worked for, right? The San Jose Sharks.

Stacy McGranor 06:02

Yep,

Maria Ross 06:02

the Columbus Crew.

Stacy McGranor 06:03

Yep, the San Jose Earthquakes, the Orlando Magic, and the Tampa Bay. Then, like I said, Devil Rays. And then I’ve also had two huge opportunities in tennis. I’ve had the privilege of working for both the U.S. Open and then also the Australian Open. So it has been a whirlwind of a career, and I am loving every second of it.

Maria Ross 06:22

Well, and this is why I love you so much, is because you are doing this work. You’re not just about the sporting event. You are not just about the match or the game. You are about the customer experience. And I know there’s been roles in your past where you even opened their eyes to that. There’s more to this than just selling them concessions and season tickets, right? So, talk to us a little bit about that journey of understanding, truly understanding customer behavior and what it takes to be your customer. And what did you say or do with those executives to open their eyes to really understanding the complete customer journey from start to finish.

Stacy McGranor 07:04

Yeah, so I think I think the first huge piece of that is understanding that, and there’s a theory out there. I think it’s Clayton Christensen who talks about jobs to be done, and so anyone who’s walking into a sporting event is we’re in charge of delivering something different for a lot of those people, for each of those people, parents who are coming in with children have a very different goal than business executives that are entertaining clients, who have very different objectives than someone who’s on a first date than is a girls’ night out. And so it’s understanding that there are different pockets and different customer segments that are inside a venue at all times. Yes, they have all bought tickets. Yes, most of them have bought concessions, but their revenue and their spend isn’t telling the story, and it’s also not going to be the thing that brings them back. So experience certainly drives revenue, but what it drives more so is it drives enjoyment, it drives impact. It drives emotion, and the emotion is the thing that is actually going to bring people back because the emotion is what creates fandom. It’s not how much a ticket cost. It’s how much fun they had in your building.

Maria Ross 08:14

Right.

Stacy McGranor 08:15

And ironically, a lot of the times, the results of the game is oftentimes the least remembered thing about an event, which I think is really interesting. Now, in the moment, you’re feeling the elation of a win or the disappointment of a loss, but at the end, if it’s like I went to this game, no one remembers the score. They remember how they felt while they were in your building, and so it’s about creating the memories and attached to memory creation, and you know this better than anybody. It’s making sure that there is a sense of being seen, valued, and acknowledged. And so all of that rolls into how are you empathizing with the people that are coming into your building, and how are you considering their needs? Does a mom have a place to take their children to use the restroom, or does your child who may need a sensory room, do they have a place to go? Is it easy to find? Do you have a kid that thinks popcorn is the best thing in the world? You need to know where to get them. Are you on a first date, and the one thing you know about them is that their favorite team is this? Take them to the gear store. You know, there’s all kinds. Yeah, it’s really understanding what they want. What are they trying to accomplish in your building? Right, and then making it easy for them to do so.

Maria Ross 09:29

Right,

Stacy McGranor 09:29

and that makes it easy for them to spend money, which is then the impact on the bottom line, which is what the executives want to know.

Maria Ross 09:35

Well, and how do you get the executives? Because I talk a lot about this. I did in the Empathy Edge about getting in the trenches, right? Yeah, because I think it should be mandatory that every CEO of an airline fly coach at least once in their life on a delayed flight, right? Yes, like to understand or to go to the website and try to buy the ticket, right? Yes. How have you successfully gotten executives out of their ivory tower to say, “Here, you kind of need.”. To see this through the eyes of the fans and of the people who come through our gates.

Stacy McGranor 10:05

Yep, some of them are actually willing to go very, very willingly. Like the undercover bosses, right? Like they’re all willing to go. And if there is ever a moment of like, well, that hasn’t been my experience. Okay, and we all, you know, we all kind of know that. So come with me and have that experience. Or honestly, photographs are generally how I’ve changed minds repeatedly. Like this is what the line to get in the venue actually looks like.

Maria Ross 10:32

Here’s what the women’s room line looks like. Yeah,

Stacy McGranor 10:35

this is what it feels like to have a purse measured. This is me being five three and unable to see a sign. This is what this means. So your six-two self, I understand that when you said it there, you knew you could see everything. But what about me? I can’t. Yeah, more people are closer to my height than your height. The other thing that we’ve done in certain places is we’ve done a credential surrender. So like, okay, if you don’t believe me, give me your badge. I promise to keep it safe. Now go try to do the thing that you’re trying to do

Maria Ross 11:08

without telling them who you are.

Stacy McGranor 11:10

Exactly. Yeah. And assume that no one knows who you are, and go try to get where you’re going quickly without access, without knowledge. Go try to buy a sundae. Let me know how that works out, and then tell me how much it costs, and tell me how much you feel or how you feel about that. Because if you don’t have your badge, you can’t take the shortcuts. You can’t spend the money that’s been loaded onto your credential, and so on and so forth. So, photographs, credentials, surrender, and then asking nicely.

Maria Ross 11:36

So I love that so much because again, I’m a huge proponent of making executives get out of their experience and into the experience of the people that they serve, and that’s where they can really feel the empathy. Like, oh, this is frustrating. Oh, this is an amazing thing. Oh, this is a little bit of friction we could remove really easily.

Stacy McGranor 11:54

Yes,

Maria Ross 11:54

and then they can start to be more open to other ideas in the organization, right? And other people saying, “We’re telling you that this is what’s going on. Maybe you should trust us, right? You’re hiring smart people. You should trust them to give you the right information. So I want to go back to this point that I I know I keep harping on all the time, which is again controlling the controllable because anyone in the back office, anyone in the you know the executive ranks of a sports team cannot control that their team wins every time somebody comes to a game.

Stacy McGranor 12:25

Yeah,

Maria Ross 12:26

and this is such a unique perspective on running a business because you can’t always control the quality of the product. Like the Cubs for a long time, see the Mets for a long time.

Stacy McGranor 12:35

Yeah,

Maria Ross 12:36

my brothers are huge Jets fans and constantly talk about that what it means to be a Jets fan is to hate yourself all the time, right? So, how do you deal with that when you can’t control the scoreboard? What’s also surrounding the customer experience? You alluded to some of it earlier, but what does that mean in terms of operational decisions?

Stacy McGranor 12:54

Yeah. So, I have often thought about the sports fans’ experience from I call it driveway to driveway. So from the moment that you back out of your driveway, or you pull out, or whatever direction you go, until you come back home, we’re responsible for every piece of that, and we can only control probably a third of it. We can’t control weather. We can’t control traffic. We can’t control the price of gas. We can’t like we have no control over any of that, right?

Maria Ross 13:22

Parking, well, a little bit, but not a lot.

Stacy McGranor 13:24

Parking, we can.

Maria Ross 13:25

Yeah.

Stacy McGranor 13:26

Sometimes we say we can’t, but we can,

Maria Ross 13:28

right?

Stacy McGranor 13:28

So our responsibility is understanding in there how do we either make you forget about the things that happened on the way, because again, if you’re in traffic and you’re stuck, and it’s the Bay Area, and you’re on your way to a Sharks game. You were in traffic on the way to the Sharks game, or you were in Sharks traffic. So we don’t own anything that ends in an 80, but we’re responsible for everything you encounter on a freeway that ends in an 80. And so, but when you arrive, if when you get out of your actually when you arrive to our lot. If you have someone who is waving you in, we’ve been able to direct you exactly where you want to go through wayfinding. We have gotten you to a place where someone welcomes you to the lot. You have a very friendly face that asks you for payment or for your parking pass, who then directs you into the lot. Then from that moment, you get out of your car, and ideally your traffic has been left behind because we’ve given you a reset. We’ve given you another door to walk through, but then we have to do that again when you’re walking into the building. So we can control lines. We can control the amount of time that you’re in line. We can’t necessarily control how many people line up when, but we can make sure that you’re getting through as quickly as possible. That the people you encounter are very friendly, are very helpful. That the signage is easy to see. That if there’s something that we’re restricting, where bag size is one that comes up a lot. If we have signage along your path of travel saying this is what you can bring in with you, turn around now. If you have something that is you know that doesn’t. Meet these requirements, and again, making security just so many places now. You can just walk right through. Again, the ticket scan works. The people who are scanning your tickets are excited to see you. They welcome you in giveaways, making sure that giveaways are fast and easy, and that you are delighted when you receive it.

Stacy McGranor 15:19

Well lit inside the building, clear signage, all of the fan favorite offerings, your favorite color, because hopefully you’re there to see your favorite team. So that’s where we can start to indulge all five of your senses, and we really can control that. Then when you get to your seat, was it easy to get to your seat? Friendly people on the way. Your seat’s comfortable. It’s not broken. You have a cup holder. The temperature is good. The music is good. The volume is good. You can engage with people around you. We can design traditions that you can participate in. So we basically are responsible for everything off the playing surface, so that at the end of the game, while again you may feel the sting or the elation, that’s actually not the focal point because you were there to have an experience in hopes that your team would win. You weren’t there to see your team win in hopes that you had an experience, and so it’s flipping those two things. And we know that we can drive the experience piece of it if we choose to do so, and if everybody is pulling on that rope.

Maria Ross 16:21

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Because you know, I lived in Chicago 30 years ago, and the Cubs games were always packed. They were losing every game, but it wasn’t even about the score. It was about being in the bleachers. It was about going to the Cubby Bear after the game. It was about you know experiencing that. It was about the seventh inning stretch, all of those things, and so I think that there’s a lesson in there for organizations, even if they’re controlling the quality of their product, is that we cannot discount that experience all around it. And to your point, the people make the difference, and that’s why you know when I see companies pulling back from investing in their people and their relationship skills, their EQ. I’m like, that’s where you need to be doubling down, especially if you are trying to cut costs in other areas, because that’s what people will remember. To your point, the people waving you in, the people opening the door. I remember going to the Oakland Coliseum once, and I was blown away by how friendly

Stacy McGranor 17:21

yeah

Maria Ross 17:21

everybody was. You could ask anybody anything, and it didn’t matter if it was their job or not.

Stacy McGranor 17:25

Exactly,

Maria Ross 17:26

they would find a way to help you.

Stacy McGranor 17:27

They would, and it didn’t matter if 100 other people had asked that same question first. And that’s the Disney way too, right? Where what time is the 3o’clock parade? Is a question that they use a lot of times in the conversations.

Maria Ross 17:40

Yeah.

Stacy McGranor 17:40

Well, what we think you want to know is where should I stand, or where do I need to be to see the 3o’clock?

Maria Ross 17:46

Yes. Yes.

Stacy McGranor 17:47

So the question behind the question is another piece of it. I might add two more things. I think one is experiencing your own experience. Back to what you were talking about earlier, we can make a lot of decisions inside an empty venue, but we can’t understand the impact of those decisions until the building is full. So it’s extremely important to understand traffic patterns, line formation, where lines are actually forming, what’s taking so long. So this is a little bit of a ridiculous example, but it’s an ice cream one. So when I was at the Sharks, there was a very short line for ice cream against a very long line for chicken tenders, and so we couldn’t. We understood the chicken tenders one, and we kind of had reconfigured how people waited in line. So there was a TV, and they were engaged while they were in line. But this ice cream line was taking forever, and I mean, when I say forever, I mean 45 minutes for a sundae, and so that seemed excessive to us. And so, and by us I mean myself and the other member of our customer experience team at the time. And so we waited and we waited and we waited. And what we realized is the ice cream was extremely fresh, which meant that it was very frozen. The ice cream scoops hadn’t been thawed, and they were all custom made. All three of those things are great features, not in an environment where you need high throughput. So we went back to our food partner and said, “Hey, can we either have signage that says this is a DIY experience and it will take longer than an average sundae, or can we have menus where they basically build it while they’re standing in line, or can we just have a couple select products that we’re selling here, but we can market the freshness of it? And so we went the we only sell these sundaes here, but we promise it’s very fresh. We promise it’s made just for you. And the line, I mean, the throughput tripled as a consent.

Maria Ross 19:42

Wow!

Stacy McGranor 19:43

But that came from seeing the line and not understanding what was happening and asking why.

Maria Ross 19:47

Right.

Stacy McGranor 19:47

So again, shop your own experience, whether you’re an executive or a practitioner.

Maria Ross 19:52

I love that.

Stacy McGranor 19:53

The other thing is is asking for feedback. Whenever I think you know this too, you can’t do anything anymore without getting a survey. Use that data, like please action that data. If you don’t want it and you’re just going to store it, then don’t ask for it.

Maria Ross 20:07

iYeah.

Stacy McGranor 20:07

Another example I’ll give is on that one is we ran it’s still food and beverage on this one, but we ran a focus group with our all inclusive season ticket members again at the Sharks, and we heard from them that salads were a huge pain. Okay, tell us more about that. Like this isn’t why. Yeah, you ask us for healthier options. Why is this a pain point? Well, it turned out it was the location of the salads in the food line because it’s also a DIY process. You build your own salad, and so people were taking time to build their salad at the front of the line, so it was making a delay in getting to the hot food. And so the people who were making their salad felt pressured by the people behind them, and the people behind them were pressuring them to hurry it up. So we did two different things. We one we pivoted to pre-made salads with customizable ingredients, so like croutons would be on the side to make sure we could stay gluten free, as an example. But we then put salad stations around the room, so people who wanted salads could go and do that. Certain toppings were still there for them to build their own, but then the hot food line was just then the hot food line,

Maria Ross 21:19

right? Right.

Stacy McGranor 21:20

So again, it’s actionable feedback that you’re. I’m. I was never going to know that because I’m never going to be in that line building a salad.

Maria Ross 21:26

Right. Right. Exactly. Well, that’s the thing. Is if you’re going to ask for feedback, there’s nothing. The only thing worse than not asking for feedback is asking for feedback and not doing anything with it.

Stacy McGranor 21:34

Yes.

Maria Ross 21:36

That’s actually because that’s actually also costing you money and time.

Stacy McGranor 21:38

Yes.

Maria Ross 21:39

All right. So I want to talk about this idea of you know I want to go back to this idea of the personas and the archetypes because I think that’s really interesting and we all many of us know as you know I used to do brand strategy solely for a long time and that was all about building your ideal customer profiles and who are these people as people

Stacy McGranor 21:57

yeah

Maria Ross 21:57

right how do you juggle accommodating all those different types of archetypes, because a company might say, “Yeah, I get it, but I’m not, you know, I’m not Microsoft, I’m not Apple, I don’t have billions of dollars to actually market and serve those different segments effectively.” Yeah. So how do they how do they balance that when you’re in sports?

Stacy McGranor 22:17

Neither do sports teams. Sports teams run as lean as you can possibly imagine, so neither do teams,

Maria Ross 22:23

right?

Stacy McGranor 22:24

So I think it’s really it’s understanding what your again not the result on the playing surface, but what your product is, and then the different responsibilities that your product has. So it’s it’s not about every single individual in the venue, but it’s generally speaking, who are the types of audiences that are coming, and why are they coming? What are they trying to accomplish? And so, a lot of times, the marketing is built again. It goes back to the jobs to be done, and then there are certain games within a schedule, just like there are certain product lines inside every business that have a different responsibility. So, afternoon games on a Saturday are going to be attended by far more families than a 730 game on a Tuesday, regardless of sport. So, the what you’re offering on a Tuesday 730 game is going to look different than what you’re offering on a 1o’clock Saturday game, so giveaways as an example. So at a 1o’clock game on a Saturday, you might offer something like a lunchbox because you have kids coming, or an action figure, or a mascot plushie. But 730 on a Tuesday probably won’t have a giveaway, but there might be a happy hour. But a Thursday at 730, there might be a Jersey giveaway celebrating Hockey Fights Cancer, as an example, or a mashup, is what we often call it. So in Columbus, there may be like a Crew and a Blue Jackets matchup, or mashup, I should say. So it’s really then programming to who the primary audience will be for each of those, but then understanding that those primary audiences can shift based on what exactly you’re offering.

Maria Ross 24:04

Right.

Stacy McGranor 24:04

We never felt like we had 20 or 42 or 81 different products per se, but we definitely had 10 different products inside a singular NHL season. We had 12 different products inside an NBA season,

Maria Ross 24:21

so it’s almost like Legos. It’s like you’re taking the pieces depending on, and then that all of what you’re describing requires data.

Stacy McGranor 24:28

It does,

Maria Ross 24:29

and this is where I know you were a huge proponent in the past jobs that you had about like how do we get that data, how do we use that data. Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about. I know you’re doing some work with SwitchBase now.

Stacy McGranor 24:40

Yes.

Maria Ross 24:41

And tell us about that and their philosophy around using data to augment and improve the customer experience or the fan experience in your case.

Stacy McGranor 24:51

Yeah, so in my opinion, and well, I hope everybody’s opinion, the thing that Switchbase offers right now that a. Of organizations don’t is a single source to house your data. So what happens a lot in a lot of businesses, and for sure in sports, is that there are numerous single point solutions that will solve for one data need, but they don’t talk to each other.

Maria Ross 25:19

Yep.

Stacy McGranor 25:19

And so, and you and I, I think, have talked ad nauseum about this. Like, I, you have to have conversations with your data. You need to be able to talk to your data like it’s a friend. Hey, how do I do this? Hey, what are the trends that are showing up that I can’t see? Hey, what happened last night that I need to know about? These are the things that we need to be asking of our data, and then what do we need to do with it? SwitchBase offers a single platform of record for all of the information that you’re collecting when you’re operating a venue, and so that gives you the ability to understand all kinds of different perspectives inside one building. It’s I say it’s like a it’s like a CRM for the venue, so each seat is like a customer. But it’s a single place where all of that information is stored. So now you truly have a holistic view of your venue. And for us, venues are certainly arenas and stadiums, also zoos, convention centers, different theaters. We’re actually talking to some casinos, so there’s all kinds of different definition of venue,

Maria Ross 26:24

right?

Stacy McGranor 26:25

But everybody needs a single source of or a single place to go and see everything we have, and then to what you said earlier to actually take action on it.

Maria Ross 26:33

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s it’s like it’s kind of like how we interrogate AI now.

Stacy McGranor 26:38

Exactly.

Maria Ross 26:39

It’s not based on the data for data’s sake. It’s what’s the business use question I have? What’s the task I’m trying to accomplish? And you go find me the different disparate data that will give me the answer that I need. And that’s what you know. I’ve been in software for a long time, and that’s always been what’s been missing is the ability of those systems to talk to each other, so that again, with the goal of like not data for data’s sake, but how is it actually improving our customer experience? Yeah, which ultimately is increasing our revenue.

Stacy McGranor 27:08

Exactly. And what are our blind spots? Because that’s the other thing too: is that inside of your data are answers to questions you may not be asking right now. And so the other thing that we should always be challenging ourselves to ask: Is how do we get better? And is that on the experience side? Is it on the business side? I would argue it’s experience first, but where are we missing? And then understanding what what we’re blind to, and then managing those blind spots, shining a light on them. Whether what and there’s not good or bad information in your data; it’s just information, and it’s all very helpful.

Maria Ross 27:43

Yeah.

Stacy McGranor 27:44

So shining a light on something that isn’t working is extraordinarily valuable.

Maria Ross 27:48

Well, and this goes back to what I’ve talked about on this podcast so many times with different guests about the skills required to complement AI and to complement data interrogation. That is where our human skills really shine, our curiosity, our creativity, our discernment, our ability to go, hey, something weird is happening here. I need to look into this further, right? And the critical thinking. This is why companies now are, you know, you can train anyone on the data collection, on the data analysis, on the on the tools, what you can’t train is the curiosity and the discernment and the critical thinking. I mean, you can you can work on it with your people, but

Stacy McGranor 28:29

you can.

Maria Ross 28:29

This is where it’s so important to everything we’re talking about, and this is actually the data is out there about how this actually improves your career adaptability and your resilience is to have those skills and be able to apply it in situations like this. And

Stacy McGranor 28:42

The Claudes and the ChatGPTs aren’t your customer; they’re not walking into your business. And so they can give you back what your data is showing, but you still need the human to validate it, to challenge it, but then also again to decide what is the human-centered decision that we’re going to make because it is only humans coming into our business right now,

Maria Ross 29:03

right? And Claude can’t go wait in line for the salad, or wait in line for the ice cream, right? He cannot.

Stacy McGranor 29:09

As much as he likes to think he can, he cannot. Exactly. He does not have a digital ticket.

Maria Ross 29:16

No, no, not at all. So this is so good. And so as we kind of wrap up, what’s your advice based on the the unique experience that you have around marketing and customer experience in this environment? What do you want to leave our listeners with, who are executives and organizations ranging from you know service organizations to technology organizations to CPG?

Stacy McGranor 29:37

So I think we hit on it early. I think it’s go be your own customer. Do it without your magic badge, whatever kind of badge or credential or whatever it is that you have. Go be your customer, or go be a customer of your competitor and understand what you love and what you don’t love, and then compare your experience against your business. Model your business strategy and find the gaps between the two. If something isn’t working, it is certainly going to show up for every customer, but that is going to show up on your bottom line. Yeah, we’re customers as much as we are executives. So where are we encountering pain, and how does that apply to your business? And are you the best at making sure that pain doesn’t happen? And if you are, then you just continue to continue down that path for each each milestone in your customer’s journey.

Maria Ross 30:29

Right.

Stacy McGranor 30:29

If you don’t want to do it, have your kids do it. Have your spouse do it. Have your friends do it.

Maria Ross 30:33

Have somebody do it. Have somebody do it. That’s indicative of who those ideal customers are. I love that. And I just want to harken back to what you have said throughout this, not only find the pain, but find the opportunities for delight.

Stacy McGranor 30:46

Yes,

Maria Ross 30:46

find the opportunities to say how can how is this need not being met? That if we meet it, we’re actually going to really impress someone.

Stacy McGranor 30:53

Yes, and thank you for calling that out because amplifying the joy is as important as mitigating the friction. They’re both equally important because they’re emotional peaks and valleys, and that’s where that’s where you capture the heart. Very early in my career, in my Major League Soccer days, I had we had one of our league executives come in, and he said, “You capture the heart, and then you capture the wallet.” So if you wanted summarized, and that that has lived with me for more years than I want to count,

Maria Ross 31:23

and it’s true. No matter if you’re B to C or B to B, I don’t care if you’re selling like infrastructure software. There’s a way to speak to the emotion because we all, as human creatures, buy based on emotion and often justify it with logic.

Stacy McGranor 31:38

Yes,

Maria Ross 31:39

and so just because you’re in sort of a quote-unquote boring industry, it doesn’t mean you can’t provide those moments of joy. Even if those moments of joy are in the buying process,

Stacy McGranor 31:48

yes,

Maria Ross 31:48

or the customer support process, maybe your maybe your product or service is not sexy, but like you said, the experience around it could be.

Stacy McGranor 31:56

Yeah, well, and that was the reason I joined SwitchBase. Is it is such a huge opportunity for me to scale joy, and joy feels unscalable if you think about it. But actually, like getting to work with all the operators of different venues around the country, like if we can get them experiencing joy, or we can just ease the pain of their work, then they are ultimately delivering joy to their fans, and then it just keeps rippling. It’s the butterfly effect. So software,

Maria Ross 32:23

I love it.

Stacy McGranor 32:24

can be a channel of joy.

Maria Ross 32:26

Love it. Let’s boom, mic drop on that one. Stacy, this has been so fun to bring this conversation that we’ve had a billion times between us to lots of other people who will benefit from it. So we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s on the go right now. Where are the best places to find out more about you and your work?

Stacy McGranor 32:44

Yeah, so I would say Switchbase. You can find at switchbase.com. My company, which does special customer experience, it’s a boutique customer experience agency. We’ll do the smaller projects for you. That’s blueprintsandplaybooks.com. But you can get both at my LinkedIn page, which is just Stacy McGranor. And thank you, Maria. This has been phenomenal.

Maria Ross 33:02

Love it. Thank you so much. And my little PSA for all my guests that my listeners know is: if you reach out to Stacy on LinkedIn, make sure you send a note that you heard her on this podcast, so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Thanks, Stacey. This has been great.

Stacy McGranor 33:16

Thank you. It has.

Maria Ross 33:17

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 theempathyedge.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.

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

Catherine Cooley: Why Most Workplace Empathy Gets It Wrong

Most workplace conflict isn’t really about personalities, tone, or poor communication. It’s about unmet human needs. And most organizations have never been taught how to recognize or address them.

Catherine Cooley has spent her career doing exactly that. Catherine is a communication and conflict coach, mediator, and Certified Trainer of Nonviolent and Compassionate Communication. She’s a conflict and empathy expert who began her work teaching empathy inside federal prisons, and today helps leaders and business teams who dread going to work learn how to resolve differences, restore trust, and build cultures rooted in clarity and connection.

From connection during tension, identifying unmet human needs, properly integrating corporate empathy training, and what Catherine calls “precision empathy”, this is a practical, no-nonsense conversation about empathy that works—not as a vibe, not as a script, but as a disciplined, learnable practice that helps people speak honestly, listen deeply, and repair what’s broken.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Connecting rather than alienating in moments of tension
The four steps of nonviolent communication – OFNR
Reclaiming emotion as a compass for human needs
How unmet human needs appear as organizational dysfunction
Why “feeling literacy” is a form of body intelligence, not just cognitive intelligence
How poorly done corporate empathy training can make communication worse
How self-empathy can transform workplace relationships

“We can pretend all day long we don’t have feelings, but our amygdala, meanwhile, is firing the whole time. So let’s harvest what it tells us.” — Catherine Cooley

Episode References:

The Empathy Factor by Marie Miyashiro
Center for Non-Violent Communication (NVC): https://www.cnvc.org/
Google Project Aristotle: https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/
The Empathy Edge podcast: Annalee Hagood-Earl: A Founder’s Masterclass in Values-Driven Velocity

About Catherine Cooley, Communication & Conflict Coach and Certified Trainer:

Catherine is a conflict and empathy expert who cut her teeth teaching empathy in federal prison; now she gives leaders and business teams who dread their workplace a reliable way to resolve differences, restore trust, and build an empathic culture.

She started her career as a geologist, but pivoted early on toward mastering systemized communication “soft skills”. She is a mediator and a Certified Trainer of NVC (Nonviolent & Compassionate Communication), a collaborative communication model that has been used by Microsoft, L’Oreal, Merck, and many others. She coaches and trains leadership teams of mission-driven enterprises with 3×3 Empathy Factors®️, a proprietary NVC-based communication and culture-building system.

Catherine is a member of Rotary International E-Club of World Peace, Mediators Beyond Borders International, and the LA chapter of Conscious Capitalism. She was a facilitator for the Alternatives to Violence Project in federal prison.

Connect with Catherine:

Peaceabl: https://www.peaceabl.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinedcooley/

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. Most workplace conflict isn’t really about personalities, tone, or poor communication. It’s about unmet human needs, and most organizations have never been taught how to recognize or address them. My guest today, Catherine Cooley, has spent her career doing exactly that. Catherine is a communication and conflict coach, mediator, and certified trainer of nonviolent and compassionate communication. She’s a conflict and empathy expert who began her work teaching empathy inside federal prisons, and today helps leaders and business teams who dread going to work, learn how to resolve differences, restore trust, and build cultures rooted in clarity and connection. Her path into this work is anything but typical. Catherine started her career as a geologist, then pivoted early to master systematized soft skills, the kind that actually hold up under pressure. She coaches and trains mission-driven enterprises on the three-by-three empathy factors, an NVC-based communication and culture-building system that’s been used by organizations like L’Oreal, which trained more than 60,000 employees, as well as by small and mid-sized organizations navigating real-world conflict. In our conversation, we explore how to connect rather than alienate in moments of tension. Why reclaiming our emotions as a compass for human needs changes everything. How unmet human needs show up as organizational dysfunction. We discuss why feeling literacy isn’t just cognitive; it’s a form of body intelligence. Why poorly integrated corporate empathy training can actually make communication worse, and we discuss how a self-empathy practice transforms workplace relationships. Finally, Catherine shares what she calls precision empathy, getting to the root of conflict by addressing unmet needs, not just behaviors, this is a practical, no-nonsense conversation about empathy that works, not as a vibe, not as a script, but as a disciplined, learnable practice that helps people speak honestly, listen deeply, and most importantly, repair what’s broken. So many gems. Take a listen. Welcome, Catherine Cooley, to the Empathy Edge podcast. I’m excited to have this conversation with you about your really interesting work with organizations rooted in nonviolent communication. But also, before we even get started there, I want to hear this wonderful story about how you got to this work and how you got from being a geologist to doing the work you do around communication skills with organizations. So share that with us, please.

Catherine Cooley 03:30

Thank you. I would love to. It was a fascinating journey and a surprise journey. So I was part of a new thought group in San Diego in the ’90s, and they invited Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the psychologist that created that developed the thinking and language model of NVC, not which stands for nonviolent communication, and a lot of amazing thinkers passed through that group. And but he really sparked me. There was something about what he was saying that I I knew was completely transformational, and so I took a workshop and then I I started applying it, and I had this misconception because really nonviolent communication serves our whole lives. It’s a way of being in the world, a way of seeing the world. I just thought it was a way to get out of like relational troubles, so I had I was a geologist and I was working for an environmental engineering firm, and I had a boss that for me personally was quite difficult to work with. There was just like a lot of like I felt like I couldn’t get past like his coldness. Like for some reason, you know, I it was just like so hard. And then I also my boyfriend at the time, who’s now my longtime husband, we would get into tangles, right? So that’s when I used the four steps of NVC, like to get out of my jams. And then we moved to Santa Barbara from LA. I’m from San Diego, and actually LA, and then San Diego. But there was a move. Going on in Santa Barbara, there were a number of very powerful teachers teaching council circle process, and in council circle, it’s about diving deep with people in a very authentic slow down conversation. But to do that, if you and I are in circle together, but we have this personal conflict going on, we need to clear that up, or we can’t do the work of the council. And so over time, I would see some people. They would think, “Oh, this is no big deal between you and I,” and they would what I call winging it through the conflict, just doing their own thing, how they usually would resolve a conflict. And then there were others of us who were taking the model a little more seriously and doing the four steps. And I just noticed over time, wow, those four steps make a huge difference in terms of the clarity and the quality of emotional quality of the connection that would happen in these conflict resolution. And so then I ended up taking. I decided to take mediation training, and I worked in small claims court with that. And then I also got trained as a facilitator for Alternative to Violence Project, and I worked in a federal prison, bringing emotional intelligence, nonviolent skills there. And and one of their core modules was NVC based. Just as my the core part of the mediation training was NVC based, so something my brain was going, this is transformational. Everyone is starting to know this and recognize.

Maria Ross 06:23

Yeah, it keeps coming up again and again. Yeah. Yes.

Catherine Cooley 06:26

So let’s start a business.

Maria Ross 06:29

So by geology, and now you’re you’re fully into this work.

Catherine Cooley 06:33

Yes.

Maria Ross 06:34

All right. Wonderful.

Catherine Cooley 06:35

Yes, because it was such a rich human experience. All of these experiences.

Maria Ross 06:41

Right.

Catherine Cooley 06:41

And so it became it. You know, NVC is my what I call my professional scaffolding. I have two professional scaffoldings. I have the NVC model, and I also have something called three by three empathy factors, which is a training, a corporate training that was developed by my mentor Marie Miyashiro, author, an early pioneer, because her book, The Empathy Factors, came out in 2011. So she was she was early on the curve, and was doing already. She was a successful organizational development consultant. But when she met in the early 2000s, she met Marshall Rosenberg. They she collaborated with him because she saw NVC’s genius for the I and the you relationships right that’s my relationship with myself and my relationship with you whether that’s at home or in an organization she saw that like NVC does that brilliantly and she immediately pivoted her business all of the training she did to be NVC based because she saw he nailed it. Yeah, I nailed it. But then she realized though there was the there’s the I, there’s the you, and then there’s the we that she had become so skilled at as an organizational development consultant. So she took the need. So NBC is basically needs feelings literacy and needs literacy, and so she took that literacy and expanded it to organizational needs literacy, and outlined six main categories of organizational needs. And so now in an organization, you and I can be skilled and cognizant of our human needs, and be able to communicate about it very effectively in four steps.

Maria Ross 08:32

Right,

Catherine Cooley 08:33

but we can also recognize, yes, I’m here, but if I’m the marketing director or whatever I am, I in a role meeting organizational needs? I want a language for that as well, and that’s what Marie developed in the L’Oreal Corporation. It’s been 10s of 1000s of people in that company were trained in it, and then it was developed as they were being trained in it and modified

Maria Ross 09:00

right

Catherine Cooley 09:01

to really to hone it all in, and in over 60 countries, by the way, wow, that’s amazing. Yes, and that’s the other amazing thing about NBC. It’s also all over the world because it’s totally cross cultural in its effectiveness.

Maria Ross 09:15

Okay, so let’s dig into that a little bit more. So, just briefly, share with us what because it feels like what I hear you saying is this is the missing piece. You’ve talked about poorly integrated empathy training in organizations and why it potentially makes communication worse. And in your view, is that because this piece around nonviolent communication is missing?

Catherine Cooley 09:37

Yes, and I would say it’s not just the needs literacy, yes, that is missing in most people. So many experts talk about empathy, and they don’t go there. And I wish this for them all. I really do, right? Because it’s going to really clarify their work for them and make it more powerful. So there is the needs literacy, but there’s also that feeling. Element and you and I both know in our work that the feeling part is so tough for people. You know, it’s we’ve all been trained that feelings are bad news. We’re when when we’re emotional, we’re in the way, we’re inconvenient, we’re you know like push past that. You know, suck it up and push past. But what Dr. Rosenberg realized is no, let’s re. our most one of our most valuable body intelligences, human feelings, and human feelings. He recognized were this amazing compass to our human needs, and all of our conflicts are about our unmet human needs.

Maria Ross 10:44

Wow, that’s very powerful. I love that phrasing of it being. I love that idea of reclaiming emotions and reclaiming feelings as not an inconvenience to the human experience, but the core of the human experience. It’s what makes us us.

Catherine Cooley 11:00

You can pretend we can pretend all day long we don’t have feelings, but our amygdala, meanwhile, is firing the whole time. So let’s harvest what it tells us. And his compass is, I’m, I have painful feelings like anger or fear or sadness. That’s the compass going unmet needs. I have delight, excitement, all the pleasurable feelings. Thank you. My needs are being met, but I want to harvest that. I want to get clear. Wow, what needs were met in this conversation?

Maria Ross 11:36

Right. So I can replicate it.

Catherine Cooley 11:37

Yeah.

Maria Ross 11:38

So I can scale it

Catherine Cooley 11:39

exactly. Exactly.

Maria Ross 11:41

So,briefly tell us the four steps of nonviolent communication.

Catherine Cooley 11:45

Okay, I’m going to give you the acronym first: O F N R.

Maria Ross 11:51

Okay,

Catherine Cooley 11:52

as in do this more oftener.

Maria Ross 11:55

I love that.

Catherine Cooley 11:58

The O is observation. The F is feeling, and which we’ve just reclaimed is the need under the feeling, right? Need under the feeling, yes. And then the R, it’s crazy, but what we often don’t get to is the request, the request to meet the need. So, and I when as I was getting certified in automatic communication, I had like done this for years, right? And I and it was so humbling to realize I’m not making requests, even in my jams, even with the four steps for like. Wait a minute, let’s get and there’s two humbling things. First of all, I wasn’t making the request that I thought I was making. Second of all, they weren’t because one of the core. So the the four steps are the bones of NVC, and you certainly need those. The soul or the heart NVC is the consciousness, and that means when I am in a jam with you, and now it’s solution time. Now I understand your needs. I understand my needs. I need the consciousness and the the trust. We’re both ahead of the game when we try to meet your and my needs with the solution.

Maria Ross 13:15

The finding common ground. Yeah, which can always be found. Yes, even if it’s even if it’s not about, I always talk about empathy being about connection and not conversion or coercion, where whichever C you want to use there. Because we can have empathetic conversations, and the goal is not to convince you of my point of view necessarily. It’s just a. I still don’t agree with you, but I understand how you got to where you got to.

Catherine Cooley 13:39

Yes,

Maria Ross 13:40

and now that I understand, you know, it’s kind of what you’re saying without it, without even me even realizing it before. It’s about what was underneath that, so maybe we can find a different way.

Catherine Cooley 13:51

Yes,

Maria Ross 13:52

that we can both agree on together.

Catherine Cooley 13:54

Yes, right. A strategy. See, because that fourth step request requests are basically strategies needs, yeah. So now we’re elevating our strategies with a lot of clarity about your unmet needs in the situation, my what my unmet needs have been, and now we’re going to experiment. Right. So I’m going to make a request, and you’re going to say, “Well, that would work with me for me, if we change this and that, and I’m, and then we’re gonna say, okay, let’s try this this month. Great. Let’s see if when we get in that same jam, because you know we repeat our conflicts all the time. We repeat them all the time. Yeah. When we get there, we’re gonna try this instead. Okay. And it’s gonna meet your needs for clarity, and it’s gonna meet my needs for support.

Maria Ross 14:40

I love it. I love all this. So explain to me because the work you’re doing with organizations is based on the three by three empathy factors. So tell us a little bit about that, which I know you said Marie pioneered, and it’s underpinned by the nonviolent communication. What is that about, and how? Well, let’s find out what it’s about first. What is that three by three empathy factors approach?

Catherine Cooley 15:04

So the three by three is a grid of nine modules. The first three going down on the grid are addressing the I relationship. That’s me with myself. And as you know, working with leaders, right? Leaders right now more than ever need emotional resilience and just and a lot of self care, a lot of emotional self care that they haven’t been giving themselves, right?

Maria Ross 15:28

Right.

Catherine Cooley 15:28

And so the the it the it focus those first three modules focus on the eyes, starting the very first one is actually it’s the third one sorry, but in that first column is the self awareness piece, right? And that’s where what I’ve seen through my years of being in conflict and communication work is that it’s the nervous system. When we go into fight or flight, our strategies, our language, our language is so disconnecting

Maria Ross 16:01

when we’re

Catherine Cooley 16:02

in fight or flight. So the self awareness starts by even if I only have 60 seconds in my busy executive day, I take it before a challenging conversation. Be attuned. I use that magic of the breath, like in Howard Zinn’s work, right? And I use the basic fundamental reconnection so that the noise in my head can settle a bit. My vagus nerve system can go out of fight or flight. It usually takes a little longer that and then that, but even that minute will gain you points. Probably know that.

Maria Ross 16:44

Yeah, no, that’s great.

Catherine Cooley 16:45

And if you can take five, wow, that’s way better.

Maria Ross 16:48

So the first column is relationship with myself,

Catherine Cooley 16:51

the self, the I

Maria Ross 16:52

What’s the second column in the three by three model?

Catherine Cooley 16:56

You and I.

Maria Ross 16:56

Okay,

Catherine Cooley 16:57

that’s coming to a place of listening that is also informed by that calm nervous system that you’ve got going now,

Maria Ross 17:06

yeah.

Catherine Cooley 17:07

And a listen, a precision listening, because I know if you are upset, it’s because you have unmet needs, and now I have a language for talking to, for listening for it, and then discussing it with you. So it’s a listening for needs, and then it’s also a connecting process with like connecting requests when we we need to know more information. So we have like processes for being able to do that skillfully.

Maria Ross 17:37

Got it.

Catherine Cooley 17:39

And then the we, the and the the other three modules are about like connecting us, including connecting us around our celebrations. What is it that we love doing together? Right, right. It’s like almost like the appreciative inquiry like let’s let’s base our relationships. Let’s not forget because you know we’re human beings are wired to pay more attention to the pain than the pleasure, so we have to put a little consciousness to taking advantage of the beautiful connections and insights that come when we connect about what’s going well, and then also when we have the trust to do like authentic brainstorming, and I want to. I want to. Can I? Can I make a little tangential thing about trust and psychological safety? Because both the three by three empathy factors and, at its core, NVC deliver something that is of foremost importance in human in human productivity and abilities to cooperate, which is psychological safety, and you’ve probably know about the Aristotle study by the Google Aristotle study. Yeah, and just for your listeners who may not know about that, because they studied like 200 teams at Google. Like, okay, so what’s the magic ingredient here for high performing teams? Right, they had some confusion around it. They knew they weren’t quite hitting it. Then they latched on to Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson’s work and refined their study. And it was a surprise. I don’t think they wanted it to be this.

Maria Ross 19:15

No, they found that the teams. I joke when I present that is like they found that the you know the B teams were the ones that delivered the most profitable, productive work for the organization because of the way that they worked together and the environment that they had. Yes, and that’s you know that’s the crux of this idea of why culture matters.

Catherine Cooley 19:36

Yes, yes, because you are if you don’t have a psychologically safe team, and that means that I feel comfortable. I can like go on the the edge with this kind of edgy idea I had and share it. I’m not going to be laughed at, put down. I you know I feel

Maria Ross 19:51

safe enough to point out a risk and not seek you know not fear repercussion.

Catherine Cooley 19:56

Yes,

Maria Ross 19:56

yeah, all of it. It’s so important, and yeah, and. You know we’ve done we’ve done quite a few episodes on psychological safety and Amy’s work, so definitely appreciated with this audience. So just review for us quickly the three by three model. The first column is I, the second column is you, you, and the third is we.

Catherine Cooley 20:14

The we.

Maria Ross 20:15

Okay, really holding

Catherine Cooley 20:16

the collective. And when you know organizational needs, because part of the a very big important part of the we is these organizational needs of identity. Who are we? What are our values and our our purpose? Like, why are we here? What customer needs are we serving? Right, and but but really holding it at the passion level, and then our direction. Where are we going by when? Right. So these are what we would call like the source organizational needs, and so the more that we can clearly communicate those, and as I you know about the conscious capitalism work of John Mackey, and part of that realization was that these kinds of things have to be embedded in everything we do and say. Right, right, absolutely. And when they are, we’re more profitable and more sustainable as an organization, and we’re way more fun to work for.

Maria Ross 21:05

Absolutely. Okay, so let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about how this model. How have you worked with this model with clients, and what results have you seen? Can you give us some some anecdotes or examples, even if they’re anonymous, to really bring these concepts and these theories home.

Catherine Cooley 21:21

Yes. Okay. So a couple examples. One examples in my earlier day where it was pre three by three empathy factors was in a family business with the CEO, and the complication for the CEO was issues with his wife and family. Where and yet his wife was like the second. He was the CEO, and she was like,

Maria Ross 21:46

yeah, like ripe with drama, family business. Yes,

Catherine Cooley 21:50

yes, and it was just so painful. You know, with just like these really curt, short-tempered texts and and avoidance in terms of not wanting to be directly engaged, and so he took on the you know learning first, and this is a really good place to start for leaders to do it themselves first with the nonviolent communication, and so he was he went in with the motivation to for some healing in his family as well as healing that very key relationship that was having all kinds of nasty ripple effects that was because it was so challenging. But what the interesting thing that he learned that as he honed his skills and empathy and started applying it to his customer conversations. He was blown away at the level of connection that he had, and like the joy of every conversation. In fact, he told me that some of his team members were going, “I think you need to cut these conversations a little shorter because you’re not getting X, Y, and Z done anymore.” Yeah, absolutely. Because of the joy of the connection, and I know joy is one of your pillars. Like I was just completely delighted to see that because it’s very critical. We’ve it’s something that is so easy to push aside, thinking this is not this is not important. It’s fluff. Thank you.

Maria Ross 23:19

Yeah, it’s a waste of time. It’s distracting us. But that’s there’s a great quote by the founder of the brand, “Life is good,” that I always use in my presentations. Where it’s I’m going to paraphrase it, but he basically makes the point of that the it’s the joy, it’s the foolishness, it’s the camaraderie. It’s not a waste of time. That’s actually what makes a team more resilient and productive.

Catherine Cooley 23:45

Yes,

Maria Ross 23:46

are those moments? Yeah,

Catherine Cooley 23:48

yes, kind of like what we were talking about with the we and the celebrations, and yeah, we want to be heart connected. And for some people, like heart connected sounds scary, like woo, whatever. But you can just replace the connection in the nervous system if you prefer. Yeah, exactly. Prefer that, but it’s basically care, and I think most people can relate to that. You have a language and and a pro and processes that care for the people yourself and the people around you.

Maria Ross 24:15

So, can you give us an example with an organization that you know? Because I I I can sense a lot of my listeners are going to go. Well, I don’t work in a family business, so we don’t have that kind of personal drama. So, how

Catherine Cooley 24:25

about a charter school? That would be

Maria Ross 24:26

amazing. Give us an example of that in action.

Catherine Cooley 24:29

Yeah. So, I got a call, and again, this is where, wow, the stress, the personal stress levels

Maria Ross 24:36

for all educators,

Catherine Cooley 24:38

unreasonable. Yeah, yeah. Just in the day-to-day job, let alone when you have a conflict with another key person. And I want to mention one thing that we’re not going to dive into a lot, but one of the things I really appreciate when I pivoted my business to work with Marie is this concept, this very key organizational development concept of. Structure governs function, and so they’ve done studies. You and I could be on a team. We really like each other, but we’re working in a problematic structure. We’re not going to be high performing, and we’re not going to like it. And vice versa, we might not get along so well personally. We came from really different backgrounds, and just it’s not working out that way, but we’ve got excellent structure. We’re gonna do well on our team,

Maria Ross 25:29

yeah.

Catherine Cooley 25:29

And so, what I’ve been learning about conflict and conflict resolution in companies is that it often looks like the the outside looks like this is a personality issue between me and my boss. Like I was mentioning with the environmental engineering company, right? It’s this is a personality thing. So let’s like work it through at that level. No, you quite often usually Marie would say like 80% of the time it’s structural, and that’s where you go back to those source needs, like what’s our identity, what are we valuing, where are we going by when, how clear is that, and so forth, right? Right, and other needs as well. So, how are we using authority? Is there confusion around roles? Like all of that, and so back to the charter school example, it turns out that their structure from the founder had been a little pretty challenging. Where the two, the one carrying the operations and the finances, which would be like your COO and your CFO role, they didn’t really have like a clear enough roles or really even tie-breaking kind of functionality with the principal, the CEO,

Maria Ross 26:42

right,

Catherine Cooley 26:43

and so there was definitely some structural things happening that again look like I just can’t work with her. But also, then there’s the we, the relationship with the board, and there was like a big fear that by one of them that her relationship with the board was getting sabotaged, and that she was in real danger in her position. Right, so these are hard things to arrive at your desk with in the morning going on, and so we did a level one, three by three empathy factors. And it’s funny because because of my conflict background, I’m like, okay, okay, Marie, but I just I need to build in some conflict resolution here. I know you’re saying that these modules are going to clear it up, but I’m just going to build it in, and I did. But we didn’t use it. And once they started being able to articulate the needs and connect with each other in their from their human heart, right? With clarity, they what had been they used to like avoid each other. They were supposed to meet every morning, but they didn’t want to, and you know, so it was more like quick emails and texts thing, unlike what we were talking about with the clothing online clothing company. And so now, then even before we finished the level one, they were already meeting more regularly and actually finding enjoyment in the meetings. And I got to see as a trainer; it was beautiful, you know, in the exercises where, like, now the body language was soft. There was even some smiles and laughter. I’m like, Wow, so like that’s what we live for, right? Right, exactly. And then when I asked her recently, because and then they what happened was the one of the vice principals had a really challenging interaction with a parent outside the school, and had they had to call the sheriffs, and it it got icky. And she was like reviewing the video on it. She’s like, “Oh no!” And so she brought me in for a de-escalation program for the wider team and the front office. And but when I asked her, like, what would you like? You know, because a lot of the school members have not been trained, like the teachers and obviously the parents and the students haven’t been trained yet. This is not it’s not like embedded in their culture yet, right? At that level, and I’m saying like, well, but what are people noticing? And she said one of the biggest difference makers is how the two of them at the top are relating to each other, and they’re on a team. They they have so much cohesion now with what how they’re operating with the board, and it’s just it’s transformational.

Maria Ross 29:21

Well, that gives everyone relief, right? Nobody wants to be in the you know in the organization where mom and dad are fighting, right?

Catherine Cooley 29:27

Exactly. And so we

Maria Ross 29:29

we need that safety within our own organizations of the leaders have to work on their relationships with each other because everyone’s watching, yeah, and they’re creating the environment that all these other employees have to enter into, and it’s like, ah, do I really want to go back into this house with them arguing all the time, and also not understanding? You know, am I getting not being able to trust information? Am I getting conflicting information because you know he said it, but does she agree? You know, you don’t want your employees. I always feel like there’s 80. In some organizations, of the productivity time is spent on these political issues of your employees looking over their shoulder, and is that really where you want them spending their time? And if you’re contributing to that, you have to take a really hard look in the mirror and say, “What am I modeling? What am I showing them? Because you might think they don’t know, but they know. Absolutely, they see it, they sense it.

Catherine Cooley 30:26

It’s you just feel it in the air.

Maria Ross 30:28

You feel it in the air, and also it’s just I could be spending my time innovating, creatively problem solving, doing the work. But no, I’m spending my time going back and forth between two people who can’t agree, or I’m spending my time making sure I dot all my eyes and cross all my T’s, or I’m going to get in trouble. Like all of those things are such a drain on our people and on our resources, and a leader should care because it impacts the output.

Catherine Cooley 30:56

Yes, it so impacts the output, and having those kind of issues between the leaders is like a recipe for division and faction building totally.

Maria Ross 31:09

Yes,

Catherine Cooley 31:09

and then you you just have it like rippling all over the place, right? Where you don’t want that.

Maria Ross 31:14

Well, everyone’s going to feel like they have to choose a side. That’s what’s going to happen. So yeah, so I I love this connection between this approach of of nonviolent communication and feelings building as an underpinning to your or you know any of your organizational challenges, making sure that I I actually had a great conversation with a guest who is the founder of Bash Creative, and she spoke about the fact that when she started her company with her co-founder, they actually went through a couples counseling. Yeah, I remember that

Catherine Cooley 31:49

episode. I was so impressed, Annalee,

Maria Ross 31:51

Annalee, and I’ll put a link to that one because I like that sounds silly, but it makes so much sense. You are the the steel girders of your organization, and if you have tension, if you have challenge, if you haven’t navigated, what are our rules for engagement, and how will we split the work, and why, and why exactly? So I um I’ll put a link to her episode in the show. Oh, please

Catherine Cooley 32:16

do. Yeah, that was brilliant, and I and I had never heard that before from a a leader, yeah, doing the couple counseling, and and I’ve I’ve worked like with different like founders leaders have seen those kind of of problems, but I never heard anyone take that um as a strategy to go from that angle.

Maria Ross 32:35

I know, and it’s why they were so successful. I mean, they were they’re an events company who thrived during the lockdown of the pandemic? Like, explain that to me, right? So, and she did, and she did, and she did. So, Catherine, this has been so great. What is sort of a last nugget you’d like to leave us with in terms of maximizing the investment or the time that you take in empathy training, in like trying to manage your conflicts, what sort of a gem you can leave us with?

Catherine Cooley 33:08

I would love to leave you with a tool that I I left in a keynote address to a four department division at a college. Okay, so recently, so it’s and it’s so great because right after the keynote, the English department met, and he applied it and told the division, the the dean, “Wow, it works.” So anyway, so it’s those two middle steps: the feelings and the needs, right? But it has something in between. Okay, so it’s which is our thoughts, and so it’s I Feel X because I’m telling myself Y because I need Z, and the thing is, is that that Y step you will not find it in the four steps of NVC for really good reason because if I just blurt out my thoughts. They’re laden with blame and judgment, or whatever. I don’t want to do that, but I want to use my judgments similar to the compass of the feelings. It points me to my needs. If I have the thought she’s a tyrant, it means I have a need for autonomy, shared power, trust. Is all of it? Yeah, that’s what I want to name. She’s. We’re not. I’m not going to go anywhere in that relationship if I tell her I think she’s a tyrant. Right. If I tell her I’m noticing in our interactions, I have. I would like to build some more power sharing in this area. Is that is this something we can experiment with?

Maria Ross 34:37

Yeah.

Catherine Cooley 34:38

That’s a different world.

Maria Ross 34:39

That’s a whole different conversation. So I’m going to reiterate it again. I feel X because I’m telling myself Y.

Catherine Cooley 34:46

Yeah, I’m telling myself she’s a tyrant

Maria Ross 34:48

because I need Z.

Catherine Cooley 34:49

Yes, because because I need a healthy shared power. Right. Roles.

Maria Ross 34:56

But what’s powerful about a fill in the blank sentence like this? Like a template is because it makes you think about it. So you might say, “I feel this because I’m telling myself,” but now I have to have something to put in the Z.

Catherine Cooley 35:10

So now I have to really think

Maria Ross 35:12

about what’s actually going on and what do I need, which is the step we often miss. We’re not naming it.

Catherine Cooley 35:19

Yes, and and I want to give two kind of place ways to cushion this, especially in organizations where feelings where feelings aren’t supposed to be there. Still, so many. You don’t have to say the feelings out loud, but still harvest your feelings. I feel frustrated. I need to listen to that frustration. And back to your point about like why empathy trainings don’t often work in corporate because it’s not embodied. The feeling literacy embodies the empathy, and there’s nothing more frustrating or off-putting or unsustainable as a leader who has like wallpaper empathy rather than empathy that’s coming from their center, their heart, their gut, right? Yeah, and so so, but a way to soften the the X Y Z template, you don’t have to say that the X out loud, right? Never say Y out loud. Yeah, it’s

Maria Ross 36:11

for you and to have the information. Go to Z

Catherine Cooley 36:14

and then go to your requests to meet your Z, right? Your experiments to meet Z, right?

Maria Ross 36:21

And I would actually, I would maybe disagree with that slightly because I think there’s power in sharing with someone that it’s you know when my kid was little and we would we were looking at all his social emotional learning. We taught him. I don’t know how well it stuck, but we taught him to frame things in I statements. I feel yes this way when you do that because it actually explains. It’s not just me. You know, I’m not just going to go into your office and say I need Z. I need to give it some context. So not because you’re doing anything wrong, but I feel this way because I’m telling myself whatever. Maybe you skip that step, but I actually think it’s valuable to share with someone when you’re making a request for a behavior change or a process change to actually say what the impact of that not happening is doing to you, and

Catherine Cooley 37:13

then there’s

Maria Ross 37:13

no blame, there’s no shame, and that would be the first step of

Catherine Cooley 37:16

NBC. Your observations,

Maria Ross 37:18

right? And so

Catherine Cooley 37:19

observed is I leave our meetings and have knots in my throat. Yes,

Maria Ross 37:24

and I think my my belly’s

Catherine Cooley 37:26

tight.

Maria Ross 37:27

Yes, I think that’s powerful to share. Observation. Yeah, even if you’re talking to someone who might not be a very overly emotional person, it’s you’re taking the agency back of like I recognize that this is impacting me. I feel this way because I want to share with you that I need Z. Yes, and then I would also yeah go ahead. I would also say that that actually is very telling to you in terms of if you’re in the right environment or working for the right person, if their response is that they don’t care how you feel. I would say that’s an actual data point as well. Of if you take that approach and you share it, and they’re not even willing to have a conversation because they’re like, “I don’t care how you feel, just do it.” That’s actually information for you to say. Okay, now I need to decide if I want to stay here or not.

Catherine Cooley 38:19

Yes, or if I want to like try to bring the awareness of how important why they might why it would serve them start tuning into feelings as a body intelligence that tells them everything about what they’re needing yeah so there’s before you bail ship right

Maria Ross 38:38

good point good point yeah no I love this, Catherine. This is so great. Thank you so much for these insights and for sharing a little bit about your work and your journey. We’re gonna have all your links in the show notes, but where is a place that folks can go to if they’re on the go and listening right now? Can you share with them audibly a place to go to check out your work?

Catherine Cooley 38:58

Yes, my comfort. My website is peaceable.com, and I’m going to spell that for you because it’s like the English word peaceable, except that it doesn’t have an e at the end of the word because it’s a brand name. So it’s p e a c e a b l.com. Go to my resources page, and you’ll find feelings and needs lists, both for your feelings and needs list for personal relationship repair and advancement, and also organizational. And even and even more important, get Heart Talk. There’s a handout there called Heart Talk that will give you the bones and the soul of NVC, and start you off. Put it on your refrigerator, and the next time you get stuck in a conversation, take it down and at least say, “I feel because I need,” and then see if you can do that kind of listening for the other person involved.

Maria Ross 39:56

Love it, love it, so great. Thank you. I will put all those links in the show notes. As well, thank you, Catherine.

Catherine Cooley 40:01

And also, if you’re having trouble in a organizational, especially, but even if it’s a personal relationship, go ahead and sign up for a free discovery call, and I’ll share with you what my approach would be.

Maria Ross 40:13

Thank you, Catherine, for your time today, 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 thereempathyedge.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.

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

Scott M. Curran: Better Good: The Simple System for Scaling Your Impact

You do not need more time, more money, or a different career to make a meaningful impact. You just need a better system for using what you already have.

My guest isScott Curran, a social impact lawyer, adviser, educator, founder and CEO of Beyond Advisers, and former general counsel of the Clinton Foundation. Scott’s own journey, from corporate law to philanthropy to helping organizations scale their impact globally, is proof that every experience you have accumulated matters, and that you can make a difference in ways you never imagined.

When leaders genuinely care about people and purpose, it is not just good for the soul. Companies that embed compassion into their culture grow three times faster than their market peers. We get into his practical framework for identifying your best talents for impact, how organizations can turn collective passion into something real rather than a PR exercise, and the immediate steps you can take right now.

If you have ever told yourself you’ll make an impact someday when you have more resources, a bigger budget, a different role, or when your company finally hits its revenue targets, Scott is about to call your bluff in the best possible way.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Ways you can create a lasting impact right where you are.
How your PPP plus your TTT is the core of your social impact footprint.
Looking deeper into what you uniquely do – your own competitive advantage.

“Ask yourself what it is you are most passionate about, what you will crawl through glass for, either as an individual or as an organization. Start there. Inventory that.” — Scott M. Curran

Episode References:

Benevity 2026 State of Corporate Purpose report: benevity.com/state-of-corporate-purpose/2026
The Guardian article on firms who stayed committed to DEI outperforming peers: theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/dei-policy-company-performance
The Empathy Edge: Denise Roberson: Mistakes Leaders and Boards Make When Thinking About Purpose

About Scott M. Curran: Social impact lawyer, educator, author of Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact

Scott M. Curran is a social impact lawyer, adviser, and educator who has spent more than twenty-five years helping leaders and institutions turn good intentions into scalable, lasting impact. He is the founder and CEO of Beyond Advisers and a former general counsel of the Clinton Foundation, where he advised a global nonprofit operating in more than forty countries. He works across the nonprofit, corporate, and legal sectors, advising boards, executives, and organizations on governance, strategy, and systems to do good well at scale. His work spans major foundations, companies, and cross-sector initiatives tackling some of the world’s most complex challenges. He teaches social impact law—recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as “one of the coolest courses for law students”—and hosts the podcast, Better Good with Scott M. Curran. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Amy, their family, and their rescue dogs. He is the author of Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact.

Connect with Scott:

Beyond Advisers (Get your free Action Plan): scottmcurran.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scottmcurran

Instagram: instagram.com/scottmcurran

Book: Better Good: bettergoodbook.com

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

Scott M. Curran 02:57

Thanks for having me, Maria. I’m thrilled to be with you.

Maria Ross 02:58

Awesome, awesome. So let’s start where we always start. We’ve heard about all your your accomplishments and your accolades, but tell us the story behind how you got into this work, and why are you so passionate about this? What why this book now?

Scott M. Curran 03:12

Yeah, it’s it reminds me of the great axiom that you can only connect the dots looking backwards. And so, I’ll tell the story forward, but it’s fun to reflect on it backwards. I got into it because I went straight from undergrad to law school. I went to law school not wanting to be a lawyer. I thought it would be a great education. It was the late ’90s. Everybody got jobs out of law school, even if you weren’t going to be a practicing lawyer. So I thought that would be me.

Maria Ross 03:33

Yeah,

Scott M. Curran 03:33

I found myself 24 years old practicing corporate law at a law firm against what I thought would be the case. So I kind of always knew I’d be looking for something else, but I also absorbed every minute of value I could get out of that early experience. And then, a very long story short, but a true butterfly effect situation was I became aware of a grad school in Arkansas, and they were recruiting for the first class, the inaugural class of a master’s degree in public service at the University of Arkansas at the brand new Clinton School of Public Service. I had no connection to Arkansas. I had no connection to the Clinton world, and I applied. And a very long story short is that that set into effect a series of events, and wound up moving to Arkansas. I went for 18 months for this degree program stayed for five years. Had no plans to stay in the Clinton world, and eventually stayed there for 10 years. So I took this mid-career pivot back to school to get a master’s degree in public service because that was the something else I was looking for, and wound up in this world of philanthropy and started as an intern at the over 30 years old. I was an intern with mostly other 18-year-old undergrad interns.

Maria Ross 04:46

Yeah,

Scott M. Curran 04:47

except for one person whose quote is actually at the top of the book. I happened to be paired for that internship with another guy who was also not an undergrad. He was an Air Force veteran, and he was out of Goldman Sachs, and. He was also making a career pivot. He is now today the chief impact officer at Chobani, the yogurt and dairy company. Amazing! He is there. My former intern compatriot, Nishant Roy, is there on the front cover of the book with me, and he’s he’s also an impact. And so that experience led me on this 10 year journey at the Clinton Foundation, circa 2006 to 2016. Which, if anybody’s doing the math, yes, that 2016, I wound up as I started as an intern and I finished as general counsel of a global nonprofit with 4,000 people in 40 countries and 35 U.S. states working on over a dozen different groundbreaking, fun and exciting initiatives, and then it got turned into a political football during the 2016 election, and I had been planning to leave long before that. I failed miserably, so I stayed with the foundation, and in many regards, still stay close to it today. And I’m very, very proud of the work I did there for a decade. And so that pivot point, which I start with in the book, I talk about how I was trying to figure out where I would go next, and one of the last things I was considering, and probably the last thing on my list was that I would-I knew I would never be a consultant. So for the past 11 years, since 2016, I have been, or 2015, I have been a consultant in the social impact space. This is why you

Maria Ross 06:13

never say never. Never what I’ve learned in my life, right? Yeah, yeah.

Scott M. Curran 06:17

Never say never, or and don’t tempt fate. But for a variety of reasons, I never thought I’d be a consultant. I didn’t have a great opinion of consultants. I’m still sometimes pretty skeptical of consultants. But I started a social impact consulting firm. I knew that I was leaving the Clinton Foundation and that I would never probably leave another platform that big again. But I realized that most of the nation’s approximately 2 million nonprofits didn’t have a general counsel, couldn’t afford one full time, and I thought, well, it would really be a bummer if all this advice, all this guidance, and all these tools we’ve curated over this decade of incredible globe impacting work went to waste. And so I ultimately figured out the best way for me to share that with the world was on a consulting basis. And so I’ve now spent the past almost 11 years, 11 years actually this month, as we recorded in the social impact consulting space. And then, you know, during those 11 years, I thought, how do I scale that? How do I give away these sort of not so secret secrets of how the best in the world do good? How everybody’s using the exact same framework, and because everybody’s motivated ultimately to do good in this world, yeah. And so that’s how I got here. I turned a corporate law career into a little bit of a pivot into a nonprofit general counsel toolkit that I then took into the consulting world. And to me, the only way to truly give it away without creating a juggernaut of a consulting firm was supporting the book, and so that’s how I got to where you and I are today.

Maria Ross 07:46

Amazing, amazing. Well, and you know the pivots just keep coming, but I find, and I don’t. It sounds like this is true for you too. The pivots happen, but they’re actually really connected. It’s not like you’re making complete left turns, and here you are again, kind of using your law background to aid social impact organizations so they can do more and exponentially have more impact. Right? I started as a change management consultant, and then I got back into my love of marketing, and and then I had a long marketing corporate career. Then I started my own brand consultancy. Fast forward, now I’m talking about empathy and human centered leadership in the age of AI, but I’m leaning on all the change management skills I learned back in my early 20s, right, and the marketing skills as well. It’s all kind of interrelated. So when I look at the dots, it’s like, of course, that’s I went from there to there to there. It sounds like you did too,

Scott M. Curran 08:39

and I have a 15 and a 17-year-old, and the 17-year-olds applying to college, and the 15-year-olds going on all the visits and present for all the family conversations around it. And we keep explaining to them that you can’t predict the way it’s going to unfold, but you can absorb what you’re going through and realize that it’s equipping you in ways that are very exciting, even though you can’t yet predict it. And part of that uncertainty is also part of the excitement of it all, and that life’s an adventure. Yeah, and you know you can’t control all the waves of life that come your way, but you can decide whether or not you’re going to get pummeled by them, or whether you’re going to try to ride them. And sometimes you’ll have have better rides than others, and sometimes you will get pummeled, and you won’t be able to predict it all. But it’s just part of it. And I find that to be when I when I do informational interviews, which I also talk a little bit about early on in the book, and I still love doing with people to help them, is to say, “Hey, listen, the best you can do is prepare and just soak up every bit of it. I knew for those five years I was practicing corporate law that was not my destiny; that I would not do that forever, and I had no idea what would come next. But I knew it was my job to do the best I could and to soak up as much as I could learn for it, and I never would have been able to do any of the things that came next had I not had that mentality. So yes, and to any young people listening, or early career folks, or people who are considering a mid-career pivot, know that whatever it is you’re working through, slogging through, wondering about, it’s. Preparing you for the next great thing-it

Maria Ross 10:01

really is. It’s you got to file it all away. I love it. Okay, so I love this book, and personally, what I love about it is that it talks about, in my perception, it talks about how everyday people can have an impact. Anyone who has a desire to make the world a better place, and I think I, you, like many of us in recent years, are wanting to make the world a better place. And partly it’s you know being in my 50s, partly it’s being a mom, partly it’s just you know just what’s going on in the world. But you have simple questions that people can ask themselves about how they can figure out how to identify the best ways they, with their unique talents, can make an impact. So, can you walk us through some of those questions?

Scott M. Curran 10:50

Sure, and I’ll start with basically the premise of the book. And it evolved this way. I originally started off writing a very different, very nerdy book. I wanted to put like sort of the general counsel toolkit in a box or in a book for the nation’s 2 million nonprofits, and it became this bigger book about how we are all wired for good, and we like to do good in groups. And so, I start the book by noting humans are wired for good in a whole bunch of ways. But like, we have these four-I’d call them the happy chemicals in the book. Simon Sinek calls them the happy chemicals: oxytocin, endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. They’re coursing through us at all times, we feel them when we do good of any kind. Picking up a piece of trash, holding the door, giving someone a compliment, smiling at someone the way Dolly Parton would encourage us to. If you see someone without a smile, give them yours. All that stuff makes us feel good. And then here’s a fascinating part of this biology, and a way you can hack it and curate your scroll for it, which is you don’t even have to be the one doing good to feel those feelings. You can just watch it. You can just see someone else doing it, and you know this if you’ve ever seen one of those tear jerking, heartwarming videos in your Instagram scroll or your social scroll, and you’ve seen somebody doing a random act of kindness. It’s the same things that make you feel good. So humans are wired for this. It doesn’t matter what the headlines are or what the headwinds those headlines create are, even if those are persistent in this quote-unquote moment we find ourselves in. Because I started writing this book a lot, lot longer before I knew what this moment would be like, and and so we’re wired for it. We always have been. We still are betting against that is betting against human nature, and it’s a bad bet. So we humans are wired for it. We take that wiring with us everywhere in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in where we go to work, and when we go to the store or make investments. All those things, all the things about doing good that some people want to convince you are too much or not good, etc. etc. Those are things that are part of who we are. So, if you think about that, if you accept that reality, and you should because it’s true, and science backs it up, as does business performance. By the way, for any business leaders who are wondering how this applies, it absolutely applies. That’s

Maria Ross 12:56

what we’re all about here. Yeah,

Scott M. Curran 12:57

100% And and you will be more successful, more profitable, and have have greater talent and customer retention. The more you lean into this, and the data keeps proving it over and over again, including some recent reporting fresh out this past summer that shows that even in this moment we’re in, those who have stuck to it are as profitable and in most cases more profitable than those who retreated from corporate purpose or impact or what we will call you know connecting to the world around us, doing good for others. So if you accept the fact that we’re wired for this, right, and you want to bring that wiring, the best thing you can do is find what I call in the book your Goldilocks zone-not too much, not too little, just right. That or in the I’m a nerdy four-time space camper, so the Goldilocks zone is a habitable zone, the place where life can not only survive but thrive.

Maria Ross 13:41

Right. When you

Scott M. Curran 13:42

find your Goldilocks zone, the things you care about most and are best at doing, that overlap is your Goldilocks zone for impact. It’s where you are passionate, and I talk a lot about passions. There’s a whole chapter on it. We’re passionate about a lot of things, but if you drill down to the things you are most passionate about what I call your crawl through glass passions-the things that never get boring, that stay with you all the time, always, and in always for years and years. Even though your contributions to them and interest in them may wane with the seasons or change with the seasons of life, your if you focus on what you are most passionate about, or if you’re a business leader or an organizational leader, what you as a business and an organization and a community, whether that’s your talent, your customers care most about, you will put down deep roots that withstand the winds of change over time and help you withstand the headlines and the headwinds that can sometimes push you in different directions. So ask yourself what it is you are most passionate about. What you will crawl through glass for, either as an individual or as an organization. Start there. Start there. Inventory that. And if you’re leading an organization, ask what you and your teams can uniquely do in this world that you are most. Passionate about based on this impact footprint, I encourage readers to discover for themselves using this framework. I make crystal clear in the book, which is the same framework everybody uses. Yeah, every great impactful organization and individual is using the same framework all the time, which is why I put it in the book. So find focus there. Start asking what you are most passionate about, what you will crawl through glass for and what you are best at, and you will quickly identify your Goldilocks zone. Start there.

Maria Ross 15:25

Love it. So let’s talk about that framework a little bit because you do have a framework, and for maybe for someone hearing it for the first time,

Scott M. Curran 15:33

sure.

Maria Ross 15:33

What is that framework?

Scott M. Curran 15:35

So it’s super simple. It’s six core components and three advanced tactics, and it’s super easy to remember. It’s PPP: your profile, your platform, and your passions, plus your time, your talent, and your treasure. Your profile, your platform, and your passions are who you are, where you show up, and what you care about. And the 3t’s are what you bring to the equation. You bring some combination of your time, your talent, and treasure. And you don’t have to have your own treasure. There’s this misleading assumption: is that we think we have to have some amount of our own money, or come into more money, or that we have to write big checks making. We have to have open money. Yeah, yes, not at all the case. And in fact, the data proves this to be true. You don’t have to have any money at all to mobilize treasure these days because we have these crazy little devices in our pockets and on our desktops that connect us to the world, and you can mobilize resources that don’t cost you a penny. So your PPP plus your TTT is your core of your social impact footprint. And then what I have found about how the best in the world do good. And when I say the best, I’m not just talking about the big names with which I’ve worked. I’m talking about street corner nonprofits too. I’m talking about hometown heroes and leaders who we respect and admire, who may not be famous, but whose work and impact should be, those people tend to focus on the 3s’s, the last three of this framework, which are scale, sustainability, and storytelling. And while those are advanced tactics, they’re not hard. Scale is just doing more of what works. Sustainability is doing it over time, even when the seasons of life change for individuals and organizations alike, and finding ways to stay true to our core passions throughout time, and doing more of what works over time, even though what it looks like may change. And then storytelling is something we tend to think is reserved for other people, but it’s not. And we’re all telling stories about ourselves, what we care about, what we value, how we engage every day in more dynamic and interesting ways than ever before. So the 3s’s are scale, sustainability, and storytelling. The other magic of storytelling is that not only are you telling people what you stand for, what you care about, you’re providing an invitation for them to join you.

Maria Ross 17:36

Yeah, well, that’s where empathy comes in, right? Empathy is magnified when you’re able to tell the human story behind it, so you can share the facts, you can share the figures, you can share the data, but let’s talk about what happened to Scott, right? Let’s talk about what happened to Judy and their family. Let’s talk about what happened to this nonprofit or this community over here, and that’s why that’s such a part of the journalistic practice. Is how do we take these big things and bring them down to a human level? How do we talk about that individual immigrant or that individual refugee or that individual person who defied the odds? We do that because actually creates it creates empathy. It creates like oh, I can see myself in that story, and I can relate to it, and I can start to emotionally connect to it, and that’s what some of the best impact organizations are able to do. Is yes, be good stewards of the money, manage the operations, manage the systems, manage the processes, and they’re able to share the stories.

Scott M. Curran 18:38

Strong agree. Storytelling, I think, feel like is the whole game right now, and we see it in the platforms we’re on, the social media platforms that we spend time on, or that we consume stories from. And if you think about your own life, your own work, what and or your your own organization, if you lead one, and how you show up in the world, what story you’re telling, again, it takes the abstract and makes it concrete. Either what the issue is that you uniquely serve, how you make a difference, how you create impact, and then it makes it personal, right? Like when we show up, the world is different. When we help in this way,

Maria Ross 19:07

yeah.

Scott M. Curran 19:08

I pick up a piece of trash on every walk I take my dog on, then I know I’m making my community a cleaner and better place. And if I share that example with other people, then it has a force multiplier effect and it creates a ripple, and that makes all of us feel good and it makes things inherently better. And by the way, none of that requires you to start up a new entity or organization or fundraise or write a size large check to anybody. Those are things that literally people do every day. To and I talk about this F word in the book quite a bit. Feel better at a time when feeling better is in high demand and something that we can all play a role in.

Maria Ross 19:41

Yeah, I mean, I talk about this a lot in terms of empathetic and human-centered leadership. Is you actually don’t have to be a leader by title. Everyone has a sphere of influence, and they’re able to impact the people that are most directly around them, or the team that they have, or even just the colleagues that they they. Influence on a daily basis, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your community. So everyone has one, whether it’s five people or you’re a CEO of a company that has 5000. So within your sphere of influence, can you create that bright light where people? I always talk about microcultures within teams, for example, of like you don’t have to wait for your CEO on high to say we’re going to have a culture transformation project, and we’re going to be more human centered, we’re going to care about each other more. No, I’ve been a part of organizations where the leader of my team created a microculture where we all felt empowered. We felt like what we did mattered. They told the stories. They gave us the purpose, and we were our own little bright light. And then, what happens when you do that is others see that and go, “What’s going on over there? What’s in the water in that department or on that team? Why are they? Why are they killing it? Why are they able to smash their results and achieve their goals? Maybe I can do. I can find success that way. Back to your point earlier about you can now start to picture yourself in it and go. Let me look at what they’re doing and just replicate that throughout the organization or throughout the community.

Scott M. Curran 21:10

One of the things I have found most interesting, exciting, and enlightening about this entire process is how enthusiasm is contagious. How positivity and encouragement is something people are so hungry for and want to reciprocate. One of my favorite little quotes is “Momentum begets momentum, and you know people are attracted to energy and enthusiasm and positivity. Yes, it’s true that on social media and in the news, negative. Yeah, it can

Maria Ross 21:32

be used for evil too. Yeah, there’s the

Scott M. Curran 21:35

greatest ray of sunshine produces a dark shadow, and you know our greatest strengths can be our greatest weaknesses. But we as humans, we love good stories. We love being attracted to stories, and and negative stories do sell. They travel quickly, and negative things can be interesting and shiny objects too. But people love optimism. People love energy and enthusiasm, and when and we all have a little bit of FOMO. And when we see an organization rocking it out, or it works in a very large global nonprofit, and people worked all over the country and all over the world. But people knew that our little legal department was super happy. We were positive, enthusiastic. We took pride that our little internal FAQs on our website said, “Are you the Department of No? Because most most legal departments are known or labeled as the Department of No. Yes, our FAQ said, “Are you the Department of No? and the answer said no. See what we did there? Smiley

Maria Ross 22:23

face. Yeah,

Scott M. Curran 22:24

that just kind of projection. People like you guys are so fun. You’re not like usual lawyers. That was a high compliment in a global nonprofit that had pretty high stakes and consequences for its work. But that enthusiasm-it’s

Maria Ross 22:36

the joy. It’s the pillar of the empathetic and effective leadership framework. It’s joy. It’s the magic ingredient, and it’s not about toxic positivity. I want to be really clear. It’s not about being Pollyanna because you can be a truth teller and go, “Yeah, this really sucks right now. It’s tough. Here’s how we’re going to get through

Scott M. Curran 22:57

it, and we’re going

Maria Ross 22:58

to find the joy in the drudgery. We’re going to find the joy in the tedium. We’re going to find the joy when things get tough, because that’s what’s going to carry us through.

Scott M. Curran 23:07

You literally are the first podcast I’ve done where the host has gotten to that line before me, where I’m like, “This is not toxic positivity. This is not a Pollyanna-ish view of the world. Look, I work with clients all over the world that are addressing hard issues,

Maria Ross 23:21

right?

Scott M. Curran 23:22

These and these are foreboding and scary situations and times, and there are real consequences to this. But people still say, you know, how are you so positive? What Kool Aid are you drinking? Whatever your your axiom is for that, I was like, because these are the helpers. These are the people who are trying to do it, and that like attracts like, and it doesn’t change the fact that people are showing up every day, digging deep and doing the hard work, and that leaders of organizations who care about the world in which they operate, which are most, and care about the teams with whom they work every day, which is most good leaders, and the people who are listening to this podcast know this is not our fingers aren’t in our ears. We’re not closing our eyes. We’re not being ignorant to the realities of the world. We’re realizing that we have an opportunity to show up as the helpers. And if we take care of each other first, and the causes we care deeply about, the communities in which we work, or whom we serve, or who our products and services support, and we lead with that. It is contagious in the best ways possible,

Maria Ross 24:25

right? And that’s why you know I love this because we’re saying very similar things coming at it from a different angle, which is that I always talk about empathetic leadership does not mean everything’s going great. It doesn’t mean you’re crying on the floor with your employees every day. It doesn’t mean you’re constantly focused on the personal and not on the work that needs to get done. It’s not either or leadership. It’s what I call both and leadership, and that’s what it sounds like this is all about. And given that, I want to ask this question, which is, how do you help an organization find their collection? Passion. I know the ways that I’ve done it when I’ve done my brand strategy work with clients, helping them figure out what’s the larger purpose. Right? You all could be working anywhere to get a paycheck. Why are you here? What is the actual fundamental reason why we’re here, and what’s getting us excited to be here? So, from your standpoint, because I know you talk about this in book. How do you turn that into something meaningful rather than just a rah rah PR exercise?

Scott M. Curran 25:27

Or in the worst case of that spectrum, is performative PR, formative

Maria Ross 25:31

PR,

Scott M. Curran 25:32

greenwashing, or you know, fake purpose or fake good. Look, those are real things, and those are real things on the nonprofit side too. There’s bad nonprofits, but we shouldn’t let a few bad apples. Spoil it for the bunch. So the the very top of the book says, “Start where you are, use what you have, make the world a better place. That is literally what the best in the world do. Is they say, “Well, they do an inventory. And so the answer to your question is to do an inventory. Anybody can go and grab. I have an action plan in the back of the book for both individuals as well as one for organizations. You can also go to my website and grab it for free. You don’t have to give it, but use the action plan. Start. You don’t even have to have an action plan. You can have what I have here on my desk. You can just start with a post-it note. But if you grab a pen or an Apple note or whatever your note-taking app of personal preference might be, inventory what you do uniquely well in organizational speak. What is your competitive advantage? What is uniquely yours to give, and this works for individuals, each of us as humans, and it works for us as organizations. And that really goes to your profile, your platform, and your passion. Start there. Start with who you are and how you show up in the world. Platform is where you are and where you show up in the world, and and then your passions are clearly your passions. Once you start inventorying these things, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And anybody with skepticism or scarcity mindset, just start. Just give it a try. Yeah, literally can’t hurt a thing, and it won’t cost you anything. Try it. Prove me wrong.

Maria Ross 26:53

Prove Scott wrong. Prove him wrong.

Scott M. Curran 26:54

Your profile is bigger, greater, more diverse, interesting, and exciting than you give yourself credit for. Your platform and platforms are bigger and more expansive than you think they are, and they get. And the more you, and my favorite, one of my favorite other little quotes is: “The more it works, the more it works. Just keep saying it over and over and over again. The more you see it, the more you see it. The more you experience it, the more you experience it. It is truly this fantastic. But the answer remains: start where you are. Use what you have. Focus on how you make the world a better place. Whether that’s for you as an individual,

Maria Ross 27:25

yeah,

Scott M. Curran 27:25

or whether it’s for the organizations where you work, lead, serve, support. Maybe it’s outside of the workplace with other organizations with which you’re engaged. Start with that inventory because momentum begets momentum, and it becomes incredibly powerful. And the more you engage with others in that process, the more edges you’ll see, the more your platforms expand, the more the stakeholders you serve get more rich and diverse in all across all dimensions of diversity, which is a beautiful, wonderful word we should use more often, not less often.

Maria Ross 27:55

Yes, Amen. Well, and I think what’s also true about this is when you’re looking at the organization, that’s to exactly your point. This is not an exercise that you do in a black box with just three executives in a room. This is really where you really need to open up to the rest of the organization and all your employees, and get the input from various points of view. This is why empathy is so powerful because other people may see something you’ve missed, other people may industry is

Scott M. Curran 28:25

full of these examples

Maria Ross 28:26

exactly, and so find a way to involve the whole organization and give everyone a voice in that. Yes, you can have a process by which you distill down and you pare down and you make it something that everyone can rally around, but don’t be afraid to go into the nooks and crannies of the organization to get the input because again it might turn into one of my favorite phrases from empathetic leaders is “Huh, I never thought of it that way. Right? That’s where you get the magic. That’s where it’s like I’m not going to have a management team or a leadership team that looks and sounds and thinks exactly like me because then I miss those. Huh? I never thought of it that way. Moments, and I love what you’re saying about making that into. I mean, think about just let’s get practical for a second. How much fun would it be if you went to work tomorrow, and your leadership team said we’re kicking off whatever you want to call it-a collective purpose project, right? We want to hear from you. What are you good at? What your What is your team good at? What do you think this company is good at? Everyone, weigh in. That would be so fun to just do something different within the organization and say, “Oh wow, they’re asking me what I think.

Scott M. Curran 29:37

And if anybody listening is skeptical or is wondering if you really have the time for this, or you don’t want to have to kick off an activity. Fine, cool. Let me meet you where you are. Try this as a starting point. This is for the skeptics. I strongly agree that everybody should go and do that. I offer the action plan. Go ahead and use that.

Maria Ross 29:54

Yeah.

Scott M. Curran 29:54

Start there if it’s helpful. It’s a one-page tool. Right. But just say if you are a leader. If you’re an exec, a board member, an executive leader, a C-suite leader, a program leader, even in a in a team, your microclimate example, right? Of just your own team or my legal department back at the Clinton Foundation with 4000 colleagues in 40 countries, we weren’t all in one place at any one time,

Maria Ross 30:13

right?

Scott M. Curran 30:13

Try this: just say, “I care about what you care about. Will you tell me what that

Maria Ross 30:20

is? One email.

Scott M. Curran 30:21

What do you care about?

Scott M. Curran 30:22

And if somebody’s like, “Well, what do

Scott M. Curran 30:23

you mean by this? Is this work personal or work? Sure. Yes. Either whichever one you’re comfortable with. I want to hear about it. I want to know more about what it is. Okay, let’s start with you individually. What What are the three causes you care about most in your life and in your work? See what comes up. Just tell people you care about what they care about, and watch the conversations open. Watch the lane open. If you’re like, “Hey, that’s way too crazy. That’s too scary. I have 1000 people. I’m a huge org. Okay, great. Try this instead. What do you think is uniquely ours to give? How do we show up in a way that makes the world a better place? I’ve done this with organizations like Starbucks. Starbucks answers the question with a at least they used to. I can’t speak to what they do now, but they used to answer it with their first mile and last mile focus. First mile are their coffee, tea, and cocoa growers. Where are their products origin?

Maria Ross 31:11

Origin

Scott M. Curran 31:13

farmers in countries all over the world who grow coffee, tea, and cocoa. What? How do we work with them? How can we make an impact with them? By the way, that just becomes a rapidly, awesomely expanding conversation.

Maria Ross 31:27

Yes.

Scott M. Curran 31:28

Then last mile. So first mile and last mile. Last mile are the places we all go in communities to purchase that coffee, tea, and cocoa product, among other products from Sala. We care about our communities. We care about our team members, our partners in those communities who open and operate those stores every day, we care about our customers who are in those communities, who consume our products, who go in and interact with our team members. Okay, great. We just took this global juggernaut company that means lots of things to lots of people. Right, people have lots of thoughts and feelings about it. We just said, well, what if they just focused on caring most about the first mile stakeholders and the last mile stakeholders. The stuff in between will take care of itself. That’s what the business does. But how can we make the biggest impact there? If you’re skeptical, if you think your organization is so big, so unwieldy, so hard, hey, Starbucks figured it out. Chobani has figured it out. Yeah, you can too. Yeah,

Maria Ross 32:18

this stuff scales. That’s the thing. Oh, it

Scott M. Curran 32:20

scales

Maria Ross 32:21

well, and you know you’re. I’m watching you, and for folks that are listening and don’t see the video on YouTube behind you, you’ve got the believe sign from Ted Lasso from the show on Apple, and I just wrote an article for my Forbes column about the four leadership lessons of Ted Lasso that are putting all leadership coaches out of business. Right, so great, and especially in this season, so believe was something that Ted Lasso brought to the team. We, if you’ve watched the show, he brought it to the men’s football team, soccer team, right? UK, and he brought that. That wasn’t their idea to make that sign. It was his idea to make that sign. Then he brings it to the women’s team that he’s coaching now, and he puts the same sign up, but they don’t have the same response to it, right? So what he does is he encourages them to make it their own, and they start adding post-it notes to it. Believe and win. Believe and smile. Believe and get it done. Whatever it is in their own. So this is the power of that. You can throw out a straw man to the organization of hey this is just a starting point and then let them mold it let them decide where can we have an impact beyond just making money and that is what we mean by purpose we don’t mean that you have to be philanthropic and give away all your profits as an organization all we’re saying is within the confines of the work that we do, how can we make the world a better place? And you’re reminding me, Scott, of this woman that I met decades ago, who owned a hair salon in Seattle, and she talked about at an event that I went to. She talked about the fact that she was her profession was doing hair, but her purpose was to make the community a better place, and she did that through very specific kind of job training, having her her salon give back, hosting events at her salon that were for the community. So she found the way she was already making a living. She said, “This is how I make a living: is doing hair. But my purpose is to give back to my community, and I do that through the four walls of my salon. And I just was so moved by that. I was like, ‘That’s incredible!

Scott M. Curran 34:34

There is a very short anecdotal story that isn’t very long in the middle of the book. I can’t remember exactly where it was, but there’s a gentleman named Lorenzo who was a barber in Little Rock, Arkansas. His personal story is is just spectacular learning, and he started a company or an organization called the Confess Project. Lorenzo was born in a prison to a mother who was incarcerated, and he he he was a quote unquote just a barber. What he realized was the barber shop was a safe space for men to talk about mental health.

Maria Ross 35:05

Bingo!

Scott M. Curran 35:06

And so he started this program, and it has gone global, and it has gotten incredible attention. And if you just think about the platform as you described it, whether it’s a beauty shop or a barber shop or anything else, it expand. I talk very briefly about a very profound experience I had when my dad was in his final days in hospice care at a hospital, a DoorDash driver dropped off one of many meals we’d gotten, and she just took a second, an extra second of kindness, and said, “And I don’t know why. We, my brother and I, were dressed in like khakis and blue polos. We could have been, you know, administrators or workers at the hospital, but for whatever reason, she got the vibe, and she’s, or maybe she does this with everybody, and and that would be amazing. Yeah, she said, “I don’t know why you’re here, but I hope you have a blessed day. And I said, “Thank you so much. We’re actually here saying a sad goodbye to our dad, but that really hits home. So thank you. And she said, “Then I’ll be praying for you and your family on the road ahead. And that was it. That what a great, amazing, poignant, and touching reminder and use of platform that we don’t know how in any given day how we show up, how we interact and engage. It cost her nothing. Yeah, cost her no extra time, no extra money, or no extra anything. And it had a huge impact on me. And shout out DoorDash, train that because that’s amazing. Is it going to work in every interaction? No. Sometimes I just want my chocolate milkshake from Portillo’s, but you never know the impact you’re going to

Scott M. Curran 36:30

have. A

Scott M. Curran 36:30

barber having a conversation, somebody in a salon somewhere, etc. So just these are the platforms we’re on every day. These are the interactions we have every day. And I want to say something about something else you said earlier. By the way, this action for those who are like, all right, this is a little bit on the rah-rah side for me. Yeah, we are looking to scooch. Okay, scooch, Pollyanna. Maybe a touch talks a positive. Okay, great. I have great news for you. Look at the numbers. Yeah, the numbers across decades and dozens of countries continue to prove over and over that the more you care about people who work with you and for you, and who you serve with your product or service, purpose-driven businesses grow three times faster than their peer competitors that do not have purpose baked into the business. Yeah, customers routinely cite 65 to 75% of the time that they will buy a product or service from a company that aligns with their values than a competitor that does not, and that is across 25 countries over decades. Do not let headlines. Do not let politically expedient taglines about wokeness or anything else distract you from the reality of human goodness.

Maria Ross 37:47

Yes,

Scott M. Curran 37:47

and friends, it will make your business or your organization more profitable or lucrative. It will increase team retention, talent retention, and will increase innovation, performance,

Maria Ross 38:00

customer loyalty, customer retention, all the things. It

Scott M. Curran 38:04

is a business competitive advantage. Period. Always, and but and there is reporting out of the past six months. We’re recording this in October of 2026. Check out the Benevity Impact Report from the summer. Check out Guardians reporting on this. Check out what has happened with shareholder lawsuits that are anti-ESG, DEI, etc. etc. I’m not here to pick political scabs. I’m here to point out that the businesses that have stayed the course, even though they have had to change the way that they speak about it or the volume at which they speak about it publicly, those that have stayed the course have remained as profitable or more profitable than their competitors that retreated on purpose. Yes, it is competitive. Absolutely, always has been, still is, always will be.

Maria Ross 38:50

It will, and that’s you know the whole thing that got me into this work was let me make the business case for empathy and compassion, and it’s there. The data is. I was delighted to find the data and the research that proved that over and over again, and we just have more and more data. Like I started researching this in 2016, we have more and more data that is showing that. And especially on the customer side, there was one study that showed that 97% of customers say that empathy is the most important aspect of their customer experience, or when they contact support, even if their problem is not solved, if they are treated well, and how do how do you get your employees to treat your customers well? You treat your employees well. You treat their community well, and this is why you know when people go, well, we’re just here to to sell and make money. You are part of the ecosystem of the community and of the world. You employ people who go back to their homes, who go back to their schools, who go back to their families. It has an impact, and I’m so, you know, if you’re sensing my frustration, Scott, I’m just so tired of this idea that we are separate beings at work than we are in our personal lives. We are not the TV show. Severance. We do not have a chip that makes us forget what is going on in the world. And so, the more that the place where we work gets involved in the community in which we live and the world in which we live in a positive way, the more loyal we’re going to be to that organization, the more innovative, the higher performing, all of the things. So I love this, and for anyone listening, yes, this has just been a conversation of two people who agreed with each other speaking to each other. But it’s because we want you to check out the book “Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact. So, Scott, thank you so much for your time and your insights today, and thank you for writing this book. And I, I really feel that both individuals and organizational leaders can benefit from this book, and not just nonprofits, but they can.

Scott M. Curran 40:47

It’s designed for everyone.

Maria Ross 40:49

Yeah, I love it. Okay, so we are going to have all your links in the show notes, of course, so people can get the book and get in touch with you. But for anyone that’s on the go right now, where’s the best place they can find out more about this work? Sure,

Scott M. Curran 40:59

if you’re looking for a social platform, I’m most active and present on LinkedIn. I’m at Scott M Curran on LinkedIn, and I you can use the same scottmcurran.com to go to my personal website and find that action plan. You don’t have to get the book. I’d love it if you did. Yeah, the book will take in advanced tactics of it, but you can get that action plan for free on my website as well. Start where you are. Use what you have. You’re already doing more good than you give yourself credit for, and you can do it better starting where you are with what you already have.

Maria Ross 41:24

Better, good, love it. Thank you so much, 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 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, be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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.

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

James Terry: Three Shifts Reshaping How Companies Hire and Manage Flexible Workers

The world of work is being reshaped in real time, and the companies that are winning are the ones rethinking not just who they hire, but how, when, and why. With over 15 years of experience across staffing, HR technology, and workforce solutions, James Terry, Head of U.S. Revenue for Indeed Flex, works at the intersection of technology and workforce innovation, helping organizations across hospitality, retail, light industrial, and customer service build more agile, responsive staffing strategies.

By flexible work, we’re talking about temporary, shift-based, and on-demand work, and also more general agile workforce strategies that meet qualified workers where they are, and why it’s becoming a genuinely strategic path to growth for everyone involved.

James breaks down three big shifts changing how companies hire, schedule, and manage workers, and AI is a significant one. We talk about what businesses consistently misunderstand about temporary workers, why their intentions and outcomes are so rarely aligned, and why they need a partner who understands best practices to help them adapt. We also get into how companies can use technology to make the staffing process faster and more efficient without making it feel cold or transactional, and how to create a genuine sense of team even for workers who may not be there long.

If you lead people, manage workforce strategy, or care about the future of work, this conversation will change how you think about flexibility, agility, and the very definition of a great hire.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Insights into the current labor market.
Job seeker etiquette and what to do if you’re being interviewed by AI (and why it may actually be a good thing).
What flexible or adaptive staffing can do for your organization.
Maintaining the human touch during hiring and after the fact.

“Someone is going to crack the code, and it will become the standard for everyone. The question is: Is it going to be you, or is it going to be someone else?” — James Terry

About James Terry, Head of U.S. Revenue, Indeed Flex:

James Terry is the Head of U.S. Revenue at Indeed Flex, a flexible staffing platform that connects businesses with qualified workers for temporary and shift-based roles. With more than 15 years of experience across staffing, HR technology, sales, and workforce solutions, James helps organizations respond to labor shortages, changing worker expectations, and evolving operational demands.

Working at the intersection of technology and workforce innovation, James has helped companies build more agile staffing strategies across industries including hospitality, retail, light industrial, and customer service. He is a frequent commentator on the future of work, AI-powered staffing, workforce flexibility, and the role technology can play in creating faster, more accessible paths to employment.

Connect with James:

IndeedFlex: indeedflex.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/james-terry-33023717

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

James Terry 03:16

Thanks so much for having me, Maria. I’m excited to chat.

Maria Ross 03:19

Awesome, awesome. So, before we start, we’re gonna we’re gonna start with the question we always ask, which is, “What’s your story? How did you get here doing this work for Indeed Flex? And what are you so passionate about?

James Terry 03:31

Well, I’ll start with the second question first, which is an easy one for me because the motto we have at Indeed Flex, kind of our north star, is we help people get jobs instantly, and that’s that’s really what got me here to Indeed Flex. So I started. I actually started in my career out of college, working in the nonprofit sector in Washington D.C. I was like writing grants and and and trying to get money for nonprofits so that they could go and change the world. And I realized like that’s great, but it’s actually really hard to change the world from inside the Beltway, and so I started thinking about like what else could I do that help can help make a positive impact. And I know this might sound weird, but I figured, well, in sales, if you sell something to a customer, you’re hopefully making their life better off. And so that started my my career, and worked for a really large HR outsourcing company, a great training program, great leadership development program, and then was given the opportunity. Moved to Romania with them, and then when my assignment was over there, moved over to Indeed Flex because I saw the vision and the mission of what they were doing. Essentially, making it, you know, using technology to make it the fastest place to get work, democratizing the way that people find jobs. I mean, giving ultimately both businesses as well as workers control and choice over the types of roles that they’re picking up, and so that’s where I found myself about six years ago, and here I am now talking to you.

Maria Ross 04:55

Awesome, awesome. So lots in there, and what a great journey to. Where you are now, and I, I empathize with the need to have a job where you’re giving back and you’re making the world a better place, because there’s a lot of different ways we can choose to take our careers. And isn’t it great when you can have both and right have a great career, make good money, but also leave the world a better place? So I really admire that, and I want to talk a little bit based on your background and the work that you’re doing at Indeed Flex. Tell us a little bit about the way that hiring and scheduling and managing workers is changing right now. Give us some sense of, I mean, we know there’s there’s seismic change happening in all kinds of areas, but why specifically? Let’s drill down into workforce planning and hiring and shift working, how is that changing?

James Terry 05:47

Yep. So there’s, I’d say there’s the the answer is probably more complex and nuanced than a lot of people think. There’s really three big things that have happened in the course of last call it five to 10 years. Number one is COVID. COVID changed the way that people work and the expectations they have of work. The second one is generational changes. You know, you have baby boomers beginning to exit the workforce. Gen Z is starting to enter the workforce. Millennials and Gen X kind of right in the middle, and millennials even are starting to evolve, like kind of what they want in a work life and that balance. And I think that’s probably because of what they’ve seen from the younger generations coming up. And then the third part of it is AI, which is a little bit the flavor of the week for everyone right now, and how much that is changing the world and the economy. Those three, I’d say, main aspects that are kind of the driving forces behind it. The overarching theme that we’re noticing is that on one side, because of COVID and a little bit the generational changes that we’re noticing, there’s more of a demand for flexibility. When COVID happened, a lot of people were working from home. A lot of people had to change industries. People that were doing bartending, serving, waiters, any kind of hospitality role, they were they were shut in for a long time, and so they had to change industries. Along with that, they realized, wow, I don’t necessarily need to work until two a.m. every day. This is great. I can work in a different industry, and so there’s been changes in that regards. In addition to that, like on the generational side that I mentioned, you know, you have a number of of a large portion of workers in Gen Z that they’re not even electing to use their degrees if they have them in in their jobs right now, and that’s because they’re willing to make a trade off that probably a lot of earlier generations, myself, I’m a millennial included, weren’t didn’t feel comfortable with, so they’re willing to say, you know what, like I will forego potentially a higher paid, more cushy title and and whatnot to be able to have more flexibility in my work life. And they’re seeing that, and they’re seeing those opportunities because as consumers, you have to keep in mind these job seekers they’re also consumers as well. They now can order just about anything that’s ever existed in humanity to be delivered to their door in two hours. Yeah, they can order food to be delivered to their door, you know, in 30 minutes, and and and so you’re you’re noticing that people are electing to whether it is their primary form of employment or a secondary form of employment, pick up these other types of kind of you could call it gig work opportunities to be able to supplement their income, and that means that they can have a little bit more control over when, where, how they want to work. Right, and then the third part is AI. I mean, AI is changing everything. I’d say that you know a lot of the work that we do is more on the front line side. So you know, AI is I’d say is like has a knock on impact. It’s not really direct. The people that we hire are not usually directly using AI, but a lot of the decision makers, a lot of the HR leaders, operational leaders, like it’s becoming such a critical way that they’re running their business. And I’m noticing there’s becoming a bit of a chasm where you’re starting to see the the adopters and the laggards, and that plays out. It’s not even that someone necessarily needs to say, “Oh, I’m I’m using AI. You can just tell in the conversations that you’re having when someone is taking multiple data sources and being able to aggregate them in a way and get really insightful viewpoints that can help drive change in the business, and others are not. I mean, so I think that those like kind of those three things amalgamated are really driving change in the way that people are interacting with their work, and then also businesses are thinking about the talent that they’re bringing on board.

Maria Ross 09:29

Exactly, and so much to unpack with what you just said. But you know, to your point, we are going through a workplace culture shift. We’re going through a leadership paradigm shift as well. And what I always like to say is, it wasn’t that it wasn’t coming; it’s just the pandemic accelerated it. Right, that was already the trajectory to where things were going based on all the fights and the the demands that millennials were making. Right, and then right after them, Gen Z and all good demands, by the way, all. Things that people wanted that are good for everyone in the workplace. So there’s just been this disconnect between people that are like, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it, and people that are willing to break the system and come up with a system that works better for people. And I want to click into your point about AI. Like, how is it changing in a positive way? Because we’ve heard some negative stories too, right? In terms of bias in AI or or really good candidates being missed because of AI. But how are you seeing HR leaders and recruiters and hiring managers, especially when we talk about flexible scheduling and shift work? How are they using AI to hire and to manage those kinds of workforces, yeah. Give us some examples.

James Terry 10:44

Yeah, there’s probably two parts to this. So, and and I’ll kind of frame it as the candidate experience, and then also like the employer experience. On the candidate experience, when it comes to using AI, you know what I see and what I notice. I mean, you know, you see it on LinkedIn and talking to a lot of a lot of our customers because of the advent of AI, they’re noticing a significant increase in the number of applications they’re getting. It’s easier. Yeah, they’re overwhelmed. And so, what are they doing? Well, we just bought this AI system, and so now we can run all of our resumes through AI. Well, let’s not forget Maria that most more likely than not, the resume that you’re looking at was probably also written by AI, and so you’ve got AI writing the resume and AI reviewing the resume, and then you know a bunch of you know probably more people than previously are getting rejection emails and they’re not even talking to anyone.

Maria Ross 11:38

And then where’s the human in the process, right?

James Terry 11:40

Exactly, but it’s a real problem, right? Like, like we don’t say we want to slow down the use of AI. I mean, it’s it’s it’s going to have major gains for us as a society as a whole. And so, one of the things that we’ve done at Indeed Flex is we’ve actually built an AI interview system. So, what that means is that allows us to be able to put all of our candidates through an AI interview. Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re only using AI to interview them. What it does mean is you’re actually giving people an opportunity to show up. You’re giving them a shot to actually make make a case for themselves. So rather than you know an AI bot scraping an AI generated resume and then a bunch of people getting you know, based not just on your skill set, but also who is able to craft

Maria Ross 12:28

the the best sounding, yeah, the best sounding resume. Exactly,

James Terry 12:31

exactly. Now you have an opportunity to get on an interview because because you have so many candidates applying now. You know, call it. I used to have 30 people apply for role. Now I have 300 people apply for role. It’s just not realistic for every single person to get in a human interview. Right. What this does, this gives us an opportunity to be able to allow for those workers to be able to have an AI interview, and it will, based on the role that that specific candidate is being vetted for, it will ask questions, first and second level questions that will dig in and ask follow-ups, and and then it will be situational, behavioral, motivational fit questions to be able to identify if a candidate may or may not be good for this role. And so you’re giving the the candidate an opportunity to show up. And then what happens is it it you know our system’s able to essentially rank the candidates and give them a score, and you can say, okay, well, like the next maybe 20 candidates are the ones we the top 20 are the ones we want to hire, or the ones that maybe you’ll pass on to a second level interview that might be with a person.

Maria Ross 13:31

Right.

James Terry 13:32

So that’s that’s sort of one side of it on the AI interview. The other part of it is, you know, if we kind of click back to this first question you asked around the the flexibility, you know, candidates are demanding more flexibility now, and that sounds great. And to your point, like it is the right thing to do. But the reason people haven’t done it before is because it’s not the easy thing to do. It’s easy to say I have a Monday through Friday nine to five shift pattern, and you need to work every single day. And if you can’t, then you’re not a good candidate for it.

Maria Ross 14:00

Right.

James Terry 14:00

That, from an operational perspective, is much more simple. But now, with the advent of AI and technology, you’re able to build a world where, you know, Maria, maybe I can work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but I can’t work Wednesday because I have to take grandma to the doctors every Wednesday afternoon.

Maria Ross 14:15

Right.

James Terry 14:15

Well, does that mean I’m a bad worker? No. Does that mean I’m not going to be good? No. That just means that I don’t fit the really rigid schedule that you provided, and so what you’re able to do now with technology is build a world where you know I can still pick up that role, and then Maria, hey, you you’re only able to work on Wednesdays, and so you can actually slot in for that Wednesday shift, right? If you really boil it down, and this isn’t like every job isn’t going to work like this, but for a lot of roles out there, you know, an organization they care about having someone who is consistent, who knows how to do the job, who knows how to show up and be good at it. It doesn’t matter if it’s James or Maria. I just need it to be James or Maria, right? And that’s a big seed change that’s happening in the market, or cust, or businesses are starting to realize that these are the. Types of things they need to do because now you’re able to attract Maria and James, who previously weren’t even in the job market for you particularly because they couldn’t work that schedule.

Maria Ross 15:08

Right, you already like cross them off the list. I want to just go back a second because this I’ve heard various experiences with with friends who have college students or college graduates who have been interviewed by AI, do we need to now teach job seekers the etiquette of interviewing with an AI interviewer? Because where do you get the the magic? Where do you get the rapport that sometimes happens when you have two humans meeting in an interview? Do we have to help them understand that you have to show up in the same way you would show up with a human being to the AI, so that you are you are rated accurately, right? Or or is there the tendency to phone it in because you’re being interviewed by an AI bot? Like, talk to me about that whole shift in job seeker etiquette and and the skills they need to have an interview with an AI bot.

James Terry 16:08

Yes, to give you the short answer, we probably do need to teach people. But I would say even more than that is you should treat every interview like is an interview. If you show up and you don’t have your shirt on to the interview because you know it’s an AI interview, like or you’re sitting in your car. I mean, you know, you wouldn’t. It’s kind of the old. It’s kind of the old saying of like, you know, how would your mom feel about it if she saw that you were showing up this way? Well, I’m like,

Maria Ross 16:34

yeah, and I’m talking more. I’m talking less about the obvious stuff like that, which maybe you still need to reiterate for people, and I’m talking more about the, you know, if you bring humor to the interview, if you have a rapport with someone, and you’re able to crack a joke or you’re able to say something, does that translate when you’re interviewing with an AI bot?

James Terry 16:53

So, Maria, probably you and I are similar in that we have the gift of gab. We love to do this. We we love to talk and and have conversations, and not everyone is like that. And so I think that it’s a great point you’re bringing up. But I’m gonna I’m going to just for the sake of argument, I’m actually going to take the counter to what you’re saying.

Maria Ross 17:13

Please,

James Terry 17:13

yeah. Could you argue that too often people are judged in a very in a very subjective manner by a recruiter based on how well they get along with someone, or they just seem nice,

Maria Ross 17:25

right?

James Terry 17:26

Or they, you know, we hit it off on the interview, and we just kind of, you know, I saw that

Maria Ross 17:31

they’re not qualified for the role, but I really like that guy, right?

James Terry 17:33

Yeah, we get we get on the interview. The recruiter has a baseball team, and I relate to them on that, and right, like all of a sudden we don’t get into any questions, and they pass me along. Like in reality, like you’re you’re potentially if I only have a certain number of slots that I can send through to a hiring manager, you’re potentially actually qualifying in the wrong person. But even more than that, you’re you’re qualifying out the right person of that job out of that job. And so one of the things that AI can do, and I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. I’ll tell you that like with all the AI interviews we do of our hires at Indeed Flex, we still have a human review every single one of them,

Maria Ross 18:06

right?

James Terry 18:06

Because it is not there yet. Now, like in 10 years, are we going to need to do that? Probably not. But like, yeah, right now it’s still so early doors and early days. Like we are still reviewing them. Yeah, it allows. Side note: it allows our recruiters to actually like scroll through to like really the most critical parts of the interview to like check those. So interview capacity has has grown drastically. Yeah, but essentially what this does is it kind of you know it kind of takes the bias out of the interview. Yeah, you know it’s it’s. I was gonna say it takes out.

Maria Ross 18:35

I I wrote this down. It takes out the bias of rapport.

James Terry 18:39

Yep,

Maria Ross 18:40

because to exactly what you’re you’re pointing to, which is, we just get a feel good feeling about somebody because maybe they’re like us, right? And so we pass them on, even if they’re not necessarily the most qualified candidate that we’re talking to that day. So I kind of love that. Yeah, yeah.

James Terry 18:57

Also, if you think about it, is let’s just say that AI is where AI interview is worse than the average recruiter. Let’s just make that argument. AI interview is is from a quality standpoint worse than the average recruiter. Well, do you know what? It’s consistent because you’re going to have recruiters that are good, and you’re going to have recruiters that are bad. You’re going to have recruiters that do ask secondary follow up questions. You’re going to have recruiters that don’t. At the very least, you know what you’re getting with with an AI interview. Like you have consistency in it,

Maria Ross 19:27

right?

James Terry 19:27

And so, you know, you’re not going to hire a CEO for a Fortune 500 company with just an AI interview. Of course not. You’re probably, you know,

Maria Ross 19:34

yeah,

James Terry 19:35

not going to hire a lot of roles just in AI interview. But what it does is it gives someone like this. This is where I I get really frustrated when people kind of give it a bad name because it’s not that this is necessarily replacing anything. What this is doing is it’s actually giving people, if you really think about another shot, it’s giving them another opportunity that previously they would not have had. Because if it weren’t for this interview, I would have just gotten a you know a two line rejection email from the company.

Maria Ross 20:00

Yeah. Completely, I love that. I love that perspective, and I probably should have asked this at the top of our interview. But because I am human and not a bot, I’m not always perfect. Can you explain to us what you mean by flexible staffing or short-term staffing? Because you mentioned a few times, you know, this might not be the right fit for every job or every company. What’s the definition from Indeed Flex on the types of roles we’re talking about, and what industries are those in? So, give us some examples.

James Terry 20:29

Yep, most of the industries that we work in are light industrial, so that’s like warehouse, distribution, logistics, light manufacturing, hospitality. So that would be like people that do everything from you know serving at the banquet dinner for a wedding reception at the local hotel, all the way to pouring beer at the baseball game. Facilities management call center work. So it tends to be more like high volume work is really where where we focus most of our most of our efforts.

Maria Ross 21:00

Is it also seasonal work?

James Terry 21:02

Yeah. So when I say when you say flexible schedule, flexible, there’s there’s the the idea here is that flexible is different for every single person. A lot of the times, people think of flexible as oh this is gig work. I mean yeah, gig work is a component of flexible work, but flexible work could also be hey I want the flexibility to work every single day, and then also on Saturdays pulling pouring beer at the at the local baseball game. So it doesn’t need to be one or the other. So we have a lot of a lot of workers that are out there that have been working for Indeed Flex on very long term assignments with the same exact client for three years, and we have some workers that only work, you know, a day or two every couple of weeks because that’s when they need to fill their schedule. Flexibility is really in in the eyes of of the beholder, and really where so so kind of to your question about like the types of of organizations that are looking for this type of work, it’s it’s contingent labor, which means you’re thinking about really two use cases. Number one is, well, I know I need to hire a high volume of labor, and I don’t, I don’t have the resources or the skill set or the capacity to, or or the want to have a team of recruiters that are doing this. We can just have, you know, third party staffing agencies can do a lot of the recruiting. So you’re outsourcing your recruitment efforts. And the other side of it, to your point, is if you’ve got peaks or troughs in demand, if you have, you know, for that wedding, I need 40 people on one or two days a month. Like I don’t, you know, I don’t want to hire a bunch of people just for that. I can bring in contingent labor, or if I’m scaling up, as a lot of companies are starting to think about right now, or in the the preparing for their peak period around the holiday season, you know, I I need people for two months, and that’s all, right? And that’s where people are usually using this type of type of labor.

Maria Ross 22:45

Got it, got it. And so, you know, you’re talking a lot about flexibility from the from the job seeker perspective or the applicant perspective, but you also talk about adaptability as some of the most important traits of the future labor market in terms of organizations. Can you share a little bit about your perspective on that? When you talk about adaptability from the employer side, what does that mean? What does that look like?

James Terry 23:13

So to keep it simple, I’ll use the same example as I was doing before, where James can only work certain days and Marie can only work certain days.

Maria Ross 23:19

Right.

James Terry 23:19

From a candidate standpoint, it makes sense, right? Like if I’m now able to work for you, that is a net positive for me. Well, the difficulty of it is you now need to convince an employer to to actually change the way that they operate their business to to accommodate for this. And quite often, organizations are thinking to themselves, well, you know, a we’ve already always done it this way. It’s a little bit more difficult, and why would I make this change? What we found is really helpful, and this is where a lot of the really really transformational HR leaders that we work with on a day to day basis are thinking: is you know how can I take you know previously dispersed data systems, a warehouse management system, a staffing system, or HRIS, and then like a finance and billing system, like you know any type of net suite or whatever it might be. And how can we take all this data that previously was really hard to understand, and how can we bring it together and get insights out of it? And that’s where a lot of people are starting to move. So what they’re able to do now is say, I’ll give you an example. This is actually something that we noticed that happened last year, and we’re in the in the process of planning for peak with a lot of our clients. Is we looked at a bunch of data and found a lot of our a lot of our clients will ask us to ramp up really close to Thanksgiving because they know that Black Friday is when when it’s just all hands on deck, like you’re not, you know, we literally have clients that like general managers who are like sleeping on an air mattress in in the in in their office of the warehouse, like on Black Friday. Right, it gets that intense, and and so what we’re able to do is take this information, and previously people would say, well, well, I know. That my demand isn’t actually going to hit until right right of Black Friday, and so I want to bring on people a couple of days before that because that lowers my cost. Right, that makes sense. Well, when you actually look at the data and you you look at all the information across all these systems, it turns out that when you’re onboarding people for these warehouse roles in this example on the week before Thanksgiving, the turnover rate is massive because you know they’ve only worked there for a couple of days. They don’t have that connection to the organization. By the way, they when they started, it was all they could tell like this place is turning into a madhouse because things are about to go crazy. Yeah, and so we started working with clients about hey, how can we think about progressive hiring? Because we noticed that the people that started in early November or late October, they actually stayed. Well, from face value, an operations manager says that’s crazy. That’s extra labor cost, right?

Maria Ross 25:50

I’m not going to pay for that until I need it. Yeah,

James Terry 25:51

right. But if you actually think about well, what is the cost of you know what is the productivity level of a worker on day one versus week you know versus day two versus week two versus week three, and by the way, you know, so we got to ramp people up,

Maria Ross 26:05

right?

James Terry 26:06

Also, what is the cost of turnover for you? Because for every 10 people I need to hire, if I know three or four are going to be leaving because I’m hiring them so close to this peak period, that’s also going to drive up my costs, and I could have you know packages that I can’t clear out through my warehouse, and so you actually start looking at and say, if you bring people in earlier, you don’t need to hire as many overall because they’ll stay. They’re going to stay, and you’re not going to have the turnover. And B, they’re going to be more productive, and that productivity means you only need one person who’s productive for every two people that aren’t as productive and are going to turn over anyways. Right, and so those are the kind of conversations you start having. But you need to lead with data, and you need to, you know, with us as a vendor, a lot of the times, you need to be able to have an HR partner that’s able to help you to navigate a lot of those waters because it is fundamentally a change you’re asking organizations to make, and it’s a risk on their side that that needs to play out. You need to be able to show them the benefits of it.

Maria Ross 27:02

Absolutely, absolutely, and you know, just that kind of creating that kind of relationship and easing the burden for HR and operations during those times. It’s it sounds so good in practice to just be like, well, you know, let’s let’s have a flexible workforce. Let’s just do it. But there’s there’s systems and there’s structures and even just how you lead a workforce that is only there temporarily, versus a consistent team that’s together that has time to gel, that has time to get to know each other, do all the things I talk about in terms of empathetic leadership. You almost have to fast track that for flexible workers. So you given given

James Terry 27:43

if I could add to that, I think the other side of it is that you have to be willing to have a relationship with the customer that is healthy, and there’s a certain amount of radical candor in it. And what I mean by that is you need to be willing to go and have a tough conversation, and the answer shouldn’t always. If you’re a vendor, shouldn’t always be yes, because you fundamentally you do this for your living, right? You do this as your job. Like this is just a small part of the overall organization that you’re serving. You’re the specialist, and so you should have the confidence to say, “Look, when you do it this way, this is why it’s not going to work out with the outcomes that you’re desiring. And too often, what happens is they say, “Well, we have so much turnover in November, and so what we want to do is we want to make sure we really bring in the right people. So now we’re going to ask everyone to come in for an interview a day before or a week before, and all of a sudden, like especially in high volume hiring, you’re doing things with the right intention. It’s not that they’re doing things for the wrong reason; they’re doing it for the right reason. But the outcome that ends up happening is well, now I have an even higher conversion rate. The turnover is not happening on week one or week two. It’s happening that they’re just not showing up for their first day because they said, “You know what? This is crazy. I’m having to interview for this job.

Maria Ross 28:59

Right.

James Terry 29:00

And so it’s really important to have the the the confidence as a as a supplier, as a vendor, as a business partner to be able to go to an organization say, look, like this is not going to work out for you, and here are the reasons why, and we can show you the data.

Maria Ross 29:14

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s that’s you pick a partner based on best practices they can share with you, of course. And I’m talking more about on the employer side of leaders on the employer operational side, who have to learn how to manage a workforce like this in a different way, right? And like I said, they can’t always draw on the fact that they’ve had time to coalesce as a team. They’ve had time to get to know these workers and how they’re best motivated, and and what lights them up. Again, all the things that I teach around empathetic leadership. So, with that question, and also going back to the interviewing question, how do you help your customers keep the personal touch, keep the humanity, keep the human connection within? Both the hiring process for roles like this, and with the after they’re hired, making sure that they they stay and they’re retained, and you’re creating a good work environment that maybe they’ll want to come back again, right? Because it’s easy to believe like, oh, it doesn’t matter how I treat them because I can just get a new body to fill the role later, right? Which I’ve heard before from from people that work with organizations that have seasonal workers, for example, and they don’t invest the same time and energy into those people. So I’m asking kind of two questions: How do you help your customers keep the personal touch within the interview process, especially if it’s using AI, and keep the humanity? And then after those workers are hired, how do you help your customers maintain a good employee experience, even though those people might not be there for the long term?

James Terry 30:51

Yes, with with the interview process, I think as we were talking about before, it’s really about helping them understand this is just one, this is just an additive step to the process. Like this should not it’s not replacing it. Yeah, yeah, it’s super critical to still have a really good hiring process. I mean, here’s here’s a couple of the interesting things that I found as we have surveyed a lot of the workers that do these AI interviews is that they actually will rate the AI interview as good as, if not a better experience than an in-person interview, why? Probably because of a little bit of like the you know unconscious bias stuff that we talked about before.

Maria Ross 31:28

Yeah,

James Terry 31:29

but the other side of it is that you know if I’m working a job full time right now and I I want to interview for another role, I have to take time off work, you know, and then no, I take time off work, and then the interview gets moved to an hour later, or whatever it might be, and now it’s you know, or the next day, and it gets difficult with an AI interview. I can apply for the job at 7p.m. at night after I get home, put the kid to bed, and then you can be on the interview at 730 that night doing the interview. So you’re you’re at kind of meeting people where they are, which is really nice, and they’re not feeling that pressure of having to relate to the baseball hat in the background or whatever the flag is or whatever whatever that might be. That’s one side of it. But then, on from the point of how we help clients and businesses understand this, you know, one of the things you have to be cautious of, I’ve noticed, is especially with operational leaders, because those are the people that, at the end of the day, are making the decisions. It’s not HR. HR can be an advocate in your corner, but it’s the ops team,

Maria Ross 32:28

right?

James Terry 32:28

And with them, you have to lead with data. You can’t just go to them and say, “Well, like you know, if you do this, people will like it. You need to actually show them some of the data, like the examples that I just walked you through about how they’re opening up the aperture of the job market to be able to access candidates they previously couldn’t have have gotten in in the past, you’re driving better retention and higher productivity. Like that part is really critical. But then the other side of it is honestly, yeah, I mean, like bringing in pizza and all that type of stuff and giving everyone a branded T-shirt. Like that all feels good, but you know what, Maria is the most important thing. Just walk up to them and have a conversation. Connect to the people. Yeah, tell them on their first day we’re so happy to have you. When you have your 20 new starts, just make sure that you touch base with every single one of them and you shake their hand and you thank them for being there. Like I can guarantee you, there are not enough organizations that are doing that type of stuff,

Maria Ross 33:22

absolutely

James Terry 33:23

one, and that is setting you apart. You think about whenever you see whenever you see this type of stuff happen on the news. I’ll tell you actually a quick story. We were lucky enough to be one of the suppliers of labor for the recent opening of the Obama Presidential Library in in Chicago, and one of my colleagues was there, and he said that about an hour or two before the event, you know, there’s there’s like where the big event happens and the big beautiful you know form, but then there’s also like the the offices and changing rooms and whatnot upstairs where all the staff are.

Maria Ross 33:56

Right,

James Terry 33:57

they were up there with a lot of the staff doing a like a welcome meeting and walking everyone through what what was going to happen,

Maria Ross 34:02

right?

James Terry 34:02

And President Obama and Michelle Obama walk in, and they took time. President Obama took time to look into every single person’s eyes and thank them for being there. That is something that he will never forget for the rest of his life, and every single worker that is there will never forget. And it doesn’t have to be the president doing that, right? It just has to be the manager, but but that impacts people when you make that personal connection with someone. That is something that you can’t put a price on, and and outlasts a lot of the bad that can happen in any type of job because you know, hey, they care about me,

Maria Ross 34:37

right? Exactly, exactly, and you know, you know, you mentioned the other stuff about the T-shirts and the and the pizza. You know, that’s just fun generating. That’s not empathetic leadership. Like that’s trappings. What you’re talking about, and and having that mindset of it doesn’t matter how long they’re here for, we need to make their experience a great one. So not. Maybe they come back. Maybe they refer other people to us in the future. But also, we want them engaged and productive while they’re here. And you become engaged and productive when you are seen, heard, and valued for however long you are working for an organization. And so, I love that you’re you’re talking to your customers about this aspect and not just like we’re done with them once they hire, right? It’s no. What else can you do to make this employee experience

James Terry 35:30

the best it can be? And how can you bring those empathetic leadership principles into that maybe temporary assignment or seasonal assignment or short-term flexible assignment. So I love what you’re saying. As we wrap up, what is kind of a final nugget about you want to share with people about the current labor market, and how would you invite them to experiment with a flexible workforce? What I would say is that there is no right or wrong answer, and and I will actually I will actually bundle this answer into how a lot of people I think are are are thinking about AI as well. So you can bundle these these this applies to both of them. No one has figured it out. This is new for everyone. It’s a little bit scary, but you know what? Someone is going to figure it out. Someone is going to crack the code, and it will become the standard for everyone. The question is: Is it going to be you, or is it going to be someone else? Are you going to get a head start and play with table money for a while, or are you going to be a laggard and you’re going to have to catch up? Whether it’s flexible staffing or whether it’s using AI, those are both things that it like the train is coming, ladies and gentlemen. The question is, are you going to be are you going to be the conductor? Are you going to be in the caboose?

Maria Ross 36:50

Love it, love it so much, James. Thank you so much for your insights and for sharing a little bit about this really unique angle on managing a workforce and and learning how to do this in a new way, plus your observations on the current labor market, been really, really valuable. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s on the go right now, where’s the best place they can find out more about this work?

James Terry 37:14

Yeah, Maria, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and also go to IndeedFlex.com. It’s easy. If you’re a job seeker and you’re looking for work, you can click on the job seeker tab. If you’re an employer and you’re looking to find out more, you can click on the employers tab. But yeah, go to Indeedflex.com and we’d be happy to have a chat with you. And we’re also right now running a labor AI labor audit right now for organizations. So we’re actually going in and helping them understand how they’re using AI and how they might be able to use AI more effectively and efficiently in their labor planning. So we’d be happy to do that as well.

Maria Ross 37:46

Love it! Thank you so much for being here today.

James Terry 37:50

Thanks for having me, Maria.

Maria Ross 37:51

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 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 theempathyedge.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.

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

Rachael Kelly: People-First Systems and Models That Break Limiting Cycles

We’ve long been told that compassion and profitability can’t coexist. My guest today challenges that idea, building her business, people systems, and technology around proving otherwise—and helping clients do the same.

Rachael Kelly is a bestselling author and founder and CEO of Hive Enterprises. She specializes in strategy, organizational effectiveness, and people and culture, helping mission-driven organizations lead with purpose and measurable impact.

Today, we explore psychological safety, how to build it, and what HR often gets wrong about empathy. Rachael also makes the business case for human-centered leadership, showing how it can deliver measurable ROI.

If you’ve ever had to fight for the “soft stuff” in your organization, Rachael will give you the tools and insights to make your case.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How human-centric leadership helps organizations navigate extreme challenges
Why mission-driven leadership isn’t soft, but has real ROI
What it looks like to create safe spaces inside organizations, and why psychological safety is the secret ingredient to performance and innovation
How HiveSMART and Hive HEALTH use AI to amplify empathy at scale, freeing people to focus on the human parts of their work
Designing people systems that are both compassionate and accountable

“It’s not about creating a bunch of extra processes or a bunch of extra tools. It’s about energy and focus and presence and being able to receive in that moment.” — Rachael Kelly

From Our Sponsor:
Check out this offer from our sponsor, Better Benefits USA: Are You Overpaying for Employee Benefits Without Knowing It? Take the free 10-minute benefits audit at https://findbetterbenefits.org/

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! https://retreat.therisingmastermind.com/

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge podcast:

Claude Silver: Be Yourself at Work for the Ultimate Leadership Advantage
Dr. Cori Lathan: Benevolent Cyborgs and a Techno-Optimist’s View on Technology
Catherine Cooley: https://www.peaceabl.com/
Webinar with Maria and Spark Effect: HR’s Make or Break Moment: https://sparkeffect.com/podcast/hrs-make-or-break-moment-leading-your-organizations-ai-transformation/

About Rachael Kelly, Founder & CEO, Hive Enterprises:

Rachael Kelly is a bestselling author and founder and CEO of Hive Enterprises, comprising HiveSTRONG, HiveSMART Consulting, and HiveHEALTH. She specializes in strategy, organizational effectiveness, people, and culture, facilitating transformation through strategic planning, operating model design, and team development.

HiveSMART helps mission-driven organizations lead with clarity and purpose, while HiveSTRONG builds nonprofit capacity and community resilience.

HiveHEALTH provides culturally responsive, trauma-informed care through telehealth and in-home services, starting in Texas.

Across executive teams, community leaders, and care providers, the message remains the same: Empathy isn’t a liability—it’s a lever for driving measurable impact.

Connect with Rachael:

HiveSMART Consulting: https://www.hivesmartllc.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-kelly-7452194

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

Rachael Kelly 02:56

Thank you. I’m I’m really happy to be here.

Maria Ross 02:58

So let’s talk a little bit. You know, you’re the CEO of Hive Enterprises, which includes Hive Strong, your nonprofit, Hive Smart Consulting, and Hive Health. How did you get here? What’s your, you know, quick behind the music story of this work? How you got here, and what you love most about it?

Rachael Kelly 03:16

Yeah, I think you know what got me here was solving problems. You know, going through life as a mom, as somebody who you know worked in her career, who’s gone through a lot of different things in life, and I really wanted to solve problems, and I wanted to work with people that I love and care about, and do good work for people that we love and care about, and so you know, we kind of took our experiences of business, private equity, all that stuff, and said, “How do we use our skills and talents in a way that breaks limiting cycles, unleashes potential, and now we’ve added achieve systemic impact as our platform and ecosystem really works together to do that?

Maria Ross 03:56

Oh, I love that so much! It’s funny when I went off on my own in 2008. That was kind of my mantra too, which is I just want to do good work with people I like, doing things I enjoy. Right? That was like that was it. Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. So, tell me a little bit about. Let’s talk a bit about your organizational structure because you are a great model for what you’re preaching around the fact that we can marry purpose with profit, and we can build business models that have compassion and empathy embedded in them. So, tell us a little bit about the world of Hive Enterprises and how everything fits together.

Rachael Kelly 04:33

Yeah, happy to. It started with wanting the nonprofit and the work that we wanted to do to support survivors breaking free and achieving independence and thriving. When I first, then after I built that, I thought, okay, well, survivors

Maria Ross 04:46

of trauma and

Rachael Kelly 04:48

abuse.

Maria Ross 04:48

Thank you.

Rachael Kelly 04:49

So these are and human trafficking. So these are people who’ve experienced could be anywhere in their life, but any time in their life, they could be in it, they could be out. Just are various different stages. Of recovery and breaking out of that cycle, and we thought about like, okay, how are we going to fund this work? Because certainly we want to give this to people, right? We do not, you know, like this is this is our gift. We want to help people. So the first person I was going to ask, actually, I never even got to ask him for the donation. He quickly hired me as a consultant, and I thought, “Oh, I love this! Whoa, we can do this! Wait a minute, I can do this professional stuff that I like to do, and also do this other stuff, and like we can fund it. And that’s that was the first like aha moment. Yeah, and from there it took off because then other friends found out, “Oh, wait, you’re consulting, and I started to pull together my friends and I met Bridget, and it was just like the light exploded, and we were like, “Whoa, let’s do this together! And it just started to attract people that were really good and that connected to our mission, and we were very focused on delivering results for them because we knew the power of not only what it was doing for the client on the consulting side, but what that meant for our organization, so people saw as this was building, the consulting work was building. They saw the nonprofit continuing to build and the work real, like real time of what we were doing with survivors, and so it grew from there. Yeah, and us just going, let’s do the work, and then we were like, well, wait a minute, okay, now how do we keep taking our own medicine and take these skills that we have and these things we’re doing with business clients? We can do this with survivors. And wait a minute, there’s a big health issue too. How do we take this brain we have of these brilliant people and consultants? Like I don’t even want to say consultants because they’re just great business leaders,

Maria Ross 06:41

yeah,

Rachael Kelly 06:42

and solve this problem because we’re trying to solve this problem. We’re not trying to buy a. I’m not trying to buy a boat. I’m not trying to make a pajillion dollars trying to solve this problem,

Maria Ross 06:52

right?

Rachael Kelly 06:53

And when you start to attack it that way,

Maria Ross 06:54

yeah,

Rachael Kelly 06:55

compromise with that paradigm. It with a human beings at the center, it just changed. It shifted it. So then we incubated our hive health, and you know we’re in that process of launching that in the middle of our pilot right now. So it’s just been this fun kind of you know evolution that’s happened.

Maria Ross 07:11

Yeah, well, so many things stand out about that, and I think the macro lessons for listeners are that you can either start with an organization, a business organization, where you’re plying your trade, right, and you’re doing your thing, and then decide with all that I want to give back, and you can create a foundation, a grant, a nonprofit that also fuels your own personal philanthropic mission, right? But what I love about what you’ve done is you had a nonprofit, you were trying to help people, and you were like, “How do we fund this? Oh, let’s take all the brilliant minds that are already involved and the work that I’m already doing, and we can create a synergy among these two entities. And I’m curious if that business model attracts a certain kind of consulting client to you.

Rachael Kelly 07:58

It does. It very much does. What’s been interesting too is, and they’re very diverse because the thing that I underestimated, and I should have known this, being an HR and operator for years, was the the through line of the work that we do with survivors, empowering them, not empowering them, they’re empowering, we’re supporting them in that journey and that life transformation. It’s very much the same tools and skills that you’re applying in the business world. Yes, and the one thing that is universal is trauma. Yeah, human beings, the human experience. Whether you are a conservative, tall Texan white guy, you know, who’s president, CEO of your company, or you are you know me who’s this wacky you know neurodivergent you know blah blah blah right like that’s a commonality we can all connect on our human experience and so we just saw the through line so it it actually appealed to more people than we thought it would yeah and they know like hey we like making money. We want you to make money. We want you to grow. And in fact, not only are we diligent about this and you know really good at what we do,

Maria Ross 09:10

yeah,

Rachael Kelly 09:10

that dollar’s got to stretch further, right? Right. It’s funding a whole other entity, and we know if you grow, we grow. Right. That’s our model. We’re not trying to like you know we don’t try and like dump in a bunch of. It’s like we want you to be successful in accomplishing this thing, right? And we’ll grow with you on that journey, however that should look. And you know, and you know that here’s why we’re doing it. So it’s it definitely created a increased, I think, credibility and alignment. Yeah,

Maria Ross 09:38

yeah. It’s just reminding me of all the brand work that I did with clients for decades, where it was like really helping them articulate and implement their values on an operational level, because that does attract. That is your brand, right? And so, of all the other consulting firms that your clients could work with, you’re giving them a reason to work with you. Hey. If you are down with this, you believe in this mission, you want to do this work, but you also want to benefit others, then work with us. If that’s not your vibe, fine, go work with somebody else, right? But it’s it’s that ability to put a stake in the ground about your organization’s values and whether you are human centered, whether you are about giving back to the community or not. But when you’re clear about it, you tend to attract a certain type of client. And I found that in my own business when I was doing my brand strategy work, because near the beginning of my business, I had a major medical issue and I almost died from a brain aneurysm.

Rachael Kelly 10:37

Oh my!

Maria Ross 10:37

And so that’s a whole nother story my listeners have heard multiple times, but they the the idea that I would bring that into my consulting work. I shared that story. I talked about that experience at business conferences about overcoming adversity, about facing challenge, about counting on your community and your tribe, and I applied those lessons to the business world. And that was scary because I thought, what if people think if they know this about me that I can’t do the work? But what it ended up doing was attracting a certain kind of client where we were very value aligned, and they thought if she can deal with this, she can build our brand. She knows how to connect and engage with people, and what you’re doing is so similar to that, in that you’re just there being you, being you know supporting the nonprofits, supporting the people you want to support, and it’s sort of like, hey, you want to be part of this or not?

Rachael Kelly 11:30

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m so glad you brought that up too about like owning your voice and your story. Yeah, it was one of the things that Bridget, really, who’s one of my co-founders, really encouraged me to do, and she’s done it so brilliantly. Because you’re right, when you speak your truth, it resonates with people, and you connect with people at a human level, which enables faster, right? Enables getting to the transformation or the next step for people so much faster. Yeah, and so what has been so fun for us has been like taking that and taking that human approach and bringing that to very hard, difficult business scenarios, right? Like,

Maria Ross 12:08

yeah,

Rachael Kelly 12:09

the team is getting cut in half, right? Yeah, and there’s massive restructure. There’s multiple leaders leaving, right? There’s a multi-million dollar thing online that we’re trying to get done and not get off track, and people are you know they’re afraid and they’re frozen, and so it’s those same things to your point. And right, allowed them to have us in that space was knowing, hey, we deliver the goods, right? Like we deliver the work. Yeah, there’s a way that you can do that that actually increases the effectiveness by being with the humans at the center,

Maria Ross 12:42

yeah,

Rachael Kelly 12:43

and holding empathy for human beings and listening to them and walking through with them, and so many leaders avoid that, and it costs them so much.

Maria Ross 12:52

Well, this is what we mean about being vulnerable and being authentic. Like this is exactly what it means. It means you stand for what you stand for, and therefore, like will attract like right? Isn’t that quantum physics or something? Like attracts like. Yes, but it’s this idea that you can have both right. You can be a thriving, profitable business and still do right by people, and that’s why you know when I built the business case for empathy in the first empathy book, the Empathy Edge, that was all about the ROI and all the research and data that show that it increases collaboration, it increases engagement, innovation, performance, customer loyalty, all of that. But to your point, what I’m talking about a lot now is this idea that empathy also enables you to navigate transformational change, right? And that’s from my change management background. So to your point, when you can lead people in a way where they feel safe, where they feel heard, where they feel like their values align with you, they’ll go with you anywhere.

Rachael Kelly 13:53

Yes, yes. It’s that quote, right? Like you know, when man knows the why, he can get through anything. Like I’m miss saying it, but it’s like absolutely, yeah. You know, absolutely. Yeah. When I when I feel connected to you, and I connect to the mission, then I’m going to get through those moments of instability and ambiguity, the VUCA world right around us, and it certainly is right now.

Maria Ross 14:17

Oh my gosh, yeah. People feel that. So, so what does it look like to create safe spaces within organizations? Can you give us some examples from your client work and what you’ve seen be successful?

Rachael Kelly 14:28

Yes,

Maria Ross 14:28

and we’ve talked a lot about psychological safety in various episodes on this show, but really give us give us from your experience and your examples the link between that and performance and innovation.

Rachael Kelly 14:41

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’ll give one of a client that is very active that we’re working through this as we speak, but I’ll keep it anonymous. We were started engaged with this client when there was a situation with a leader, exiting leader, had really created toxicity in the organization, and had been there for several years. And this was an organization as the leadership team had been together several years, and they’d grown, but not they’d grown steadily. So you know, overall, a healthy business, right? Right. But has huge potential, and so leader, you know, we help with the leader, you know, exiting in that transition, right? So there’s usually like a crisis or scenario, like hey, I need help with this and restructuring the organization, right? But as we approached that, it was one-on-one conversations with key leaders and holding that safe space for them in the moment, creating that literally in the moment, and hearing from them what was really on their mind, what the things were that were holding them back, and a lot of it stemmed from behaviors that have been driven by the situation over years. These neural pathways that we talk about with survivors and trauma. Well, and then you’re triggered by it because you’re just expecting it. Even if someone comes and says, “I’m not going to do that, it’s like your body’s going to react. Yes, Totally right, absolutely. This stuff happens in the workplace, and people it holds people back. So then, fast forward to like, okay, so created that safety, handled the hard situation, and held the space, talking about that and modeling for the CEO. Here’s how you hold a safe space with people, and how we have the conversation. So there were one-on-ones, and then there were some group, right? Like facilitated conversations as we were building through the next what the structure and strategy should be moving forward. So

Maria Ross 16:30

you were coaching them on how to have those conversations first, not just like, “Hey, go have a safe conversation. It was working with them first of like, “How do you have a safe conversation, especially when people have their guard up,

Rachael Kelly 16:42

yeah.

Maria Ross 16:43

And I’m curious if there’s any little nuggets you can share with us because I think that’s the crux of it. Is people there’s many people, not everyone, who want to build that psychologically safe space, but given patterns, given the legacy of the relationship that’s there, they don’t know what to do going in on a Monday with this renewed desire to create a safe space, what do I actually say? What do I actually do? How do I lead into this? Because they’re not going to share their honest viewpoints if I’m from going from a toxic environment to all of a sudden someone’s asking them, “What do you think about this? Yeah, they’re not necessarily going to tell you the truth. So, is there anything very specific or tactical that you could share that worked well for those conversations?

Rachael Kelly 17:27

Yes, there are a few things. So, one was modeling it with the CEO and the executive team and coach, and then explaining to them, even like debriefing with them on that conversation with them. Uh huh. So experiencing, yeah, yeah, role like like role playing real time, and then giving them some of the lead in conversations. Like, okay, so I’m sensing this, or I saw this with this meeting. You know, how are you thinking about addressing that and coaching them through how they were thinking? Giving and the a lot of times it’s just asking questions and listening.

Maria Ross 18:02

100%

Rachael Kelly 18:03

How I noticed this,

Maria Ross 18:05

right?

Rachael Kelly 18:05

Am I, you know, am I internalizing that, right? How should I synthesize that? How are you really feeling about this? So it would be giving them key practical questions where they could dig in, yeah. The coaching through that, and then orchestrating in some of the team meetings, intentionally pulling out what some of the underlying concerns were and not letting them get away with not.

Maria Ross 18:29

Oh, yeah! Like let’s not gloss over this. Let’s talk about it.

Rachael Kelly 18:31

We’re going to talk about it, and then we’re going to debrief and you know make sure we were we we process through that right in a healthy in a super healthy way, and it really enabled the speed, you know, by which the team then built their strategic plan, and they are off to the races. And now we’re helping them with other things,

Maria Ross 18:48

right? Well, and I I want to point out that idea of speed because the the biggest barrier I see to leaders even learning these skills are like I don’t have time to have these conversations and to do the coaching and to learn, we just need to move. Like we’ve got to make our quarterly number right. But what I’m hearing, and I’d love to hear your response when you get that from leaders, because I’m sure you get that all the time. But what I’m also hearing is that you have to go slow to go fast.

Rachael Kelly 19:16

Yes, it’s both. In fact, I even say this to myself. Okay, like I don’t have time. I gotta make payroll. I gotta da da da. Yeah, yeah. Like I don’t have time. But we do. It’s in that. It doesn’t actually take a tremendous amount of time to be empathetic. It takes being present in the moment. Yeah, and being present for that person, right? And really hearing what they have to say and taking a moment and thinking about them, you’re already with them. You’re already doing right, right. You already have your leadership meetings, uh huh, right. You already so it’s not about creating a bunch of extra processes or a bunch of extra tools. It’s about energy and focus and presence. And being receive in that moment

Maria Ross 20:04

edgy focus and presence. I’m writing that down. Sorry.

Rachael Kelly 20:06

No, absolutely. And then it becomes data that informs you as the leader,

Maria Ross 20:12

right?

Rachael Kelly 20:13

So you can make better decisions. So I would argue it actually speeds things up tremendously, right? When you have empathy, because accountability without empathy is causes burnout. Yeah, empathy without accountability causes chaos.

Maria Ross 20:27

Is a daycare. There was a quote I saw once that empathy without accountability is a daycare. Accountability without empathy is a war camp. Right. Yes. So you got to go somewhere in the middle. Yeah. No, but I love this because, and it’s also you know something I always have to remind myself too of just that if you do make the time to just spruce up your learning and strengthen your empathy muscle with some coaching with some videos read a book I’ve got a book I can recommend to people right but if you just I know or yeah or my book, but yeah, yes, but yeah. So this idea of just spend the 10 or 20 minutes that you spend with that person will actually reap way more rewards later than if you try to just pretend it doesn’t exist, or deny their experience, or just say, just I don’t want to hear it. Get to work, right? You’re going to waste so many hours and weeks and months, if you don’t just stop for a second and have that conversation, and if you don’t feel like you’re good at it, to your point, just listen, just listen and repeat back what they’re telling you.

Rachael Kelly 21:34

Yes,

Maria Ross 21:34

what I hear you saying is this

Rachael Kelly 21:37

Yeah

Maria Ross 21:37

Is that your experience? Wow, that sounds hard. How can I help? Yeah, right. You don’t have to have all the answers, and it’s just

Rachael Kelly 21:43

right.

Maria Ross 21:44

And I, I’m thinking back to a great episode I did with Claude Silver, who is the chief heart officer at VaynerX, and she is there to basically be almost like a well, she’s the heart of the organization, but people get sent to her slash go to her when they need support about leading with who they are, or leading with heart, or they’re struggling with something. She’s almost like a full-time executive coach within the organization, and I asked her how she keeps that from bleeding into a therapy session, and she told me that oh, our time slots are 15 minutes. We have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It doesn’t mean we can’t meet again, but people know that this is this is the container that we can spend on this, and even if it’s just the 15 minutes they need, sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes it’s not. They’ll come back another day, another week.

Rachael Kelly 22:32

Yeah,

Maria Ross 22:33

and so it’s it’s really interesting to me that if you just devote that time to putting aside the papers, you know, closing your laptop screen and saying, “Just tell me what’s going on for you. Absolutely, that’s the first place you need to start. Even if you’re uncomfortable with, like, well, I don’t know what to say if they start telling me about their personal lives or or the issues they’re having with someone at work. It’s just about listening and asking reflective questions back.

Rachael Kelly 22:58

Exactly, you’re not there to solve it, and you don’t have to solve it. And that person is not looking to you to solve it. It’s like you know when your partner says something and says like, “Look, I don’t need you to solve this problem. Is what she says. I need you to solve this problem. I don’t need you to be the CEO. I need you to listen and let me vent. Okay, I can do that. My husband

Maria Ross 23:15

actually does that to me. I’m the one that’s that I go into problem solving mode. He’s like, “I’m just, I’m just venting.

Rachael Kelly 23:22

I just need to. I just need a space, safe space to process that, so that I can continue to do my work. So I think creating those containers, helping leaders to understand that and practice those skills.

Maria Ross 23:34

Yeah,

Rachael Kelly 23:34

absolutely. And starting each of those meetings, like each, we don’t take a lot of time to do this, but starting each meeting, checking in. How are you doing?

Maria Ross 23:42

Yeah, how’s everybody like level set? So I know if you’ve had a bad day or a bad weekend, I know why you’re biting my head off later.

Rachael Kelly 23:49

Right.

Maria Ross 23:49

I have context, and I’m not assuming all these things about you that

Rachael Kelly 23:53

right

Maria Ross 23:53

you hate my idea or you’re a mean person or whatever. It’s just like oh, they you know they didn’t get any sleep this weekend, or

Rachael Kelly 24:01

right,

Maria Ross 24:01

whatever you know. I don’t create

Rachael Kelly 24:03

a story. There’s you brought up a good thing that we talk about a lot, and we self-identify because you know we’re all many of us are trauma survivors that have been you know doing this doing this work, and so and we work with trauma survivors helping them build careers, so they work in the hive as well. Yeah, so we will talk about that. Like, hey, I’ve got a really heavy thing going on right now. Like, I just left this survivor that is dealing with this horrific situation. Da da da da da. I’m feeling activated. So if you see my energy right now, like that, I’m a little bit. Please know that’s what’s going on.

Maria Ross 24:38

Right. It’s not you. Yeah.

Rachael Kelly 24:39

It’s not you. That also doesn’t mean I get to mess around and not do my job. So like that’s the other side of this. Like this is a container.

Maria Ross 24:47

Yeah,

Rachael Kelly 24:47

not an excuse. It’s helping give context so that we can move through energetically together.

Maria Ross 24:53

Yeah, yeah. I interviewed a woman named Catherine Cooley who does some trauma informed consulting, and she had this great mantra. Or phrase that I’ve been sharing with a lot of people when she talked about the stories we tell ourselves, right? To ask yourself, I feel X because I’m telling myself Y because I really need Z. Ooh, isn’t that good? That’s really good. Yeah, and I’m like I’ve been I’ve been playing with that as like an experiment of like why am I being reactionary right now why am I why am I taking that feedback so personally what is it I actually need oh I feel underappreciated because what I really need is validation and so I’m taking the feedback personally or you know whatever it is the story but it’s again it’s the story you’re telling yourself.

Rachael Kelly 25:42

Yes,

Maria Ross 25:43

right. Yes,

Rachael Kelly 25:43

there’s usually fear at the core core of that.

Maria Ross 25:47

Always, always, yeah. So I want to talk about AI and the use of it at Hive Smart and Hive Health and all the places to amplify empathy at scale because we’ve had several people on the show that have been AI innovators, techno optimists. Some of them working at companies where they’re working on empathic AI to help in fields where there’s shortages of people, whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s counselors, whether it’s companionship, all of that. So tell me how you are using AI for yourselves and with your clients to scale empathy,

Rachael Kelly 26:21

yeah, a few ways. So one is we have definitely thought about the governance model, right? Like just starting from a safety standpoint and from a risk standpoint, we know that there’s important governance, humans in the loop, right? Like we created structure that’s connected, that’s enterprise, that’s secure, that enables us to use the key tools that we’ve selected, and enables us to use it across the organization. That really speeds us up in terms of what we can deliver to clients and when, and keeps us focused around like the human part of that interaction.

Maria Ross 26:55

So, can you give us an example of what you mean by that, like a process example or something?

Rachael Kelly 27:00

Sure. One of the things that we’re working on-I’ll give you a couple different examples-but one of the things we’re working on is an L and D implementation leadership training around the Hive model, and that’s helping the client that we talked about. It’s helped a couple different clients elevate their leadership for transformation and create the leadership skills based on this hive leadership model and behaviors, uh huh, that came from our closed data lake of hive minds and all of our recorded meetings and and key content that was anonymized. Right, we protect data from going. How did we actually do this? What is the leadership? How does this relate to how successful beehives grow and develop? Because there’s actually principles of how those hives work, and we applied it and developed this model, right? So this was like over a year, a little over a year of content, right? Create the model, generated that model, developed that, customized it for the client, implemented it into their systems. That part took 20 hours.

Maria Ross 28:07

So they have it that it pops up in real time when they need it. Is it situational?

Rachael Kelly 28:12

It’s a develop. It’s a situational coach. Oh, it’s the leadership program. So it’s a leadership program through their LMS.

Maria Ross 28:18

Uh huh.

Rachael Kelly 28:18

Work designed live workshops that we’re facilitating and recording, so we can figure out how to then scale that. Right, a leader’s guide, a leader’s guide, and a facilitator’s guide, and we’re training the person who will carry that forward and repeat this with their internally, so they’re not dependent on us. Right, giving them the IP, I’m licensing them the IP, right? It took like that stuff used to take years to develop. Yeah, it took hours. The initial data capture was over a long time period because I wanted. I really, honestly, at first, I was like, “How are we leading? Yeah, though, like, yeah, real time. And this, this, these meetings, these captured tears. You know, tough conversations. We’re going through life stuff. You know, right, really hard. And one of our co-founders is a beehive keeper too, as as well as an operator, an actual beehive

Maria Ross 29:11

keeper. Yeah,

Rachael Kelly 29:11

actual beehive. So, like we have, and we’ve got this really neat mixture of brains, right? So that was that’s an example of yeah, we used AI to amplify empathy because the model is based on the hive clarity, courage. Yep, you know collaboration includes empathy in that.

Maria Ross 29:34

Yeah,

Rachael Kelly 29:34

so that’s one way that we’re scaling.

Maria Ross 29:36

That’s amazing.

Rachael Kelly 29:37

Another way that I’m really excited about that I’m testing is I have been testing a tool that we’re using with survivors going through really hard cases, really like litigious.

Maria Ross 29:48

So this is on your nonprofit side

Rachael Kelly 29:49

on the nonprofit.

Maria Ross 29:50

Okay, got it.

Rachael Kelly 29:51

And tools where that can help them capture key information, help them synthesize, so that they can keep the legal process on track. They can. Themselves because you’re like your executive functioning is are

Maria Ross 30:04

are zero yeah when you’re in you’re when you’re in trauma and fear yeah you’re nothing’s online yeah

Rachael Kelly 30:09

nothing’s online plus the gaslight you’re like you’re like I don’t know what real is right

Maria Ross 30:13

right yeah

Rachael Kelly 30:14

so it’s a tool that helps you real time synthesize right understand you I’m working out all the guardrails, right? You got to yeah. But is it like

Maria Ross 30:24

an app they can use?

Rachael Kelly 30:26

It will be.

Maria Ross 30:27

It will be. Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

Rachael Kelly 30:29

Yes, we’re testing it right now with like four other people after I seized it.

Maria Ross 30:32

This is what I mean. I interviewed a woman named Corey Lathan, who’s one of the people that’s an AI innovator. She’s done phenomenal work with like everything from the military to like projects helping autistic children embrace empathy, like, and she called herself a techno optimist, and that’s why I’ve been using that term since I interviewed her. This is an example of using the technology for good, like any tool. In the wrong hands, it can be used for evil, but in the right hands, we can come up with such creative things like this. And by the way, human beings thought of doing this.

Rachael Kelly 31:06

Yes, with AI. Yes, it’s an amplification. Yeah, yeah. It’s not. It’s like the iPhone. I mean, the iPhone’s a different thing, right? But I

Maria Ross 31:15

know I go through my days with an 11-year-old of like cursing Steve Jobs for inventing the iPhone, and then also, like, oh, this is so great! I can find my way around any city I go to in the world. Like, right, right, right, right. Yeah, totally. I get that’s exactly right. That’s exactly

Rachael Kelly 31:30

right. Yeah, but you know, there’s a safety that can be happen, especially with some of the coaching tools. So it’s there’s things that have to be done, but it’s very powerful.

Maria Ross 31:38

That is amazing. Oh my gosh! All right, I want to ask one final question because I work a lot. Not only do I work with operational leaders, but I get calls and emails and speak with HR leaders as well. And it’s funny because you know what I what I try to tell people is yes, I’ve got like a leadership workshop for you, right? But it’s not going to solve all your culture problems. Like I would love to think that my one two hour workshop can solve all the ills of your culture, but it’s got to be part of an extended program and part of a development and part of a hiring process. It’s all got to be integrated. So I’m curious to know what, from your perspective, you think HR gets wrong about empathy and how to design people systems that are both because this is what I’m all about compassionate and accountable. What have you seen from your experience? What’s your hot take on that?

Rachael Kelly 32:28

Yeah, my take is HR leaders need to be speak more about how empathy is a strategy and it is a hard skill. This is like this is

Maria Ross 32:38

bottom line impact.

Rachael Kelly 32:39

Yes, yeah, bottom line impact. This is it. Actually, accelerates. It’s a force amplifier. So it’s not about giving people tissues. It’s a.

Maria Ross 32:49

I always say it’s not about crying on the floor with your employees.

Rachael Kelly 32:53

Right. That’s not what it is.

Maria Ross 32:54

iYeah.

Rachael Kelly 32:55

That’s not what it is. So HR leaders need to talk about the business investment thesis, the business performance, how this, how they’re driving business performance-that is really key, right? And I think as they’re then doing the work, the the some of the work product, right? We don’t, we don’t, we rarely get hired for culture. We get hired to go implement global HRAS systems and centralize the entire, you know, how people operate. Yeah, culture work, right? That’s change management work. We well, it’s changing when

Maria Ross 33:27

it changes how people work. That’s culture. Culture is how we get work done.

Rachael Kelly 33:31

Yes, right. So energy.

Maria Ross 33:33

Yeah,

Rachael Kelly 33:33

it’s energy. So focusing on the energy, building it into the work that they’re doing versus it being a separate initiative. You layer it in, yeah. So then it’s connected to the business strategy, and talk to the business leaders. Talk shop,

Maria Ross 33:49

yeah.

Rachael Kelly 33:49

Talk shop.

Maria Ross 33:50

100% I think that’s where a lot of HR leaders struggle is because they’re not talking about the ROI. They’re not talking about the business benefits. Which yes, I get it because this is my world too. It’s like yes, it’s the right thing to do, but that’s why you have to build the business case, and that’s how you’re going to get taken seriously to get a seat at the table, especially when it comes to conversations around AI and what it’s doing to organizational structure, what it’s doing to organization organizational processes. I did a joint webinar with Kim Bohr from Spark Effect a few months ago, where it was specifically for HR, it was like how to get your seat at the table in the AI conversation, and it was about a little bit of tough love. Of you’ve got to learn to speak the language, you’ve got to be showing how this is providing business value, not just how it’s making everybody happy.

Rachael Kelly 34:38

Right. There’s a million things as a CEO that I can work on, and as a board that I can fund, I can’t do it all, right? Right. So it’s got to be the things that I’m trying to make happen. It’s got to be a driver of that. And when you make that a driver of it, like I remember going through pandemic with like no dollars and saying to the you guys, look, you got 100% ROI on what I’m doing here. It costs you nothing, and you get everything back. So we’re gonna dye his hair pink right now because that motivates the team. All right, right.

Maria Ross 35:04

Okay. Trust me. Yeah.

Rachael Kelly 35:08

Percent return on that. Okay.

Maria Ross 35:10

Oh my gosh, I love it. Okay. So what’s a final gem as we wrap up that you can share with organizations who are who are looking at? We know we want to have a human centric leadership model. Maybe, maybe if I can narrow it down for you specifically, a CEO who’s like, I feel overwhelmed and daunted about fundamentally, potentially, I’m coming into an organization and I’ve got to change the culture of the organization to be more human centered. Where’s a good place they can start, or what are some actions they can take at least to get the ball rolling in the right direction.

Rachael Kelly 35:44

The first thing is with the CEO is assessing the leadership team and the values. I mean, it’s whatever the CEO and the leadership team, whatever that dynamic is, that becomes the culture of the organization. So, if you want a human-centered culture and you want to change the culture. It starts looking internally at yourself and how you’re showing up, yep, and asking what messages you want to send. And then it starts with that leadership team and assessing each of those individuals and the collective, the hive, and looking at how are we functioning, where is the dysfunction, where is there alignment, where is there not? Right, developing that that game plan and not waiting. If you wait, you like it compounds fast, especially with now add in with the technology capabilities and the speed at which we can go.

Maria Ross 36:33

Yeah,

Rachael Kelly 36:34

it amplifies.

Maria Ross 36:35

Well, it’s the the speed at which we can go or the speed at which we can crash into the barrier. Yes, right. Yes, you can just make bad decisions faster. Yes. That’s exactly right. So let’s not do that. Oh my gosh, Rachael, I could talk to you so much longer. I have like a billion more questions for you, but we’ve got to wrap. So I know listeners will want to find out more about your work, and I will put all the links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s maybe exercising right now, as they’re listening to us, where’s the best place they can find out information?

Rachael Kelly 37:05

Best place to reach us is at our website is www.hivesmartconsulting.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. You’ll see me. You’ll see Hive Smart, Hive Strong, and Hive Health.

Maria Ross 37:17

Wonderful. And my PSA with LinkedIn. Make sure you send her a note that you heard her on this podcast, so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Thank you so much for your insights today, and for the work that you’re doing, and for really proving this model of being both purpose driven and profit driven at the same time. Because, Lord knows, our world needs more of that right now. So, thank you,

Rachael Kelly 37:39

thank you, thank you very much,

Maria Ross 37:41

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 theempathyedge.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.

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

Peter Swimm: Stop AI-ing the Wrong Things — Put Your Humans First

We’re all so busy “AI-ing” everything that nobody stops to ask — are we actually solving the right problems for the real humans on the other end?

Peter Swimm is a conversational AI product lead and solutions expert with nearly three decades of experience building and scaling technology that actually works for humans. Peter got his start in tech in 1996 teaching communities how to use the internet through the Chicago Public Library — and that people-first foundation has shaped everything since. He’s launched and scaled conversational AI products at companies like Pando Networks and led product strategy at Howdy, where he helped build the Slack API ecosystem before Microsoft acquired the team. He has since done enterprise conversational AI work for Walmart, Loews, Rabobank, and UnitedHealth Care, and at Microsoft Copilot Studio helped spearhead enterprise-grade generative AI capabilities. His firm, Toilville, is AI-aware but technology agnostic — because Peter believes the best asset any organization has is the human minds that shape it.

Peter shares why so much technology is being deployed in ways that are shortsighted and frankly unempathetic — cutting costs without actually solving the real problem. Take a listen.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How to embed empathy-driven requirements directly into your technology specs
What it means to design systems to enable dignified escalation
Why the best solutions never cross the line from helper to surveillance
Why you need to understand how work actually happens before implementing AI in your organization
What operational compassion at scale really looks like in practice

“(Many) clients don’t know how work happens today, and so when they go to automate it, they have no A and B to compare against how it was before. Every company has soft-skilled people that are secretly holding the company together through sheer will.” — Peter Swimm

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! https://retreat.therisingmastermind.com/

Episode References:

MIT Study: These Human Capabilities Complement AI Shortcomings

About Peter Swimm, Founder and CEO, Toilville:

Peter L. Swimm is a conversational AI product lead and solutions expert who started in tech in 1996, teaching the community how to use the internet through the Chicago Public Library.

Since then, Peter has built and scaled conversational products from early adoption to enterprise durability, including work at Pando Networks (Intel Capital) and launching the Slack API ecosystem at Howdy, where Peter led product strategy across Botkit and Botkit Studio before Microsoft acquired XOXCO, the team behind Botkit and the Howdy Slackbot.

Toilville has supported conversational AI work for major enterprises including Walmart, Loews, Rabobank, and UnitedHealth Care, and at Microsoft Copilot Studio helped spearhead enterprise-grade generative and conversational capabilities, spanning connector ecosystems, customization of language understanding, and architectures for LLM-powered actions.

Toilville is AI-Aware but technology-agnostic and believes that the best asset any organization has is the human minds that shape it.

Connect with Peter Swimm:

Toilville: toilville.com or peoplemakeitbetter.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/peterswimm

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. We’re all so busy AIing everything that nobody stopped to ask: Are we actually solving the right problems for the real humans on the other end? My guest today is Peter Swim, a conversational AI product lead and solutions expert with nearly three decades of experience building and scaling technology that actually works for humans, Peter got his start in tech in 1996, teaching communities how to use the internet through the Chicago Public Library, and that People First Foundation has shaped everything since. He’s launched and scaled conversational AI products at companies like Pando Networks, backed by Intel Capital, and led product strategy at Howdy, where he helped build the Stack API ecosystem before Microsoft acquired the team. He’s since done enterprise conversational AI work for Walmart, Lowe’s, Rabobank, and United Healthcare, and at Microsoft Copilot Studio, helped spearhead enterprise-grade generative AI capabilities. His firm, Toilville, is AI-aware but technology-agnostic, because Peter believes the best asset any organization has is the human minds that shape it. Today, Peter shares why so much technology is being deployed in ways that are short-sighted and frankly unempathetic, cutting costs without actually solving the real problem. We discuss how to embed empathy-driven requirements directly into your technology specs. Why you must design for what he calls dignified escalation, knowing exactly when a human needs to step in, so customers aren’t left fighting your organizational complexity. He also gets into why the best solutions never cross the line from helper to surveillance. And one of my favorite insights from this conversation that many organizations are simply AIing the wrong use cases entirely because they don’t understand how work actually happens, and we talk about what operational compassion at scale really looks like in practice. If you’re a leader making decisions about technology, automation, or AI, this conversation is an important one to sanity check yourself. Take a listen. Welcome, Peter Swim, to the Empathy Edge podcast. I am excited to have this conversation with you about bringing humans back into technology, because that has been the drum I’ve been beating for a really long time, ever since I was in change management early in my career. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about bringing humans in, empathy-driven requirements for tech projects, all the good things. So, welcome to the show.

Peter Swimm 03:22

Hey, thanks for having me, Maria.

Maria Ross 03:24

So, before we get going, as we do with everyone, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this work of being an AI expert and a product leader, someone with a lot of experience in tech. How did you get here, and what makes you most passionate about it.

Peter Swimm 03:39

iYou know, I think a lot of my career trajectory has been falling upwards because my first job in high school, my first job in high school, I was I worked at the library and at the library they just got internet computers and it’s 1996 and so they moved all the car catalogs of the way and they put a couple of Packer Bell computers up with internet connection and I was teaching seniors and people from the community how to search for stuff on the internet.

Maria Ross 04:01

Nice.

Peter Swimm 04:02

And so, like people, the library had its audience, and they wanted to learn, and they understand the concept and pedagogy of learning stuff. And I think a lot of the hype around the internet, which surprise continues its day, tries to paint the internet as a new paradigm when it’s really just a tweak of an existing paradigm, like web pages or magazines or card catalogs, it’s all kind of the same, and that really stuck with me as I started getting into tech and getting more and more jobs, almost in like emperor has no clothes way.

Maria Ross 04:30

Right.

Peter Swimm 04:31

And so over the years, I really became focused on the intersection of like human desire, where it meets the edge of technology to do stuff. And as I became a product owner, it really became clear to me that like technical requirements sometimes get lost in the weeds from the initial human need and desire to the point where the requirement becomes more important than the outcome.

Maria Ross 04:50

Yeah,

Peter Swimm 04:51

and when we get into things like conversational AI now with AI, we’re so close to the wish to the execution of the wish that we have to really. Really, be careful when we execute the wish that the execution is going to result in what we want to do, and that is basically the cornerstone of my consultancy. Is there’s a lot of opportunity for business people to use AI technology to expand and increase the reach of their people, but you need to make sure it happens on your terms and it needs to happen with your outcomes.

Maria Ross 05:21

So, Peter, I love what you’re saying because, as I mentioned to you before we started recording, I started my career in change management, and so much of the technology implementation became about the features and the functions and the widgets. And the coding teams lost sight of what they were actually trying to help humans do with the solution, and they would create these methods and these instructions that were not intuitive at all. And my job as change management was to help translate this so that users could adopt it. And it’s like, no, it’s not just oh, press Control Alt Six exclamation point, and then they can find the menu. It’s like they’re not going to know that, even if they get trained in the moment, they need to be able to use this seamlessly. So, how can we design the technology solution to meet the business requirements of what the person actually needs to accomplish? And it doesn’t matter all the whiz bang features and gadgets and bells and whistles you can add onto it. It’s does this help them accomplish their job and achieve their goal. So, I love what you’re saying here about this idea of keeping the human front and center when you’re working on technology implementations. You talk about empathy-driven requirements for technology projects, AI projects. What do you mean by that? And can you give us some examples?

Peter Swimm 06:38

Sure. I think a lot of a lot of technical challenges in tech are focused so much around user stories to the point where you have valid user stories and invalid user stories, and things that are invalid are considered orthogonal to the result of the valid ones, and is very easy for people to marginalize the out groups of people who fall into the other bucket as an edge case or something that doesn’t affect the most of the people, or not the desired outcome. And what you see now, a lot of companies are AIing their products. Is one they don’t understand why people use their products, and so they’re AIing the wrong cases. So technology often is misused and used by people in different ways than is intended. And if you put that process more on rails and stricter, you make the program less useful for the people off your beaten track.

Maria Ross 07:31

Right.

Peter Swimm 07:32

And because you don’t understand what portion of your audience that is, you could be losing a lot of people with your new features that come out every six months. It drift farther and farther away from this audience that may like your project. I think a lot like during COVID, the United Kingdom tracked all the COVID cases in Excel, and the reason they did that because probably it’s hard to spin up a database and it’s hard to like get access to stuff and everyone can do in Excel and then they hit the limit on Excel tables.

Maria Ross 08:00

Yeah,

Peter Swimm 08:00

because there’s it’s not meant to be a database,

Maria Ross 08:03

right?

Peter Swimm 08:03

And so is that is that the product’s fault or the user’s fault? I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. Like people use what they had, and you know you need to be acknowledge that they maybe you know as a product owner, I’m sure you’ve seen this where you watch a usability test, and that’s like watching like an alien from outer space putting the mouse in their mouth and not understanding why is he not clicking this program right? Yeah, it’s because you come so focused on design and the pattern of it that you don’t think that like oh this is an open field like a game system and users we have very intuitive pattern matching brains and we won’t pick up the manual we’ll just try to like figure it out, and there’s desire lines all throughout your application that maybe a better design pattern than you thought was the best design pattern.

Maria Ross 08:48

So how do you how do you get to those empathy driven requirements?

Peter Swimm 08:53

One, I think you need to make people requirements as strict as legal compliance gates are, or accessibility requirements are, or other things that you can’t ship without. I think these kind of things are the first thing to go when you’re trying to hit a deadline in a big company. And so, if your end goal is the program must be easy to use and delightful, and you’re like, well, you know, delightful is not really bound, and that’s you know you can’t really measure that, so we’re just going to like wing it. It’s just like, no, you got to find some sort of smoke signal to tie to that and understand that, and realize the cost of putting off human-friendly and human-desirable outcomes. Like for example, I work with a lot of clients that work in contact centers, and the main analytic that people own contact centers are looking for with AI is something called containment, and containment is not talking to a real person, and which makes sense, right? Because a phone call is $5 a phone call; they know how much it costs, and you want to keep those costs down. But when does the $5 keeping the cost down is an. Information disbursement problem or a company greed problem, right?

Maria Ross 10:04

Yeah,

Peter Swimm 10:05

and that is like it’s hard when you make technical KPIs the outcome versus empathetic KPIs.

Maria Ross 10:12

Right, and so what are some of the ways that I know you’ve talked about shadowing, you’ve talked about day in the life research. Can you explain how that actually works for folks that are building these tech solutions.

Peter Swimm 10:22

Yeah, you know, I find a lot of my clients don’t know how work happens today, and so when they go to automate it, they have no A and B to compare against how it is before, which is fine. You know, I like to build that as part of this and create benchmarks. But you know, you need to have, you know, I think every company has soft skilled people that are secretly holding the company together through sheer will.

Maria Ross 10:44

Oh, of course, yeah.

Peter Swimm 10:46

And you know, I don’t think the goal should be to wow. I need 20 of Mike or 20 of Cindy. It should be how do I make Cindy the editor-in-chief of a fleet of tools that don’t waste their time doing the stuff that’s easy for her and optimizes her ability to handle really complex situations and orchestrate them, and that resonates really well with employees and you know heads of contact centers, unless so with CFOs and CTOs,

Maria Ross 11:14

yeah,

Peter Swimm 11:14

because it puts a lot of emphasis on your people and your customers in a way that’s probably uncomfortable to technologists or engineers,

Maria Ross 11:23

right? Well, I mean, it’s the short-term gain of like we’re cutting costs. I can’t remember the name of the company last year that tried to replace all of their customer service agents with AI, and it was a total debacle. And they had to bring people back because it wasn’t about the customer experience; it was just about them trying to cut costs. And so you’re making these decisions that look good on a balance sheet. But what are you doing to the long term revenue and long term sustainability of the of the business? You’re degrading it, and then now now not only do you have to get back on track, you have to regain trust from your customers and from your employees. Right? Imagine that company trying to hire people back. Someone going, well, I don’t know. Are you going to fire this position again? Right? Yeah, yeah. You guys don’t seem to know what you’re doing, right? Yeah. So I think that short term, that short sightedness, even from the most experienced executive, they’re trying to jump on the tech train. They’re trying to jump on the AI train, and they’re not thinking through the people component, as you’re saying. How do your clients do? Because this is something I talked about in my first book, The Empathy Edge, of getting in the trenches and where it’s possible, getting into the experience of your customer, of your client, right? Whether it’s going through your own buying process on your website or calling customer service, or the one that I wish every CEO of an airline would do is go fly incognito and coach and see what that’s like, right? What’s a realistic way that they can do day in the life research?

Peter Swimm 12:47

You know, I think one of it is they have people in the trenches already. They don’t have to put on a fake mustache and go undercover boss. Yeah, like they just need to empower the people on the ground to filter out the relations. Like in my early days in startup, I did a lot of support, and I think support is an incredible place to understand where the rubber hits the road of your stack and the people and what they expect. And I was very blessed to be in a company where the CEO’s desk abutted mine and the CTO’s best desk, and so I could just say, “Hey, Tom, I think there’s something wrong with this, right? Yeah. Look at this email. This is a good example of something that is not-it’s not a bug, you know. Like it’s just like a annoyance.

Maria Ross 13:27

Yeah,

Peter Swimm 13:27

it’s an annoyance, and it’s just like we’re making this unnecessarily hard. Yes. You know, very few companies are segmented with that sort of opacity between the orgs, and so I think this is why like AI is very appealing to sea level people because they think that’s all just like the sausage making, but really it’s the research and it’s also you know the customer signals and the business signals. And if you don’t have a realize, you know, I think companies are optimized now for funding and exits and not so much as customer retention and year-over-year growth. So it’s very hard to like say, yeah. If we pay attention for three quarters, the next six quarters will be that much smarter.

Maria Ross 14:07

Right, and three quarters is like a lifetime to these companies. Like they were like, I might not even be here in three quarters, right? Which is right, right. And that that is my fundamental frustration with the way companies are led these days is that there’s no long-term view. It feels like there’s no long-term view now. There’s a lot of talk out there from different worlds that I’m in, where it’s like, okay, there is no more five-year plan, there is no more 10-year plan because things are changing so rapidly. But you do need contingency plans. You need scenario planning so that we know that we can pivot quickly if scenario one doesn’t pan out, but scenario two is is the reality, right? So I want to talk quickly. I kind of got off on a tangent there. You talk about this idea of respectful human in the loop. So can you talk? Can you explain what that means and how you how you build trust? When you’re trying to automate,

Peter Swimm 15:01

sure. I think a lot of people who, especially those who are part of the system that is human in loop, have issues with the system, is when it crosses the line from being a helper to being surveillance or being like second guessing. Like people really criticize ChatGPT as like autocomplete on steroids, and you know, like it’s telling me stuff I don’t mean to complete and stuff like that. And so I think that comes from these products being made by people who don’t have a human resources background, humanities background. I use ChatGPT experimentally, and the other day it started doing BuzzFeed type breadcrumbs at the end of conversations. Like, would you like five tips about ways to avoid this behavior? But like, no, I asked you the first time to tell me the five tips. Don’t string this out into a conversation. Like, yeah, you know, you’re Google, you’re not BuzzFeed, and I think they kind of misunderstand the usage of the product. So Human a Loop to me is like r2 d2 and Star Wars, where he’s you don’t even notice it’s there doing anything until like it does something that saves your butt, right? And it doesn’t, it’s not talking to you. It’s not trying to ask you about your day or any kind of artificial thing. It’s just giving you information in time. Like my dentist, she has a really great system that pulls up a Facebook card or the caller whenever they call, and so you’ll see my face and my last dental appointment and my next dental appointment and the notes, so she knows everything about me. So she can say, “Hey, Peter, how’s it going? How’s your daughter? Right. And I don’t think it’s how that root canal go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. How you feeling? And it’s just like, yeah, it’s helpful. Like that’s the kind of like empathy I think that is useful. Where like here’s five facts about the person that you may never talk to before, but the organization knows. So as representative of the organization, this information is helpful to you in solving problems.

Maria Ross 16:53

I love that. I love that idea of looking at it as a helper versus surveillance. That is key right there. Explain to us a little bit about designing systems to enable dignified escalation. What does that mean?

Peter Swimm 17:06

I think a lot of times we force people to navigate our organization chart in a way that is not like it’s not like escalation of concerns. Like you’re like you okay, I’m talking to front counter person, I’m talking to the manager, and I’m talking to CEO. That’s okay, but I think like if you’re having artificial experience or tech-driven experience, you shouldn’t like make people endure the pain of having to transfer someone to. I’ve like I’ve worked for companies so big that each contact center is the size of a company’s contact center, and they have 18 of them, and so you may get passed around, and it’s the same network and the same system. Like, why can’t a person just like, you know, why can’t a person just say I’m Walmart or I’m so and so and you know like

Maria Ross 17:51

yeah

Peter Swimm 17:51

get the information and

Maria Ross 17:53

yeah

Peter Swimm 17:53

I think this is kind of like where technology overrules the empathy side of things where I called the phone number for Walmart I didn’t call the phone number for sub department, sub department, sub department.

Maria Ross 18:04

Right.

Peter Swimm 18:04

And if you’re going to present yourself as a unified thing, don’t put your complexity on me, you know, as a customer or an employee or whatever. And I think a lot of people they come to me with AI solutions that are very hard because they made it overly hard way back at the beginning of time when they put their org together.

Maria Ross 18:22

Yeah, like I was a management consultant in the ’90s, and this was a problem then. It was the whole like, you know, we’re forcing our customer to navigate our complex org chart versus just give everyone who has access to picking up a phone from a customer the information they need. I mean, and maybe that’s not always realistic, but but the amount of times where it’s you’re getting past and passed and passed, and they’re asking you the same questions. Why is there not a screen following me? Of let me take a second and figure out where you just came from and what your initial question was. And it’s decades we’ve been dealing with that. Will that ever go away?

Peter Swimm 19:00

I mean, we had the opportunity at the beginning of ChatGPT because it has something called a context window, and when I build systems for things, we have ephemeral memory, and I think it works like human memory. We’re just like, okay, you know, it’s today’s the date, and you’re the person, and this is the order, and here’s the facts. Right. So as you get passed around, that little baseball card should bounce around for agent agent, and you should normalize the outcome where a person is like, okay, let me talk, let me send you to the decision maker here, who will ask you some more questions. They’ll know everything we said, and it will be a warm handoff. And the warm handoff problem has been effectively solved for 10 years, but people refuse to build it and use it. And you’ll see, you’ll see it like I’ll go to a website of a technology company that’s announcing new AI technology, and they’ll put a chatbot on it, and it doesn’t even have the same design as the website of the event.

Maria Ross 19:56

Right.

Peter Swimm 19:57

Doesn’t seems to me like you’re not a unified AI company. If all your stacks are completely different, you know

Maria Ross 20:02

exactly.

Peter Swimm 20:03

And I think like a lot of the Occam’s Razor stuff I do with my clients is like, okay, we’re going to cancel these three SaaS services and we’re going to put the data directly in product four. Yeah, you know, because you don’t need those two in middle products anymore because you should just go from email into Salesforce. You don’t need to like pass things around, and it’s safer and it’s more secure, and you’ll cut your bill down. You know, so why not?

Maria Ross 20:29

Yeah, you have talked about a lot of your work is around helping organizations operationalize compassion at scale. What does that mean to you?

Peter Swimm 20:37

I think a lot of it is like every decision you make in the company has a cost, right? And so, like, you can say the customer is always right, and that has a cost. And then along the line, you’d be like, “Wow, the customers are really ripping us off. Let’s make a department. And this is a real, a real department a client had. They had a customer demonology department where they isolated and banned problematic customers.

Maria Ross 20:58

Okay, yeah, no, like you cannot hate your customers.

Peter Swimm 21:03

I mean, like, like it’s one thing to say fraud, but you know, I like I had a job in college where a woman would buy a gallon of milk every week and then return it the day after expired, two thirds drink, and say she got it spoiled.

Maria Ross 21:19

Uh huh.

Peter Swimm 21:19

And so we just gave her new milk, right? And like, it’s milk, you know. Like,

Maria Ross 21:24

right?

Peter Swimm 21:25

She buys hundreds of dollars of groceries, and she like has a little scam she has with us on milk. And I think people should be allowed at the shopping level have to deal with customers, be like, it’s not worth the trouble, right?

Maria Ross 21:36

Have that have that autonomy of like what’s what’s worthwhile and what’s not right? And I’ve always said about customer service policies and how you can make them empathetic or not is don’t design for the exception, design for the rule, and then just the exceptions are going to be there. The fraudsters are going to be there. You’re just going to have to chalk that up as a cost of doing business if you don’t want to piss off all the rest of your customers, right?

Peter Swimm 22:02

Yeah. Well, especially if the goal of your of your contact center is volume, right? Do you really want a person fighting a lost cause for 20 minutes on the phone?

Maria Ross 22:12

Yeah.

Peter Swimm 22:12

You could just like, okay, the minute this phone call costs $5, we’re actually arguing about more than the cost of the phone call.

Maria Ross 22:18

Right.

Peter Swimm 22:18

So let’s cut it loose. And so

Maria Ross 22:21

that’s the thing I notice about Amazon, which it’s so funny. In some cases, they have very empathetic customer service, and other ways the organization is not empathetic. But from a customer service standpoint, all of their customer service agents, no matter where in the world they are, at least in my experience, have been like, “Yeah, just keep the item. We’re going to refund you for the book, or we’re going to refund you for the spoiled food you got from Amazon Fresh, or like there’s no there’s no chain of command they have to go through. They’re empowered to do that and keep me as a happy customer with all the other money that I spend with them, right? And so that process is designed to accommodate, you know, having trust in and seeing the best in your customers, versus there’s going to be some people. There’s going to be point 0000 2% of people that are going to say they didn’t get the item, but they really did. So we need to make a whole policy to punish everybody who says they didn’t get their item. You see what I’m saying? Like it’s no, no, it’s not even worth it.

Peter Swimm 23:20

I mean, you see the same thing with like Medicare fraud or like other things. It’s just like I would rather have 5% fraud than 1% hungry kids. Yeah, you know, as a person, as an organization. And so, like at the end of the day, you’re just like, man, people are stealing all these razors. We better lock them up. It’s like, okay, so every everyone has to wait 20 minutes for the guy the key to be found, and then find the key and unlock it because yeah, you think your profit losses this year are driven by

Maria Ross 23:50

right

Peter Swimm 23:50

slippage.

Maria Ross 23:51

Yeah, that that drives me absolutely bananas at the pharmacies when I go in person. And this is I every time I experience it, I’m like, this is why you guys are losing people to online sales. Like, this is exactly

Peter Swimm 24:04

why. Well, and then you know, like the Target boycott, I think is a really good example. This because if Target was doing everything right and they engendered this boycott, it would probably be less successful. But since people are already half annoyed with them, the boycott is also like, cool. I can have a moral victory as well as an annoyance victory with this company. Yeah. And so, don’t give your customers reasons to hate to leave more than they do. Exactly.

Maria Ross 24:31

Exactly. So I also want to talk about. There’s so many great nuggets that you talk about in your work. You have this idea of a humane incident user experience.

Peter Swimm 24:42

Yeah,

Maria Ross 24:42

is that kind of what we’re talking about right now, or is that something different?

Peter Swimm 24:45

No, I think it’s. I mean, every decision made in a system should be recorded not in a surveillance way, but in an arbitration way, and so you should understand like the acclimation of decisions in the day and the net. Result of that in terms of your company vision and ethics and standard and business and all that stuff, and I think people are thinking like, oh, we need to make sure our employees are productive, and or I need to make sure that I have good ROI on the AOI. Like they always say, how do I measure ROI in AI? I’m like, how do you measure ROI on your day? What’s your ROI on sending an email by hand versus like how would you know to base it off of? Yeah, they don’t, and I think like this is kind of like the f around, find out moment of things where people go to AI and they’re like, not really seeing the effect by automating our existing business process, but 10 times faster.

Maria Ross 25:39

Yeah,

Peter Swimm 25:39

faster. You’re not more. You’re not more elegant. You’re not more sophisticated. Like the AI is garbage in, garbage out.

Maria Ross 25:47

Right.

Peter Swimm 25:48

And you know, it takes a lot of the chief insight for me. I took a day. I was sick, and I took a week off, and I did a vibe week where I just did vibe all week, and I let the vibe do everything, and the chief like thing for me is when you just say your wishes into the wish box, and they come out like based on the median response of that, and it’s very inefficient, and it repeats itself all the time, and I’m not happy with the outcome. So you have to like be as mindful as you would any creative endeavor and process, yeah. And so, if people are like wishing their bad system into the box, it will happily produce the the bad system faster and wider, and

Maria Ross 26:31

exactly, exactly,

Peter Swimm 26:33

and less effective.

Maria Ross 26:34

Well, and also, I years ago I worked for a business process management software company, and the whole thing that we would talk about, and this was like pre AI, right? It was automating your business processes, but that was always our advice: is you’ve got to you’ve got to figure out the optimum process first before you automate it, or you’re just automating inefficiency. You’re just creating inefficiency at scale, faster and wider, and in a more you know, impactful way. So unless you know, unless you got your process down, and to your point, from an empathetic point of view, is it providing the outcome that your employees or your customers need? You got to fix that first before you’re just like, let’s automate the heck out of everything, right? Because then you’re just, you’re just one of the things we used to talk about was business process outsourcing, and it was the same thing of like, don’t outsource a process that you haven’t optimized yourself to get the result that you want because now you’re just doing it at scale.

Peter Swimm 27:30

And humans have this great thing, you know, of if they don’t like something, they’ll they’ll ride it out, you know. And so like, if if you like, okay, now we have a new system, you have to type everything you did in a day into the wish box, and the wish box to tell you what you did wrong, and you’ll do just enough to fulfill the requirement, and you’ll slow roll it, and it’ll fail. And the things that I launch to succeed are things that silently become part of the system and enrich the process, and doesn’t change materially the way they execute the plan of how they work, they are just better informed and better hydrated for the day of doing things, and they’re better aligned. Right, and those are the kind of things that are like, what company has that as KPI, an alignment factor? Yeah. Where like, I when I was at Microsoft and we announced Copilot, there was 109 different Copilots, and they all spoke different programming languages and were in different products, and they used different models. Some used ChatGPT, some didn’t at all, and they couldn’t talk to each other.

Maria Ross 28:29

Yeah

Peter Swimm 28:29

And so this was a mandate of like, okay, you need to make AI, but no one said this is how we as a company are going to make AI, or this is how we’re going to evaluate what makes good AI, right? And these are our guardrails.

Maria Ross 28:42

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Swimm 28:44

I mean, there was there is guardrails in ethical AI, but they were suggestions and they weren’t compliance processes. And there was you know gates you would have to go through in a dog and pony show kind of way. Yeah, it wasn’t like this won’t ship without this kind of moment.

Maria Ross 28:58

Yeah,

Peter Swimm 28:59

and I think that was such a huge wasted opportunity because you know they had a head start. They had the technology in house. We were already working on ChatGPT stuff when ChatGPT came out, and you know they were so sure that the way that they’d be building stuff was always the right way to building stuff. They didn’t miss the opportunity, and the company and the tech industry has missed opportunity of like, what, how does this redefine how we make software? Like, what you know, and like I’m talking to a client right now, and they want to synergize. They have a bunch of information streams from all out their organization, and they want to make AI summaries of things.

Maria Ross 29:34

Okay,

Peter Swimm 29:34

and I’m arguing that people don’t want AI summaries. They want an AI whiteboard. They want to have a Pinterest, and so when your big pattern imagined brain looks at all the information aggregate, you connect the things together and like, oh, here’s the Venn diagram of where all this is being ignored, and this is the opportunity. Right. Sometimes

Maria Ross 29:53

you got to get your hands dirty, and that’s I think that’s the human blending. I’ve talked about this on the show before. There was a. They came out from MIT last year about the five skills that complement AI to get the most ROI out of it, and they’re the human skills that currently AI can’t replicate. And guess what’s you know on there? Empathy, right? Yeah, judgment, ethics, perception, connection, all of those things. And they’re saying that the best ROI you can get out of AI is not necessarily ripping and replacing, but blending, and that’s exactly what you’re describing there. It’s like letting AI do the grunt work of pulling everything together, but then you still want the human brain to look at it and make the connections and get into the data. I was speaking to someone on a past podcast interview about customer insights and leveraging AI to pull everything together, but you still need someone to look in and find the patterns and understand the nuances of the conversations. Right? If you just have AI do everything for you, you miss the nonverbal cues. You miss the the you know pauses or the hesitancies when they respond to something, you miss those connections that you make when you’re actually involved in the process. And this is the thing of I think everyone, I think a lot of companies, and tell me if I’m wrong, they are struggling to find that balance of connecting the human with what AI can do for them, and how those how they how that can work together. That’s where they’re doing so much experimentation right now.

Peter Swimm 31:26

And I think like the very two best conversational AI experiences I’ve ever worked on was one was a bot that read the contract and compared it to 13 months of email to make sure all the agreements from the email made it into the contract.

Maria Ross 31:40

That’s amazing.

Peter Swimm 31:41

Like, absolutely, that is a tedious data-driven job that AI is so good at. And like, oh, you know, you see says here that you’re paying for all goods and services. I thought we were going to split that.

Maria Ross 31:54

Right.

Peter Swimm 31:54

It’s us. Or online, and you can redline all the stuff. The other one was an airline. They in the text message they sent you, your flight was canceled. It offered you three alternate flights, and you can click one button and instantly book it. And I think like, yeah, bad news, good news. Click here, and those 30 people are going to run the counter right now, and you’re going to be in line for an hour. Or you can click this button and go have a beer, you know, and you’re booked, you know, like, and I think those are like the opportunities that we’re leaving on the table with the AI automation thing. We’re just like, okay, if 60% of the people are going to choose this, let’s give them a button to choose it, and then that’s how we’ll contain customer service floods. That only people very strange or unusual or detailed requirements are the ones who have to talk to the people take a lot of time,

Maria Ross 32:43

right? And you’re saying that that’s not a good approach.

Peter Swimm 32:46

No, I love that approach because you know, like, I should never have to call a phone number to find an address, right? Right. I should never have to call a phone number to get office hours or you know a mailing address or fax or you know, or find maybe even what are my policies and my insurance plan, or you know, and everything you have in a company that the context of their answers, you should have a list of those and say, okay, this is something that 100% could be automated, and this is something that could be automated for some people, and this is one that should never be automated.

Maria Ross 33:16

Right.

Peter Swimm 33:16

Like if a lawyer, if if someone calls and says, I’m a lawyer, or I ate something and I got sick. Like that should go to a person. Like don’t even mess around. You don’t mess around with you know don’t mess around with people or anything and force them to go through hoops. Right. And if someone calls and says like my food came cold and it’s a $10 order and it’s going to cost $6 to find out what was wrong with the food, you give them a coupon for the food.

Maria Ross 33:38

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Swimm 33:40

And I think that, like, I worked for a client, and they launched an SMS ordering bot for a taco chain.

Maria Ross 33:45

Okay.

Peter Swimm 33:46

And it could order food, but it couldn’t refund bad orders. And so the bot had very poor analytics. And like, why does everyone hate our bot? It’s like, well, look at all the things that the people who voted you down are complaining about. They’re complaining about the food quality. It’s late. I was double charged, and there’s no one to talk to. Right. So there, there’s absolutely nothing you could do to improve that score until you approve that. And it’s just like, ah, well, you know, it’s like, you know, like you, you can’t, you can’t like make people bend to your will in customer service.

Maria Ross 34:17

Right. Exactly.

Peter Swimm 34:18

You know, you have to meet them where they are, and that’s what we mean. When the customer is always right, it means the customer has a point.

Maria Ross 34:25

Right.

Peter Swimm 34:25

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean that it’s a valid point or whatever. But and as a company, you have to decide what is the cost worth of dying on this hill.

Maria Ross 34:32

Right. Right.

Peter Swimm 34:33

And well, and I think that’s also empathy too.

Maria Ross 34:34

Yeah. And there’s been studies about you know 97% of customers in one survey, I believe it was 97% said empathy is the most important part of their customer experience when they’re calling into a call center, even if their problem is not solved. And I think that’s an important point, right? So again, the customer isn’t always right, but how are you handling it? Are you handling it with empathy and compassion? You might have to say no, or we can’t do that, or we can do this other thing that is not necessarily the thing you wanted. But that requires discernment. That’s something that you might need to get in front of a person of just like, wow, that’s terrible. I’m really sorry that you experienced that.

Peter Swimm 35:17

Yeah,

Maria Ross 35:18

we can’t, you know, whatever it is. Like we can’t refund the money on that, but here’s what we can do. Would this be acceptable to you? This is, and you at least feel like the person tried or the organization tried, even if you’re doing it through a bot, right? That’s the most important thing to people is that they feel heard and not dismissed, right? One time I got from a from an online site, they botched an order that I sent to a client, and when I contacted customer service, I immediately-I don’t know if it was a bot or if it was someone because it was a few years ago-and they just immediately said, “Oh, sorry that happened. Here’s a coupon for your next purchase, and I was so pissed off because I was like, “You didn’t even acknowledge that what you did was like a hit on my reputation, I don’t want a coupon because I don’t want to spend money with you again, right? So throwing the coupon at people isn’t always the right answer either. It’s the empathy, it’s the listening, it’s the you know how can we make this right? And for some people, it’s not the coupon. It’s not the you know whatever. It’s something else. It’s even just an acknowledgement that something went wrong.

Peter Swimm 36:22

Yeah, and I think in all systems, AI or otherwise, there should always be arbitration moment, right? And if the arbitration is like this is what it’ll take to keep my continued business, and the company says no, that’s okay, that’s your decision,

Maria Ross 36:34

right?

Peter Swimm 36:34

And I have no actionable legality around this, then that’s what it is. And I think I think companies, and especially people who make those decisions, they mistake empathy for agreement.

Maria Ross 36:46

Yes,

Peter Swimm 36:47

like you don’t have, you don’t have. It doesn’t mean I agree

Maria Ross 36:48

with you. I talk about this all the time. Empathy does not mean I have to agree with you. It just means I understand what you’re going through and I acknowledge it.

Peter Swimm 36:56

Yeah, I mean, is it right for this woman to get half a gallon of free milk every two weeks. I don’t care. Like, like I see at the end of the day, we throw out gallons of milk in the trash that we can’t sell. So how is that any different as a moral dilemma? So how can you judge her? I worked at grocery stores that would purposely damage their food to discourage people from scavenging it out of their dumpsters, put glass and bleach in it

Maria Ross 37:23

Oh my gosh!

Peter Swimm 37:25

We yeah, for the you know I did some numbers and the cost we spend to throw away food in this country, we could ship that all to food centers and save a billion dollars.

Maria Ross 37:34

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Swimm 37:35

So and it’s a it’s a crazy like sunk cost fallacy thing. And sometimes we believe in things we want to be true more than they are true, and that even applies to AI solutions.

Maria Ross 37:46

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, we could probably talk longer, Peter, but we’ve got to we’ve got to wrap up. So we are going to have all your links in the show notes, so people can find out more about you and your work with your company Toilville. But for anyone who’s on the go right now or exercising while they’re listening to us, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work?

Peter Swimm 38:04

Sure, you can check us out at peoplemaker.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn under Peter Swimm. I’m the only one.

Maria Ross 38:11

I love it. Thank you so much for your insights and for this great conversation today.

Peter Swimm 38:15

No problem. Thanks for having me, Maria.

Maria Ross 38:16

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 theempathyedge.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.

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

October Hot Take: On My 54th Birthday, I Have Something to Say

On her 54th birthday, Maria gets personal, fired up, and a little cheeky. She shares the story behind her brand-new speaker reel – three minutes, eighteen years of work, and all the vulnerability that comes with watching your life’s mission condensed into a single video.

Then she reads an open letter she wrote to toxic male influencers and leaders, on behalf of boy moms everywhere, about the kind of strength, integrity, and empathy we actually want our sons to see modeled in the world. Because true strength is not force; it is the courage to know who you are, bring people along, and take responsibility for your impact. This one comes straight from the heart.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen to this episode for:

A behind-the-scenes look at what it really feels like to launch a speaker reel after 18 years of work and why vulnerability is part of the process
An open letter to toxic male influencers and leaders, written by a boy mom who is done staying quiet
A powerful reframe of what true strength actually looks like in leadership and in life
A birthday reflection on why this work matters more than ever in a world drowning in toxic role models

“We want to raise boys who become strong adult men who love honestly, feel deeply, and advocate equitably — not through greed, abuse of power, or misogyny.” — Maria Ross

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! https://retreat.therisingmastermind.com/

Episode References:

My new speaker reel!: https://youtu.be/iMmsYiHhew0?si=JEul0NQ4_G5Ot98t
Outspeak Media: https://outspeakmedia.com/
My Open Letter to All Toxic Male Leaders and Influencers (please like, comment, and share to amplify this!)
- On LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/p/gMUek4cH
- On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeZStfkAftx/

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

Courtesy of our sponsor, JLG Lawyers – Download “The Human Middle,” Your free guide to resolving workplace conflict: https://thehumanmiddle.ai/

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. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Empathy Edge. I’m Maria Ross, and this is one of our solo hot take episodes. And this one is a little different because today, October 21, I am turning 54. Yes, 54, and I have thoughts. I always have thoughts, but today I have a few announcements, a little gratitude, and then I’m going to read you something that I wrote that’s been sitting in my heart for a while. So buckle up. Here we go. All right. I have to share something I’m genuinely thrilled about, and also, if I’m being honest, I’m a little terrified by. I just launched my new speaker reel. It’s three minutes, 18 years of work, and watching it all condensed into a single reel is a strange and humbling experience. There’s pride, absolutely, but there’s also vulnerability because so much is missing from those three minutes: the early failures, the reinventions, the doubts, skipped over the whole brain aneurysm recovery that cracked me wide open and changed everything, and the moment my son was born, which became the reason I couldn’t stop doing this work, even when it was hard. But it’s me, just like this is me, and I’m more fired up than ever, so I want to just extend a huge thank you to the team at Outspeak Media, Sam Bourbon, Kaylee K, Andre Bellarive, all the other folks on the team whose names I probably don’t know for helping bring this reel to life and capturing something I didn’t even know how to ask for, and I also want to thank my longtime video partner Brett Renville and videographer Jesse Garrison for the incredible live event footage they took. I will put the link to the new video in the show notes. I’d love to hear what you think after you watch the three minutes. So moving on, as I mentioned, my birthday, 54 trips around the sun. So yeah, 54. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t think I would be here, and you know my story. This is not in a dark way, but in a very literal way, because as many of you know, I survived a ruptured brain aneurysm 18 years ago, and I got a whole second act I almost didn’t get. So, as I’ve said before on these solo episodes, every birthday does feel like a gift and a little bit of a dare-a dare to keep showing up, to keep using my voice, to keep fighting for a world where empathy is not a punchline, but it’s a strategy and it’s a way of life. Even as I imperfectly practice it, and speaking of using my voice, I’ve got something I need to say today. Something I wrote as a mom, as a woman, as someone who spent her career making the case that strength and compassion are not opposites. Given everything that’s hitting our headlines lately, from the attack at Cornell to the manosphere of male influencers, who I’m just going to say it are poisoning our sons with their rhetoric around anti-compassion and being a man and holding your feelings in and all that stuff. I wanted to write an open letter to all male leaders and all male influencers out there, and it’s meant for the toxic ones, right? We don’t hate all men here. We hate men or women who try to tell us that strength and compassion are mutually exclusive, who try to tell us that we should hate another group of people because of their gender, or because of where they’re from, or because of the language they speak, or their sexual identity, or the beliefs they hold. That’s what we do here, and so I make no apologies for this open letter that I posted in social media, and I’ll put a link to the post in social.

Maria Ross 04:51

But I’m going to read you the letter in full, so you can tell me what you think. This is an open letter to toxic mail influenza. And leaders, on behalf of boy moms everywhere, please, for the love of God, stop. Your bad behavior, tantrums, greed for money and fame, arrogance, and explicit and implicit disrespect for women is making our jobs as moms harder. We recognize you may have had negative role models of your own. Perhaps you were damaged by trauma, or you truly believe there’s no other way to succeed. Maybe your parents didn’t spend enough time with you or treated you badly. Maybe they never showed you the value of honesty, integrity, and empathy as true strength. Whatever it is, that is heartbreaking, and that is not the road we want our boys to walk down. When you spew hate for clicks or cash, or laughs and high fives, you teach our boys a way of being that doesn’t work for them or their mental health, or their ability to create fully formed, healthy human relationships. We want to raise boys who become strong adult men who love honestly, feel deeply, advocate equitably, and have the emotional capacity to work their shit out in healthy ways, not through drugs, greed, abuse of power, misogyny, or an obsession with building phallic rocket ships to space. Strength is not the same as force, or oppression, or lack of compassion, or cutting yourself off from your human feelings. True strength is being brave enough to know who you are, stand up for what is right, bring people along, hold both compassion and ambition in balance, and take responsibility for your impact on others. No one is denying you did something to get to where you are. Some of you built amazing businesses and exceeded your metrics, and perhaps even made yourselves and others a lot of money. But at what cost to your soul? Look, you do you, but the problem is you have built a platform and cultural presence that influences our boys in negative ways. Cut that shit out. All we ask is that you consider either changing your ways or stepping out of the limelight. If you want to make an intentional decision to be better human beings and role models, there are plenty of resources we can point you to. So the next time you get arrested for embezzlement, get caught in a sex scandal, make a shock jock laugh by denigrating women, or start a toddler war on social media, can you please take it inside and not influence our young boys who have the chance to grow into healthier adult men than you. You had your chance. Give them theirs, please and thank you. Signed, moms of the world. P.S. This letter also applies to anyone who is not as famous, but who idolizes these guys, who name drop to show your degrees of separation from them. You have a sphere of influence in your own lives too, and more importantly, on a real daily basis. So please be better. And the letter ends. So I read that to you because it matters not just to me as a mom raising a son in this world, but to all of us who are trying to build workplaces or communities or cultures where people are treated with dignity, where strength means something real, and where empathy is not weakness but the most powerful tool we have, you cannot lead well if you cannot see beyond yourself. You cannot build anything lasting if it’s built on fear, ego, or the diminishment diminishment of others, you certainly cannot raise the next generation of leaders if you are modeling the opposite of everything we know makes humans thrive. So, this year on my 54th birthday, this is my wish-not just for my son, for all our kids, that they get to grow up in a world where the loudest voices are also the wisest ones, where influence comes with integrity, and where empathy is not something we have to fight for, but something we simply expect. As ever, the best birthday gift is that you’re here, and that you’re listening, and that you’re supporting this podcast. Thank you for all that you do to support this work. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.

Maria Ross 09:55

For more on how to achieve radical. Success through empathy. Visit theempathyedge.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.

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

Claire Mia Burnett: Your Energy Is Money and Most Leaders Are Overdrawn

What if your energy worked like money?

My guest is Claire Mia Burnett, a coach and currently the Director of Operations and Effectiveness at McKesson. She has spent her career working with some of the most recognizable organizations in the world, building the systems meant to help people do their best work. And what she discovered along the way is that the energy problem shows up everywhere: capable people are being asked to give more than the system was ever designed to return.

Her new book, Reserve and Release: Rewriting the Hidden Rules of How We Spend Ourselves, is the first framework-driven guide to treating energy the way sound financial systems treat money. Not as a mood to manage, but as a resource to audit, allocate, and protect.

This is the ultimate Both/And conversation: individual accountability AND organizational responsibility are not competing; they are sequential. And when your energy reserves are depleted, empathy is the first thing to go. Protecting your energy is not self-indulgence. It is what makes sustained empathetic leadership possible. Take a listen.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How you, yourself, are a finite resource and why self-knowledge is essential so you can put a name to what needs to change
The inputs, outputs, reserves, and deficits people have in their lives
Auditing your energy economy from an individual and an organizational lens
Why an entrepreneurial role may be a different energy tax than working for a traditional 9-to-5
The one question all leaders should ask instead of “How is my team doing?”

“Individual awareness without structural change just makes people more conscious of a system that is still depleting them. So at some point, the role or the system has to be on trial, not the person.” — Claire Mia Burnett

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! https://retreat.therisingmastermind.com/

Episode References:

Leah Ruppanner, et al. “The Invisible Work Draining Your Best Employees” (Harvard Business Review, July 2026)
Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

About Claire Mia Burnett, Author, Reserve & Release | Director, Operations & Effectiveness, McKesson:

Claire Mia is a coach and corporate executive specializing in organizational effectiveness and human sustainability, helping organizations improve performance without exhausting their people. Having worked with leading organizations such as McKesson, AT&T, STAPLES Center, and Anschutz Entertainment Group, and recognized as a 2025 Marquis Who’s Who honoree, she developed frameworks that address how workplace systems impact human energy. Her book, Reserve & Release: Rewriting the Hidden Rules of How We Spend Ourselves, introduces a framework for managing energy like money—as a resource to audit, allocate, and protect.

Connect with Claire:

Claire Cut Consulting: reserveandrelease.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/clairemia

Instagram: @reserveandrelease

Book + Free chapter: Reserve & Release: Rewriting the Hidden Rules of How We Spend Ourselves: reserveandrelease.com/edge

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

Courtesy of our sponsor, JLG Lawyers – Download “The Human Middle,” Your free guide to resolving workplace conflict: https://thehumanmiddle.ai/

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 your energy worked exactly like money? You have inputs, outputs, reserves, and yes, deficits. And most of us are already running a deficit without even realizing it. We’re told to meditate, set boundaries, take a walk, drink more water, and those things matter, but here’s the hard truth: if the system around you is designed to take more than it returns, your individual efforts are like recycling in the middle of a climate crisis-meaningful but nowhere near enough. Real change requires the system to change too. My guest today is Claire Mia Burnett, who goes by Claire Mia, a coach and currently director of operations and effectiveness at McKesson, she spent her career working with some of the most recognizable organizations in the world, including AT&T, Staples Center, and Anschutz Entertainment Group, building the systems meant to help people do their best work. And what she discovered along the way is that the energy problem shows up everywhere, regardless of how prestigious or well-resourced the organization is. Capable people are being asked to give more than the system was ever designed to return. Her new book, Reserve and Release: Rewriting the Hidden Rules of How We Spend Ourselves, is the first framework-driven guide to treating energy the way sound financial systems treat money-not as a mood to manage, but as a resource to audit, allocate, and protect. Today, we explore what it actually means to have an energy economy, why self-knowledge is the essential entry point because you simply cannot budget what you haven’t named, and how those invisible charges show up in every job, but never appear in the job description. We also look at the organizational side because individual awareness without structural change just makes people more conscious of a system that is still depleting them. And we talk about why your most empathetic leaders are often the first ones to burn out, and what organizations can do about that before they lose their best people. This is the ultimate both-and conversation. Individual accountability and organizational responsibility are not competing; they’re sequential. And when your energy reserves are depleted, empathy is the first thing to go protecting your energy is not self-indulgence; it’s what makes sustained empathetic leadership possible. Take a listen, Claire. Welcome to the Empathy Edge today. I am so excited to talk about your new book, Reserve and Release, and also talk about the energy economy. That is really what intrigued me when you first came across my radar. So many leaders are dealing with burnout. So many leaders that are trying to balance, as I always talk about, empathy with accountability and results. They’re often taking on so much themselves. So this is going to be a really great, inspiring and instructive talk about not just platitudes of how to take better care of yourself, but really you’ve created almost a systems design approach to how to deal with recharging and letting go some of that stress. So welcome to the show.

Claire Mia Burnett 03:53

Thank you, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited about this conversation.

Maria Ross 03:57

Me too, and I would love if you could take a few minutes and start where we always start, which is what is your story? How did you even get to this work, and what makes you so passionate about it?

Claire Mia Burnett 04:07

Yeah. So, ironically, my career path was genuinely serendipitous. I spent actually the early part of my career in event operations, so nothing to do with the psychology of things, but definitely was a systems thinker always. And then somewhere in the last decade, I kind of ended up inside large organizations focused on kind of building the infrastructure that helps people do their best work. So think things like workforce design, leadership development, sort of all of those systems underneath how people actually function, right? And you know, like I said, no plans to be there, but has ended up being what feels truly like one of my greatest callings. And I think I’ll probably throw some of the personal thread in there because I think that’s just important as the professional one. So I am a first generation American. And I grew up watching my family kind of work themselves into the ground, and you know, call it devotion. And then I unconsciously became that person, right? That’s by example. I saw that, and I lived it, and I became it. And I didn’t have a language at the time. I just got to a point where I knew the math wasn’t mathing as folks say now, and so those two things-kind of the systems thinker and the woman who kind of grew up watching this pattern-collided, and that’s what developed the framework that became my first book that you mentioned. And it’s pretty much org effectiveness with that personal origin, and I think that combination is what makes it land differently than a lot of what’s out there on kind of burnout and resilience right now.

Maria Ross 05:46

Yeah, absolutely, and I completely get it. And knowing your history is important because I’m second generation, but the models we grew up with were that work is work, and you just work till you’re ground down. And

Claire Mia Burnett 06:00

yeah,

Maria Ross 06:00

you know, self care is a luxury, and all that kind of

Claire Mia Burnett 06:02

absolutely.

Maria Ross 06:03

And those are those, you know, no one ever said that, but they’re the subliminal messages. And this is the thing we as leaders have to remember: is that we’re giving these unspoken messages to our teams all the time, and then we get surprised when our team members are getting burned out, right? So I also just want to remind people of the subtitle of this book because I think it’s so important: rewriting the hidden rules of how we spend ourselves.

Claire Mia Burnett 06:29

Yeah,

Maria Ross 06:29

and you’re you were going to talk about this, but you use a lot of finance, finance and banking analogies when you’re talking about this system. So the fact that you’re talking about us spending ourselves, not how we spend time, but how we’re spending ourselves as a finite resource is so important. So let’s talk a little bit about this concept of the energy economy and sort of the the house that this all lives in. Can you share what that is and yeah how it operates?

Claire Mia Burnett 07:00

Yes, I’m actually really excited about this because there’s a piece that just came out in the Harvard Business Review just in July, and you’ll probably hear me reference it quite a bit. But Leah Rupener and her colleagues published research on what they call the mental load at work, and I was ecstatic because what they found aligned directly with what reserve and release was built around. So most people are already running an energy economy; they just don’t know it, right? So kind of exactly what you said. I’m treating energy like money. It operates like money. It’s got inputs. It’s got outputs. It’s got fixed costs. It’s got variable ones. And I’ll give you an example that tends to land immediately. So if you think about Sunday scaries, have you ever heard the Sunday scaries?

Maria Ross 07:46

Oh, absolutely. I mean, starting from school age, and then it never goes away, right? It’s that dread you feel on a Sunday night because you know you have to face the school week or the work week the next day.

Claire Mia Burnett 07:56

Yes, exactly, exactly, and that dread isn’t random, right? It’s your system telling you that the week ahead it might cost more than what you currently have in reserve, and that’s not a mindset problem. That’s a budget problem. And if you can recognize it as a budget problem, then you can start addressing it like one. And Leah, it turns out, she’s spent years kind of studying this cognitive and emotional work that happens underneath all of the deliverables at work, right? And her research documents kind of what happens when that load has no ceiling, and that’s how we have a tendency to operate. And I won’t use all of the the terms that she gets into, but she essentially talks about what I call the energy economy. But she talks about it in clinical language, and I give people that framework that they can actually use. So it’s not about if we have an energy economy; every one of us does.

Claire Mia Burnett 08:58

The question really becomes, you know, are you intentionally designing it, or is it kind of just happening to you? And most of us are in the second category, and so are a lot of our organizations,

Maria Ross 09:10

right? Well, it’s like how many of us are with money, right? We’re not budgeting, we’re not always planning. We’re just sort of like, well, when it’s there, it’s I spend it, swipe the card. I’ll save some things. Maybe I won’t. There’s no like cohesive plan, but I think this is so important because we tend to think our time is infinite, even though we know mentally, we know cognitively that’s not true. But when we say yes to too much, when we take on too much, when we do all that, we think, oh, it’s just this one thing that I’m adding, and like you said, it’s sort of like someone with a budget. And I, this is a really bad example, but I remember when I was in debt in my late 20s, I had like some pretty big credit card debt. I was so in debt at one point that it was sort of like, why not spend the $80 on the bottle of wine? That that’s a drop in the bucket at this point. Right, and so I think we feel that way of like I’m burned out. I’m at the end of my rope. So what’s you know 20 more minutes to drive someone to the airport, or what’s you know 30 more minutes to jump into this call and be part of this committee, right? And I think we tend to think that way. So, and the reason we’re talking about this on this show is because pillars one and two of the five pillars of being an empathetic and effective leader are self awareness and self care. Because if you operate from low capacity, you have no capacity for empathy, for taking on other points of view, for being receptive to new ideas or new ways of doing things, to take the beat with someone to say maybe we just need to sit and have a moment so that you can process this information or this news. So this is why we’re talking about burnout. This is not necessarily a burnout show, but it’s about how you show up as your best self as a leader, so you can be people focused and results driven at the same time. So

Claire Mia Burnett 11:04

absolutely, I love that

Maria Ross 11:05

you you talk about this. And when you talk about money, you operating like money with inputs and outputs, reserves and deficits. Can you can you give us some examples of what are some of those inputs and outputs and reserves and deficits that people have?

Claire Mia Burnett 11:18

Yeah. So inputs think the terminology that I use is quite literally financial debts, deposits, dividends. Right, so your inputs are your deposits. So think about that friendship with a friend that you leave the conversation feeling lighthearted, excited. You were glad that energized with that person. Energized, yeah. Think of your debts as things that kind of drain you. They take energy from you. You feel a little bit of reservation to do those things. And here’s the other thing I talk about in the book: you also have to be able to call a debt what it is, even if it’s something that you have to do. Right. Right. There’s plenty of things in our lives that might not be fun or exciting, but they are things we have to do. But in order to understand our flow of energy, we have to call them what they are. And so, a debt could be the tax bracket that you operate in at work. If you’re a leader, the way that you have to show up in that space, the information that you have to absorb, the code switching that you might have to do, the way that you have to present is if you know information that you don’t know, right? Yeah, that is. Those are all things that we should be taking account for when it comes to where energy is spending. And a lot of the times we focus on time and we focus on our calendar and blocks of time, but two hours in a day can look completely different. One can drain you, and one can fill you up. And it’s really understanding and auditing what is taking the energy and what is giving the energy back.

Maria Ross 12:46

I love that so much. Yeah, because and we all have, you know, when I talk about self care, I talk about managing to our own capacity.

Claire Mia Burnett 12:54

Yeah,

Maria Ross 12:54

which isn’t someone else’s capacity. So you might need no one hour break, or like 15 minute nap, or whatever it is. Someone else might. Someone else, you know, you might be able to deal with like five back to back meetings in a row and do it with no sweat. Someone else might only have the capacity for two meetings in a row, correct? And then they they can’t schedule any. So I try to encourage my clients and my audiences to think about their own capacity when they’re thinking about where they spend their time. So I’m really glad that you mentioned that. All right, let’s talk a little bit about the individual lens. So you talk about looking at this from the individual lens and then the organizational lens. First, let’s talk about the individual. Right? How do we, as individuals, manage our energy economy if we’re really trying to be effective leaders? What are the things we need to be considering?

Claire Mia Burnett 13:48

Yeah, so I love that you talked about you know the pillars self awareness. That’s where it has to start, right? Self knowledge is the entry point, and I mean that very very specifically. It is the ability to name things and what they actually cost you, right? So, the first and most critical tool that we start with, actually in the book, is a framework that I call the capacity record, and it’s built around those three kind of categories we just talked about: the deposits, the debts, and the dividends. I’m not going to belabor the point of what those mean, but we talked about those two meetings, right? So on paper, they’re the same length, but one is going to leave you thinking clearly, and the other is going to leave you needing to sit in the car for 10 minutes before you can face anything else.

Maria Ross 14:31

Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 14:32

same time cost, completely different capacity cost, and the capacity record is going to teach you to see the difference and stop treating them as equivalent because exactly like you said, we so often just well, it’s a meeting, it’s a meeting, it’s a meeting. Every meeting is not the same. Every task is not the same,

Maria Ross 14:49

right?

Claire Mia Burnett 14:50

And so we have to be able to audit that first for ourselves and understand the difference between what’s a drain, what’s a pull, what’s a what’s giving me energy. I think another notable framework on the individual side is an exercise that I talk about called the marginal tax brackets. And the margin tax brackets is what happens when you zoom out from kind of that individual meetings to the role itself. In this case, so most people we know our job descriptions, right? We know what we’re supposed to do. We know our scope of work, but nobody knows what their role typically is going to charge them beyond what’s on paper, right? So we talked about ERG leaders earlier. If I her title might say that she runs a community group, but it doesn’t say that she is the go-to for every D E and I question in the department. It doesn’t say that she’s the emotional translator in every tense meeting. It doesn’t say that she’s the person that stays late, right? To make sure that the newer members feel seen. None of that is in her charter, but all of it is on her bill. So the margin tax brackets framework make those charges visible because exactly what you said-they’re invisible. You just keep swiping the card, and if you keep swiping the card, you don’t know how much has added up, right? Yeah. And the margin tax brackets helps you to see why you might be depleted. And we go a little bit deeper into like what’s a high tax base, what’s a low tax base. But the first thing that the individual can do is start to understand what is actually costing me and what am I spending?

Maria Ross 16:22

So, how do you lead, or how does you know a listener lead themselves through that process? Is it really just two columns? Is it sitting down and thinking about everything related to the role? What’s the practical application of making the invisible visible?

Claire Mia Burnett 16:37

Yeah. So, in our book, in the capacity record, we quite literally create three columns. So we we call it the it’s a chapter called the invisible ledger, and we treat it like a bank statement. So if you are looking at finance, and I’m gonna keep using the finance term,

Maria Ross 16:54

I love it. I love it.

Claire Mia Burnett 16:55

It’s the most accepted, right? So if you look at a bank statement, your bank is gonna tell you everything that you bought and what it charged you and what you paid for it, and so we apply that same exact concept in the capacity record. What is everything that you spent? And we’re asking you to sit down and really think through it because a lot of people sit back and at the end of the day, I’m tired. I know everything that was on my calendar, but I don’t know why I’m tired. So the capacity record asks you to sit and think about why are you tired. Yeah. Let’s go through every meeting on the calendar. What did you have to do in that meeting? What did you have to do after work? What did you have to translate before you got to work the next day?

Maria Ross 17:26

Right.

Claire Mia Burnett 17:33

So we practically asks you. We ask you to list out those things, and then we ask you to rate them, and think about how much is this actually costing me in the grand scheme of things? So we get into literal budgeting for our energy.

Maria Ross 17:48

Yeah. Well, I like that you call it a marginal tax bracket because it’s what’s taxing our mind and our soul and our energy. 100% Literally, what it is.

Claire Mia Burnett 17:58

iAnd we’re all paying taxes, Right, even societally.

Maria Ross 18:02

Right.

Claire Mia Burnett 18:03

Ideally, the purpose of our taxes is to contribute to the greater good of our our culture. Right. It’s to help keep our streets clean. It’s to help make sure we don’t have potholes. So there’s always some sort of tax, no matter where you live, whether it’s high or low. Right. And understanding what your taxes sometimes it’s just the cost of being in the room, right? If I am working for a large company, there’s a way that I need to represent that company. Versus maybe if I’m working for myself, and there’s a way I want to represent myself. And understanding what bracket I play in, yeah, it doesn’t always necessarily change the system, but it changes how I enter the system and it changes how I navigate the system. If I know that at work it’s a really high tax bracket for me, maybe it changes the way that I spend my time outside of work, or maybe it changes how I reorganize what I’m doing in work. But we have to create that visibility first in order to know how to navigate it.

Maria Ross 18:57

iWell, and I I’m sure you work with clients when you’re coaching, who you have to really prompt them to think about where they’re spending their time and what it’s costing them, because they might not know. Even if you get them to sit down and think about it, they might not know. And what what do you think causes that blindness? What do you think causes that? Yeah, I know what I did today, but I don’t know where I actually spent my time. And you’re sitting there with your client, trying to help them work through this. What causes that? That almost it’s almost like short-term memory. Like we forget how taxing that meeting was, or

Claire Mia Burnett 19:31

yes,

Maria Ross 19:32

that effort that we had to put forth.

Claire Mia Burnett 19:35

Yeah. So Leah actually calls the term clinically spillover exhaustion, and it’s a sin, and I loved it. I was like, “That’s such a great. It’s so blatantly clear what it is. It’s the lines of everything just blur, right? And especially in what is now pretty largely hybrid work environment for most people, everything kind of mosh poshes into one thing. And so we are so often just trying to get through the day. A lot of us are surviving instead of thriving, right? And your brain psychologically is just trying to take a lot of shortcuts to get through the day. And so it’s not necessarily remembering every detail unless you intentionally sit back to remember the details of what happened, and you bring up a really great point in this framework: is you’ve got to sit and you’ve got to think about it, right? You’ve got to be intentional about it. And what some some clients have told them, like tomorrow, write down everything because

Maria Ross 20:36

yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 20:36

it’s easier said than done. 30 days later, to say how was the week, how was the month, and you’re sitting back, and you can’t remember every detail of the month. But if you start actively auditing the same way that your credit card tracks each purchase, if you start tracking everything that you’ve spent, you’re going to have a lot of aha moments. Yeah, because you’re going to realize I am spending way more than I actually thought I was, and that I actually have in the tank.

Maria Ross 21:03

Right, right. Yeah, there’s a book I read years ago, and the name is escaping me, but it was all about a woman. I think her name is Laura Vanderkam. I apologize if I got that wrong, but I’ll put the link in the show notes. She is infamous for telling people about managing time, and she for years have has kept a time journal every day where she’s documented everything in her day and how she manages her full time job and her four children.

Claire Mia Burnett 21:31

Yeah,

Maria Ross 21:32

and how she plans ahead and makes time. Part of it is her effort to slow down time when you actually intentionally look at how you’re spending your time. Number one, your memory improves about what you’ve actually done, and number two, it actually keeps you in the moment. So at the end of the day or midday, when she’s doing her time tracking, I mean the the patience and intention involved in that is huge, and not everyone is is capable of that. But I remember she, I remember one of the big aha’s I had from her was you actually have more time than you think. It’s just how you’re spending it, and when you’re unconsciously spending it, you think you don’t have time for anything, but you actually have time because time is about prioritization. Where you’re spending,

Claire Mia Burnett 22:16

right?

Maria Ross 22:17

So when you look at it to your point in your methodology in black and white, and you see it in front of you. You’re like, “Wow, I am frittering away a lot of time doom scrolling, for example, or having a meeting I don’t need to have every week. We could have that meeting once a month, or we could have that meeting every other week. But, but when, like you said, we’re going through these motions of just trying to survive the day, we just get into these rhythms that don’t serve us. They’re not helping us be stronger leaders. They’re not helping us build collaboration with each other. They’re just kind of wasting our time.

Claire Mia Burnett 22:50

And it can feel like one more thing to do, right? If I have to write down every single thing that I do or every way that I’m spending my energy, it can feel like more work initially. And initially, it is.

Maria Ross 23:02

yeah.

Claire Mia Burnett 23:03

But the purpose of it is so that you can redesign things so that you’re not wasting that energy and you’re not wasting that time. So it does take some intentionality. But the intentionality, same thing I would say with organizations, is how you make sure that you can keep running long term so that you can stay sustainable, because if you keep operating without the visibility into what’s costing you, you do end up in burnout, and then you are sitting there. The repeated question that happens when somebody gets to burnout is, “How did I get here?” Right?

Maria Ross 23:35

Yeah.

Claire Mia Burnett 23:35

How did it get this bad? You didn’t know you were going to be burnt out until you burnt out.

Maria Ross 23:39

Right.

Claire Mia Burnett 23:40

And that is exactly what I’m trying to stop with the book. Is I’m trying to say before we get there because I did it. I did it.

Maria Ross 23:47

Yeah.

Claire Mia Burnett 23:48

Before we get there, there’s some things that we can do so that we know

Maria Ross 23:52

exactly, exactly, and so you can show up as a better leader for your team.

Claire Mia Burnett 23:57

Absolutely.

Maria Ross 23:57

Right.

Claire Mia Burnett 23:58

Absolutely.

Maria Ross 23:58

Okay. So that’s the individual lens. Let’s talk about the organizational lens. So we talked about what we as individuals are responsible for, but what does the system own that we’re operating in?

Claire Mia Burnett 24:09

Yeah, this is my favorite part because this is where I get to hold everybody accountable, right? Yeah, yeah. Individual awareness without structural change just makes people more conscious of a system that is still depleting them. All right, so at some point, the role or the system has to be on trial, not the person. We can only do so much as people. We can only read so many self-help books. Right, we can only go to so many therapy sessions. At some point, the systems and the circumstances that we operate in, they have to audit themselves too, and the data right now is just making me cartwheel. It’s supporting me in every single way that it can. Yeah, and I I think that’s because of the advent of AI and. AI is actually not making people feel less stressed at work. It’s not. It’s not contributing in the way that we thought it would. Right.

Maria Ross 25:08

Right.

Claire Mia Burnett 25:08

And I’m going to pull up this stat here. So Gallup actually said it was 53% of managers reported burnout symptoms at a higher rate than their direct reports. That kind of feels obvious, right? These are the people that are running.

Maria Ross 25:22

They’re holding everything.

Claire Mia Burnett 25:23

Their teams, yeah, holding everything together. And the way that that’s showing up is slower decisions, higher turnover amongst the people. You’ve got miss signals. Team like team dynamics are changing. You’ve got erosion of the other thing with your managers are typically they’ve got some sort of institutional knowledge. Sometimes that takes years to build. If you leave, if they leave the company, all of a sudden, all that institutional knowledge goes with them, right? So, organizations they’re usually quick to diagnose it as a leadership problem because it’s easier, and this is going to sting some people sometimes. Yeah, easier to diagnose it as the person problem, right? But it is also an accounting problem, and I’m going to quote her because I’m going to give her all the credit for this. Rupener said that organizations are extraordinarily good at measuring what comes out, so deliverables, deadlines, engagement scores, productivity metrics, but they’re terrible at measuring what it takes and what it what goes in. And we’re not just talking about hours; we’re talking about the invisible charges. We are talking about all that cognitive overhead that accumulates when a role constantly requires context switching, political navigation, coordination of the work-none of that appears in the job description, right? But it always shows up in a person if they’ve held the role long enough. So, I think it’s for me, at least, doing this work. If your organization can budget capital, if they can track where it’s allocated, if they can track where it returns and it generates, because that’s important to them, right? They have a financial audit for these functions because operating without visibility could create some systemic risk. Human energy operates the same exact way, and it does not get the same infrastructure. No one. I mean, no one’s budgeting it.

Maria Ross 27:15

No, exactly. And this is there’s so many things I want to say about that. I mean, first of all, you know, I’ve been working for myself since 2008, so about 18 years, and I worked in corporate. I never thought I would work for myself and run my own business. What I found is I work way more, but I don’t have those taxes. I don’t have the like. I have a good idea, but I’m frustrated because I can’t move forward on it, or I have to politically tiptoe around this person, or you know I have to go through this process. If I don’t like a process, I get to change it, right? That’s the beauty of working for yourself. The downside is you’re doing everything yourself, right? You, so I see it because I see my energy for how much I work now, so much higher than when I worked for an organization, and I could clock out at six.

Claire Mia Burnett 28:10

You’re in a lower tax environment now. Yeah,

Maria Ross 28:13

yep. And it’s like, yeah, was is the work easier? No, not at all, right?

Claire Mia Burnett 28:18

But you’re being charged differently,

Maria Ross 28:20

exactly. And so this is for any entrepreneur listening or any solopreneur listening. That’s where you get that that energy and that bounce in your organization because you’re not paying that tax.

Claire Mia Burnett 28:32

Absolutely.

Maria Ross 28:32

To your other point about the environment we swim in, like yes, organizations and institutions are notorious for trying to blame the individual for the problem, right? I just wrote an article for Forbes about our brains on change, and how it’s not your team that’s being resistant to change; it’s their brains, and it’s the environment you’re creating that’s actually making it harder for them, and the

Claire Mia Burnett 28:58

behavior that gets normalized 100%

Maria Ross 29:01

right? And so, you know, a weird example, but we can look at this in our global world where companies spent a long time. Large industries, manufacturing industries, spent a long time blaming individuals about climate change. You don’t recycle enough. You’re not using green products. You’re not doing this. All of that individual effort is a drop in the bucket if the system doesn’t change. People are finally starting to wake up to that. It’s not individuals recycling on Saturdays. It’s organis. You know, it’s industries changing the way they manufacture products. Right. So back to your point of the environment you’re swimming in, it’s like you said. It’s easier to blame the individual. Like you need to go take a vacation. You need to go find a way to recharge yourself, and that’s part of the puzzle. Don’t absolutely, absolutely. That’s part of self awareness and self care to do as much as you can do. But if you then put that person back in an environment that’s. Grinding them up, it doesn’t matter how healthy they are when they enter that door.

Claire Mia Burnett 30:04

They’re coming back to the same thing,

Maria Ross 30:06

exactly.

Claire Mia Burnett 30:07

Yep.

Maria Ross 30:08

Right. So.

Claire Mia Burnett 30:08

Yep.

Maria Ross 30:09

You know, if the water’s polluted, it’s polluted. It doesn’t matter how how clean you are when you go into it. Right. So I love that

Claire Mia Burnett 30:16

great example.

Maria Ross 30:17

Well, yeah. Just reminding me that when you’re like, okay, when do we? Why do we keep blaming individuals? Because a, it’s cheaper for the company to blame the individuals, and b, we let them.

Claire Mia Burnett 30:27

Yeah,

Maria Ross 30:28

right.

Claire Mia Burnett 30:28

Yeah,

Maria Ross 30:29

we’re like, yeah, it’s a personal flaw. It’s my fault. It’s my problem. I’m not taking care of myself.

Claire Mia Burnett 30:34

Yeah.

Maria Ross 30:35

So let’s talk about this 5030 20 framework as another solution for organizations, because I want to get to how can an organization solve for this?

Claire Mia Burnett 30:46

Yeah, so I think the objection that I get here, obviously, is you know organizations might think, well, I I can’t account for every single individual. I can’t ask every single individual how they’re doing, right? And they’ll talk about you know engagement scores, which I have a whole other rabbit hole that I could go in on how I feel about engagement scores.

Maria Ross 31:04

Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 31:05

but the first question is not to ask how is the person doing. That again puts the individual at the center of the analysis. The question is really what is the design of their work actually costing them, and that shifts our unit of analysis to the system, which is where the problem usually lives after the individual has done their work. So, recent research also has pointed to a very specific set of interventions that, again, ecstatic. Because I’m like, give me all the validation that you can. Yeah. So, the first thing is obviously making that invisible work visible through the structured assessment auditing, right? Then it’s building those mental load buffers into those high volume periods, and you’re doing that by design, not by reaction, right? So you can audit not just what those roles produce, but what they cost, and then the 5030 20 model specifically. So I pull that from finance again. If anybody Google’s the 5030 20 budget, it’s the same exact thing that I have applied to energy. So I know we talked about like high tax brackets and all that stuff, and all of that stuff informs this budget. So it maps exactly to that financial tool where 50% of your energy is toward your core responsibilities. 30% of your energy is toward kind of the discretionary contribution, and then 20% is held in reserve because there’s always an emergency, right? But when organizations are routine, like they’re asking their highest performers to operate at 90% or above,

Maria Ross 32:37

yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 32:38

they’re making a decision about the human capital, with no visibility into the liability that they’re creating. So, if I always have to operate at 90% that emergency project might tip me over. And so, we’ve got to start looking at where are my employees actually spending their time in this role. How are my calendars designed across the fiscal year? That could vary by team, but we can train our teams to understand these are going to be high seasons, these are going to be low seasons. Where is majority of our energy going in this season? Where is majority of our energy going in this season? It’s that same audit, but the 50 the 5030 20 framework gives you kind of these buckets to place things in, and originally I thought I don’t know if this is going to work, and then I started running the numbers, and I was like, treating your energy like money really is a thing. When you start to get smart about it, it’s yeah, I need to spend most of my time in my core responsibilities, of course, and then another chunk of my time in my discretionary items. So that’s planning for the future, planning for the next meeting coming up. It’s getting ahead, right? That’s it’s

Maria Ross 33:50

coming up with creative ideas. 100% right? Having the time to do the work instead of spending time in meetings talking about the work, right? 100% Well, and that’s where you know we are constantly talking about the need to innovate. Yet we don’t give our most valuable assets the time to innovate, the time to just sit and be creative and think about things and strategize and whiteboard and do all the things because it’s seen as a waste of productivity. 100% Organizations are still demanding that from their people. Like not only do your work, but come up with new ideas to help us get farther. It.

Claire Mia Burnett 34:29

I laugh because I got to a point where it’s like all my ideas came while I was sleeping or while I was in the shower off the clock, right? And it’s like because I didn’t have time during the day to think through this, right? And it’s, I mean, I the biggest thing I would want organizations to hear from is I’m not asking them to monitor people, right? But I’m I am asking them to start designing roles that don’t assume the capacity is infinite.

Maria Ross 34:52

Okay, so what does this look like in reality? Like, can you give us some examples of some companies or some leaders that are doing this, and what is the. Look like that they’re putting into place.

Claire Mia Burnett 35:02

Yeah, so there’s honestly a variety of different ways. Rupener also has some assessments that she’s put out. For me specifically, they could apply the reserve and release framework. So the entire framework, it’s called the audit loop, and so you audit, budget, balance, and you build. And there’s a couple of different tools within the framework that you can go through to start to understand what does this role look like at a macro level, it would be implementing those tools and those frameworks with the leaders. So training your leaders to understand specifically your people leaders. So my book is written to the individual where they can apply these frameworks themselves to their personal life and as well as their professional life in the organizational space, it would be training your leaders on how to look for this stuff. Training your leaders on what questions to ask. Training your leaders on when they’re designing specific roles, what they need to consider in these roles.

Maria Ross 35:54

Right.

Claire Mia Burnett 35:54

I recently, when I was posting a role, quite literally used percentages. X amount of time is going to be spent on this. X amount of time is going to be spent on this, and so it’s really thinking through how to practically apply it in every level of the organization. But it really starts with your people leaders and training your people leaders to understand that there’s a way that we need to be looking at how our employees actually show up, because it’s the endless conversation, right? Of well, she used to be really great, and now all of a sudden it just seems like she doesn’t care. Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s because she’s doing significantly more than what’s in her scope of work, and no one has actually talked about it. We have these quarterly reviews set up, right, in most companies, and we’re not asking about the invisible costs, right? And typically in those conversations, it’s just the leader telling you, “Well, what didn’t go well. So it’s implementing these auditing tools intentionally. It’s not just asking about, and I will, I will go a little bit on my my engagement score rabbit hole. Yeah, engagement scores they measure sentiment, right? And it’s we’ve conflated that with health, right? They’re not the same thing. Engagement captures your discretionary effort, you know, commitment to the mission, willingness to go beyond. But those are signals of investment, not necessarily sustainability. Yeah. So, if we’re not measuring how much investment is actually made, yeah. If that employee, you know, there’s another stat too about burnout, and when you looked at the engagement scores, most women are leading in burnout in their jobs, but they’re highly engaged,

Maria Ross 37:39

right?

Claire Mia Burnett 37:40

So your engagement score, your engagement score tells you one story, but those same people are burnt out,

Maria Ross 37:47

are at risk, are at risk for burnout. Yeah.

Claire Mia Burnett 37:49

And so, how organizations apply this practically is to ask very specific questions in those auditing tools.

Maria Ross 37:56

Okay. And give us some examples of what some of those questions are.

Claire Mia Burnett 37:59

Yeah. Here, I’ll actually. Oh, I can’t share my screen. I very corporate. I was like, I’ll share my screen with you.

Maria Ross 38:06

We’re on a podcast. Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 38:08

we’re on a podcast, and I I can probably do this from the top of my head too. Yeah, yeah. On on your capacity record, we talk about we’re auditing the debts, deposits, and dividends, but specifically for a an organization, if we’re looking at the 5030 20 framework, it’s looking at a role and understanding what are the core requirements of this role. So, what are the responsibilities where this individual needs to spend 50% of their time? So, it’s even if we go back before that person is even hired, it’s looking at that job description and understanding what are the core tenets of this role, and then looking at okay, now where is the discretionary in this role? Where do we need to do the thinking? Where do we need to do the creativity? Where do we need to let this person sort of have time to work outside of the meeting? And then there’s that 20% buffer, right? So that’s applying it specifically to the 5030 20. Once we have actually designed that role, now we let’s say we’re into the phase of we’re actually hiring the person in those quarterly operating reviews, and I’ll just pick that one specifically because I know most of corporate can relate to that. Yeah, yeah. The performance review, right?

Maria Ross 39:19

Yeah.

Claire Mia Burnett 39:19

In our performance review, now we have to ask a next level of that question: of Do you feel like your work is sustainable? Do you feel like you have time to actually think and create and innovate, or do you feel like you’re constantly spread thin? Let’s audit the calendar. Let’s audit what this year has looked like. Let’s audit what this quarter has looked like-it’s not unreasonable for us to have busy seasons, ebbs and flows, right? But let’s have an honest conversation about: Was there actually an ebb and flow?

Maria Ross 39:51

Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 39:51

did it ever actually slow down?

Maria Ross 39:54

Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 39:55

Or was it just one thing after another, after another, after another? If the organization. Or their leader is comfortable enough, then you can start asking those marginal tax questions. How often do you feel like you have to politically navigate the room? How often are you the only person inside of the room? Right, and that depends on the leader and how comfortable they are asking those questions. But it develops a fuller picture.

Maria Ross 40:17

Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 40:17

what your employee is actually dealing with,

Maria Ross 40:20

right?

Claire Mia Burnett 40:21

Versus just if your employee is gaged and excited to have a job.

Maria Ross 40:24

So, do you do coaching and consulting around this process?

Claire Mia Burnett 40:28

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So, I talk people through how to actually implement this,

Maria Ross 40:34

so they don’t have to do it alone.

Claire Mia Burnett 40:36

Correct.

Maria Ross 40:36

Basically, an organization or an individual can work with someone like you who can help them do that? Okay, fantastic. Okay, what’s your final nugget? What would be one takeaway you want the leaders listening to remember most of all from this conversation?

Claire Mia Burnett 40:52

Yeah, I thought really hard about this, Maria. I was like, if she asks me that question, what do I want them to know?

Maria Ross 40:58

Yeah,

Claire Mia Burnett 40:58

so I’ll answer it from two perspectives, essentially, I’ll say for the individual, you hit the nail on the head again with self awareness. I think for the individual, they need to figure out how to name one thing at least. If I get really practical, name one thing that your role is charging you for that was never on the job description, right? So I love that. Maybe it’s the emotional translation work. Maybe it’s the title or the the thing that you do that nobody formerly recognized. Just name it, right? And that’s probably your margin tax, your debt, your deposit, whatever it is. Just seeing it can help you start the process, right? And then I would say for the leader of an organization, stop asking how my team is doing, and and start start asking what is the design of their work actually costing them, right? And I love that question. It changes it. It changes what you’re auditing, right? It gets it gets more specific into what is actually happening here.

Maria Ross 42:08

Say that question again, so we really it really lands.

Claire Mia Burnett 42:12

What is the design of their work costing them? Because that moves your your what you’re measuring.

Maria Ross 42:20

Uh huh.

Claire Mia Burnett 42:20

It moves it from the individual to the system.

Maria Ross 42:23

Yes, and that’s empathy. That’s let me look at this from their point of view.

Claire Mia Burnett 42:28

Yes,

Maria Ross 42:29

and if I don’t know, ask,

Claire Mia Burnett 42:30

100%

Maria Ross 42:32

I can tell this is costing you more than I think it’s costing you.

Claire Mia Burnett 42:35

Spot on.

Maria Ross 42:36

Where are you spending your time? Tell me. I don’t have to guess. I don’t have to assume. Right?

Claire Mia Burnett 42:40

Yeah.

Maria Ross 42:41

I love this, Claire. Thank you so much for all your insights and for this book. I’m so excited that we also want folks to check out the free chapter at reserveandrelease.com/edge. They can get a free chapter. They can also buy the book there, which is amazing. But this is definitely something you want on your bookshelf as a leader in the 21st century and in the current times that we’re in, so we will have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s on the go, is that really the best link for them? Is reserveandrelease.com?

Claire Mia Burnett 43:13

That’s it. reserveandrelease.com/edge.

Maria Ross 43:16

Amazing! Thank you so much for your time. It’s been amazing.

Claire Mia Burnett 43:20

Thank you so much, Maria. I enjoyed our conversation,

Maria Ross 43:22

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 and review, or 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 theempathyedge.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.

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

Maria and Rob: Is Empathy an Emotion, Skill, Interaction, or Choice?

Maria Ross and Rob Volpe are back! Today, we talk about empathy like it’s an emotion: something that washes over you, or doesn’t. But what if you don’t feel it? Does that make you bad at empathy?

The science doesn’t offer a tidy answer. Some researchers show empathy is deeply felt, sometimes so intensely it leads to burnout. Others argue it’s a choice we make, turned up or down depending on who’s in front of us and what it might cost us. And at least one prominent thinker says we’d be better off with less empathy and more compassion.

Maria and Rob unpack the difference between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and compassion. They explore whether these are different entry points rather than a sequence, depending on how we are wired.

And they wrestle with a big question: if you can act with compassion simply because it’s the right thing to do, where does empathy fit in?

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The difference between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and compassion
Why empathy and compassion light up different parts of the brain, and why that matters for burnout
Whether empathy is something you’re born with or something you can build
How motivation and social norms shape how much empathy we feel
Acting with compassion when you don’t “feel” empathy, and why that still counts
How leaders can find their natural entry point and strengthen the others

“If you don’t have the empathy with somebody, you’re never going to be able to accurately imagine what they’re doing. Empathy is not mind reading. Empathy is about connection; it’s not predicting the future.” – Rob Volpe

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! retreat.therisingmastermind.com

Episode References:

Rob’s newsletter: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/the-real-answer
Maria’s newsletter: red-slice.com/newsletter
Why Trait Empathy Is the Wrong Measure
Choosing Empathy: Conversation with Jamil Zaki
Jamil Zaki, “Choosing Empathy” (Edge.org conversation, with a response from Paul Bloom)
Jamil Zaki, “Empathy: A Motivated Account” (Psychological Bulletin, 2014)
Erik Nook, Jamil Zaki, et al., “Prosocial Conformity: Prosocial Norms Generalize Across Behavior and Empathy” (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2016)
Geoff Thomas and Gregory Maio, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman: When and How Gender-Role Motivation Helps Mind-Reading” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008)
Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki, “Empathy and Compassion” (Current Biology, 2014)
Klimecki et al., compassion and empathy training study
Karla McLaren, “Why Trait Empathy Is the Wrong Measure” (Psychology Today)
Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
Jessica Tarlov, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends

About Rob Volpe:

Rob Volpe is the Founder/CEO of Empathy Activist and the creator of The 5 Steps to Empathy, which he chronicles in his award-winning book Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. He is a recognized thought leader, speaker, and consultant in the improvement of communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes in all industries.

Connect with Rob:

Website: robvolpe.expert

Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation

X: x.com/rmvolpe

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpathyActivist

Instagram: instagram.com/empathy_activist

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

Rob Volpe 01:00

Thank you, Maria. It’s so good to be here. I have a feeling we’re like the people that if you sat us next to each other in class back in school, the teacher would have separated us for talking. 100%

Maria Ross 01:10

100% Yes, I just shared with a group that I was doing a workshop with a group of school administrators and district leaders that I was the student that used to get put out in the hall for talking in class, and I was like, “Yeah. It

Rob Volpe 01:23

showed up on one of my report cards. I think my parents still have it. It says, “It’s like second or third grade talks too much.

Maria Ross 01:28

Talks too much. And now I have a podcast, and I speak for a living. So there you go.

Rob Volpe 01:33

Maria Ross 01:35

exactly, exactly. And today we are going to talk about something that we’ve been noodling on behind the scenes because this is something that comes up a lot for people when they’re trying to understand what empathy is and what it isn’t, and people, even empathy experts, refer to it differently. Of if it’s an emotion, is it a skill, or is it an interaction? And so that’s what we’re going to explore today in our conversation, and look at some studies that have been done, look at some different points of view, and then just talk about our own perspectives.

Rob Volpe 02:10

Yeah, and why it even matters,

Maria Ross 02:11

and why it matters. Why should you,

Rob Volpe 02:13

dear listener, care?

Maria Ross 02:15

Don’t give away our punchline. But yeah, so let’s get into it. Let’s talk about empathy, and you know, I know you do this. I know lots of other empathy practitioners who do. I do as well. We sort of create our own definitions that benefit the groups we’re talking to and the groups we’re writing for the best, so that they can make empathy real. And talk to us a little bit, Rob. Why don’t you break down for folks the different aspects of empathy that currently are out there in terms of cognitive empathy and affective empathy, and then compassionate empathy?

Rob Volpe 02:51

Yes. So, in the world, according to Rob, no, the way I talk about it is cognitive empathy, which is the perspective taking, emotional empathy, which is feeling the feelings of somebody else. I personally see those leading into the action, which is compassion. I think compassion and empathy are very they’re linked. I feel like compassion is an extension, though

Maria Ross 03:17

empathy and action. Empathy,

Rob Volpe 03:19

yeah, exactly. It’s the action piece of it, where I see people getting tripped up is the idea of how do you get it empathy,

Maria Ross 03:30

right?

Rob Volpe 03:31

And you know, are you born with it? Well, I don’t have it, so should I do something? You know, like they, yeah. How much does it actually? Like, what can I do about

Maria Ross 03:42

it? Right, right. I think that’s

Rob Volpe 03:44

part of what fueled my work in developing the five steps and coaching and training people and groups on being more empathetic and how that shows up.

Maria Ross 03:53

Well, it’s interesting because I, you know, when you say, “Does is it an emotion or is it a skill? I don’t ever say. I try to avoid the wording of feeling empathy because empathy involves feeling in my definition, right? But it also involves perspective taking. It leans into that cognitive component of maybe I don’t, I’m not an overly emotional, touchy feely type of person, but I can use my brain to try to imagine what your point of view might be like, or use my brain to ask questions and find out what your point of view is like. And so, is that a feeling that feels to me much more like a skill or a practice?

Rob Volpe 04:31

Yes, a couple of things in that, and hopefully, I will remember all of them. It’s I just in my recent newsletter, which we can link in the show notes. I wrote based off of the last episode of “What Does It Mean to Be Hun? Our limited sub series. I was looking at AI versus human emotion, and where AI is a predictive plausibility tool. Empathy is actually about understanding. Perspective or understanding feeling, so that you can move to a more positive outcome, is the way I like to talk about it. So, even that imagining, like if you don’t understand their perspective, you’re not going to be able to imagine because what we end up doing is creating this. And synthetic twins is a thing that’s come up in the marketing research and marketing industry where they’re taking mass amounts of data, they’re producing twins, synthetic twins based on the data, and trying to predict what you’re going to do. Which is, in my mind, and the studies are finding it’s not completely accurate because we’re human and you don’t know our perspective, and we make decisions off of emotion, and so even that active imagining-if you don’t have the empathy with somebody, you’re never going to be able to accurately imagine what they’re doing. So empathy is not mind reading. You know, empathy is about connection. It’s not predicting the future. You’re not, you know, Carnac, the Johnny Carson mind reader person, character that he used to do. You’re using it to put yourself into other people’s shoes to connect, so that you can better support them.

Maria Ross 06:10

Yes,

Rob Volpe 06:11

but then you were talking about feeling empathy, and you reminded me of a experience that happened 10 years or so ago. We brought a kind of a marketing consultant, social media consultant, into help ignite 360, and she spent some time doing what they do and talking with everybody. And she sent us the leadership team a note, an email the next morning, and she’s like, “I really appreciated you know the conversations with all of you. And she’s like, “I for the first time, I really felt empathy, and I was like, “What is she talking about? Like, is that something that you can feel? And I think where she was, what she was intending with that, and as I’ve talked with other people, it’s a so, Maria, if you have empathy with me, it is a two-way street. So you’re feeling what I’m feeling, or understanding my perspective, but I am then feeling supported, or I’m feeling heard or seen, and I think that is a there’s probably some emotional sort of reaction or sense that you have underneath all of that.

Maria Ross 07:17

I don’t know that that’s required though. Like I can still practice empathy and try to see things from your perspective without it, understand how you feel. And this is what I talk about when I get asked all the time. Well, what if I’m trying to interact with someone empathetically who’s not being empathetic to me? And I always say that’s actually not your job to change them.

Rob Volpe 07:36

Yeah,

Maria Ross 07:36

but you can get the information you need, and maybe you’re modeling for them how your relationship should go, right? And so there’s a feeling component, but there’s there is again there is that interaction component as well. And then is that really a feeling, right? Do we feel empathy just like we feel sadness or joy or fear or anger? And I don’t know that we do. I don’t know that we. It’s a feeling. These feelings are fleeting.

Rob Volpe 08:02

Feelings are fleeting, and by definition, empathy. If you go to the affective or emotional empathy definition, you’re feeling the feelings of somebody else. So,

Maria Ross 08:10

right,

Rob Volpe 08:11

if they’re feeling sad, you are feeling sad.

Maria Ross 08:13

Right, you’re not feeling empathy. You’re not being you’re feeling sad because you’re being empathetic toward them.

Rob Volpe 08:20

Right,

Maria Ross 08:20

right. So this is where it gets weird, right? And then there’s there’s experts who talk about it in terms of feelings. There’s experts who talk about it in terms of a skill or a trait. There’s experts who who think it’s not necessarily a trait because that implies that it’s there sometimes and it’s there not, right? And then you get people that talk about like Jameel Zaki, who talk about it really as it’s interaction based. You’re making the choice within the moment to be empathetic or not be empathetic, and that that’s a changing condition for everyone. It’s based on their capacity. It’s based on their frame of mind. It’s based on the context of the situation. It’s based on the person they’re interacting with, right?

Rob Volpe 09:02

Yeah,

Maria Ross 09:03

and so I really like I love kind of going down that path of like empathy is active because it requires you to make a choice and make a decision based on what’s in front of you at that moment in time, and it also implies that you can’t necessarily say I’m just not an empathetic person. You’re just choosing not to build that skill for the future interactions.

Rob Volpe 09:24

You’re choosing, you know, if you, I often use the muscle analogy. Yeah, got to train it up, or it’s a superpower, and so you let it go flabby if you don’t, you know, or atrophy if you’re not if you’re not using it, and that’s a choice. And you know, I I often talk about how empathy is this thing we’re born with, and if it’s modeled properly by caregivers, parents, other people in our lives, if we stay open to it, it will fuel the skill. That we use in our life, but even let’s talk about our adult life, and it works with kids too. But in our adult life, to communicate, collaborate, persuade, make decisions, build trust, reach forgiveness-all the things that you need to be successful. And it’s like so empathy isn’t-it’s not a. It’s not technically defined as one of the senses. You know, the five senses. It’s not a skill exactly, but it enables skills. So it’s. I’ve never, and I don’t know if you have thoughts as we’re talking. Like, I don’t know what the word is to describe what it is in that in between.

Maria Ross 10:39

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 10:39

it’s the fuel. It’s the you know accelerant that makes those things better.

Maria Ross 10:45

It’s like when I talk about empathy’s relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not the initiative. Empathy is not the initiative, right? The initiative is the initiative. What are the things that we’re doing as an organization to create, you know, to foster diversity, to create equity, to foster inclusion, but what makes those actually work is empathy,

Rob Volpe 11:09

right?

Maria Ross 11:10

Because otherwise, you’re forcing, you’re trying to policy your way to a compassionate culture or to a diverse culture, and that will never stick. The thing that makes it work for you to bring all these diverse voices together and help them all belong is that we see and understand each other and acknowledge each other’s different points of view, and that’s empathy. So it’s sort of, you know, pick your analogy. It kind of greases the wheels of enabling an inclusive culture. It’s not the same thing as if you have an empathetic culture and an inclusive culture. Those are two separate things.

Rob Volpe 11:42

Totally. And would you, you know, as we were talking about compassion as an offshoot or an action, an empathetic action in DEI, I think you would say like you have empathy, which is just recognizing you’re able to connect to the need. Like, yeah. Oh wow, there are things that we need to do here that are better across all every group and how you can describe them. This isn’t about one one group versus another. Anyway, you recognize, and I think that’s some of what’s happened now in the last couple of years, is going okay. Wait a minute, we’ve favored one over another, and that’s not right either. How do we help all? But you recognize that, and then you’re like, okay, I can take action. I can create a program. I can put policies into place that are meaningful or that are going to bring about change.

Maria Ross 12:31

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 12:32

and that’s a compassionate.

Maria Ross 12:34

Well, but if you don’t change the hearts and minds, is my point. If you don’t help them build empathy, so that they’re seeing the differences in a positive way and acknowledging them, so that the organization can actually reap the benefits of what an inclusive culture does for that, what diverse voices do. If you don’t have the understanding, I always say there’s it’s just a bunch of people who are different from each other and not understanding each other sitting around the table staring at each other. Right?

Rob Volpe 13:00

I’ve used that analogy too.

Maria Ross 13:01

Yeah, until you have that ability to at least connect and acknowledge and go, “Oh, I didn’t think of it that way, or “That’s an interesting perspective, or “Tell me more about that.” To the point of your book, right?

Rob Volpe 13:14

Yeah,

Maria Ross 13:15

empathy is required for that.

Rob Volpe 13:17

Totally, and and to put it in a different business setting, imagine if you are sitting across the table negotiating with somebody. To successfully negotiate, you have to understand what they’re looking for and they’re hoping to achieve, and how that lines up with your own objectives. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be sitting there, you know, pounding your fist on the table.

Maria Ross 13:40

Yeah, you just you’re butting heads at that point. I always say it’s you’re on opposite sides of the table versus the same side of the table, looking at it together. Right? Like, how do we figure this out together?

Rob Volpe 13:51

I like that.

Maria Ross 13:52

So it’s this interesting thing because again, you can get lost, and I did. I got down a rabbit hole between Claude and then other research I was looking at about all the different ways empathy is defined, and even my existing model of you know cognitive empathy, affective empathy can lead to compassionate empathy, which is your move to take action. There’s even debates on what that is because if you think about a compassionate act, and this is where I do agree with some of the thinkers on this, is that you can still do a compassionate deed for somebody, but your motivation might not be empathy, right? And I think Paul Bloom talked about this maybe in his book Against Empathy, where he said if you give money to a homeless person on the street that you’re passing, you’re doing it to sort of get them to stop bothering you. You’re not empathizing with them, but the outcome was that you actually did a compassionate act. You gave them money, right? Or gave them a gave them your lunch, or gave them whatever. And so, empathy is not always a prerequisite for a compassionate act, but. Empathy can often lead to a compassionate act because it’s the next right step that you take based on the information you’ve gathered from the other person. Does that make sense?

Rob Volpe 15:10

Yeah, kind of. I slightly disagree though, and I think it might be with the example. Even like you know, I live in San Francisco, and you’ve lived in San Francisco, and we have a homeless problem. And I’m a pretty compassionate guy, but I do not donate to every homeless person that I or panhandler,

Maria Ross 15:31

right?

Rob Volpe 15:32

Of which there are many at intersections and things like that. Although, note it has gotten a lot better in the last couple years, so don’t you know people don’t hold onto that old tape, but am I being? I recognize. I think I have empathy with.

Maria Ross 15:47

Well, you’re doing the inverse. You can still have empathy, but you you don’t in that.

Rob Volpe 15:51

I can still see the need, but I’m making the choice.

Maria Ross 15:52

You’re making the choice.

Rob Volpe 15:54

But that’s not how I’m going to spend my dollars. Right. I will support that community if I choose to support that community in another way,

Maria Ross 16:01

yes.

Rob Volpe 16:01

And in that moment, though, when I do help somebody out, there’s, I think, even a flash. Like empathy isn’t something you just sit in like a, you know, you’re marinating. Like I don’t think you always marinate in the empathy. I think it can be a flash, like an emotion.

Maria Ross 16:18

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 16:18

that you can have, and it’s and again, like okay, are we talking affective or cognitive empathy? And I can see, oh, that person is struggling. I can imagine that’s difficult for them. Now this gets back into my. I’m actually predicting things that I don’t really know because I’m not taking the time to ask the question.

Maria Ross 16:36

Right.

Rob Volpe 16:37

But I’m I’m making the assumption that oh they need help, and that’s leading to it’s bringing up some emotion, and I’m going into a compassionate action by giving money.

Maria Ross 16:48

Right, right. But I do think we could. I, from my perspective, I think you can decouple what is seemingly a compassionate action that has no empathy involved in

Rob Volpe 17:00

it. I’m just. I’m sorry. I’m laughing at the idea of like you’re bothering me. Here’s $20.

Maria Ross 17:06

Well, and maybe that’s a bad example, but you know, there’s all kinds of things that people do for that are seemingly compassionate acts, but they’re doing it for not empathetic reasons, right? They might be doing it for a tax write-off. They might be doing it because it makes them look good in their community. They might be doing it because, and we’re going to talk about this in a minute because of peer pressure. Like, oh, I’m in a group of people that if I don’t do this, take this act, or show this compassion, I’m going to be judged for it.

Rob Volpe 17:33

Yeah.

Maria Ross 17:33

So it’s a less pure motive, but it still leads to good. And I wrote about that in the Empathy Edge. I wrote about the fact that sometimes you have to get to empathy through selfish motives. That’s how we change behaviors as humans, right? So if you are trying to be a more empathetic organization because you want to experience increased retention and more engagement and more innovation, and you want to be judged, you know, the 100 best places to work, and you initially are engaging in empathy, and you put practices in place, you still get there because now you’re you’re forcing yourself to see other points of view, and consider other people, and so you can’t unsee that.

Rob Volpe 18:13

Yeah,

Maria Ross 18:14

doesn’t matter how you get the horse to water, right? Yes, but once you know, but that’s a bad analogy because you can’t make them drink when they when they get there. But yeah, do you see my point? Like that, I’ve always argued that, and that was my TEDx talk: was how to trick leaders into being more empathetic because I’ve seen the transformation of oh yeah, we’re only doing this because it’s good press, but now it got you in a room with people you never would have been in a room with before.

Rob Volpe 18:40

Right, right,

Maria Ross 18:41

and it has changed some hearts and minds as a result.

Rob Volpe 18:44

And yet, no amount of foosball tables or free snacks is going to long term win over your employees or feel seen and heard.

Maria Ross 18:56

That’s just Fungeneering, as my friend Rebecca Freese always calls it. It’s just trappings.

Rob Volpe 19:00

I love that.

Maria Ross 19:01

But I’m thinking of like you know when I used to do community events, and I wrote about this in the Empathy Edge when I used to do community events as part of the marketing for our channels at Discovery Networks. We would go into a cable affiliate and say, “What what are your goals? What are you trying to do? Because we were trying to get more of our channels on their on their system, right? This is back when it wasn’t so centralized, right?

Rob Volpe 19:23

Right.

Maria Ross 19:23

And oh, we want to do this community event. Oh, great! We have this offer where you can help fill a food pantry, and we bring a truck in. We organize all the logistics. We bring a truckload of food in. You bring your employees. We call the press. We get this food bank filled for the day, and they were like, “Yeah, we want to do that. And the story I wrote in the Empathy Edge was one cable affiliate that did that ended up being completely changed because of the people at the food bank. They had conversations they never would have had if they hadn’t been there for good optics,

Rob Volpe 19:59

right?

Maria Ross 19:59

And what happened was many of them volunteered for the food bank ongoing after that event.

Rob Volpe 20:05

Nice.

Maria Ross 20:06

Soyeah, were they doing it for selfish motives? 100% But did it help open their eyes? 100%

Rob Volpe 20:13

Yes. Yeah, but there was some empathy that you guys used with them and what was important to them generally to connect them to food bank,

Maria Ross 20:23

yeah, doing something for the community, exactly, exactly

Rob Volpe 20:26

to give back.

Maria Ross 20:28

So I want to talk really quickly about this whole, you know, when we’re talking about is it an emotion or is it an action or is it a choice, right? There’s a woman named Karla McLaren, and I’ll put a link to her Psychology Today article. She’s someone I definitely want to have on the podcast, and she argues that empathy lives in interactions rather than as a fixed trait. People can learn to choose it when it’s hard and turn down parts of it when it’s overactive. So that’s the argument to people saying, “I’m just not an empathetic person.”

Rob Volpe 20:58

Yes, it is

Maria Ross 20:59

actually something you can choose to turn on or turn off.

Rob Volpe 21:03

Yep.

Maria Ross 21:03

If you’re being intentional about it, and I really like that. Like, what? How do you feel about that versus whether it’s a social skill or an emotional skill or whatever?

Rob Volpe 21:12

You know, it’s like the you and I were talking before we started recording. It’s like the navel gazing that we sometimes do. Like, and empathy, you know, is the the social science and the research around it is relatively new, and a lot of things like the fact that a cognitive and an emotional thing are ascribed to the same word is just like a jumble of confusion.

Maria Ross 21:39

Yes,

Rob Volpe 21:39

you it might as well be explaining physics to a second grader, like right. It’s just like, huh? And so yeah, everything Karla is saying, yes, it is a choice. It is a feeling. The way you choose to interact with it, and it is situational.

Maria Ross 21:58

Yes, it’s situational, and it’s capacity driven. That’s why self care is one of my pillars. Because are you hungry? Are you? Did you not get a good night’s sleep? Are you stressed? Everything is going to feel like an attack in that frame of mind. I have. I am just trying to survive. I have no room in my head to try to understand Rob’s point of view.

Rob Volpe 22:18

Yeah, can’t do it today. Sorry.

Maria Ross 22:19

Yeah, sorry.

Rob Volpe 22:21

Where normally, yeah, you’ll. listen and and we’ll talk. And if you’re a highly sensitive person, one of the things I I share and have written about, you know, if you’re an HSP, a highly sensitive person, somebody who identifies as an empath, they’re taking it all in. You, your challenge is a little different, not a little. It’s a lot different from the person that isn’t choosing to be empathetic. You’re potentially being too empathetic or empathetic all the time, and so instead of like the way I think about it, if you’re boiling a pot of pasta, we’re both Italian, so we can talk about the noodles and the macaroni, and if you’re cooking pasta, when you finish, you pour it into a colander to let it drain out. The risk that an HSP or an empath has is that they will take that pot of water and pour it into another pot. So both the water and the macaroni are all hanging in there together, and then you’re adding another pot with the next interaction you have, and another, and another, and another, and you just end up with a really heavy pot. Instead, so what I tell people is think colander, where it’s about letting the excess stuff drain away. Yeah, you don’t need everything. You need. You may need to know. Oh, Maria is struggling right now because of this situation, but you don’t need all the surround of it. So, how do you, through the self care, let that kind of drain away from you? Yeah, but you still know, oh, Maria, Maria’s hurting, or I’m feeling this thing that Maria is feeling, and how do I support her?

Maria Ross 23:59

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 23:59

if you’re choosing to take a compassionate action, or you’re just recognizing, yeah, okay, Maria’s having this.

Maria Ross 24:04

Yeah, and I think that’s the they talk about this as the self and other line, where that has to be a distinction and empathy you feel with someone, but you still know if you’re practicing healthy empathy, you still know that that emotion belongs to them, that that experience belongs to them, and without that line, you get emotional contagion, what they call emotional contagion, or you get empathy fatigue, or you get compassion fatigue, whatever it’s called.

Rob Volpe 24:33

You’re catching an empathy cold, like you’re picking up everybody else’s empathy.

Maria Ross 24:36

Because those studies, that those mirror studies that they did with babies long ago, right? That is an that was a proof that we have this mirror neuron, but that is also something that shows emotional contagion.

Rob Volpe 24:49

Yeah,

Maria Ross 24:50

it doesn’t mean that they’re they’re under the baby’s not understanding the other baby’s point of view. They’re literally just mirroring it, and that’s what happens with a lot of HSPs. Is they that self and other line is blurred,

Rob Volpe 25:04

yes, and

Maria Ross 25:04

they can’t hold the container of their own emotions versus what is happening for the other person,

Rob Volpe 25:10

and being separate and seeing and being separate, understanding that it is separate, and then therefore, and I think this is what Paul Bloom gets into, and where he’s quote unquote against empathy is that if you are feeling all of those feelings, it can infect your decision making. Yeah, because it can impair

Maria Ross 25:30

you to focus on the one versus the many.

Rob Volpe 25:32

Yeah, and good decision making is the combination. If you think about the head as the many and the heart as the one, you want to have those things working together, so you’re you can be inspired by the story of the one, but you’re considering the impact on the many.

Maria Ross 25:49

Yes,

Rob Volpe 25:50

and I mean even going back to DEI, I think that’s part of the issue that came up. There was too much focus on the ones rather than like okay, society as a whole, and perhaps in that case, we needed to start there to bring bring up this bigger discussion,

Maria Ross 26:07

right, right,

Rob Volpe 26:08

in the workplace, in anything else that you’re doing, in the charities that you’re gonna, you know,

Maria Ross 26:13

right,

Rob Volpe 26:14

yeah, you need to to marry those two things up. I want to give money to this charity, but I can’t give $10,000 away because I don’t have that. That will harm the rest of my family. That will be the that’s putting the one over the good of the many.

Maria Ross 26:28

Right, right. And I want to get back to this thing earlier that we were talking about again, which is sort of part of this discussion: is this an emotion, or is it an interaction? Is it a decision? Is it a choice? Is it a practice? Whatever. When we talk about those aspects of empathy, and like we said, there’s the I look at it as doors you come through, and then ultimately, hopefully, your empathy ends up in an action that moves the relationship or the decision forward in some way, right? And I don’t want to say it’s like wasted if you practice empathy for somebody, and then it doesn’t lead you to action. But, like you said, contextually, that’s what it might call for. So, when we talk about the doors through which people enter empathy, right? There’s the cognitive door that my data-driven analytic types love, which is really just I can imagine what this is like for you, right? Then there’s the affective or the emotional door-that’s I can feel this with you-and that’s where there’s some disagreement on. No, that’s empathy, right? Some people are like, no, just that is empathy. But then there’s also like we were talking about earlier about when you get to that compassionate action. There’s actually a third door, and this is through me researching for this interview that I was like, “Huh, that’s kind of interesting. There’s the value store, so it’s the, and that can be a lot of things. I may not feel or fully understand it, but I know this is the right thing to do.”

Rob Volpe 27:37

Yes,

Maria Ross 27:37

or I may not feel or fully understand it, which we would be the peer pressure driven values door that we were talking about earlier. But this will make me look good, or this is what the group expects me to do.

Rob Volpe 28:03

Yes, or

Maria Ross 28:04

this is what all the cool kids are doing, right? And I want to bring up that idea of peer pressure because, as you know, we stumbled upon this interesting little nugget that Jamil Zaki shared, and we’re going to put links to all of this in the show notes. Of course, all of the places where we grab this, but there was a study done by Erik Nook and Jamil, along with colleagues, that they wanted to see whether conformity would impact the ability to generate empathy in people. Like, if you believe that you’re around others who value empathy, and this is this is very important to our society that’s gotten so polarized because it’s an echo chamber, right? Whether you choose not to be empathetic or whether you choose to be empathetic could be a function of groups you’re surrounding yourself with,

Rob Volpe 28:48

and who you’re choosing to be empathic with

Maria Ross 28:50

and who you’re choosing to be with. So they found that people were impacted by conformity in empathy. So if you we could, and it said if we convinced folks that their peers experienced lots of empathy, then our participants themselves reported more empathy and acted more kindly towards strangers, even if those strangers belonged to stigmatized out groups. And we think, and their conclusion was that’s a changing tide in our culture that can actually change the way we view empathy. So if you think about, like, if you think about the polarized groups in our society, when you have those people within those groups that are willing to reach out to the other groups, creating a role model, that actually has huge impact. And I’m thinking, you know, I can’t help but think politically about this when we look at Republican Adam Kinzinger, who spoke at the Democratic Convention, right? So he’s sort of trying to be that model within his echo chamber, within his community, of like, no, we can reach out, and almost trying to create that little bit of peer pressure that. Little bit of like, oh, there’s another way we can operate. So I just find that fascinating, and I think that’s well. Speaking for myself, that’s what I’m trying to do with my work: is elevate those spotlight and make it normalized that leaders and organizations are operating with empathy and succeeding, so that the ones who aren’t don’t become the role models; they become the outliers.

Rob Volpe 30:24

Yeah, yeah, and you know, it is empathy is something that we choose because we choose to practice. It’s it’s not just the context of the situation, but it is who we choose to practice it with. So I’m with a group of let’s imagine I’m a Republican and I’m with a let’s imagine I’m MAGA, and I’m with a group of MAGA friends. Like we’re all in a very similar value system, and we’re feeling that kind of connection and empathy and understanding each other, and I’m choosing to have empathy with them. But then through society and and messages that are coming through and the way media and and social media algorithms are constructed, I’ve made those other, you know, which could be the Adam Kinzingers, the Liz Cheney’s, the the Democrats, the Progressives, the the what is it the DSA Democratic Socialists, the far progressive. Anyway, they are very other, and I’m not going to have empathy with them because it’s just safe to be in my bubble,

Maria Ross 31:28

right,

Rob Volpe 31:29

with my people, and that feels good. And I gotta say too, and so Jess, so I bring that up partly because Jessica Tarloff, who’s a host on the Five on Fox. She’s the quote-unquote liberal, even though she’s a bit more moderate. She’s the liberal representation a few days a week with some very conservative fellow guests, and she wrote a book called “I Disagree” because she’s always disagreeing with them and then makes you know facts. But she talks about it’s empathy effectively. I was kind of like, damn! I wish I had sent her the five steps to empathy before. You know, who knew? But she also has a podcast called Raging Moderates, where she and Scott Galloway talk about current events and issues. And she is very empathetic. And one of the things that I’ve heard her talk about in her interviews promoting the book is how you know people on the left, which is where I tend to lean or exist, we’re just as, if not worse, about othering and refusing to even listen and giving

Maria Ross 32:34

100% Yeah, so

Rob Volpe 32:36

we’re not even seeing the humanity. We’re choosing not to have empathy or even trying to have empathy, and so I would challenge everyone to you know a little thought exercise to take make a list. Who are the people in your life, or the situations when you’re choosing to have empathy and choosing not to have empathy?

Maria Ross 32:56

Right.

Rob Volpe 32:57

And look, it’s a choice. I can’t say it’s right or wrong. The choice that you’re making, but have awareness of the choice that you’re making.

Maria Ross 33:05

Yes, absolutely, and that’s why

Rob Volpe 33:08

awareness gives you the power to maybe make a different choice if that is your decision.

Maria Ross 33:14

Well, kind of related to that, McLaren had a great quote in the article that I read that she wrote, and she said it’s unempathetic to exile people from empathy.

Rob Volpe 33:24

Yes,

Maria Ross 33:24

and it’s also unempathetic to grade empathy as if it’s a stable trait instead of a situation dependent and socialization dependent interactional behavior. So even us grading people on their level of empathy and accusing people of being unempathetic or overly empathetic is actually unempathetic.

Rob Volpe 33:44

Yeah, I I want to read more of her work. I love what you’re sharing about what she’s yeah.

Maria Ross 33:49

So I want to share this one other that we found really interesting that Jameel Zaki pointed out is one of his favorite studies was on the concept of gender roles and empathy, and this speaks to again this switch we can flip of intention and choice and decision in practicing empathy or not, and not just oh I’m just not empathetic, throw my hands up, I have no accountability or responsibility for understanding my fellow humans. There’s a study by researchers Thomas and Mayo that started out by demonstrating that on a standard empathy test, heterosexual men that they fared a little bit worse than women in terms of being empathetic, right? So they cite this study. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 34:32

I’ve seen that in my own research when I was doing the five steps.

Maria Ross 34:35

Yeah, and that’s probably a whole nother episode because I have different thoughts on that. But and that plays into the stereotype that women are more empathetic than men. But the study actually demonstrated that it’s not a constitutional difference between men and women. It probably represents a difference in their motivation to what we’re getting to, right? So, in a second study, the scientists conveyed. Men that women find sensitive guys attractive, and it turns out that that motivation eliminated the gender gap in empathy performance. So straight men who believed that being empathetic would make them more attractive to women became more empathic, and that was consistent with the motivation account under which people choose to approach avoiding empathy or embracing empathy based on their goals, so it’s almost something we can again. It’s a it’s a it’s a muscle we can activate. It’s a mindset we can trigger, depending on how intentional and how motivated we are to do

Rob Volpe 35:39

it. And the ultimate KPI, and I’ll be a little crass. I apologize, but like guys, you’re going to get laid if you’re empathetic. That is like such a motivator. But I and I again,

Maria Ross 35:53

what’s in it for me? But it but if it gets you there, I don’t know. Yeah, and I have a little bit of moral dilemma about. But yeah,

Rob Volpe 36:01

I wanna. I’m really curious about that because I’m like, how did they tell people in a way that’s convincing rather than, oh yeah, this researcher, you know, it’s like, yeah,

Maria Ross 36:10

yeah.

Rob Volpe 36:11

Did they slip into their DMs and go, hey, studies have found that you can be? Yeah, we would have

Maria Ross 36:16

to do more research on how they did the research, but I I find that interesting.

Rob Volpe 36:20

But this is actually, I’d love your thoughts on this because what I see in the corporations that I’m coaching and doing empathy programs with right now is like, okay, great, they’ve got the empathy, but we need to infuse it into the performance indicators.

Maria Ross 36:38

Yes,

Rob Volpe 36:39

it’s got to, you know, it’s got to come from leadership. It’s got to come from HR. And like in your review, there’s got to be some way of measuring how supportive are you of others in the group? How much empathy are you, you know, demonstrating? And you can, you know, an HR person would be great at teasing all that out.

Maria Ross 36:59

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 37:00

But that’s the same thing as what that study is showing. So when an organization says this is what we need to do, this is important, then you’re going to get people on board.

Maria Ross 37:10

100%

Rob Volpe 37:11

And that’s always been the. I think you and I have had endless conversations about. Oh my God, what’s the ROI on empathy? Right. And there are various studies that have found it’s actually quite sizable,

Maria Ross 37:21

yeah,

Rob Volpe 37:21

and in different ways, whether it’s consumers or your employees or whatever. But you, to

Maria Ross 37:25

your point, you have to operationalize it. It’s got to be infused in practices, in rituals, in habits, in how you hire, in how you evaluate someone’s performance. It there have to be supportive structures in place that reward or disincentivize the lack of empathy. Otherwise, it’s just the pretty poster on the wall.

Rob Volpe 37:50

Exactly, and performative empathy is the worst, in my opinion. Yes, worst type of empathy. People can see through it. Yeah, it’s you know I think there are plenty of examples of it happening or when empathy is being weaponized.

Maria Ross 38:09

Yes, to manipulate to

Rob Volpe 38:11

manipulate people, which is

Maria Ross 38:13

what sociopaths do, right? They’re very good at empathy because they they do they step they tap into something, and I want to. It’s interesting because I just had this conversation when I was doing a workshop recently. I want to be clear about the difference between performative empathy and practicing empathy, because what gets in folks’ way sometimes is I, I might need to start out with the script. I might need the three magic words. I’m about to sneeze. Hang on. Tell me more.

Rob Volpe 38:45

Yeah. Or

Maria Ross 38:46

your five words. Tell me more about that.

Rob Volpe 38:48

Yeah.

Maria Ross 38:48

And it’s going to come off as stiff and stilted at first. Of course it is because it’s not part of your standard operating procedure, right?

Rob Volpe 38:56

Yeah.

Maria Ross 38:57

But that’s okay. That’s not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about performative empathy because I think performative empathy is linked to your point-the weaponized empathy. I’m going to act as if versus I’m really trying. I’m act as if versus fake it till you make it. I think there is a difference in that,

Rob Volpe 39:15

definitely. And

Maria Ross 39:16

I want people to understand they shouldn’t take this as like what you’re telling me to practice these things and giving me these scripts and whatever, but then you’re saying don’t be performative. There’s a difference in intent there. I don’t know what you think about that.

Rob Volpe 39:30

No, there there absolutely is, and is the fake it till you make it. As long as you are making progress,

Maria Ross 39:38

yeah,

Rob Volpe 39:38

and you’re trying,

Maria Ross 39:40

yes,

Rob Volpe 39:41

different than the. I mean, it. The word “fake” is a little hard. It’s kind of like, you know, I always I share a list of words. You mentioned “Tell me more about that. Like, here’s some phrases you can use to show empathy. But I always tell people you’ve got to find the words that roll off your tongue naturally that sound like you, but. You can start here. Yeah, that happen, and I do. I agree with you. It is different. I think that sincerity is the key difference. You can fake it, sort of. You can let’s not call it fake it. Let’s say you can stumble your way through it, as long as there is a showing that you are trying and you’re making an effort. Yeah. Versus performative. So I’m I’m thinking about a manager that may ask, you know, how are you doing? Uh huh. And the the stumbling their way through it, they’re at least listening and carrying on the conversation. The performative is like the uh huh uh uh uh okay yeah that’s tough, and they’re like not even making the eye contact. Yeah, they’ve asked the question because somewhere they’ve been told that’s the right thing to do. They’re putting on a mask.

Maria Ross 40:48

Yes, yes,

Rob Volpe 40:49

and they’re just like, oh, I’ve seen other people do this, therefore I need to do it, but I don’t really care. I don’t think it’s really important.

Maria Ross 40:55

I think you hit the nail on the head. They don’t really care.

Rob Volpe 40:58

Yeah,

Maria Ross 40:58

I think if you’re doing it because you care and you’re trying to build connections and you’re trying to you’re trying to grow you’re trying to build that capacity for yourself, it’s because you care. Versus to me, performative is you nailed it. Is I’m just putting on a mask so people think I’m empathetic.

Rob Volpe 41:16

Exactly, and if you’re doing that, then people won’t trust you.

Maria Ross 41:21

No, it’s very short lived. It’s very short lived, and it makes

Rob Volpe 41:23

the whole thing even worse because then you are insincere and you just are the a hole that they have said that they said you were.

Maria Ross 41:33

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 41:33

I’ve actually I have seen that play out in organizations. It’s been yeah

Maria Ross 41:39

yeah. I want to talk a little bit about this idea of empathy when it’s the empathy that we want to avoid, right? Because I think that’s where the practicing empathy makes us feel a certain way, and that does evoke an emotion or or a feeling in us. Like if we are uncomfortable sitting in someone else’s grief or discomfort or pain; those are the moments that we avoid empathy because we haven’t effectively established that self and other line.

Rob Volpe 42:13

Right,

Maria Ross 42:14

right. So it doesn’t automatically. Sometimes it has to feel a little uncomfortable and a little gritty. If you’re going to engage in empathy with someone, because it’s going to evoke feelings in you that you’re not comfortable with, it doesn’t mean the feeling of empathy or whatever you want to call it is not worth pursuing.

Rob Volpe 42:36

Right, and there are things that I was talking with a friend the other day, and she had a former colleague, boss, and friend die by suicide. And she was quite close to that individual. They had a lot of he was opening up to her about some of his stuff. She’s highly empathetic, and in that moment, I was really working through how do I sit with this? How do I offer support to her without diminishing her experience? I happened, you know, it was early on a Monday morning. I was very open to the start of the week, and like, okay, I’m here for this.

Maria Ross 43:22

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 43:22

and so there are times like I think about sitting in the workplace when you’re dealing with people that are having something going on, and you may not have bandwidth or capacity to process it. And then what do you say? What do you say back to them?

Maria Ross 43:40

That’s an interesting question,

Rob Volpe 43:44

you know. And I think it’s like an ask the, and this may be going slightly off where you were taking the question initially, but because I have had people ask me, like, I can’t, I can’t, you know, that I can’t say I can’t imagine, I just can’t,

Maria Ross 44:00

yeah.

Rob Volpe 44:01

But you could say, “I can see that you’re hurting. Yes, I can

Maria Ross 44:05

see this is important to you. I can see that you’re hurting. I tell me,

Rob Volpe 44:08

tell me about you know, in the case like tell me what that person meant to you, or tell me more about them, or how are you doing with this, or thinking about it. I you know it’s sudden it’s sudden loss, and so I went into like my own experiences with that, and so yeah.

Maria Ross 44:27

I want to reference a episode I did. I’ve done a few episodes about grief and grief support, and one woman I spoke to, Ashley Jones, I believe, started a nonprofit that also is now she’s doing work around sort of helping organizations help and support employees who go through grief, and it stems from her own loss of a child born with a congenital condition that they knew was going to be fatal, and they had about two years with her, and they maximized those two years they had with her. But we got into a conversation in that discussion about the awkwardness that people have around trying to express empathy when someone’s going through something they have no idea of, right? And I was bringing up my brain injury experience and my recovery and how so much of the attempt of empathy in those difficult situations is to do what I call empathy hijacking, which is turn it make them feel less alone by trying to compare it to a situation you’ve faced.

Rob Volpe 45:34

Yeah,

Maria Ross 45:35

that is not even close, right? That’s actually the wrong thing to do, and that you know that’s not the best choice I should say, and the conversation we had was about when it gets uncomfortable when someone’s trying to support you and wants to be there for you and is bumbling their way through it. I think that people go sort of quote unquote off on empathy in those situations because they’re like, I’m just going to make it worse,

Rob Volpe 46:00

therefore I’m going to say the wrong

Maria Ross 46:01

thing. Therefore, I choose to do nothing. And the conversation that we had was about sometimes the only thing you need to do is just say, “All I can say is this is horrible, and this sucks, and this must be so tough.

Rob Volpe 46:16

Yeah.

Maria Ross 46:17

How you know I’m here, and sometimes that’s enough. We don’t have to go into problem-solving mode. We don’t even, you know, it’s like even if you just have a little bit of time, or you text someone, or you leave a voicemail message, or you drop them an email, to show up in whatever way you have the capacity to show up, but know that sometimes that’s enough. Because I think I think our tendency is if I can’t give all of it, I’m going to withhold all of

Rob Volpe 46:43

it. Yeah, yeah, and that gets some of this gets back into our initial question of is the is empathy a feeling? Is it an action? And I think it’s both. It’s both,

Maria Ross 46:54

and like we said, like you said at the beginning, it also doesn’t matter.

Rob Volpe 46:59

Yeah, and I guess you know it’s like thinking about those situations, and I want to listen to that interview with Ashley. But it’s like there’s, I guess you can give a fully empathetic response because you’ve got some personal connection. You understand your or you’re

Maria Ross 47:17

right

Rob Volpe 47:17

equipped with the words and the sentiment to support. Then there’s the empathy hijacking, which is just

Maria Ross 47:24

jumping in with your own story. Here’s what I did, and here’s how I felt, and here and you’re just decentering the narrative from them.

Rob Volpe 47:31

Exactly, exactly, and that’s the thing is, it always needs to go back to like what I was trying to do in my story was try to bring it back and ask questions because I knew the anger that I was feeling at a sudden loss and was that showing up for her? How was she processing that? And then that opened up things rather than going, “Wow, you must feel angry about such and such,

Maria Ross 47:54

right?

Rob Volpe 47:54

But yeah, don’t emotionally hijack or don’t empathetically hijack it. But sometimes you know, just say like that looks incredibly. This seems incredibly painful. I’m here for you. Let me know. I can support you.

Maria Ross 48:07

Right.

Rob Volpe 48:08

Versus doing nothing and saying nothing.

Maria Ross 48:10

Right. Right. I mean, you can even say, “I don’t know how to support you best right now.

Rob Volpe 48:15

I’ve not been through this. I’ve not been through

Maria Ross 48:17

this. Right. And it’s just an acknowledgement. So it’s just interesting. I find I know we’re kind of talking about. It seems like those random threads, but in my mind, it’s all connected because when we talk about empathy as an emotion, I don’t that doesn’t sit quite right with me. the The idea of empathy as a choice and an interaction and a decision feels better, but we also have to acknowledge that emotion is indeed very much a part of this, and it’s the it’s in whether we can share those emotions or not. That’s sort of a different question than if I can be empathetic or not. I guess is what I’m saying.

Rob Volpe 48:53

Yes, they’re they’re totally different. I mean, that being empathetic is having the ability to take the perspective or feeling the feelings, and then there’s the choice of what you do with it. Yes, it should elicit some feeling for you. Ultimately, to me, it what matters is that you are making the effort to and the choice to try to understand other people’s perspective or feel their feelings, and then do whatever is appropriate for you,

Maria Ross 49:24

right? In the

Rob Volpe 49:25

moment, in the context, in the setting to support them.

Maria Ross 49:30

Well, and in some of the research that you did, I’m looking at some of your notes. Another add-on to that is also to give people grace that they might be showing empathy in a different way. Their way of practicing empathy, I guess, might look different than your way of practicing empathy. If you are neurodivergent, if you are very stoic, if you are, you know, if you’re a hugger or a crier, right? We all have different ways of creating that connection. With empathy, and this goes back to our point earlier about not rating people’s empathy, because if they are able to create the connection, however they create the connection, then that works, right? We we all have heard stories of different ways, you know, the different love languages, for example, and the different ways that people build those bridges, and it reminds me of a story from when I was in high school, and I had just started driving to school. I think I was a junior or senior in high school, and pulling out of the the garage one day in my dad’s Camaro that I was given as the car, I was trying so hard to avoid the new car they had just bought that I didn’t look on my driver’s side, and I rammed the side of the car into the edge of the garage, and there’s like this big hole. And I have to leave for school. My mom’s asleep, so I just go upstairs and I like whisper, “Mom, mom, hey, just so you know, I hit the garage. I’ll see you later. Get back in the car. I and it still ran. I go to school, and I was making up all sorts of stories in my head about how my dad was going to react, I’m like, he’s going to disown me. Like I’m packing my bags. Like it was bad. Which friend do

Rob Volpe 51:07

I go live with? Which friend do

Maria Ross 51:08

I go live with? Right, and I had a babysitting job right after school, so I didn’t get home till about like six or 7o’clock. And I walk home, and I see just my dad hammering the track on the garage door, and one of the only times in his life he didn’t react with. He just and I just walked up behind him, and I was like, and he just goes, “Wow, you really did a job on this, and I’m like, “Yeah, sorry, but it was, and I bring this up because the reaction wasn’t one of like, “Oh, I forgive you. Tell me about what happened or whatever. But that was his way of connecting with me, and what he was capable of at that moment, because I’m sure he was seething, right? That’s what he was capable of in that moment to still create a connection with me was using humor, right? And so, all that to say, when you think about “quote unquote” judging people for how they are experiencing empathy, yes, you want you want the empathy that you practice to help the other person feel seen, heard, and valued. I’m not denying that. And if the way that you choose to do that isn’t landing, you might need to choose another way, and we also need to have grace for the different ways that people are able or have the capacity to communicate that empathy.

Rob Volpe 52:31

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, your dad actually-you know-I have no idea. Did he? Did he like figure? Well, she’s beaten herself. Did your mom report? Well, she came and whispered it to me, and whatever. I don’t

Maria Ross 52:45

know if she even remembered. Like, yeah, but

Rob Volpe 52:47

she was like, she was stone cold asleep. It was dead in dreams.

Maria Ross 52:51

But this is an example of one of those things where you know they talk about, and my parents were very tough in terms of discipline and flying off the handle and things like that, but this was an example of when people talk about positive parenting or conscious parenting. I didn’t get grounded for that because I think, to your point, they recognized they knew me well enough to know that I had already spent the day beating myself up. 10

Rob Volpe 53:14

hours beating yourself up over it. What good is this? It was an accident, you know. A little careless, but now what happened when it happened the second time?

Maria Ross 53:24

Well, those would be the speeding tickets that all occurred after that. But yeah, no, I but I I know we kind of diverged or what’s the word diverted off our topic a little bit. But my point being that that’s where I think the lines get blurry. Of is this a practice or an emotion? Because the way we process emotion actually impacts the way that we practice empathy.

Rob Volpe 53:49

I mean,

Maria Ross 53:51

that’s my TLDR, whatever they call it. And whether whether

Rob Volpe 53:54

it’s your pillars, my steps, like people need people. What I find is that people are hungry for like. I just need to know somewhere to start. Like, yeah, give people the tools.

Maria Ross 54:06

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 54:07

and then they apply it in their own setting and the way that they works for them and what they’re capable of. But most important, that you have the awareness to make the choice.

Maria Ross 54:18

Yes,

Rob Volpe 54:18

and that’s why I always talk about the importance of courage, and not run into a burning building. Courage, but small doses of courage every day to make the choice to try to understand somebody else.

Maria Ross 54:29

Boom, right there. And so we spent an hour getting to this cumulative argument of the definitions kind of don’t matter.

Rob Volpe 54:36

Yeah, basically,

Maria Ross 54:38

it’s about the actions that we’re taking and the care that we’re showing, and the like you said, the attempt to make the connection. Just do it. Do it. Just do it. We could have done that in 15 seconds, Rob. This is as always a delight to talk to you about all this, and we would love to know, folks, what you think about any of this that we talked about today. How empathy shows up for you, whether you think it’s an emotion. Or a practice, or a decision, or a choice, where it where you withhold it, and where you lean into it intentionally would be really interesting to hear. So you can find us on LinkedIn or Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn, Maria J Ross. Instagram, Red Slice Maria Rob.

Rob Volpe 55:16

Instagram is empathy underscore activist R M Volpe on LinkedIn, and we’ll link to my newsletter in the pod in the show notes, so you can find me down there.

Maria Ross 55:28

And all the things. Thank you so much. And remember, like we always close every episode. If you liked this episode, please 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 theempathyedge.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.

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

Dan Cosgrove: The ROI of Dignity – Disrupting Broken Employee Benefits for Good

Here is a stat that should make every leader uncomfortable: most companies are overpaying for employee healthcare while their employees are still underserved, afraid to use it, and one medical bill away from a crisis. My guest today is Dan Cosgrove, CEO of Better Benefits USA. Dan spent over a decade at some of the most iconic companies in the world before channeling that expertise into healthcare. His mission is simple and urgent: close the gap on care, cost, and coverage for hardworking Americans.

Dan makes the case that better employee healthcare is not just the right thing to do; it is one of the smartest business decisions a leader can make. We get into how employers can actually lower costs while improving the care their employees receive by leveraging tax codes and building plans that prioritize preventative care. We talk about why the status quo feels safe but is actually costing you, and why treating employees as individuals rather than offering cookie-cutter benefits is not just empathetic; it is what they now expect. And Dan shares the story of one nonprofit in New York that took the leap and is now saving approximately 1.2 million dollars per year, which they are reinvesting directly back into their mission.

If you have ever thought better benefits were out of reach for your organization, Dan is about to change your mind completely.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why your employee benefits package may be costing your employees and your business.
The ROI of changing the way your organization does healthcare.
Why we need to think about our healthcare system as three things: a sword, a shield, and a safety net.

“Employee health plans should not be a one size fits all. It should be customization and curation based on meeting the people where they are in life. So that’s where I talk about dignity. Understand the individual.” — Dan Cosgrove

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! https://retreat.therisingmastermind.com/

Episode References:

Take the free audit at www.findbetterbenefits.org
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter
Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright
Forbes Article: Your Employees Aren’t Resisting Change. Their Brains Are

About Dan Cosgrove, CEO, Better Benefits, USA:

Dan spent over a decade at Procter and Gamble, Berkshire Hathaway, and Nike before he broke away to focus on his passion of healthcare. The first healthcare company he started broke $4m in under three years. Now his nonprofit Better Benefits USA was just recognized by P&G as one of the top ten companies run by P&G alumni. His group is all about disrupting our broken healthcare system, so hopefully a few insights he shares today can be really helpful for you as well!

Connect with Dan:

Better Benefits USA: betterbenefitsusa.org

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/myhealthandwealth

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/bestemployeebenefits

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

Courtesy of our sponsor, JLG Lawyers – Download “The Human Middle,” Your free guide to resolving workplace conflict: https://thehumanmiddle.ai/

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. Here’s a stat that should make every leader uncomfortable: most companies are overpaying for employee health care while their employees are still underserved, afraid to use it, and one medical bill away from a crisis. That is anything but empathetic employee care. My guest today is Dan Cosgrove, CEO of Better Benefits USA, a nonprofit disrupting our broken healthcare system from the inside out. Dan spent over a decade at some of the most iconic companies in the world, including Procter and Gamble, Berkshire Hathaway, and Nike, before channeling that expertise into healthcare, his first healthcare company broke $4 million in under three years, and Better Benefits USA was just recognized by P&G as one of the top 10 companies run by P&G alumni. His mission is simple and urgent: close the gap on care, cost, and coverage for hardworking Americans. Today, Dan makes the case that better employee health care is not just the right thing to do; it’s one of the smartest business decisions a leader can make. Yes, both and in action. We get into how employers can actually lower costs while improving the care their employees receive by leveraging tax codes and building plans that prioritize preventative care. We talk about why the status quo feels safe, but is actually costing you. Why pre-funded HRAs and direct primary care models remove out-of-pocket fear and keep employees engaged and operating at full capacity, and why treating employees as individuals rather than offering cookie-cutter benefits is not just empathetic; it’s what they now expect. And Dan shares the story of one nonprofit in New York that took the leap and is now saving approximately, wait for it, 1.2 million dollars per year, which they are reinvesting directly back into their mission. If you’ve ever thought better benefits were out of reach for your organization, or you’re wondering how to exactly operationalize empathy within your organization, even with some of the non-sexy stuff. Dan is about to change your mind completely. Take a listen, Dan. Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today about a way to show empathy to your employees that I don’t think many of us have looked at in the past as leaders. So I’m really excited to have this conversation, and I love that one of the threads of this conversation is the ROI of dignity for your employees and giving them the best benefits you can, so they can do the best work for you. So, welcome to the show.

Dan Cosgrove 03:22

Hey, Maria, thank you so much for having me. I am very excited to have this conversation today.

Maria Ross 03:27

Yeah. So, let’s start where we always start. Tell us a little bit about your story and how you even got here, and what’s the passion for this work right now?

Dan Cosgrove 03:35

Yeah. Well, a little bit about myself. Well, one on the personal side, I’m from Boston, Massachusetts. I’m originally from Cincinnati, though. Married a beautiful woman, and we have two kids, so we live in a suburb of Boston. But I started my corporate experience at Procter and Gamble. I had a lot of great experiences there. Ended up getting sold to Berkshire Hathaway, so I went over and got some experiences working for Warren Buffett. A few years after that, I got poached by Nike. Went over was the chief of staff to the CMO. Now all of those experiences taught me a lot of great things about a lot of great companies. But I’m German in nature. My mom’s name is Ilsa, and when I graduated from Richmond University, Richmond, I set a goal that 10 years after my undergrad, I wanted to break away and do my own thing, and I wanted to do my own thing specifically in the healthcare space, so it’s amazing how things line up. Is that 10 years and one month that I took a package from Nike during COVID, and I first started in the healthcare space, first trying to solve mental health, and the reason being is when I was studying the minds of consumers at Nike, I was finding that anxiety and depression were at all time highs, and people were searching for a sense of being oneself. So that’s what I first wanted to tackle. And I also know in the mental health field that I do not have the skill set. We’ll just say to sit in a room and listen to somebody talk to me about their feelings for 60 minutes. Like my wife will be the first one to tell you that. But I can do business.

Maria Ross 04:59

Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 05:00

and so I launched a mental health company where I focused on taking care of all the back office and like the employee benefits and like pulling in potential patients, and I let my people focus on their superpower, which is actually taking care of people, because I wanted to minimize burnout because we knew that was ultimately hurting patient care. Well, as many business owners have seen when you try to really take care of your people, that involves employee benefits and healthcare and all those fun things, and

Maria Ross 05:29

the non sexy stuff, right?

Dan Cosgrove 05:30

The non sexy stuff that is just necessary in the United States, necessary to do. And I went down a rabbit hole, and I found that ultimately, for the past couple decades, we’ve been not lied to, but told a creative story as to what employee benefits should be from the insurance companies in their respective groups. So I challenged the status quo. I did something different for my own employees, and I created an employee benefits package that gives us 95% retention, and in an industry, by the way, that has only 70% retention. And I found a way that saved me as the business owner about $3,600 a year per employee, while simultaneously giving my employees better benefits. So that’s where it’s like, oh my lord, if I can figure this out, why can’t I bring this to more businesses out there because that’s what I’m trying to serve. So fortunately for me, I’ve got an awesome business partner and a great team over there, and they run things on the mental health side. So I was able to launch a new nonprofit called Better Benefits USA about four or five years ago now, where we try to challenge the current model in our healthcare industry. There’s a lot of things that are broken, but I say misaligned incentive structures are one of them. So we establish that as a nonprofit, we call it a sustainable funding model. We will only get paid if we pay if we save clients money, not how much we convince them to overpay on their various healthcare costs. So that’s a little bit about like what brings us here full circle.

Maria Ross 06:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there’s so many things in there because you started out as an employer, as a founder, trying to figure this out. How do I give my employees the best environment so they can focus on the work, right? And this is this is the thing that some leaders who don’t embrace empathetic leadership or even really understand the power of employee benefits is it’s not about coddling your employees. It’s about maximizing, you know, if we really want to be bottom line, maximizing your most important asset. Correct. How do you optimize people so that they are operating at full capacity?

Dan Cosgrove 07:33

Yeah,

Maria Ross 07:33

and not at a fraction of it.

Dan Cosgrove 07:35

Yeah.

Maria Ross 07:35

So I love that you came at this from a. This is the problem that I had. Here’s how I figured out how to solve it. Now I want to go help other companies realize there is a better way to do this because I think you’re right. I think the idea of changing how it’s always been done is scary because we’re doing it on autopilot.

Dan Cosgrove 07:54

I mean, change is scary, and that’s why we have people. So many people are stuck with the status quo because, and I saw this in in my corporate experience as well. Sticking with the status quo never got anybody fired, but it also didn’t create any meaningful change. And I think I was put on this world to or on this earth to actually disrupt an industry that’s very broken. So I want to encourage people to challenge the status quo. Don’t believe everything that you’ve been told, and actually look for yourself and do your own due diligence. And find that change can feel scary, but the scarier thing to me is becoming complacent and doing nothing. Because when you do nothing, you lose your your best resource, which is your talent at the company.

Maria Ross 08:37

Right, and then you’re constantly playing catch up, and then your talent’s going to your competitors and innovating for them if they’re being treated well, right?

Dan Cosgrove 08:44

Yep. And your profit margins inevitably shrink, and then you eventually have to shut down.

Maria Ross 08:48

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 08:49

And then now you’re really struggling. So

Maria Ross 08:51

right.

Dan Cosgrove 08:51

Yeah, we want to give people a different solution so that they don’t have to be so concerned about what the future because the future is always bleak until you get there. You just have to be willing to you know make some changes.

Maria Ross 09:00

Exactly. Exactly. So, I want to talk a little bit about this idea of the ROI of dignity because this is, you know, like when I talk about the ROI of empathetic leadership and show the skeptics the bottom line. Why does giving employees, and we’re going to get into the model specifically for listeners who are curious in a moment, but I want to talk about the macro lesson here for our listeners: Why is giving employees choice and financial protection in their healthcare? How does that yield returns? So I’m the CFO. You’re telling me I need to change the way we do healthcare, which again we’ll describe in a moment.

Dan Cosgrove 09:36

Sure,

Maria Ross 09:36

that’s scary.

Dan Cosgrove 09:38

Yeah,

Maria Ross 09:38

I don’t know if that’s going to work, but what’s the ROI of doing that?

Dan Cosgrove 09:42

I mean, better retention. Better retention is one of the biggest drivers from any company, and I mean, my group is a walking case study in of itself of a 25% increase. But look at other industries that we’ve helped; at least every single one of them seen about a 10% bump in their retention. So that, in and of itself, is a strong ROI. If you can attract and retain talent, so that you’re not having to constantly, if you’re an HR person, hire a new person, hire a new person, hire a new person. Like that is a hamster wheel that creates no success. So really, retention is the ROI there. But how do you actually, you know, talking about dignity, we’re not looking at an employee as employee number one. We’re looking at them as Maria, as Kaylee, as Lisa, as Patrick, like individual people, and oftentimes we get into these cookie cutter solutions because guess what? Benefits brokers are familiar with group cookie cutter solutions. They’re not here to actually serve the individual. And I learned this part over at Nike. Like every person in today’s world likes customization and curation. Employee health plans should not be a one size fits all. It should be customization and curation based on meeting the people where they are in life. So that’s where I talk about dignity. Understand the individual, not just the macro part of I want this group benefit plan. We’re just going to force it down somebody’s throat. That never seems to work, and that’s not a surprise that it doesn’t work.

Maria Ross 11:02

Well, and that’s empathy right there. It’s really understanding not not just here’s the solution we’re going to put on you, but what do you need from your point of view? What is the type of plan or benefit? You know, whatever it is, whether it’s healthcare or something else, what is it that you actually need to thrive? So I can make sure you’re fully engaged, correct? Engaging your brain, engaging your creative thinking when you’re on the clock, when you’re under my payroll, right? Correct. So I love that. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit because then we can get into more of this. I know people are like, “Well, I don’t. What’s this model? So talk a little bit about the model because I find it interesting that you are a nonprofit. Yeah, and that’s part of this. So, explain a little bit about when you talk about custom medical benefits solutions for employees. What does it look like, and how how are you even able to do this, and not only provide empathetic benefits to employees, but save the company money? That’s the part that I’m like, wow, this is the ultimate both and opportunity. That’s why I had to have you on the show. But so tell us about the model.

Dan Cosgrove 12:05

Yeah. So I’ll take a step back. If people have never read like Rich Dad Poor Dad, it’s a great book. Well, the CPA for Rich Dad Poor Dad, his name is Tom Wilwright, so he’s like a tax attorney. He wrote, and this is just me nerding out on the tax code. He wrote a book called Tax Free Will Strategy. Now, within like those 500 pages of wonderful tax stuff, there was a line that said the majority of people think taxes are written against them because they think about that day in April. Well, in fact, 95% of the tax code is written in your favor. Most people just don’t know where to look, and so like working off of that hypothesis of okay, if 95% of the tax code is actually written in our favor, what needs to be true in order to make these things basically subsidized by Uncle Sam and not subsidized by me as the employer? So it’s just again, you just have to change the lens that you’re looking at the problem from, and you can find some real meaningful solutions. So oftentimes we’re going to do a phase one and a phase two approach. Phase one is truthfully like tax codes out there that we can take advantage of to give employees better benefits while simultaneously saving the employer money and saving the employee money. Once we do that, we then open ourselves up into phase two, which could very well be helping people get access to health insurance and healthcare at a fraction of the cost. So let’s hit a few tax codes that I think people might find really interesting. For one, we have a lot. Careful, I know tax codes. Very interesting stuff.

Maria Ross 13:28

Tell me more, Dan.

Dan Cosgrove 13:30

But you could do like say you have a lot of remote employees. Immediately, you should be giving them basically you cover their internet and like cable expenses and energy expenses or electric expenses because you can give them $1 for dollar out of a non-taxable basis. So, like I can give every employee basically 100 bucks a month to cover their internet and energy, and that can be paid $100 to them instead of losing 30% of that in taxes. So that’s a great way to give people a meaningful bump in pay. All right, so let’s just look at various tax codes, and I’ll I’ll rattle off a few of them fast, and I’ll do a deeper dive into one that I think is really going to be interesting for people in terms of healthcare. One, if you have remote employees, just think about giving them utility or energy stipends because those can be done tax free. Or if you have employees that have young kids, give them the dependent care assistance programs because you can put about $7,500 a year tax free to if you have employees with student loans which we know there’s a lot of those out there you can give them about $5,200 a year tax free so those are just some tax codes but the biggest one that I think is in unlocking where our conversation is going to be centered on today is how do we make healthcare more affordable in America and that is hidden under Section 125, no different than HSAs and FSAs. There’s an optimized Section 125 people can be doing, and it’s focused on preventative healthcare, helping people stop a healthcare condition before it starts.

Maria Ross 14:53

Yeah, because

Dan Cosgrove 14:54

unfortunately, like the data out there is pretty overwhelming. We spend four and a half trillion dollars a year on chronic care conditions. Alone in America,

Maria Ross 15:00

right? We’re horrible at preventative.

Dan Cosgrove 15:02

We’re not good at

Maria Ross 15:03

like well, and I wouldn’t even say we’re good at dealing with it when crisis hits either. But yeah, a lot of our problems could be eased if we had plans that talked. You know, and some of it is nonsensical. You’re like, especially you know, as a woman in the healthcare system, I’m like, you’re not going to cover this, but if this goes wrong, do you know how much more money you’re going to have to spend on me if I don’t get this checked once a year or twice a year or whatever

Dan Cosgrove 15:30

it is?

Maria Ross 15:30

So I love that this poor solution is very empathetic in that it’s giving people that opportunity to prevent the catastrophic. And you know we haven’t even talked about how much stress and anxiety is caused to employees because of medical debt.

Dan Cosgrove 15:45

Correct.

Maria Ross 15:46

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 15:46

Correct.

Maria Ross 15:47

So yeah. So sorry. Go ahead. I just no yes preach go.

Dan Cosgrove 15:50

Well, talking talking about medical debt, you have a million Americans every year file for personal bankruptcy with out of control healthcare expenses.

Maria Ross 15:56

Absolutely.

Dan Cosgrove 15:57

And that’s probably a lower number because like I’m a family of four. If I file for bankruptcy, it’s not just Dan impacted. It’s my wife and kids too.

Maria Ross 16:04

Right, right.

Dan Cosgrove 16:06

So we need to give people proper safety nets because I personally believe we live in the greatest country in the world, but our healthcare systems let us down, and not every American deserves access to healthcare. We just need to find a way to make it more affordable for them. Yeah, and so that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Is we’re trying to use the tax codes in such a way to make it a financially smart investment for both employees and employers to actually consider their healthcare costs in a more serious fashion.

Maria Ross 16:30

Absolutely. Okay, so talk a little bit about the preventive care component because that’s one that is often missing in the cost cutting measure.

Dan Cosgrove 16:37

Yeah. For sure.

Maria Ross 16:38

Oh, this plan is cheaper, but it doesn’t include any preventive care for people.

Dan Cosgrove 16:42

Yeah, for sure. So let’s think about our healthcare system in three things. I’m going to give you a sword, a shield, and a safety net.

Maria Ross 16:48

Okay.

Dan Cosgrove 16:49

So a shield is going to be your traditional health insurance. We’re going to save that. We’re going to table that for later. So now let’s talk about a sword and a safety net. The sword is going to be focused on preventative healthcare. Why are we doing that? I would say consider the Netflix model. We unfortunately, right now in America, we make money off of people being sick or injured. It’s a fee-based system in our healthcare system, which is truthfully screwed up. So we’re trying to change that model. We want to do value-based care. So that means just like with Netflix, whether you watch one show on Netflix or 100 shows on Netflix each month, you’re still paying the same amount. Same thing with our healthcare. Whether you see one doctor or 100 doctors, you’re still going to pay the same amount each month. So by doing that, now when that you know like that little cough is just a cough, you can still contact a doctor. You know just by having your phone right there. So instead of you know trying to battle through that cough, because unfortunately sometimes when we battle through that, that turns into something more severe. It could be pneumonia. It could be something else that then keeps me out of work longer, or worse yet, turns into a major medical situation, which I’m no longer returning to the workforce.

Maria Ross 17:49

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 17:50

So that’s what we’re trying to do: is give every employee plus their spouse, kids up to the age of 26, basically free access to healthcare. That’s our goal there, and we’re all doing that just utilizing the tax codes in their favor.

Maria Ross 18:01

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So, and then talk a little bit about phase two.

Dan Cosgrove 18:06

Yeah, yeah. So once you do phase one, again, section 125 is just like an HSA. What does that mean? You’re it’s a pre tax deduction. So when you’re reducing your taxable income, it could actually unlock the ability for you to qualify for subsidized health insurance, and we know unfortunately the subsidy cliff kicked back into place in 2026. So you need to actually help people get below the subsidy cliff to actually qualify for subsidies. But like in Massachusetts, I’ll just use as an example because that’s where I live. If you are just $1 below the subsidy cliff, you qualify for basically a $350 a month subsidy for your health insurance. If you are $1 above it, you’re paying full price at like 700 bucks a month.

Maria Ross 18:45

Wow!

Dan Cosgrove 18:46

And that is the difference between giving somebody affordable access to healthcare and not. So with phase one, because we’re able to reduce people’s taxable income via all those things that I kind of rattled off earlier. Well, if you’re able to reduce somebody’s taxable income by like $20,000, which truthfully you can. Yeah, you can legally do that. You’ve just found a way to take them from paying 500 bucks a month on their health insurance to sometimes free,

Maria Ross 19:10

right?

Dan Cosgrove 19:10

And that’s all again going to be subsidized by the government and their various tax incentives,

Maria Ross 19:15

right? And for anyone listening, we can have a whole other conversation on if it’s fair to have taxpayers subsidizing for employers, but we’re talking about the majority of people in this country who the reality is they get their health care through their employer. So if we can make that, if we can at least fix one part of the system, we can tackle the rest, right? So I want to talk a little bit about this idea of doing right by your employees, right? Being an empathetic leader and saying, “Oh, this does matter. I’m not just going to burn, churn, and burn through people because I’ve got not only the costs of hiring and recruiting, but training and the loss of institutional knowledge and all the things that come with retention issues. Right? Yeah. So. What has been the biggest obstacle that you hear from companies to actually change to a way that seems to, on this, you know, we haven’t dug in, but it seems to, on the surface, benefit both the employer and the employee? Because I’ll tell you why I’m asking it this way. Because I’m always fascinated by the inability to embrace both and leadership. I talk about that all the time. That we’re stuck in these binary models of it’s either I save money or I do right by my employees.

Dan Cosgrove 20:29

Correct.

Maria Ross 20:30

And you’re presenting a model that is the epitome of both and. Correct. So where’s the objection? Because it

Dan Cosgrove 20:36

feels scary. Different feels scary. Like, and it’s just, and again, I I challenge people. I want to walk them through the compliance piece, and they’re just like, “How is this legal? You know, I’m just like, I’ll show you in the tax code where it is written. But for every person that says it’s legal to do it, you’re going to see plenty of opposition that says, “Nope, it should be taxable. Looking like that, I could go on agnosium of all the various things that the IRS puts out in memos and opinion pieces, but it feels scary. So most people aren’t going to do anything,

Maria Ross 21:05

right?

Dan Cosgrove 21:05

What I try to help them understand is, I believe right now we are in the third evolution of employee benefits. The first one was back in basically the late 70s, early 80s, where tax brackets were really high. So what was created? This thing called the 401k.

Maria Ross 21:21

Yep,

Dan Cosgrove 21:22

and it was a great vehicle for really rich people to put away $50,000 a year at that point in time, which is like $250,000 a year in today’s terms. Right, so they could put $50,000 a year tax free.

Maria Ross 21:33

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 21:33

Well, guess what? A few years later, people start figuring out. It’s like, oh man, I could put this in my employer plan because we know pensions were starting to go away.

Maria Ross 21:40

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 21:41

And so for several years, I think there’s like five or six years. There’s just a battle between these employers putting in place and the IRS saying, no, no, no, all these things need to be taxable income. They need to be taxable income. Guess what? It then became codified into law into the mid late ’80s, and now we know the 401k as it is today, one of the best retirement vehicles for employees out there.

Maria Ross 21:59

And we hardly have companies offering pensions now because of it? Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 22:02

correct. So, so like it takes time for people to adopt there. Fast forward another 20 years. There’s this thing called the HSA that came out in the early 2000s, and it was called the greatest thing ever outside of a 401k because it had triple tax advantages. Well, people fought back against this so hard, they fought back for a good five years. Then 2008 occurred. People are living paycheck to paycheck. The Affordable Care Act had some impact on, let’s just say, healthcare costs. So what did employers have to do? They had to move to high deductible plans. The HSA became the greatest thing since you know sliced bread.

Maria Ross 22:38

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 22:39

So it took 10 years from the HSA’s creation to basically being recognized as like you should be using this vehicle as the 401k on steroids.

Maria Ross 22:46

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 22:47

So fast forward another 20 years, here we are again. We’re talking about another employee benefit under another tax code, and people are pushing back against it because you also have to look at who’s entrenched, who’s getting money right now.

Maria Ross 22:57

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 22:58

It’s a complicated and purposely confusing by design healthcare system. Yes, the old guard doesn’t want people saving money on their healthcare costs.

Maria Ross 23:05

No,

Dan Cosgrove 23:05

they need costs to go up because it’s written into law. Like medical loss ratios, they can only take about a 15% profit margin on the cost of medical loss ratios. So that’s why people’s care isn’t going down.

Maria Ross 23:20

Right,

Dan Cosgrove 23:20

they need to grow the pie larger, so their 15% becomes a bigger number.

Maria Ross 23:24

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 23:24

So yeah, the old guard is going to fight this tooth and nail. But I just tell people like, look at what’s actually written, and that’s where you’re going to find the truth. Don’t listen to somebody that might have a misaligned incentive structure that’s going to get, you know, a 5% commission on how much your insurance costs. Right.

Maria Ross 23:40

Right. Well, and what I love about this is it dovetails so well into this idea of, as I said earlier, like operationalizing care for your employees, making it real through this kind of thing, and this idea of now that you know this is out there. I talk about this when I present data around empathetic leadership and all the ROI it brings, you can cite all the other horrible leaders or companies with horrible cultures who are successful that you want. Of course, they’re still going to exist, but now you know, so you can do better. Correct. If now you know that this is another way to operate and another way to help your employees, yeah. Now that’s on you. Yeah. You know, it’s not. Oh, it’s the system. I’m stuck in it. I have to do it this way. Now you have to make a conscious choice as a leader of a company, as a head of HR, to say no. We’re going to do this because we know it’s it’s good for us and it’s good for our employees at the same time. So it’s very similar in that there’s so many of these things that even though it’s change, because our brains react to change the same way, whether it’s good change or bad change. By the way, I did an article for Forbes on that. I’ll link to it in the show notes. But this idea of well, now you know, so there’s no excuse to say, oh, I’m a victim of the system. Sorry, we can’t do right by our employees because this is the way everybody does it

Dan Cosgrove 25:00

correct

Maria Ross 25:01

Now you’re making a choice that there’s another way to do this.

Dan Cosgrove 25:04

You nailed it. But when you think about every innovation and disruption, you have that adoption curve, right? We’re still in that early adopter phase. Yeah, you have to have people that you know have the courage, truthfully, to consider something new because they’re the ones that are going to be setting a new benchmark. And like again, I did it first in the mental health field, and yeah, I will. I’ll brag about it. 95% retention. We were 1% off of being one of Inc. best workplaces. Like that’s really hard to do when you’re competing with like the Googles and the tech companies of the world that give away like free cars and free lunch every damn day. Right.

Maria Ross 25:34

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 25:35

So I’m really proud about what we’ve done there, and my goal, truthy, is to force my competition to do the same thing,

Maria Ross 25:41

yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 25:42

Like let’s just raise the bar collectively together across all industries.

Maria Ross 25:46

Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 25:46

I truthfully want to make the companies that are not willing to take care of their people. I want to make them obsolete because they should be taking care of their people. And if you’re not, if you’re just focused on how much is in it for me, yeah, that’s not a great way to live this life. No. So it’s all about giving back and providing real, meaningful value to to humans.

Maria Ross 26:05

Is that why it’s a nonprofit model?

Dan Cosgrove 26:07

The nonprofit model is for a few reasons.

Maria Ross 26:09

Okay,

Dan Cosgrove 26:10

one, we want to get paid just based on how much we save clients money. You’re a little bit more restricted if you’re like a benefits broker for profit model. Like people can actually say like, oh, you have to do this. Evidence by Gallagher. Like, if you look at them since over the last 10 years, I think they’re up 917% in the stock market price. So again, their value is just significantly higher because people dictate it. The other reason of being a nonprofit, when you look, unfortunately, with a lot of healthcare innovations, the little guys get in there, they start disrupting the big guys, and what occurs, they get acquired,

Maria Ross 26:42

yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 26:42

and then that new disruptive technology or idea or service gets pretty much killed and put on the top front end, yeah, yeah. So as a nonprofit, it doesn’t say we can’t be acquired; just makes it a lot harder,

Maria Ross 26:55

yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 26:56

So we’re we’re purposely trying to make it difficult. Like we like that insurance companies don’t like it.

Maria Ross 27:02

Yeah, yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 27:02

It’s a that’s a badge of honor for us, but that’s kind of why we’re a nonprofit.

Maria Ross 27:06

Oh, I love that. I love that. So, what you know, as we kind of wrap up,

Dan Cosgrove 27:10

yeah,

Maria Ross 27:11

what is your thought for leaders that are listening? Well, actually, before we wrap up, I would love to hear an example of one of your clients and sort of the before and after.

Dan Cosgrove 27:20

Oh man,

Maria Ross 27:21

and how that impacted their employee retention, morale, productivity, all those things.

Dan Cosgrove 27:27

Yeah, gosh. All right, let me let me think of a good one. All right, this is I like this one. So we’re actually working with another nonprofit in New York. I’ll just leave it at that part.

Maria Ross 27:36

Uh huh.

Dan Cosgrove 27:37

And a lot of these people are not earning a great living, maybe 50, 60k a year, which we know in New York is expensive. Yeah, exactly. So

Maria Ross 27:47

yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 27:47

we put in place, of course, the preventative healthcare program. That was phase one, and they had about like 200 or so employees. So we put in place the preventative healthcare program first, where again, with how we structure it with the tax code, we can actually give most employees about a two to 4% net pay increase. Give them our entire family access to basically virtual healthcare, prescription coverage, access to like specialty drugs, like you know the weight loss drugs that are you know crazed right now. We don’t think people should ever be paying 1000 bucks a month for that. They should be paying closer to like 250 a month is really the real price. So we got this preventative healthcare program put in place for the employees. Well, again, since we were able to reduce their taxable income, a lot of these people that were earning 60,000 a year, well, on paper their gross or modified adjusted gross income, which is aka taxable income, it fell from 60 down to 45,000. Well, what did that then do? We then went and looked at their health insurance costs, and we said, “Okay, again, in in New York, health insurance is pretty expensive, so the individual plan was like 1200 or 1500 bucks a month for like not a very good plan.

Maria Ross 28:53

Uh huh.

Dan Cosgrove 28:54

And the employer was paying like 70% of it. The employee was paying 30%

Maria Ross 28:58

Right. Nobody wins. Nobody

Dan Cosgrove 28:59

wins. Nobody wins at all, so we looked at it, and this is again where we we really like to take a contrarian perspective.

Maria Ross 29:06

Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 29:06

we looked at it like, okay, you just reduce that person’s taxable income. Let’s see what they would qualify if we went to the individual marketplace. Now, again, we took them to the individual marketplace because most brokers don’t take them there because they don’t get paid by the insurance companies when you do that. So we’re just like again, we don’t want to get paid by them, so we looked at it. And in New York, if you’re earning about $45,000 a year of taxable income, you get free health insurance from the state. Free, $0 deductible, $0 premium. I think is like a $2,200 maximum out of pocket.

Maria Ross 29:34

Uh huh.

Dan Cosgrove 29:35

So we went from these employees paying what is that? If it’s 1200 bucks a month, they’re paying like 360 or 400 out of pocket, and the employer is paying 800 to paying $0. So we essentially save the the employer 1000 bucks a month. We save the employee their 300 bucks a month. Now, again, this takes it one step further because they did have 200 employees. They were larger than the applicable large organization. Which is over 50 for an employer. Legally speaking, you have to offer health insurance. If not, you get hit with a tax penalty A. Sometimes a tax penalty B. Well, we looked at and we’re just like, wait a second. Tax penalty B is basically $6,000 a year for every employee that gets a subsidy. You’re paying $12,000 a year for every employee to have crappy health insurance. All right, go ahead. Get the tax penalty. Take the tax penalty. Like pay the $6,000 tax penalty three years down the road. Whenever they do finally come back and ask for it, you just save $6,000 a year per employee. You saved your employees basically $3,600 a year on health insurance premiums, and you just gave them free access to health care instead of overpaying on a absolutely horrible employer plan. And guess what? The only person that pushed back against it was the benefits broker because they get paid on that. So, like, right, that’s just like one example of groups. Like, there are so many creative things you can do out there, but we try to take the emotion out of healthcare decisions because truly, it is an emotional based thing.

Maria Ross 30:56

100% Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 30:58

we try to apply math and logic, right? And sometimes people like it. Sometimes people are just like, “Nope, no way in hell am I touching this. Because again, different feels scary, right? Nobody’s been fired forever changing the status quo,

Maria Ross 31:09

right? Well, and I think the other thing that you’re changing is, like I said, the amount of care and the quality of what they’re able to access, which again takes a huge burden off your employees from stress, from anxiety, from fear, and now they can focus on their work.

Dan Cosgrove 31:26

100% right? 100% And think about think about this also for that nonprofit. If you just save $6,000 a year after that tax penalty per employee, well, all right. So 200 employees. Help me with my math here. Six. You’re talking the wrong woman, 200,

Maria Ross 31:41

120,000, 100.

Dan Cosgrove 31:43

No, it’s more than that. That might be 1.2 million. 1.2

Maria Ross 31:46

million, maybe.

Dan Cosgrove 31:46

Yeah. So if we do that, I’m just checking my math here too, because yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 31:50

beauty of calculators. Yeah, 1.2 million. Yeah. So imagine you, if you’re that executive director, you just say $1.2 million. It’s going to be a lot easier to fundraise when you’re asking charitable donors not for extra money to cover overhead expenses that you can’t control, because you actually did control that overhead expense, and that 1.2 million can actually be reallocated to actually helping serve the community that your nonprofit was created for. So, like, I love trying to find these solutions for groups because, again, most people are not creating a business to say, “Hey, how much can I pay the insurance companies? That’s typically not why they created their their companies, and so now now we just want to help them avoid the middleman and yeah, actually give their employees more meaningful benefits.

Maria Ross 32:34

Well, and I think the takeaway lesson here is that there’s so many opportunities you have to take better care of your employees within the policies within the the systems that you’re engaging in, and this is where I always talk about operationalizing empathy. It’s not just a feel good thing. It’s how are we taking care of people through our systems, our policies, our decisions that we’re making, so that they know that we have their back.

Dan Cosgrove 33:03

Yep.

Maria Ross 33:03

And oh, by the way, if it benefits us too, great. Yeah. Yeah. So, what would be sort of a parting thought you have for listeners right now, whether they’re an HR leader or a CEO? Yeah. Who are like, this sounds intriguing, but like, what would be the biggest mindset shift you would want people to have around doing more to do right by their employees?

Dan Cosgrove 33:28

Yeah, I would say like if you’re a CEO or CFO listing right now, it starts at the top. It starts with you. All too often, these healthcare decisions get you know CEOs and CFOs and CEOs all just think like, well, this isn’t sexy, so I’m just going to send this over to HR and deal with it. And then HR, I love HR to death, but HR, our strong suit is not math. And so commonly in HR, we’re just like, oh, this sounds kind of crazy. Let me send it to my benefits broker for perspective. Well, that you’re sending information to the same. It’s a conflict of interest. Yeah, yeah. So, so really, the only way that you’re going to create change is if if it starts at the top and they are bought in. They’re the ones in those initial meetings having those conversations, saying like, “I truthfully want to solve for this. It’s not a, “Oh, I want to solve for this, but I really don’t want to spend the time on it. Because if you’re not actually going to spend the time, you’re not going to create more meaningful change. So I just say, starts at the top, buy in, be committed to it. Actually, mean what you say instead of just you know putting words out there.

Maria Ross 34:26

Thank you so much. This has been so fascinating to hear and learn about. And any way that we can amplify solutions like this to organizations and HR professionals and CEOs and founders, I want to use this platform to help them take better care of their employees. So, Dan, thank you so much for coming on today. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s exercising, hopefully, while they’re working out, while they’re listening to us, taking care of themselves, where’s the best place they can find out more about this?

Dan Cosgrove 34:56

Yeah, Emory, again, thank you for having us on the show. We really. And hopefully we can at least impact one company and all their employees just from this show. So the best place to find us is BetterBenefitsUSA.org. That’s our main page. They can play around in there, get in contact with our team. If they actually wanted to do an audit of their benefits without ever having to talk to our team, and they have like 10 minutes of the time, we have a sister site called FindBetterBenefits.org. Like just go there, put in. I think there’s like 12 questions. Just fill it out, and then somebody from our team will quickly get in contact with them to say like, yeah, you would probably save 1000 bucks here per employee, or oh no, you’d save about 5000 bucks a year per employee.

Maria Ross 35:34

Yeah, just do some of the math, and I think we have a special URL for our listeners.

Dan Cosgrove 35:40

It’d be findbetterbenefits.org is the best place to go for their. We’ve created that landing page for them to do that that little audit of their own employee benefits.

Maria Ross 35:48

Great, thank you so much for that, and thanks for reaching out and for sharing this with us. This is great, love it.

Dan Cosgrove 35:55

Thanks so much, Maria,

Maria Ross 35:56

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 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 theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes 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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