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Dr. Joel Pérez: Becoming an Exceptional Leader Through Cultural Humility

Teams today are more diverse than ever—and within that diversity lies the potential to unlock innovation, performance, and belonging. But only if leaders practice cultural humility. It’s not just about competence or checking boxes; it’s about fostering safety, trust, and transformation.

Dr. Joel Pérez equips leaders to navigate today’s instability with empathy and authenticity. He has partnered for decades with national nonprofits, corporations, and higher education institutions to deliver keynotes, workshops, and strategic consulting that inspire action and lasting change.

In this conversation, we unpack what cultural humility really means, how leaders can move beyond cultural competence, how cultural humility can help you navigate the instability of today’s market and world, why he wrote Dear White Leader, and how organizations can leverage diversity to create lasting impact and stronger results.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How to develop a posture of cultural humility, no matter your background.
Understanding the difference between cultural competency and cultural humility.
Raising the bar as a leader from effective to exceptional.
Curiosity is the key to achieving your goals.
The three things that are necessary to move from cultural competency to cultural humility are.

“Cultural humility allows you to navigate the complexity that comes with developing organizations with a strong sense of belonging and psychological safety.” — Dr. Joel Pérez

Episode References:

Book: Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility: dearwhiteleader.com
Terry Cross Cultural Competence Research
Janet Helms
Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World by Scott Shigeoka
EEP Episode: Amer Kaissi: Humbitious Leadership Equals Success

About Dr. Joel Pérez, Executive Coach and Author of Dear White Leader:

Dr. Joel Pérez is an executive and leadership coach, speaker, and consultant who helps leaders and organizations create inclusive cultures through the practice of cultural humility. As founder of Apoyo Coaching and Consulting, LLC and a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), he specializes in identity-conscious leadership, career transitions, and DEIB strategy. A Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, Qualified Administrator for the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), and certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator, Joel draws on more than 20+ years of leadership experience in higher education to guide clients through meaningful transformation.

He is the author of Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility, which received the Silver Medal for Best New Voice – Nonfiction from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Joel has partnered with national nonprofits, corporations, and higher education institutions to deliver keynotes, workshops, and strategic consulting that inspire action and lasting change. His work moves organizations toward creating a sense of belonging and the psychological safety to meet their goals.

Joel holds a doctorate in higher education administration from Claremont Graduate University. Outside of work, he enjoys life with his wife of over 28 years, their four children, cheering on the Los Angeles Dodgers, and watching movies.

Connect with Dr. Joel Pérez:

Apoyo Coaching and Consulting: apoyocoaching.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joelperezphd

Instagram: apoyocoaching01

Connect with Maria:

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

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

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

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Dr. Joel Pérez 02:54

Maria for having me and really looking forward to this conversation. I am too.

Maria Ross 02:59

And so before we get going, as we always do, share a little of your story with us. How did you even get into this work? Why are you so passionate about it all

Dr. Joel Pérez 03:09

the things? Yeah. So thank you for the question. So as you you see an accent on my last name, Joel Bettis, born in Los Angeles, son of immigrants, grew up in a predominantly initially fairly white neighborhood that changed over time. So lived white flight growing up and then went off to college where I was not part of the majority culture, and that shaped my worldview, particularly around diversity, equity and inclusion. Identify as a man of color, Chicano, Latino. Spanish was my first language, and I really believe higher education was going to be my vocation. And started that track, masters, PhD, working in higher education. And then as things happen, you get a new senior leader, and things change, and I ended up having to pivot. And the one thing that really pulled me in was coaching. I always thought I wanted to be an executive coach, but was going to do it in retirement, and things got sped up, mainly because we were living in a really good community. Our kids didn’t want to leave their schools. We didn’t want to move, and so we stayed. And in that process, leaned into getting certified as a coach, and then started coaching. In that coaching process, one of the things I started doing was helping white leaders who wanted to get better at leading diverse teams, but didn’t know where to start, or were feeling stuck. And I had been introduced to the concept of cultural humility in the mid 2000s and it had stuck with me, mainly because I was very familiar with cultural competency, but I always felt like at the end of the cultural competency conversation that. There should be more. Because competency, for me, felt like a box, to check an i to dot, a T to cross, something to be achieved, whereas cultural humility was really dry to me because like, oh, it’s about developing the ability to lead well within the complexity that comes with leading, creating an inclusive organization. So in the work that I was doing, particularly with white leaders who wanted to get better, I was doing what I would call a so called cultural humility coaching, and I recognized that there was a story to share, and that led me to writing the book, Dear White leader, how to achieve organizational excellence through cultural humility. Now, Maria, you’ve written books, and you know, if you don’t have a target audience, you don’t have an audience Exactly. And so my target audience is white leaders who want to get better. Now, every concept of the book is applicable to any leader, regardless of your cultural background, your identity, your salient identity, right? So I do workshops and trainings around, how do you develop or move towards a posture of cultural humility, no matter what your cultural background is or whatever your salient identities is. But to answer your question, what compelled me was working with the leaders I was working with, and wanting to change the way we approach this work with this posture, because identities will continue to change, culture will continue to morph. And in that process, I realized that this posture helps you engage in difficult dialog with a deep sense of curiosity, where you’re seeking to understand versus seeking to

Maria Ross 06:42

convince love it. I love it. I talk about empathy being a method of connection, not coercion. And so everything you’re saying is resonating for me. I’d love a breakdown, though, of what is the difference between cultural humility and cultural competence? So when you talk about cultural competence being a checkbox. Is it more like I know about other cultures and I recognize them, and then where does cultural humility take that? Yeah, you can do some definitions for us. No, I appreciate that.

Dr. Joel Pérez 07:13

So I was just with actually doing a webinar before jumping on here, talking about that cultural competency is important. It is the foundation Terry cross and his associates back in the late 80s, did a lot of work about around cultural competency. But like you said, it’s it was about understanding a culture and then applying the skills you learn so that you can better lead or your organization to do better work. The Challenge Maria is that, because things continue to change, what may have worked 10 years ago doesn’t work anymore. The example I’ll give you is that I have a 17 year old who came out to us when they were in middle school, and I was certain I was going to raise four heterosexual children, and that was not the case anymore, right? I had to do a lot of work myself in the sense of, how do I create this posture of cultural humility in my fatherhood, where I’m seeking to understand, creating space to explore. It’s not about checking boxes and like, Okay, did this, I did that, I did this, which I’m not saying cultural competency, that is necessarily that specifically, but that’s how it feels. Whereas cultural humility is about a sense of openness, right? Understanding, engaging in dialog. You may not agree with the person at the end of the day, right, but you’re walking away with a better understanding, whereas I believe competency just feels a little bit more like an academic, yeah, endeavor where culture humility, because humility is something a lot of leaders aspire to have, but it’s hard to obtain. And I would say, because it’s a process. It’s a lifelong journey, right? And recognizing that you’re going to make mistakes, it’s what you do with those mistakes that help you get better in leading across difference well,

Maria Ross 09:05

and I feel like so much of this is really about empathy, because I talk about empathy being the ability to put your ego aside and understand that there’s another point of view and be open to it, but also this sense of curiosity. Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people, and it’s because they don’t think they have all the answers. They’re going to ask you what your point of view is. So I guess, in my mind, and maybe for some of my listeners, is this more about cultural competency? Is knowing that the group is there, knowing what some of those groups norms are, and creating that checkbox for yourself, right? Like we often do this with other cultures where we say, Oh, that’s a very hierarchical culture, or that’s a culture where they you need to get to know people personally first before you engage in business. Like there’s these rules that go along with the culture. Are you saying that cultural humility is more about the curiosity to always be a. Tune to where those cultures could be evolving. And also the difference is that it’s not everybody in that culture that acts in that particular way or subscribes to those quote, unquote norms.

Dr. Joel Pérez 10:12

Yes, that’s the short answer. And the academic definition was coined or developed by two researchers travel on and Garcia, who were working with looking at doctors, physicians, and frustrated with them because they were applying what they thought worked with one culture to the other culture, and that clearly was not working, and they really wanted them to improve that patient physician dynamic, because they wanted, they knew they needed to serve their clients better within the particular demographic group they were working with. And you can’t just, it’s not a cookie cutter, right? It just take one approach and apply it to all, even though, at times we really want that to ourselves, yeah, but the reality is that it doesn’t work that way, and the way I talk about is cultural humility allows you to navigate the complexity that comes with developing organizations with a strong sense of belonging, the psychological safety that you are aspiring it to have, right?

Maria Ross 11:19

So why do leaders need this? What does it do for their organization and for their team performance?

Dr. Joel Pérez 11:26

Yeah, so the way I respond to that, because I get that question when I do workshops, and in the book, I talk about it as well, is that leaders need to develop this posture if they’re going to lead exceptionally. I believe cultural humility is an is a trait of exceptional leadership. The story I share is when I was talking with a coaching colleague of mine, I was like, Hey, Brian, I’m writing this book, and I’m really excited about helping leaders be effective. And he stopped me, he said, Joel, if the bar is effective, the bar is too low. We need exceptional leaders, because if you want to engage your talent and retain your talent, you’re going to need to navigate that complexity, because they’re bringing their identities into the workplace, into your teams. So you need to be able to navigate and lead people across difference, right? And what you think works at you know, like said, going back to what worked 10 years ago, probably won’t work now, right? And it’s getting first, getting clear about you. So self awareness is really a key aspect to developing a posture of cultural humility, which has three characteristics, getting clear on your biases, cultural self awareness and other awareness, right? The other awareness is key. So what are you doing to create a space for your team members to share more about who they are and their identities, and create that space in a way that’s going to be helpful in creating that sense of belonging, and that’s going to lead the business case is it’s going to lead to retaining your talent because they feel like they belong, right? Right? There’s that Harvard Business Review study done in 2019 that belonging, having developing a sense of belonging in your organizations, increases the retention rate of your team members 100% so there’s the ROI. But also, I believe as people, there is a call for us to be able to bridge across differences, if we’re truly going to be able to lead exceptionally,

Maria Ross 13:31

yeah, I mean, and the fact of the matter is, we have difference inherent in every team. And you know, to your point, there’s all these other quote, unquote cultures out there that are really just different groups, different subcultural groups that we might not understand, that we might not be able to relate to. But when you have a team, you’re bringing all these different personalities together. And there’s statistics. I was actually trying to find it while we were talking, there’s a startling statistic around how many Gen Zers identify as neurodivergent, yes, which is another type of culture, right? And that number is going up and not, not necessarily, because there’s more. It’s just people are removing the stigma from being able to admit that they are neurodiverse, and with that comes tremendous opportunity to harness that for your team and boost innovation and boost productivity. But it also creates things that are rife for conflict. If you don’t have that open mind, if you have a very like we need to do it this way, because this is the way we’ve always done it, or this is the way, the only way I know how. And so it’s we’re beholden to the fact that if we want to harness all the intellectual and innovative power of these teams of diverse human beings, we as the leader, need to be able to be open to their different perspectives and life experiences. And to your point, again, it doesn’t mean you. You have to, quote, unquote agree. It doesn’t mean that you have to cave into unreasonable demands. I talk about this in terms of the myths of empathy, right? But empathy requires us to sort of shut our ego down and open our eyes and our ears and be able to listen. And I notice, for people that can’t see you, you’re wearing a t shirt that says, Be curious, not judgmental, yes. And that’s really the key to empathy as well, but it’s so important for us to understand the ROI that this has on our organization, and how if we ignore it, we’re going to fall behind. Things are changing too fast. The workforce is much more diverse, much more willing to admit that they’re diverse than ever before, and we’ve got to be able to capture those various points of youth so that we make smarter business decisions. So go ahead.

Dr. Joel Pérez 15:49

No, I was gonna say thank you for naming that, because I think it’s important that you name that, that we Yes, nimble, neuro diverse is really important. I have two kids. One has ADHD. One it has dysgraphia. We talk about difference and how it shows up in the classroom, right? And then, how are they engaged in the world? I also work with seasoned professionals, aka old people, who are like Joel, help me understand the new worker, right? I don’t get it like, why do they need this? Why do they need that? Right? Well, what if you approach that with curiosity, where you’re seeking to understand, because you’re going to have to help them be successful in your organization if you’re going to create some kind of succession plan and for your organization to thrive, and that means learning about them, and you not telling them it has to be this way because it was that way for me.

Maria Ross 16:45

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day, if you want your goals met and your KPIs achieved, yes, you’ve got to bring people along to do that. And so you can shame and blame and disagree all you want, but that’s not actually going to help you with your goals. Yes, correct, right? So it’s about managing to the person in front of you, and yes, it takes a little bit more time, and yes, it takes a little bit more caring. And that’s the job I always, you know, I’m kind of tired of pussy footing around that, you know, tiptoeing around that for people. But it’s really about understanding that that’s your role. Now, you are not a doer. You are a leader, yes, and that means harnessing the value of everyone on your team. So how do we begin to develop a posture of cultural humility? Because there are the people who are like, Yes, I know I have a gap and I want to learn. Then there’s other people who don’t think they need it. So who do you talk to? Well, I

Dr. Joel Pérez 17:41

focus on, if you’re looking at change principles, right in the sense of, you know, you have the early adopters and the laggards. You I try to live in the middle with the folks that are truly curious. Not quite sure. I think as leaders, we’ve done a disservice to the people in the middle, because we will flock to the extremes, which then crowds the middle out where they don’t feel like they can ask questions Yes, because they have a fear of, if you want to use the term cancel, yep, or you know,

Maria Ross 18:12

or saying the wrong thing, right?

Dr. Joel Pérez 18:14

And so I talk about, as leaders, we need to create space for mistakes to be okay with that. So when I to answer your question, I believe so it starts with self awareness and self critique, which is a key to anything I believe in leadership, right? We have to be clear about who we are, yeah, in order to know how we need to improve and get better so we can lead exceptionally, right? So that requires three things, getting clear on our biases, cultural self awareness and other awareness. So that’s part of that self awareness piece that I talk about for moving from cultural competency to cultural humility. I talk about three things that are necessary. One is having a growth mindset. So looking at Carol dweck’s work, because you’re going to make mistakes, right? It’s what you do with those mistakes, right? The second is developing deep curiosity, being able to learn how to be deeply curious. And the third, which sounds simple enough, is deep listening. Right? Now, we always say we’re good listeners, and the reality is we still have a lot of work to do with listening. Yeah, right. And so working with executive and leaders on how to develop those three things is really key to start that process and to recognize and this is where leaders get frustrated. There’s not an end point, per se, because it is a process. So it always goes back to self awareness, uh huh. The second piece is redressing the power imbalances. So as you begin to learn about yourself and others that you lead, you’re going to recognize, if you want to use equity, that’s what you’re going to recognize, that there’s some unequity that needs to change, right, whether it’s pay or or just the way things are structured. So you’re going to want to re. Address those power balance that ultimately is going to lead to systemic change, but it always starts with you, the leader, but it doesn’t end with you. So I

Maria Ross 20:08

have a question for you, and this is something that comes up for me personally sometimes, but also I know when I talk to a lot of people about this, is that there are some groups when you try to enter and you try to get curious and ask the questions they can sometimes and not, not all groups. There’s no like one group. I’m just saying different people who say, that’s your job to figure it out. I’m not here to educate you. What are leaders who are trying to get curious and actively listening supposed to do with that? Well, this is

Dr. Joel Pérez 20:39

where a little bit of humble pie is necessary in that. So when people come to me because of my ethnicity and and my faith and the you know, they really want to know, for me, for me to have permission to say, Maria, thank you for the question, but I’m really tired right now. And yes, I understand you want to know, but I’m not, I’m not there. I can’t have this conversation, and for you, Maria, to say, thank you. Just know that if you’re ever able to have that conversation, I really would like to engage in the conversation and walk away the danger, not danger. The problem is that we have is what I want to press right. Help me, help me, help me, help me. And it’s yes, you need to get better. But for some people, sometimes I’m included. I don’t want to have to always educate, right? So you Maria or ex leader, need to think about okay, Joel doesn’t really want to share. What do I need to change in my own life in order? So for me to gain awareness, part of that could be talking with Joel, or part of that could be listening to podcast or putting myself in different types of communities, reading, joining a Facebook group, so I’m able to learn more about another culture, right? But for us to say it’s okay that Joel doesn’t want to share now, I may change my mind in six months. Yeah. So you could come back and say, Hey, Joel, remember that conversation we had, and I know you weren’t ready for it. Are you able to now? Yeah, that conversation. And I’ll say, well, first, thank you for thank you for recognizing and appreciating what I said to you. And yes, I’m ready to have that conversation now, right? Or I know someone who does this work, yeah, who may be able to help you where I’m not able to help you.

Maria Ross 22:20

I think that that’s the frustration for leaders who want to get curious, is that they see sometimes feel rebuffed by being curious. They feel they’re attacked for making assumptions. They’re attacked for asking the questions. And that’s the fine line there, of like, they’ve, they’ve got to, they’ve got to get the information from somewhere if they’re open to listening. So are you? Are you basically saying, Keep trying, not with the same person, but I’m saying, like, just because you get rebuffed once?

Dr. Joel Pérez 22:52

Yeah, so that’s where, that’s where it’s important for you to recognize that I may be rebuffed once. It doesn’t mean there aren’t others who are going to be willing to partner with me, right? Right? So I’m going to keep looking right? The other thing I would say, Maria, when you approach someone and say, Hey, this is coming from a place of curiosity, I truly want to know. It’s not coming from a place of judgment, right? And it’s okay for you to say, No, yeah, that’s different than you saying, Hey, tell me all about it. Yeah, tell me all about your Mexican heritage and why you eat certain food, right?

Maria Ross 23:22

Represent your entire community, right

Dr. Joel Pérez 23:24

now, yeah. And I think recognizing that, and it’s the way you ask, it’s like, anyway you talk about empathy, right? It’s being being an empath and being empathetic and putting yourself in that other person’s shoes. Yeah. And now for me, I make myself available for conversations. That’s that I don’t mind being in that lane, but I have colleagues who don’t like being in that lane, right? And they say to me, Hey, Joel, it’s so good. You’re in that lane. I have no desire. And I’ll say, Okay, thank you. Send them my way. Happy to have a conversation, exactly. And that’s and that’s the approach to take or start taking. And I, and I, I would bet that opportunities would arise for you to have conversations, so you can ask questions. If you start off the conversation with coming from a place of curiosity, it’s okay for you to say no if you want to have the conversation. But here’s

Maria Ross 24:14

what I’m wondering, yeah, I love that. I love that you’re kind of giving us some words to say when that can be uncomfortable sometimes, to to reach out and ask. And I, you know, I know this from being a woman and having, you know, men try to get me to speak for my entire gender, right? And I also know I’ve been part of groups of women that claim that men need to be more curious about how what women are going through, and then they get very vicious to any men who enter the conversation. And I’m like, no, they actually, that’s good. We need them to be part of the conversation. So it’s, it’s, I know there’s a lot of hurt, there’s a lot of frustration and resentment that builds up, and so I get. Some of those people are coming from, but I love your idea of, you know, but there’s other people. So don’t give up, don’t, you know, don’t assume all women don’t want to include men in the conversation, right? As an example, because I’ve seen that, and I I’m like, that doesn’t help any of us, for us to not have men as part of the conversation when, when you know, from a from a male female dynamic, when we that’s, that’s the gender we need to have allyship with. That’s, they’re the ones in power in many cases. And so if we’ve got open minded and curious enough people in that group, we should be helping them. We should be working with them, and we should not make them feel blamed and shamed for their even their ignorance or their you know, but to your point, having that element of humility is so important, right? There’s a great book, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to someone that I interviewed on the podcast a few years ago, America Z, who wrote a book called humbitious, which is about the marriage of humility and ambitious and being a great leader. And so much of this is about that and it and I’m constantly talking about this too. It’s a growth mindset. Is what I often say, is show me a leader who thinks they know everything and don’t, don’t, they don’t need to learn anymore or improve themselves anymore. And I will show you a leader who’s irrelevant. Yeah, because you can’t adapt, you can’t be resilient. You can’t change with the times, so to speak. So this is great this is great advice. Why did you write Dear White leader, and what do you hope readers get out of it? I wrote Dear White

Dr. Joel Pérez 26:35

leader because I wanted to write some when I felt like others should hear about cultural humility, right? You’re creating that

Maria Ross 26:40

resource for them when nobody else wants to. Else wants to talk to them. Exactly. That’s it.

Dr. Joel Pérez 26:44

And the way the book is described by my readers, so if you go to Amazon, you’ll see over, you know, 50 reviews and and generally, the way people talk about my book, from all cultures, is that Joel is walking with us and not talking to us. Yes. So in the book is a lot of my own journey that I still make mistakes. And some of the clients I work with, I talk about how I was enlightened about certain things that I thought I always knew, even growing up as a son of immigrants, Spanish was my first language doing diversity work in my undergrad, that I still have things to learn. Yeah, right. And so that’s where people say you’re talking and Joel is walking with us and not writing to us. So I wanted to write something to help leaders lead exceptionally, so that they can be the best that they can be. Because I want our world to look different and feel different. I want our organizations to look and feel different. I want our faith communities to look and feel different. So the way I talk about is it doesn’t start or end with you. It moves into your organization, yeah, whatever that organization is, and then your community. And by community, I’m talking about your family, your faith community, your volunteer organization, your neighborhood. So it’s not just about holding it in for yourself. My hope is, as you develop this posture, it’s going to bleed into every aspect of your life.

Maria Ross 28:13

Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly why I do the work around empathy. Is because we can use work as a sandbox to practice it and see see ROI from it, if we choose to. But that also impacts us in our personal lives as well, and helps us with our relationships and our community and our our family. We bring that back, and that’s how we exponentially change. So I’m also, I would also love for you to speak to this idea that because we’re asking, you know, you’re specifically targeting, not targeting, speaking to white leaders, help us understand that it doesn’t mean they need to lose their cultural identity as well. Because I get that fear a lot, and it’s, it’s like, No, we’re just trying to create a bigger pie. We’re not trying to make silence you. So how do you address that when you’re dealing with leaders who are little resistant to what you’re talking about?

Dr. Joel Pérez 29:09

Well, one is, you know, I make the case right? So whether it’s the ROI or this idea of being moving from effective to exceptional, I also talk about it is, I want leaders to understand they need to develop their they need to get a better sense of their own identities, right, whether that’s their ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, whatever they may be, that we have to get clear in our salient identities, and that may mean getting really clear about what it is to be white in this world. So I have an executive that I’m working with right now who is Lee. Is a leader in a nonprofit, a fairly mid sized nonprofit, and everyone he leads is either he identifies white male, everyone that he leads is either a person of color and. AND, OR, AND or female identifies as as a female. And so we were doing this work around identity. And so I gave him some resources. Right? Janet helms has a lot of work around white identity, and he engaged in that work. And he was like, oh, like, yeah, I got, I got stuff to do, like, so then we coached her on that, okay, if you recognize where you’re at along her model, and you want to move along the model, what are some things that you can do to get clear about who you are and the role it plays, or how you show up in your leadership. And what I tell white leaders, particularly those that want to just keep apologizing for being white, is I said, stop it. You only need to apologize once if you feel like you should apologize. It doesn’t mean that every time you show up in a meeting, you have to apologize. Everyone gets it right. They know you’ve already done it. You got to get comfortable in your own skin and show up to lead authentically, and part of that is recognizing who you are. It’s your superpower. So this next book I’m working working on is developing these traits to help you become an exceptional leader. One of them is leaning into your identity and seeing it as your superpower and not something to hide. Yeah, and that’s really important.

Maria Ross 31:11

I love that. I love that that that call to just have empathy for yourself as well, and, you know, give yourself some credit that you’re you’re trying to learn, you’re trying to be curious, you’re trying to be open, when, unfortunately, there’s so many people who aren’t right. So as we, as we kind of wrap up, we’ve done a lot of episodes on this show around diversity, equity and inclusion, and the data and and and creating that environment. But how? What? Maybe, what are, what are some ways or entry points, if you are a leader, maybe in your organization, either dei is being stifled right now, or it’s just not made as important of a priority. Or, you know, you’ve you’re unlearning some things as a leader as you go along. How do they start developing, like a day one, developing or week one or a month one, developing a deep sense of belonging with their team? Where are some places they can start if they listen to this podcast, read your book, and they’re like, yeah. I mean, what’s, what’s the right approach and what might be not as effective an approach? Can you give us both examples to Sure, start the conversation with your team.

Dr. Joel Pérez 32:22

Yeah. Well, I so I was working with an executive at an organization, and she they identify as a white woman, and she said, Joe, I really want to get to know about the people I lead and their identities, but I just can’t go around asking Maria, what identity? What’s your identity? What’s your ethic identity?

Maria Ross 32:41

Today we’re going to talk about identities.

Dr. Joel Pérez 32:43

Yeah, let’s don’t do that. The key thing to start is modeling it for your team, sharing more about yourself that you feel comfortable sharing, so that they can see it in action, right? And then that may be lead them to share more about themselves, right? That’s an important first step. But first asking yourself, this is something that I want to move towards. My hope is that it’s Yes, right? And then it’s about gaining more self awareness, particularly around this, and what it means to one acknowledge that I have biases. What is getting clear about my identities, all the salient identities that I hold and are friend of mine, and then getting to know the people around me that I lead is going to help and approach that with curiosity is going to help start create a culture within initially, right, your division, your department, so that you begin to model it and have these conversations where people feel like they can be who they are, because they have a sense of belonging, right? So give us an

Maria Ross 33:41

example of and I just really want to drill down to something practical, and not that you need to give people a script, but what does that look like they go into the meeting the next day? What is the vulnerability? What is the modeling sound? What could it sound like?

Dr. Joel Pérez 33:55

Yeah, so I’ll just take me for example. Okay, so if I’m in a meeting, I’m a leader. I walk in I said, Man, last night was really hard. I just want I the reason I’m sharing this with you is I want to be transparent about something that’s impacted me in my day to day, right? I have four kids, four biracial children, and one of them is struggling, in particular with how he is having a conversation with his teacher, around their strong belief around a particular culture, and this is what I’m struggling with, so it’s impacting me. I just want you to know what it is. You don’t need to tell me how to get better. I just want you to know that today I may be a little bit down in the dumps because of this, right? So you have to be vulnerability is important, but it has to be vulnerable. It has to be purpose behind your vulnerability, right? And I think that’s a that could be a way, or, Hey, let’s talk about what we did on the weekend, and what did you find most enjoyable about what you did this weekend, right? It could be I was with my family, and we had a good time, and or we attended this concert. Oh, say more about the concert you attended. Right, yeah. And that’s going to begin, I believe, to develop this ability for people to share, okay, Joel, values, who we are, yeah. One of the things that Scott shikioka talks about his book seek, is recognizing that people are more than their jobs, right? You’re going to create a culture of curiosity in your organization. Is one of the steps is understanding that people are more than their jobs, right? Yeah, and I think that’s going to begin to model for people that they can share. I mean, you got to create. I mean, I do think it’s important for there to be boundaries. I’m not saying you’re, of course, you open up your whole life to everyone, right? But little things like that, you’re leaning into sharing your own values, particularly around culture, is going to help people connect with you and say, Okay, I can. I could share a little bit more about myself if I want to, not that I have to, but

Maria Ross 35:47

if I Yeah, we talk a lot about that in terms of empathetic leadership. So coming in, getting to know people as people, creating building that trust, building building that camaraderie and comfort level, so that when things get tough, people know they can trust you. They can have each other’s backs as well, and so leaving that time in meetings to let people talk about what’s going on for them or how their weekend went, or what they’re frustrated about right now, and giving each other the context so that I’m not assuming all these things about your reactions to my ideas or my proposals or my behavior in a meeting, like, if we all know, hey, you know, Joel had a tough weekend, if you are a little short with us in a meeting, we’ll know why. Yeah, right. We can assume positive intent, yeah. And we can also decide if we want to table the conversation, right? If now’s not the best time. So that’s so much of this is intertwined with empathy, but just looking at it through a cultural lens, which I find really, really interesting.

Dr. Joel Pérez 36:51

Yeah, the one thing leaders shouldn’t do is this, where the performative piece gets in, right? Like, I have a diverse workforce and we’re doing great stuff, right, or we’re going to make it a priority and just saying it, but then there’s no action behind it, right? Right? And that’s what a lot of companies did right after the murder of George Floyd, is they put out a lot of statements. Some took steps and actually put plans in place, and we’re started executing them. But others were like, we’re just going to make a statement, right? We know it’s going to go away, right? And so that’s what you should not do as an organization, right? And why? Because I believe organizations serve a great I believe serve a greater good, right? And it’s important, if you’re going to put a statement out there, that statements are important. So let’s say, don’t like if,

Maria Ross 37:34

right, but back it up with action. You got to back

Dr. Joel Pérez 37:36

it up with action and show that you’re making progress towards whatever, you know, whatever the goal is that you set out to accomplish.

Maria Ross 37:44

Right How do you feel about the backlash to dei right now? Well, here I’m gonna say, Sure, you feel a lot of things, but yeah, I’m

Dr. Joel Pérez 37:53

gonna say something that’s a little could be a little controversial, and so I will, but I’ll put it out there is that I was really moved by something someone said in that, we do change people, not two people, right? In other words, we part. We should, when we come to change, we should be partnering with people, not just do

Maria Ross 38:11

it to people, right? Oh, we change with, not change to, yeah, okay, got it.

Dr. Joel Pérez 38:16

And that got me thinking particularly a lot of and I put myself in this category early on, when I was doing dei work, I was talking, you have to change like you just have to do this. Demographics have changed. You just got to suck it up and get it done, right? It’s the reality. Now, once they think about, hey, Maria, let’s have a conversation about why this is important, right? And I want to answer, I want to set up time for you to ask me questions. Yeah, right, because I want to for you to hear it from me and why this is important. And I think those of us who are doing a lot of dei work early on, we were RAM rotting people and not creating space for conversation, yeah, and that’s what’s done a disservice, and I think has created the pendulum to swing the other way. Now I do believe the pendulum will start swinging back, because organizations and leaders will recognize look around the room and go, Oh my gosh, there’s a lot of different people here. And whether it’s generationally, gender, sexual identity, I got to get better at this stuff, yeah, and if I want to lead this organization, well, right? Because this is who comprises the organization.

Maria Ross 39:23

Yeah, I love that. I think that’s actually very profound of this idea of understanding where forced change, again, my change management background, forced change never works, right? It’s about getting buy in, and it’s about listening, and it’s about letting people feel what they feel, and and going through it, and not, you know, shaming them for that, right, but trying to bring them along that’s much more effective in the long run. Yes, right? So I love it. This has been such goodness that you’ve shared with us today. I just want to let everyone know again, the name of the book is, Dear White leader, how to achieve organizational excellence through cultural, human. Melody, an award winning book. Fantastic. Congratulations, and we’ll have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone on the go, where’s the best place that they can find out more about you and your work? Yeah, I would

Dr. Joel Pérez 40:12

start with a boyocoaching.com a boy Oh is a P, o, y, o coaching.com a boy Oh stands for support for in Spanish, so I the way I talk about the work I do is, is I listen, bring clarity, provide support a boy, oh coaching and consulting.

Maria Ross 40:29

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

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

Ashley Jones: How to Courageously Lead and Support Through Grief

Some conversations linger long after the recording stops; the conversations that deepen your humanity and reshape how you think about leadership. This episode is one of those conversations.

Ashley Jones knows grief in its most devastating form. When her daughter Skylar died from a terminal illness just before her second birthday, Ashley was thrust into a darkness no parent should ever face. But through that unimaginable loss, she discovered a calling: helping people heal in grief.

Today, Ashley shares her personal story and what her healing journey revealed about grace, resilience, and the power of community. We discuss the four survival reactions to trauma – fight, flight, freeze, and fawn – and how these can manifest. We also dive into the relationship between trauma and grief and how leaders can support those around them during these times.

Trigger warning: In this episode, we both talk about experiences with sexual assault.

Ashley shared incredibly valuable tips and resources to help you become a more trauma-informed leader and support your team to their fullest potential.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Ashley’s personal story and what her healing journey revealed about grace, resilience, and the power of community.
How leadership is evolving to become more deeply human—and the distance we still need to travel.
Why grief is a universal leadership issue, and what it asks of us.
The two fundamental needs people have after experiencing grief or trauma, and how to meet them.
The four survival reactions to trauma that leaders need to understand.
Why not all grief is traumatic, but all trauma includes grief, and what that means for how we support people.

“It’s really about choosing love regardless of the situation, regardless of the people involved. To show up and say, ‘What is the best way I can love myself and others right now in this moment?’” — Ashley Jones

Episode References:

How Can I Love You Better: howcaniloveyoubetter.com

The Empathy Edge:

About Ashley Jones, Founder, Momento Foundation:

Ashley was thrust into the depths of grief when her daughter, Skylar, died from a terminal illness just before her 2nd birthday. Her unique experience through darkness and healing led her to create the Momento Foundation (formerly Love Not Lost), a nonprofit on a mission to help people heal in grief. Known for creating innovative tools, new resources, and meaningful solutions for navigating grief, Ashley provides individuals and organizations with tangible help to better support themselves and each other through trauma and loss. She’s a sought-after TEDx & keynote speaker, author, and passionate plant mom.

Connect with Ashley:

Momento Foundation: momentofoundation.org

Author Site: www.ashleynicolejones.com

Book: When You Can’t See the Light

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ashleynicolejones

Facebook: facebook.com/momentofoundation

Instagram: instagram.com/momentofoundation

Momento Community: momento. impact.app

Connect with Maria:

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

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

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

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Ashley Jones 03:40

today, absolutely. So my husband and I married young. We weren’t planning on having kids for a little while, but we got surprised with the pregnancy, like, a year into our marriage, and so we kind of just went forward, like, Okay, we’ll be really young parents, and by the time our kids are in high school, we can still go skiing with them and hiking, and it’ll be fine, right? So we had our daughter healthy bill of health, told to go home as a family of three, enjoy each other. And then at one month old, we noticed something wasn’t quite right, and her right arm came up like a chicken wing. And I had volunteered as a high schooler at our local elementary school with severely handicapped kids, and it was a part of like a peer mentorship program, and I noticed that my daughter’s chicken wing kind of looked like a contracture that I saw in the cerebral palsy, you know, situation where I was like, huh, but I knew my daughter could track with me and was mentally there. And so like, well, it’s not cerebral palsy, but what is it like? Why her arms stiff? And if I pull it down, it just naturally comes back up without her seeming to control it, right? So I was like, Okay, maybe like, and I’m thinking, like, the worst that I’ve seen is, you know, that kind of disconnected child that you know has all these ailments that it’s like, okay, in my mind, worst case scenario is like a lifetime of physical. Therapy, maybe some surgeries, like, you know? Yeah. So I’m preparing myself for that, right? And I’m like, Okay, we’re just gonna do therapies and play and surgeries or whatever we need to do. And so we go to the doctor. He sends us to a specialist. The specialist comes back and is like, oh, man, it’s not good, but doesn’t say what? And then I get a phone call 30 minutes later from the pediatrician, who’s like, it’s really not good. And I was like, Okay, what are we talking like? You’ve got to tell me worst case scenario, or my mom brain will just be, like, causing anxiety forever. Yeah? Like, I need to know, like, just, what is it? And so the doctor comes back, and he’s like, premature expiration. And I was like, You mean death, yeah? Oh my gosh, tell me straight, right? Yeah? And he was like, yeah, it could. It looks like it’s going to be one of five things. They’re all lettered, acronym, you know, illnesses. And at the time, we didn’t have smartphones. So he was like, if you make the really bad decision to go home and Google these. Here’s my cell phone number, personal cell phone number. You can call me anytime. Uh huh. And I was like, Oh, my God, it must be terrible, because there’s no way a pediatrician would give a first time mom cell phone number, cell phone number, right? So I go home, I google and she has every symptom for SMA, which stands for spinal muscular atrophy. It’s really similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease, so muscles degenerate and there’s no cure, and the severity depends on how early they present symptoms. And because she was showing symptoms within the first month of life, we knew it was pretty severe. In those cases, it’s very unlikely that babies who show symptoms that early see their first birthday. So we knew our time, you know, we’re just on a timer here, and how can we give her the best life possible? So through that we did, we tried to give her the best life possible. We, you know, set out to find the best care team and the best hospice team and supported her through, you know, she was on hospice at first, but 10 months old, and then ended up not having to say goodbye until 21 months old. Oh, no, yeah, we had a researcher step in and really change the trajectory of her life at 10 months old, right? So through that, though, we were the first, because we were so young, we were the first of all of our friends to get pregnant. And at 25 years old, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. And it was 27 when she died. And so it was one of those like, Wow, I’m so young I don’t know what to do. I’m looking to adults. Who I mean adults? I am an adult, right?

Maria Ross 07:41

Yeah, yes, hopefully older and wiser, yeah, yes.

Ashley Jones 07:43

And they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know what to you know, I look like a alien with a third eyeball in my head, like people are just looking at me like, oh gosh, what do I say? What do I do? Yeah, like, run the other way. So then, and, of course, like all of our friends, they’re young and experienced, and they’re like, terrified and shocked and experienced and don’t know what to say or do. So we lost a lot of friends and support through that time period. But the, you know, the most special people who stepped up were the people who came with empathy and said, Oh my gosh. Like, I lost my you know, parent or sibling or whoever. Right? Like, I can’t imagine what losing a child is, but I am. I know what deep grief is, and so let me bring you a meal. Let me take your dog for a walk or whatever, right? Yeah. And so I just realized, like, one, our society has a really big problem with not knowing how to deal with grief. And then two, no one’s teaching people what to do, right, right? We’re not solving this problem that is just rampant in our society, right? People being so afraid of loss and grief and saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, which just ends up isolating everybody, right? Yeah, so through that loss, you know, it’s kind of like a little bit longer story, but we had someone had given us a portrait session with our daughter when she was still here, and those photos were instrumental in getting me through the grief, but also maintaining a connection with my daughter and allowing me to heal. And when I say heal, it’s not like healing from a wound per se, in that physical sense of healing, but like integrating my pain in the emotional sense, so that I am still whole and healthy and able to be my full self, right, right? And that connected version of myself, instead of the disconnected or fragmented, fractured version of myself, right? And so I wanted to give that gift to others. And as a photographer myself, I started volunteering portrait sessions to anyone I heard of facing a terminal diagnosis, because I was like, if we know time is short, let’s take advantage do it. Yeah, like, let’s make these memories and give you these photographs. Ask that will hopefully help you and everyone else who loves this person who’s dying. And that’s what started love, not lost. The nonprofit that you know was focused on preserving memories, and we’ve expanded it and rebranded to Memento Foundation, giving, obviously families mementos and making the most of every moment that we have, but also expanding to provide grief support and resources to start the education side of things, right? How can we do better? I mean,

Maria Ross 10:31

there are no words, right? That is such a poignant story. And thank you for sharing that with us, absolutely, and thank you for publicly sharing it. Because I think the more that we publicly share and name grief as one of the many emotions that we feel as human beings. I was just talking to someone this week about the fact that it’s such an elementary component of emotional intelligence to just be able to name an emotion and recognize that it’s happening. And I feel like grief is something everyone wants to sweep under the rug. It’s like something where they feel like they can catch it or something I don’t know, yeah, but it also I again, kind of my empathy comes through having had personal experiences around people not understanding what I was going through with my brain injury, for example. But I also am empathetic because people are also afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing to make your pain worse, and I think that’s where the avoidance comes in. Of like, I don’t know what to say, and if I say something wrong, that could be worse than me not saying anything at all, of course. And you know, I know you know this show is about the workplace, but we have people in our workplaces that are dealing with these kinds of losses, and just because we can’t see it, just because they’re physically fine and they’re potentially showing up to work, it doesn’t mean there’s this tumultuous storm going on inside of them, yeah, impacting their performance and their ability to connect with the people that they work with and people that they care about. So tell us more about your view on where we are as a society dealing with grief, and has it gotten better? Because I know and I’ve connected you with two people I’ve had on this show that I’ll link to in the show notes, Stephanie, Sarah and also Ron Gura of empathy, who are doing great work around removing the stigma of grief, but also providing support mechanisms. So before we dive into specifically how Memento supports people, where’s kind of your thought leadership perspective on where we are in terms of of navigating grief, and maybe even just, you know, I know different countries and different cultures deal with it differently. So maybe just talk about Western culture, North American culture. Like, where are we with that? Has it gotten better or worse? Like, where do you see things?

Ashley Jones 12:52

I do think there has been progress, right? Because back in my parents generation was like, literally, like, if you come to work, you’re leaving everything else out the door. Do not talk about your feelings. Do not talk about anything else going on in the world. It’s like, you show up that you have your work life and your personal life, and there’s a hard line, right, right? And you’re like, Okay, theoretically, I get why leaders back in the day would say that, right, especially because a lot of those leaders are male and weren’t taught how to express emotions. And it was very much like, man up, don’t, right, don’t talk about your feelings. That’s for sissies, right? And so there is, like, a gender role there. But then also, you know, I think what’s so, you know, I have so much, like empathy, and honestly, just like pity, almost, for the older generation, because they had to do everything with just the resources that were right around them, right? Like, they did not have the internet to teach them better, yeah? So it’s like, if they didn’t have an amazing therapist, if that was even allowed, you know, exactly, yeah, like, if they didn’t have helpful resources in their community, they didn’t get to grow and, you know, and process, right? And, yeah, the support or the tools or anything, right? And so I do think we’ve gotten so much better because of the internet, because we are our capacity for knowledge and understanding and growth has just completely expanded, right? So I think that’s a beautiful thing, and has allowed a lot of people, myself included, to grow beyond what my parents and what my community could offer me, right, where I can learn from trauma experts and amazing psychologists. And you know,

Maria Ross 14:36

where that’s even a thing, where trauma experts is, or even a thing, right?

Ashley Jones 14:40

Like, so good, yeah, and so all that to say, right? There is so much more work to be done, right? Like, why are our court systems not trauma informed? Like, that is where and police officers and first responders and the places where there is literally trauma every day, yeah? Like, why do we not have. Those trauma informed places that said in the workplace, I do feel like leaders are growing and realizing that there is an emotional component to work and people are human, and so if people are human, we cannot ask them to leave a personal side of their being at the door, right, because we are whole humans, and whatever’s going on at home does impact us and how we show up at work, right? And so the good news is, I do feel like there’s a lot of progress. I still think there’s a massive lack of training in leaders for training leaders how to manage grief, how to manage hard, challenging situations, like how to support a team through a tragedy, yeah? Like, no one knows how to do that, right? No. So leaders are falling short, and there are still really toxic work environments where people aren’t allowed to share what’s going on in their personal lives, or they’ll get fired, or, you know, like, whatever. So there’s lots of situations that are ripe for opportunity.

Maria Ross 16:06

That’s a very optimistic way of looking at it. Yeah. I mean, I know that. You know, I’m thinking about decades ago, there was a tragedy in a startup I was working for. One of our execs, and his girlfriend died in a plane crash coming back from vacation in Mexico. And the team, you know, everyone found out we were pretty close, because we were in a startup, working, you know, all the time together. And the one thing that was beautiful that they did was they did bring in a grief counselor, which, at the time, was very progressive, right, yeah, because this was, like, early 2000s this wasn’t, you know, this was decades ago, yeah, and, but then it stopped, like, that’s where it stopped, because, and not for any ill intent, but just, what else do you do? Right? And so those leaders sort of learned by fumbling through how to keep their team motivated and inspired. And but you’re absolutely right, this idea of sort of upskilling and training leaders to deal with trauma, and I’m going to put even more links in the show notes to other guests I’ve had who’ve talked about being a trauma informed leader. So that might be a great place to start for folks listening. Is, what does it mean to be a trauma informed leader or a trauma informed workplace? Yeah.

Ashley Jones 17:22

So I think that being a trauma informed leader is acknowledging that the people working for you and with you go through trauma throughout their life, right? Yeah. And when you experience a traumatic event, your nervous system goes into survival mode, and what that looks like is, sometimes it’s fight, sometimes it’s flight, sometimes it’s freeze, and sometimes it’s fawn, right? Those are the four main I didn’t know there was a fourth one. Now, yeah, so fun is a new one. Tell us about these four. Yeah, give us a brief revisit. Fight and flight are the ones we know fight, right, go in or you run away, right? Like, throw punches, or take off running. Uh huh. So the freeze is actually a really common one that is hard to diagnose. Like, a lot of people beat themselves up for it, because they’re like, gosh, I’m just so lazy. And why can’t I do this stupid simple task, right? Like, be this hard? And like, Yeah, I can’t even just make one phone call, right? Yes. And it’s like, okay, you might be in freeze mode, right? Like, so freeze is like not being able to do things, and you just freeze like a deer in headlights, right? Yeah. So it’s kind of like that, right? The fawn is very much like a survival instinct, for example, like, when someone’s getting attacked by someone, they know, uh huh, there might be this response of, oh, I can’t anger them, or they might come after me harder. So it’s just saying what you need to say to survive the incident, right? And to people, please, yeah, yeah. Like, for example, like, this is a personal share. I was sexually assaulted. And during the sexual assault, I went into freeze mode, because I was like, This guy is huge, huge. Like his biceps were twice the size of my thighs, right? Like he’s a personal trainer, former soldier in Afghanistan. Oh my gosh. Huge guy. And I was like, I’m basically dead, right? If I try and fight, I can’t fight, because this guy will crush me and break me and whatever. So I was like, I can’t fight, and I can’t get away. I can’t flee. So my body literally just went into freeze mode. And then afterwards, I was able to, you know, get away from the situation peacefully. But I had to be kind, because I wanted to fully get away, yes. And so I was like, Oh, okay. Bye, like, you know, it was, like, so awkward. And it was like, yeah, oh my gosh. Like, why did I just do that, right? Why was I, like, like, polite, right? Bye, like, right? And I realized, like, my body was surviving because I didn’t want to anger. Him, or make him think that I was going to press charges, which I did, right? Because I was like, I just have to get out of here. I’m going to go on attack, right? Like, yeah. I just need to survive, yeah. So obviously, in the workplace, hopefully that is not the extreme situation that’s happening, right? But it could be an angry boss that you’re just like, okay, like, Oh yeah, that project looks so good. Or like, yeah, yeah. Like, that timing works out great, even though it’s going to cause chaos in my life, you know, yeah. And so you’re telling them what they want to hear exactly, exactly, yeah. And so. So those are the four main survival functions and instincts of when someone goes into a survival mode, trauma response, wow.

Maria Ross 20:44

That is so enlightening, because we I had a workplace years ago where the there was a joke, and actually, this wasn’t even like the worst workplace I’d ever been in, but there was a joke about when the bear attacks go limp, like just and more, not from an assault or a trauma perspective, but just sort of almost like an argumentative like, at some point it’s not worth your you know your your body’s telling you this is not worth your time. Yes, it’s not going to go anywhere. So just tell them what they want to hear and then move on. Right? And to think of that in terms of a trauma response is so heartbreaking and and yet it makes so much sense, because, similar to you, I survived a potential sexual assault, and I remember my my first instinct after fear was just to calm this person down so that I could get out From so it was like, Can I get you a glass of water? Can I, you know, let’s sit down and talk. Let’s, I just wanted to, like, calm the person down so that I could get away right, right? And it’s amazing that that, I mean, that is, it’s such a survival instinct. And what can that look like when someone’s dealing with grief, is that even a reaction? Is it that you’re just telling the person you’re okay, and you’re trying to, like, make them feel better? Like, what? What does that look like in terms of being a response to grief?

Ashley Jones 22:14

Um, I think sometimes it is just being like, Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, yeah. How are you Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about grief is that not all grief is traumatic, right? So there are griefs and instances of grief where you might lose a grandparent that you knew was getting sick and being you know, and it was their time, healthy, family dynamics, yeah, and everybody was supportive. And so then it’s like, okay, that was a grief, right, but it was not traumatic, right? But I will say all trauma does include grief, because even in an instance like our situations with the sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, it’s like there is a loss, there’s a sense of safety that was lost, a sense of what you thought was okay in the world, like the values and like all trauma includes grief, but not all grief includes trauma.

Maria Ross 23:16

So that’s so powerful. I mean, not all grief is traumatic, but all trauma does include grief.

Ashley Jones 23:21

I Yeah. And I go into a lot of this explaining in my book that I have it which, yeah, tell us about the book real quick. Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a book called when you can’t see the light, and it’s a trauma informed guide to surviving a significant loss. Wow, yeah. And so I really, and so back to the leadership side. Part of supporting your team through trauma and being a trauma informed leader is understanding what it means to help people feel safe and give people control. So those are the two things in trauma that are I mean, there’s a lot more that’s taken away in trauma, but those are the two main things when it comes to healing that are really, really critical for leaders to make sure is a possibility in the workplace. So creating the possibility for safety, so giving people a safe room to go into, whether that’s like a sitting room or a piece it’s just a peaceful, quiet room that everyone has a break, whether it’s a break room that is softer, lighting, more comfy, chairs, like whatever it is, right? Water, like meeting people’s basic needs for safety, right, which includes, like hunger and thirst and and those things, right? And then giving people control. So it’s like, maybe, you know, coming back from a trauma or a traumatic loss, it’s like, Hey, how about for the next six weeks? We give you control over your your where you work from? Yeah, you want to work from home for six weeks as you ease back into work? Do you want to go part time as you work back. In, right? Like giving people, do you

Maria Ross 25:01

want to take these tasks off your plate until you feel ready to tackle them again?

Ashley Jones 25:05

Yeah. And so giving people control and creating a sense of safety is so critical. And so anyway, in in the book, I, you know, my book is more of a guide to take people by the hand and and truly support them day by day through a loss. So if someone goes through a loss, the you know, one of the first things I talk about is just my own story and the empathy of just like, hey, this sucks. I am so here for you. And even if no one else shows up, you can take this book and we’ll go through it together, right? Yeah, and then we start with super basic needs, just like I talked about, like, hunger, thirst, like, like, how do you support yourself and handle yourself with care? Because you’ve been through a traumatic incident that has created significant wounding, even though no one can see it, right? So, right? As if we should be laid up in a hospital with bandages and casts and people serving us and waiting on us and taking care of us, uh huh. But because it’s a heartbreak, no one does right, or job loss, or a you know, whatever it is, the loss of a team member, the tragedy that that we deal with is so invisible, yeah, and so we don’t have a cast or crutches for people to be like, oh, we need to handle them with care, right, right? And the thing about covid that I really appreciated was the mask was such a universal symbol of, hey, we’re all going through something right now, right? Like, we all are going through trauma. And like, the mask was that symbol of like, hey, let’s handle each other with care, right, right, um. And so now that we’re kind of back to back to, quote, unquote, normal, yeah? Like, okay, where? What can we do to show each other that, like, Hey, I’m going through something. Please handle me with care. Yeah, yeah. So I talked about that in my book. We go through, you know, handling yourself with care. We talk about, you know, the flow of things like right flow of energy, setting boundaries. How do you, you know, just focus on one thing to get done today, right one and working your way back into productivity. We talk about emotions and understanding grief, and we go through the definitions of grief and trauma and all of that, and then really supporting people through that. You know, hopefully the transition to say all right now that you’re through hopefully the worst of it, right? We know how to process the emotions and the grief and all of that. Now let’s, let’s talk about self care and supporting ourselves through self care, we go through healing tools that can be resources for people, and then also kind of integration of, how do we now process this in a way that supports our health and wellness in that connected sense of healing? Yeah, so that we can be our best whole self moving forward. And how do we move forward and look outward instead of looking inward with that victim mindset? Yeah. And so it really walks people hand by hand. So if you’re a leader and you’re like, I don’t know what to do, get my book and read it.

Maria Ross 28:15

I was gonna say people should just have these Yeah, people should just have these books on hand for their teams, that’s right, in case that they need to provide that kind of support to somebody, and look through it yourself, so you know what’s there. And you know you can kind of get a an idea of what their experience might be, but that’s just a wonderful resource for like anyone listening, if you’re in HR, if you’re in employee experience or culture, or you lead a team. You know, have these books on hand to be able to provide a resource for people when you don’t know what to say and you don’t know what to do, right? Like, start there. You know, I mentioned it briefly before, but we talked about the episode I had with Ron Gura about his company empathy, and the strides they’re making with bringing almost grief benefits into organizations, into large organizations, like pairing and partnering with insurance companies to provide these these resources and these benefits to people. And really starting the conversation on this is another thing. If you want to be as cold as possible, it’s something that impacts your people’s productivity, which impacts your bottom line. So you should care about this, but from a moral and ethical perspective, it’s great. We want to be there for the people that we work with, right? We’re spending probably more time with them sometimes than our own families. So I want to talk about specifically what the nonprofit does, and also Memento foundation. So can I know you started the nonprofit first? So tell us about that first, and then let’s get into momentum.

Ashley Jones 29:50

Share the theme. So they just, I know they more, yeah, yeah. So love not lost. Really, was just focused on taking pictures for people. Facing internal diagnosis and providing family members with the at first we were doing albums. Now we’re doing custom photo boxes with a bunch of five by sevens inside really beautiful and and it’s been such a amazing tool to hear families talk about. Because with the album, what we realized was the album was just a solid thing that they could have on their coffee table or on their shelf or wherever, and they could pull it out and take it, you know, take a look at it whenever they needed to. But it was hard for people to share it. So families actually would tell us like, oh yeah, we sent the book on tour, and we’re just sending it to family, and trusting family passes it to the next family, and then hope it’ll get back to us. And I’m like, oh, that’s kind of terrible, like, the book get lost or, you know, right? And so we ended up giving them a large box. It’s a wooden box with their photo printed on it, full of five by sevens and nice. Then the five by sevens out if they want to share, but not lose the whole thing. That’s great, yeah, and so, so we, you know, really focused on that and figuring out, okay, how do we scale that? How do we get volunteer photographers to join us? How do we, you know, the send out the photo boxes in time, and all of that. And then we would hear families say, oh, man, that’s, that’s great. But, you know, I’m getting threatened at work with a performance improvement plan, and my husband’s on hospice, right? Like, how am I supposed to meet these goals when, like, my husband’s dying and I have twin daughters at home, right? And you’re like, yeah, that’s insanity, and that should never be the reality of a situation like, I am so sorry your boss is doing that. Yeah? And so we would hear these stories of families who are navigating these horrible, horrible situations of losing their person, right? Yeah, or even a child, and you’re like, I cannot believe this is your experience and that leaders are choosing to interact with you this way, yeah. And so that’s when I really started thinking, like, gosh, there’s gotta be something we can do. And same thing for the support tools. So people would say, oh, man, like, you know, we had all the support up front, but now it’s died down. Yeah. And only have like one or two people coming around to check on us? Yeah? Or, you know, this cancer has been going on for years, and everyone’s just kind of done supporting us, because their life has moved on, right? We’re still here with the cancer, and it’s getting worse, so we have more help, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, it’s so one of the first tools that we created was the How can I love you better? Com website, which was a site that I created, because a lot of times people will say, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you. Yeah, or call me if you need anything. Right? And what people don’t understand, because that’s just such an easy phrase to throw off, right? Right? Is Like, one you’re not giving a timeline on that, so it’s like, Call me if you need anything. But do you mean that, like five years from now, or just five years from now, or just five minutes now? Right? Right? And then you’re putting the responsibility back on the grieving person or the person who needs the support, right, right? So, and then two, oftentimes, if people did make the call, it’s like there was no follow through. So it’s like, how can we solve for this problem? We have great technology. And so we created a simple email form. When you go to, how can I love you better? Calm, you can choose the relationship. So we made one for personal like, friendships, and then we also made one that’s more casual, for workplace relationships, where maybe, like, so it’s like, how can I love you better? Calm, I might not say that to a male co worker, right, right? Like, not

Maria Ross 33:55

appropriate. Like, how can I support you? Yeah,

Ashley Jones 33:57

exactly. And so we have that language shift that’s great. Like, I would send the How can I love you to my best friend. Best friend, and maybe the, how can I support you to the male co worker, right? Yeah, exactly. And so we have those two different kind of tracks. And you can offer a tangible thing that you are capable of following through on, yeah? And you can customize your list. And so that was one of the tools that we created. And then the other piece, as we’ve evolved into Memento Foundation, has been creating a learning library. And so that is really the education piece of okay, how can we create these very vulnerable, transparent conversations with trauma experts, with people and families who’ve gone through the loss to support one another and educate each other on what this could feel like. How can we do better? We have a series with Dr Jerome lovey, who’s a an incredible neurologist, Enneagram expert. He’s got, like, a. Me like several certifications that are way above my pay grade. Trauma Informed expert, like, yeah, all the thing, and we have a 10 part series with him on how do we use the Enneagram to support people through grief and trauma based on their Enneagram breakdown, right? So like in my Enneagram, like my highest number is a two helper, yes, shocker. As a helper, I don’t like asking for help, because I feel like a burden on other people, and I helping, right? And so for me, like my friends just know, oh, Ashley’s not going to ask for help, so we just need to show up and do stuff for her, right? Yeah, like, and so it’s really helpful, based on the Enneagram. And so when we rebranded to Memento Foundation, we launched the Memento collective, which is an online community where people can get the free Enneagram assessment. There are a couple other self assessment tools that there are free, and then that’s also where the learning library is, that you can check out the videos, and it’s amazing education tools that, with more funding, we will continue to build out and create exactly comprehensive, holistic approach to grief. I mean, this

Maria Ross 36:21

is all so amazing, and so this is why I’m so honored to amplify the work you’re doing. Because I think everyone listening needs to know that these resources are available. And I am going to have all the links in the show notes for people so that they don’t forget where to access all of these things, the links to Memento collective, to the community, to your website so that they can get their hands on the new book, which is beautiful, by the way. And so as we wrap up, what is sort of one golden nugget you can leave us with in terms of navigating grief for ourselves or for someone close to us,

Ashley Jones 36:57

I think the one thing that people fall into the trap of is choosing fear and for ourselves and each other, right? So, like, I’ve heard phrases when I’ve gone to support people that say, Oh, I can’t start crying, or else I’ll never stop, right? Yeah, or I’m so afraid to feel sad, because I’m afraid I’ll never feel joy again, right? Or I’m so afraid, dot, dot, dot, right? And I think when we go to support other people, that’s another comment we’ve already talked about, right? I’m so afraid I’m going to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, or make someone cry, or whatever. Yeah, my advice is to get out of the fear mindset, right? Because that will always lead you down the wrong path and choose love instead. So when we choose love, we’re supporting ourselves in saying, You know what? I need to feel sad right now. I need to cry right now, and I’m going to go find a safe place for me to do this, whether it’s in my car or my house or the closet or wherever, right? Yeah, to let that out and to love myself and give myself that experience and to stay connected with myself. Yeah, yeah. The same thing is of helping others, right? It’s like, I’m going to give this person permission to unload on me and say, yeah, hey, I’m here for you. You can break if you need to, right? Yeah, cry on my shoulder if you need to. I am here for you, yeah? And to not be afraid of crying, because some people are like, Oh, I’m afraid. I’m gonna make them cry. It’s like, well, yeah, of course, like their grief is just bubbling below the surface, right? Yeah, yeah, looking for ways to cry, and that’s actually giving them a really beautiful space to heal, yeah, because crying is feeling, and feeling is healing. And so if we can give people that safe space to feel their emotions, to stay connected, that is really such a beautiful gift to people, and so choosing love over fear and staying connected in the present, one of our values at Memento foundation is embracing the present with courage, no matter what it holds. Yeah, and sometimes that’s fear, right? And we embrace fear with courage. Sometimes it’s, you know, you’re walking into a situation where you have no clue how it’s going to go, yeah. And it’s embracing the unknown with courage, right? Yeah. And so it’s really about choosing love regardless of the situation, regardless of the people involved, right? To show up and say, what is the best way I can love myself and others right now in this moment, I love it.

Maria Ross 39:44

That’s such a great place to land. Thank you, Ashley, for all of this. I did want to ask one important last question, what is your daughter’s name? Skylar? Skylar? Wow. Skylar is responsible for all of this love and support you are bringing to so. Many people, so thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story. And like I said, we will have all your links in the show notes, and especially the link to your website where folks can get their hot little hands on your book as a resource. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. 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™

Conny Kalcher: How Zurich is Making Empathy Pay Off by Closing the Gap

For years, empathy was treated as a business nice-to-have—important, but secondary to speed, scale, and efficiency. The data now tells a very different story.

In this conversation, Maria and Conny, the Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group, dive into Zurich’s new global study, Addressing the Empathy Gap, which surveyed more than 11,000 consumers across 11 markets. The findings are striking: 79% of consumers say empathy matters more than any other factor, and 43% have left a brand due to a lack of empathy. This isn’t theoretical; it’s revenue walking out the door.

Conny shares how Zurich is closing that gap by treating empathy as a learnable skill. She shares practical first steps organizations can take, starting right where they are. We also explore Zurich’s philosophy of AI with a human touch – using technology to augment human connection, not replace it.

This is a conversation about moving from transactional payer to trusted partner—and why, in an industry ripe for disruption, empathy is quickly becoming a competitive advantage.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why customers are leaving brands due to a lack of connection and empathy.
How to make AI work for your organization, without trying to replace human connections.
How to create trusted relationships and partnerships and maintain them for long-term success.
The power of the NRR – Net Revenue Retention – metric.

“We started out with the starting point that empathy can be taught, and if people get the right tools, they will also do the right thing. So we can de-learn practices you’ve had over the years, and you can bring new aspects into them.” — Conny Kalcher

Episode References:

Zurich’s 2025 Report: Addressing the Empathy Gap: https://www.zurich.com/sustainability/customers/empathy-report

The Empathy Edge podcast: Anna Liotta: Understanding Generational Codes

About Conny Kalcher: Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group:

Conny Kalcher is Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group and a global leader in customer experience with a reputation for embedding empathy into business strategy to drive long-term business success. She is a founding partner of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Loyalty Forum with more than three decades of experience from senior roles at LEGO and consultancy work at Mindfolio.

Connect with Conny:

Zurich Insurance Group: zurich.com

LinkedIn: ch.linkedin.com/in/conny-kalcher-198ba5

Company LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/zurich-insurance-company-ltd

Connect with Maria:

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

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

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

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Conny Kalcher 03:51

Thank you very much, and thank you for having me. I also looked into what you have been preaching for many years and talking about and where it’s definitely a meeting of minds about empathy. So thank you very much for having me. Well, I

Maria Ross 04:04

love it, and I want to talk a little bit you know you are Chief Customer Officer of Zurich Insurance. Many of us have heard of that global brand. Tell us how you got there. What’s a little bit of your story and your passion for being a customer advocate?

Conny Kalcher 04:18

Well, it actually all started with with Lego. I was working for the LEGO Group for many, many years, and of course, it’s very easy to understand that a brand that kind of is for kids is more focused on empathy and connecting on an emotional level. And at Lego, we had a kind of a crisis at a certain point, and we had to really go back and reconnect with what was the brand all about, and what would we want to be for customers? And through that whole journey, I really, really learned many aspects of how you can improve the relationship with your customer and how you can connect with them, and especially with kids. You need to connect on that emotional level as well. It’s not. Just about selling to them or promoting something, it’s really tapping into their passion and what they’re really excited about. So having been quite a few years at Lego, I learned a lot about how you can put this into practice, not just talking about it, but really making it happen. And I saw the outcomes of how powerful it is. So when I joined Zurich, which is a totally different industry, so insurance is typically much more focused on kind of our expertise and how good we are at managing all the more technical things in our business, so I really saw a gap there as we transformed the Zurich brand to become more customer focused, to also tap into empathy as part of that journey. It’s not empathy alone, but empathy is a strong element of it, absolutely.

Maria Ross 05:53

And you know, I love the whole the so much of the through line of the report that you recently put out, which we’ll put a link folks in the show notes so you can access the report. Is really about understanding. What I’ve been trying to say for the last, you know, seven years, is that empathy is not a soft skill. It impacts everything from customer loyalty and revenue to employee engagement and retention. And there’s ways we can practice it that are not just for optics, to make it genuine and to make it something that actually we want to embrace as human beings, going to work every day. So I really appreciated that through line. Let’s talk a little bit about the report. You carried out research of more than 11,000 customers in 11 markets to understand what they need from brands, what they are expecting, you know, from the external point of view, not just internal team dynamics, but how we extend that empathy out to our customers as a large, intricate, you know, sometimes bureaucratic company, however big or small our company is, and so tell us about what you found That was blaring for you around the empathy gap.

Conny Kalcher 07:02

Yeah, first of all, we did it. We did this study because we wanted to move away from what you just said, that empathy is not a soft skill. It’s actually a smart skill, because it actually drives business at the same time. So by actually get getting some data behind what customers are expecting from companies. We felt we could make a stronger case, and we would also, we also became wiser in as part of the process, of course, and what we learned was that there is a clear empathy gap across industries, but especially also in financial industries, where customers are kind of expecting insurance companies to be empathetic. So 88% of them expect that, but actually it’s only 63% of them that feel that the industry delivers it. So expectations are high, and there’s still a gap that we can fill out by doing it better. So that was a very helpful insight, but also the insight that customers are actually leaving brands that are not delivering on that connection with them on an emotional level. So 43% of customers have actually left the brand because they didn’t feel that there was a real connection. So we think this is the this is a good space, as we are transforming Zurich into be much more customer focused, to kind of tap into that and deliver what they’re expecting, and maybe even more than they’re expecting, right? And what we learned is that it actually it works. It works in the sense that the customers don’t just say that they actually respond to it very positively, right?

Maria Ross 08:43

And I should mention, because I mentioned this in your bio, that you’re a founding partner of the Net Promoter Score and loyalty forum. So you’re you have deep expertise in getting a beat on how customers feel about the companies they do business with. And so you know, that background, combined with this data to now support, you know, the work that you’ve been doing your whole career is amazing. And we should point out, you know, you actually even looked at the Delta within some other companies, like food and beverage, like hotel hospitality, and the expectations are, there’s really no one industry, even transportation, I think, where the expectation was lower than 70% or 60% I don’t have that graph in front of me right now, but that’s very telling for people that might be saying, Oh, my customers in my industry don’t care about it. They just want their stuff, right? They just want their service. So can you talk about that a little

Conny Kalcher 09:39

bit Absolutely, and also, we’ve also experienced over the last, I would say, maybe 1015, years, that where we used to perceive a company or a brand, it was more about their product. You know, is the product high quality? Is it packaged in a good way, etc, more the kind of functional values? Yeah. But of course, that has changed, and now customers are seeing the whole experience, so they see the product is key, but also the experience that we deliver. At the same time, big companies like Amazon and Netflix has changed that, and they have changed expectations of customers. So it’s not just they don’t look at us and say, Oh, they’re insurance, so I can’t really expect to be able to change my address. That’s not how customers are thinking. They’re thinking like, if I can get my parcel from Amazon from one day to the other, I should be get similar services for other companies. So we need to deliver also on the experiences, and that’s where the empathy really plays in is when they contact us. It’s when we deliver service to them, etc. That’s where they need to feel that we are there for them, and we are there to deliver what they expect, and we understand their needs and who they are. And that this is goes back, as you said, to the NPS forum, where we were together many practitioners around the world, from businesses who were all striving to be excellent, and by sharing these experiences, you learn how powerful it is to actually strive to be excellent and then also deliver it in a meaningful way. Absolutely.

Maria Ross 11:17

And it’s interesting, because I come from this at this work, from being a brand strategist and a marketing executive. So that’s how I got into the world of empathy, of understanding, the catalyst that it provides when you embrace genuine empathy for your customers as people, not as numbers, not as dollar signs, not as subscribers. And there’s a statistic and a study that I always love to talk about, which is that 97% of customers say that empathy is the most important element in the customer engagement, and that’s even for I believe, in that study that was done in 2020 and 2021 that that’s even if their problem wasn’t necessarily solved, they still felt good about doing business with that company because they felt seen, heard and valued. So sometimes I do talk to tech leaders, because I have come from a tech background before. They’re like, Oh, they don’t care. They just want our widget. They just want the infrastructure. They just want the plumbing. But anywhere where you’re dealing with interactions from human to human, the truth is that we do business with people and brands we like, ones that that see here and value us, yeah.

Conny Kalcher 12:24

And you know that is that seeing it’s not what people will remember, is not what you say, it’s how you make them feel exactly. And I think that’s very, very true. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re selling software or something very technical, even there, you need to understand the needs of the customers

Maria Ross 12:40

Exactly, exactly. So let’s talk about also some specifics in this data that you found is that, you know, you mentioned the 43% of customers that said they had left a brand due to a lack of empathy. There’s also this stat of 71% seven in 10 consumers surveyed believe AI cannot recreate human connections, because that’s what I’m seeing too, is some leaders who are not as skilled at EQ are saying, Oh, I can just outsource it to AI. And that’s been a lot of what I’ve been out talking about is that AI can do a lot, but it’s actually also going to expose the workers and the leaders that don’t have the human skills, because they’ll have nowhere to hide. They won’t have the tasks to hide behind. And really tell us a little bit about your perspective and the perspective within Zurich of how we’re going to use AI to complement and free up our time for human connection Exactly.

Conny Kalcher 13:35

We have to remember AI can’t feel, and so how can they be empathetic if they can’t feel with what your opposite is feeling. So the role of AI is much more to take away repetitive tasks or to make you more efficient in the contact but the high value communication with customers should still be done by humans. It’s more their role is more to reduce friction and make us humans better. In the contact and especially in insurance, it can be complicated. It can also be very emotional situation. Something has happened, you’d had an accident or whatever. You don’t really want to talk to a bot. You do want to talk to a human being, having said that we have to respect that customers have different needs. So you would have some customers that, in some situation, just want fast, efficient, 24/7 they don’t want to wait until your phones are opening in the morning. So overall, it’s about making AI work for this kind of way of working and thinking and then, but still allow the best service you can deliver for the consumers who are customers who want something else, absolutely so, but not fall into the trap of thinking, AI is going to solve problems, no, because that’s not going to happen. It still has to start with a use case. It still has to start with a need from a customer. More that we want to deliver to and not just being a lot of technology. I think we have done that before. We’ve been falling into that pitfall before, when we talked about digital transformation, it was all about getting the digital experts in and not really thinking about but what is it we’re trying to achieve? So our our vision is to build a meaningful relationship with customers, and that really demands that you are able to do both, that you are able to be supported by AI, but also able to be there for them, show up when they need you in a way that is helpful to them, absolutely.

Maria Ross 15:37

And before we go into the work that Zurich has done internally, as we kind of look at this market perspective, I’d love your commentary on the opportunity for companies to differentiate, because that is a lot of what I talk about in terms of it being a competitive edge. I know you mentioned obviously the insurance and financial services industry, but what’s your take on the opportunity that companies are missing right now,

Conny Kalcher 16:03

I think there is a lot of opportunities that we miss if we don’t take this into consideration, no matter what industry we’re in, as the numbers were showing us in the survey that almost everywhere customers expectations are higher than what we are actually Delivering, especially when it comes to empathy. So I think it’s a need that we can tap into, and it is a differentiator, for sure. On the other hand, I would be happy if more brands did this. I know I would love it also in my industry. You know, it’s not like we need to keep this for ourselves. It’s more like the world will be a better and we will be happier also as customers ourselves, if we felt that bigger connection when we were needing help from even if it’s from the government or from a company or whatever it is, yeah.

Maria Ross 16:51

I mean, it’s kind of sad that the bar is so low, but with that comes an opportunity for companies to really differentiate and stand out. So I love it. Okay, let’s talk about what’s going on, the magic that’s going on internally at Zurich, because your philosophy is a company, which I applaud, is that empathy is a learnable skill. There’s the ability to strengthen that muscle, just like anyone starting a fitness routine and going to the gym, and it’s a strategic business imperative. So tell us a little bit about what Zurich has done to invest in this concept that seems a little squishy and scary. How have you defined empathy within your organization, and what have you rolled out to empower your people to deliver that empathetic experience to your customers?

Conny Kalcher 17:40

Yeah, first of all, we kind of started out with the starting point that it can be taught, that we believe it can be taught, and if people get the right tools, they will also do the right thing. So we can delearn what some practices you’ve had over years, and you can bring new aspects into them, especially if you feel that you get something back in that conversation as well, which is what our people definitely are experiencing. So what we did, we set out to create two types of training programs. One is a simpler it’s an online training program. You can do it in your own time. It talks about different types, different customer types, and what they’re looking for, so that you are able to recognize these customer types and treat them in a different if in a different way. I don’t mean that you now need to read the script and say, Oh, you’re this person, or you’re that person that’s talking about. It’s more soft kind of guidance. And then just by doing that and going through that training, we see a step up in how the connection is with the customer, and the satisfaction goes up. The more dramatically impactful Training Program is one that takes its starting point in an audit. So for example, if you are in a customer service team, we then go in and we audit the customer service team, we look at how they deal with calls, emails, how they write, how they talk, how they deal with cases, and this is done by a third party company. So we don’t do that. We don’t audit our colleagues, if you know what I mean, and then based based on that, we find okay. So these are the things we can train that can be different. And here are some systemic things we probably also should look at. And then after that, we invite the whole team in for two days where we have some actors who act out these situations. Yep. And then their group can evaluate it and give tips and tricks and talk about what the difference is. They’re not criticizing their colleagues, but they are kind of improving situations that they know of. They can recognize them from their daily work. And once we do that kind of training with the teams, we actually see that in some cases, the NPS score, so the satisfaction score, the loyalty score, jumps almost 20 points. Little. Little bit dependent, of course, their starting point, if they’re already world class, they won’t jump as much, but Right, right? But you know, for some teams, it does, and what’s more important is that not only do they connect better with our customers, they’re more empathetic, but they’re also working better together, because they now understand some of these mechanics and what they mean, which I think is a fantastic outcome as well. Yeah, what we also see is that that increase in the score or improved service level actually stays. So we have measured it, you know, more for more than a year, one and a half year, and the jump is there. So it’s a change that lasts. It’s not okay. Let’s do some training. Blip. It works for three weeks, and then we go back to what we did before, right?

Maria Ross 20:48

I just want to drill into that a little bit. What do you do in terms of ongoing so you do this big initiative within this one team, and then share with our listeners you know, your commitment and what it looks like to continue to, you know, if, for me, I always use the analogy of it’s, it’s, it is like going to the gym and working out and getting those six pack abs and getting your muscles. But then would you stop going to the gym after that? You wouldn’t. You need to keep maintaining it. So how do you do that within Zurich?

Conny Kalcher 21:16

So we, in general, then have the local team continue the journey and keep it fresh. But from our side, we create what we call learning nuggets, little inspirational videos or insights or situations that can inspire them and just refresh them. So we don’t ask them to sit down and do two days of training again. But it’s more like we just keep it fresh and that that’s highly appreciated. And it’s often stories from within. We have a very good comms department that are good at creating these assets that’s amazing. So they are exciting and they have high production values. It’s not like a brochure on paper. It’s really interesting content.

Maria Ross 21:58

Yeah, well, you want people, you want to make sure people are consuming it, right? Yes. So, yeah. So I love that. And then I think you may have mentioned this if you already did, I apologize that your investment has led to a seven point rise in customer advocacy since January 2024 I mean, that’s a pretty that’s a pretty big jump. And so were there, I guess, if you can pull back the curtain a little bit, were there skeptics initially within the company, when you first started talking about this and trying to get these programs in place, because I know a lot of my listeners are fully bought into all of this, but they might be working in organizations where they’re fighting an uphill battle, and, you know, I’m trying To give them as much of the data and the business case as I can, but hearing it from you, what was that experience like of getting the internal buy in before you had the metrics in front of you?

Conny Kalcher 22:52

It was a good question. There’s always doubt, you know, when you try to introduce something new and it’s a bit unusual, and then also here, there was that perception, this is a soft issue, and we’re just going to whatever the customer wants. We’ll just give it to them. That’s not

Maria Ross 23:10

which you can’t always do in insurance. Yeah.

Conny Kalcher 23:12

No, exactly, exactly. So for me, and I think for you as well, when I read your things, you have written, empathy is not only when you deliver good messages, empathy is also when you have a difficult message to convey, or something that’s factual, that might not go down that well with the customer. But what we have learned is that it’s about being open and honest and not avoid it, not avoid the conversation or just say no or being abrupt with it, the more we lean into that difficult conversation, the better we get a reaction on the other side and and in our industry, we have difficult conversations. It can be emotionally difficult situation because something tragic has happened or it has had something to do with their policy or expectations. Maybe they thought they were getting something that they may maybe are not covered for. So there are many, many difficult situations to be able to master, and I think that’s what we keep on telling internally, not just the numbers, but also equipping our people to have difficult conversation is just as important. Absolutely, we know that that’s just not only consumers, but as people, right? The more you kind of actually have a difficult situation with your children or in a conflict, if you can kind of bring in the empathy into that dialog, it’s a different dialog.

Maria Ross 24:38

Yeah, it’s a different tenor of the conversation. And you know, because I know there’s listeners who are going, I wish we could invest in something like this at our company, but our CEO would never go for it. Did you feel like the culture was already primed at Zurich to say, Yeah, we get that. We understand that this is not just about fluffy skills, but about important conversations that could make or break our. Customer revenue.

Conny Kalcher 25:02

We had been on a journey to transform the brand from being what our customers was telling us was a bit we were a bit cold and distant, to be more connecting more emotionally with our customers, be warmer, have a nicer visual identity that people could recognize themselves in. And so we had been on that, on that journey, we had also run a big program, which was all about changing the tone and voice, because, as you know, the way that we are sometimes talking about things in letters and emails, it can be complicated, technical, not easy one. It’s like we’re speaking to ourselves right to the customer. So we had to totally transform that. So we transform how we look, what we stand for, how we speak in communication, and then also now how we speak in the direct contact with our customers. So it is rewiring a brand right to work on all of these elements. And I think because we took one step at a time, you kind of bring people on board slowly, and then they are more willing to take risk with something that is because they’ve seen the other things working right. I would say, though, what I would advise people to do is not go in and ask for 2 million budget and saying, this is these are the fantastic results we’re going to achieve, but simply just trying, start doing it, and kind of invent smaller programs that you can actually test and try and do pilots, and then learn from that and bring some results into the company. It’s very convincing. Yeah, absolutely doing it. Yeah.

Maria Ross 26:36

And, you know, really encouraging folks to just do those pilots start small, maybe with your own team. You know, you can create a micro culture within your own team. And as your results start to go up, people will go, what’s going on over there, right? And also, you can bring that to light. You can showcase that and say, here’s what we’ve been doing the last three months we invested in, you know, spending 10 minutes before every meeting, checking in with people and finding out how they’re doing and how their weekend went, and how, you know, just those little it doesn’t have to be a huge, expensive transformation. Again, I know there’s probably listeners who are very jealous of what Zurich’s been able to do, but if you can recall what was the small step you all started with, do you remember?

Conny Kalcher 27:23

Yeah, it was more, as I said, looking at the other aspects. Because if we look at the how we write our letters, it’s clear to everybody that that’s outdated, and we need to change that. And if we look at how we were communicating, it was cold and distant. So we need to change that. So I think it’s the credibility you build up over time, yeah, but then there are lots of data, and there are also lots of example of examples of good brands that are connecting exactly feel something for and that power is you can’t buy it with advertising. You really need to connect with your customers in order to get Yeah, that connection going, yeah. I remember

Maria Ross 28:02

when I was doing my brand strategy work. Now I’m fully devoted to the empathy work, but I remember telling my customers, everybody wants to be apple, but nobody wants to do the work that Apple has done to be apple. And I think that’s the point. Is you can’t just it’s not necessarily like something you just copy. It’s something you have to build organically within your organization and have those champions who care enough about it. I love there was something you wrote to me of Zurich’s goal to move from a transactional payer to a trusted partner, and even if you have customers that are one time, it’s one engagement, one product, if you can treat them, if you can create a trusted relationship, and trusted partnership, that’s much, you know, from a dollars and cents standpoint, much less expensive to maintain those good relationships and continue to upsell, cross, sell, serve, then unearthing new customers, acquisition costs, right? So just from a pure CFO perspective, yes, this is an approach that’s really helpful. I want to talk about you introduced a new metric at Zurich, the net revenue retention. NRR, can you tell us about that?

Conny Kalcher 29:18

Yeah, so we were looking for. We had been measuring NPS for for years, and we really has grown that a lot over the years, more than, if I go back to 19, much more than the seven points. And we have been growing brand consideration. And insurance is really a financial industry. It’s not marketing driven. So these, these metrics, yeah, they are understandable by the my colleagues understand them, but they’re not the same thing about us saying, Well, this is the revenue we were driving, or this is the Bob we were driving. So we were trying to look for a metric that would tell us how much our loyalization strategy. G was creating value. And for that, we looked into many different things. But among other things, the work of Fred reicheld. Fred Reichelt is the inventor of NPS, and he was also getting a little bit annoyed with the fact that you couldn’t say, I grow NPS with one point that equals so much more revenue. It’s difficult to say, because there are many factors that impact that. So he came up with this new, new metric that actually goes a little bit further than NRR. But we took the first bit of it and said, Well, we can use this. And what we’re looking at here, we’re looking at we combine our customer data with our financial data, and then we look at how much revenue we we generate in any given year. And then the year after, we look at how much revenue we’re losing by losing customers. And then we look at how much revenue we’re losing by losing products from these customers, but keeping the customers. And then we look at renewals, and then cross an upsell, and then we come to a new number, and we look at that over the first number, and then that’s the net revenue retention. So that number needs to be above 100 then you are earning loyalty value. If it’s below, you’re losing value. You might then make it up by acquisition, as you mentioned before, but it’s not has nothing to do with loyalty. So by having this metric, which we developed together with our our CFO over a year, and getting all that data correct, we now have this data for all markets, and we have very good dialogs with them about not only how many new customers are they getting? Because new customer can be high value customer, low value customer, right? But actually understanding the value of what we’re creating, it’s a big leap forward. Is that easy? No, it’s not easy to implement a new KPI, right? Because it’s a muscle. You have to learn how to use that new muscle, but I think we’re getting there, and everything starts with good data, starts with good insights, and once you have that, it’s only the only way is up,

Maria Ross 32:10

absolutely, absolutely. And I know you are focused externally on the customer, but can you say more about what this initiative and what this training and empowerment for the employees has done for internal metrics. I think

Conny Kalcher 32:25

what we’re seeing on the internal side, they also, you know, internal metrics is also impacted by many different things, of course, of course, the customer. But we have very high satisfaction scores in the company, or engagement scores, as we call it, and they also have been growing over the last year, since 18, I would say, right. So this is part of that. But most of all, what I see is I see more pride in the brand. I see more pride in the way we’re doing things, and people are saying to me and to other that we kind of this is an exciting brand to work for. We also hear from our competition and from people in the marketplace, my God, you’ve changed. So we are, we are seeing the impact of that, and actually think most people like to be seen as a company that’s striving to be good for customers and trying to do the things that are modern Tiktok, or whatever it is. Yeah, it’s not we can. If we think we’re boring, we will be boring. So we think about the brand as this is relevant for young people. This is exciting, but how do we then speak to them in the media where they are in a way that’s interesting for them? So the journey has been quite, quite strong. That way. It’s a big team, you know, who’s done this transformation across also other departments in the group, but it’s definitely a different brand than the brand it was when I joined

Maria Ross 33:50

absolutely well. And you know, just to point out your point about culture is that is what the incoming talent generations want. They want more than a paycheck. They want a place where they’re seen, heard and valued, so they’re asking questions about culture, and they want to work for a company that’s doing right by their customers, that’s doing right in the world, and yes, I’m Gen X. Of course, I wanted that too, but it’s even more pronounced now, because younger people, younger generations, are more savvy. Everything’s more transparent. So, you know, when they’re going to go work for a company, they’re going to look under the hood and say, not just, is this a great job offer, is this great benefits, but how do you treat customers? How do you treat employees? And that matters, not from a you know, I get some, some executives, not many who kind of sniff at that and say, well, they’re just lucky. They’re going to get a job. Well, you’re going to be lucky if you get competition, if you get the right talent, otherwise your competition is going to get that talent. So if you want a sustainable company, you need to know that this is what your talent pool is looking for, and it sounds like you’re delivering on that. Because I didn’t mention this earlier, one of your data points in the report showed that these expectations of empathy cross generations, cross age groups. It’s not just one particular age group that cares about this kind of customer experience or cares about this culture. We are now all empowered and have the information to make choices, and to say, I want to put my money in a company where they’re doing right by people, and not just right by me as a customer, but right by their employees as well,

Conny Kalcher 35:33

absolutely, and they have choice, and we all have choice, and I think I’d rather work in a company where where the employees get up in the morning and they love to go to work then, then if they crawl to work and can’t wait to get home, right? So, so I think with a higher purpose, and we do a lot in in sustainability and other big, big projects as well. So so if you deliver on these, again, more emotional aspects of what we do then, then you get a more committed workforce, but also a happier workforce, and I think that’s important, at least. I know that for myself I need to believe, if I believe, I’m a steam engine, right, right?

Maria Ross 36:17

I mean, we spend the bulk of our time at work. We want it to be a place that matters. We want it to be a place we feel good about so. And I, for 1am, really happy that the younger generation is making these demands, because that, you know, it raises all ships, right? What’s the rising tide? Raises all boats. Because that’s good for everyone, not just their generation coming into the workforce, it’s everybody, so I’m like, good on them for saying, wait a minute, if I’m going to spend 4060, 80 hours a week at this organization, I want it to be a place that I feel good about and where I belong, and that will translate to how they serve customers, absolutely so.

Conny Kalcher 36:59

And we can learn from them as well. I think we can, because we can also easily be stuck in our own ways, but having new generation coming in with different expectation, wanting to do things differently, yeah, also pushes us, you know, so I think that we desperately need them to influence how

Maria Ross 37:15

for sure, for sure. I’m going to mention to listeners, I did a fantastic episode with a generational expert a few years ago, Ana Liotta, and she wrote one of the best books I’ve seen about generational differences and generational operating codes called unlocking. Oh my gosh, the name is escaping me, but I will link to her episode in the show notes, unlocking generational codes. That was the name of her book, and she really talked about things in a very non judgmental and very just like, it’s not good or bad, it’s just different. And the more that we understand, the more we have empathy for each other from a generational standpoint, the better our organizations can do, the more they can thrive. So I’m going to put a link to her in the in the show notes as we wrap up, I just want to kind of talk more motivationally for folks around the disruptors mindset, because that seems to be a mindset that Zurich has. Can you comment on disruption in this time of massive upheaval, and how to reframe it as opportunity.

Conny Kalcher 38:23

Yeah, there’s AI drives a lot of disruption and in many ways and different expectations from people in the company. Some thinks, oh, this is it. They’re going to sort that all out. And other people are thinking, it’ll it has to be end to end. From day one, we have more the mindset that this, let’s embrace this disruption, because it’s actually cool, and then, and then start with use cases. What is it we want to do different? And then play with it, you know, find out what works and what doesn’t work, and then quickly it’s not, we’re not looking for a glorified Rolls Royce, but we are looking to move fast. You know, you can, you can move fast with little things as well. So we have a big transformation projects in the company, within the businesses in our world, because marketing, as you know, is being disrupted greatly. Search is being disrupted, and many other things in marketing, with with AI is changing, but it’s also energy, isn’t it? Is that what makes it exciting? Do we need another 10 years of what we’ve done the last 10 years? I don’t think so. We really need to embrace these and also we will never go back to things will be the same year after year after year. We just have to get used to that change is good, yeah, and we just need to put it to good use.

Maria Ross 39:49

It’s funny you say that I’m part of a larger Think Tank community of board members and C suite leaders and thought leaders and innovators. It’s called Samudra. And we have had talks about what is the future of strategic planning, right? And Gone is the 10 year plan really? I mean, if you report to the market, you do have to set benchmarks and expectations, but this mindset that if I plan today, I’m going to be able to foresee what’s happening three years from now, five years from now, they’re much more looking for companies and for leaders to create strategic plans that potentially have scenario planning included. Potentially have okay, if this happens, we’re going to do this. If that happens, we’re going to be do that, and we’re also going to leave the flexibility for we don’t know what will happen. And this is the infrastructure. Those are the kinds of strategic plans that successful companies are starting to put in place. And sprinkled across all of this is the human element of making sure that we are we are treating our people, we with respect. We’re seeing valuing them, and seeing our customers as people as well. So that I’m so excited that that mindset is finally coming to the forefront in terms of real strategic planning. What are we doing for our employees? What are we doing for our customers? Absolutely.

Conny Kalcher 41:10

And I also think we have a tendency even though, even though we’ve been looking at these big tech companies and how they’re revolutionizing business as more traditional companies, we’ve been looking more backwards. So what do we do last year? Let’s extend the planks for a couple of years, and then we will get to somewhere maybe we need to think of it more disruptively. Now, what do we need to do if we need to grow 30% in this area or totally transform that area? So strategic planning can be many things, and the scenario planning can be also helped by AI, so you can simulate, yeah, what happens if you go in this direction or that direction again? I think it offers many exciting opportunities. Well, it’s

Maria Ross 41:53

funny, because I started my career in change management for a management consulting firm, and so much of this is not it’s not a tech issue. It’s not even a geopolitical it’s a change management issue. And change management issues require us to figure out kind of coming full circle. How do we bring our people along in order to navigate this change effectively and come through it successfully? And I think that’s the piece that more and more leaders are waking up to and kind of following in Zurich’s footsteps of, oh, we actually have to start looking at people as people, and that has to factor in to to navigating this change. Where I think, you know, 10, even 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that was the afterthought. I remember. The Change Management team would be brought in as an afterthought to true

Conny Kalcher 42:42

and they would be specialist, whereas, in reality, we all need to be able to manage change 100% Yeah, 100%

Maria Ross 42:49

Well, I could talk to you for another hour, but I will not keep you. I know you’re on Zurich time right now. So thank you so much, Connie for all of these insights and for your golden nuggets that you’ve shared with us today, we will have all the links to Zurich’s report to connecting with you in the show notes. But for anyone who’s working out while they’re listening to us, where’s the best place they can connect with you or find out more about the work?

Conny Kalcher 43:12

Oh, they can. Everybody can connect to me. On LinkedIn, there’s lots of articles and posts about this topic if you’re interested in that otherwise on zurich.com There’s also information for people to reach out to me wonderful.

Maria Ross 43:27

And I’m going to just remind folks that if you reach out to Connie on LinkedIn, make sure you customize the note and say that you heard her on this podcast, so that she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Connie, thank you so much. I love that we’ve connected, and I really appreciate you Excellent.

Conny Kalcher 43:44

Thank you very much. I enjoyed the dialog,

Maria Ross 43:47 and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice 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™

Claude Silver: Be Yourself at Work for the Ultimate Leadership Advantage

Too many leaders are still trying to succeed by becoming someone they think they’re supposed to be—quieter, tougher, more polished, less human. And in the process, they’re leaving their greatest strengths at the door.

My guest believes that’s exactly backward. Today, we welcome back Claude Silver to discuss her latest book, Be Yourself at Work: The Groundbreaking Power of Showing Up, Standing Out, and Leading from the Heart.

We explore what authentic presence really looks like at work, and why pretending to be a different kind of leader rarely gets better results. Claude and I unpack why many leaders have accountability backwards, why the more power you gain, the less truth you often hear, and how being open and emotionally present doesn’t weaken communication but rather prevents under-communicating with your team. Finally, Claude offers us a simple, actionable practice you can use right away to take a small step and rebuild trust and connection where it matters most.

This is a conversation with one of my favorite humans on the planet about stopping the performance of leadership—and starting to lead from the strengths that made you worth hiring in the first place.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The importance of bringing your unique perspective, talents, and humanity to your team.
What authentic presence looks like at work.
Protecting healthy boundaries with courage and kindness while still connecting with others.
Signs your culture is thriving and how to get there.
Why is the room with everyone in it smarter than any one person in that room?
The reason actions say more than words ever will.
The dangerous byproduct of silence.

“When a person is real, they are not carrying the burden or the weight of any other facade.” — Claude Silver

About Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer, VaynerX, and Author of Be Yourself at Work:

Claude Silver is on a mission to revolutionize leadership, talent, and workplace culture. She is the world’s first Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX, partnering with CEO Gary Vaynerchuk to drive their success. Silver has earned Campaign US’s Female Frontier Award and AdWeek’s Changing the Game Award, and she electrifies audiences at national and international conferences, as well as at organizations including Meta, Google, US Government agencies, and the US Armed Forces. She has been interviewed on dozens of podcasts and featured in The New York Times, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. Silver lives in New Jersey with her wife and two young children. She is the author of Be Yourself at Work: The Groundbreaking Power of Showing Up, Standing Out, and Leading from the Heart.

Connect with Claude:

Website: claudesilver.com

VaynerX: beyourselfbook.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/casilver

Instagram: instagram.com/claudesilver

Book: Be Yourself at Work: The Groundbreaking Power of Showing Up, Standing Out, and Leading from the Heart

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

Claude Silver 03:21

empathy edge. Great to be here. So good to see you again. Thank you.

Maria Ross 03:25

I know, as we were talking in our pre talk, prepping for this, I was telling you how much I really loved your new book, and how it’s kind of a Bible, and it’s kind of a guidebook for any leader right now. And the gems per paragraph worth their weight in gold. So thank you so much for writing this and getting it out into the world. So let’s start where we always start, because we’re going to talk about a variety of things, of being yourself at work and what, what the heck Authentic Leadership actually means in a practical sense. But before we go there, I would just love if you would share your story and how you got into this work, because it’s such a good story, and it has so much to do with

Claude Silver 04:06

why you wrote this book as well. It really does. Thank you so much. You know, when you were just asking me that question, all of a sudden, I went to being five, six and seven, really, right now, yeah, and I remember, I was such a tomboy, and I rebelled against my mom. I did not want to wear dresses at all, and so I didn’t really until, like, I graduated from high school or at someone’s wedding. When I look back on that, if we’re you know, the book is really about belonging and belonging to yourself, right, and being accepted by yourself. And I think back to those years, and I think I knew who I was. I knew that it made some people uncomfortable, and so I think about how that probably shaped my life in many ways of being extra aware. Aware of when someone is comfortable or when they’re not comfortable. And I bring all that up because it is what I do all day. It is we are in relationship and in connection and community with people all day. And so my story really is in many ways, I think I was an underdog for a long time. I didn’t know where I fit in. And my parents are highly educated. My brother, who’s 18 months younger than me, is highly educated, and school was really tough for me, really, really tough. Dyslexia. I’m not a good test taker, right? And I’m a Gen Xer, so like, we had to take those tests, yeah, yep. And I didn’t do well. And at school, that’s what you are graded on, how well you take a test, how well you write, how well you comprehend. And my gift has always been that of emotion and that of much more emotional intelligence and emotional fluency. And so finding my way through my life has been. It’s not been anything I really have talked about until much recently with the book and really sharing a lot of my story. And so, you know, to get really into the nitty gritty. When after my sophomore year of college, I left after, you know, uncomfortable things happen, bad decisions, Bad boys, bad drugs. And I was like, I need to get out of this place. And I went back home to Santa Fe, New Mexico where I grew up, and I told my parents I needed to find the longest outdoor adventure, outdoor education class I could find, to get my butt kicked. Literally, that’s what I said. I need to get my butt kicked, because I was going nowhere fast, and I knew that wasn’t the plan for plot internally. Be careful what you wish for or what you look for. Yeah, I found a 93 day Colorado Outward Bound wilderness Leadership Program. Tell you how out of shape I was. Tell you how not prepared I was so here I go, October. Go to Outward Bound. I’m the only young woman with nine young men, and I’m learning right then and there that, okay, there’s no toilet paper. You don’t get a shower or a hot meal until 18 days. You know, this is 1991 so it’s snail mail. There’s no cell phone. Sleep in tents. You sleep in tarps, and everyone is going to carry 80 to 85 pounds on their back. So by then I was five three, and now I’m five and a half on a good day. So it’s day one. It’s snowing. We’re 9000 10,000 feet up already. We need to climb another 1000 feet to get to wherever we’re going to get to. The guys just bolt up the mountain. And here I am, you know, taking a breath step, taking a breath step, and just hoping and praying and wishing. I twist my ankle, I break my leg, and I get to go home, wishing, hoping, praying, and God, it didn’t happen, right? Crying, and it’s just the worst. It’s the worst. I’m soaked. It’s the worst. And I had a female instructor for those first 18 days, and she comes all the way down the path, and she looks right at me, about a foot and a half away from me, and she just says, What is going on in your head? Well, I answered her. I said, Well, you know, I’m singing that song by Nine Inch Nails, you know, head like a hole. Black is your soul. I’d rather die than give you control without blinking. She says, You better get another song in your head. Love that story, and that was it like, yeah, not that my life changed, I mean, but that was the first time after going to therapy and after just, you know, feeling like I understood a little bit about life. That was the first time it clicked that only I could change this talk in my head. And I really think it’s because music was the origin of that, you know, not like, oh yeah, Claude, only you can change the thought in your head. Well, okay, but this was, like, a real song lyric that was not doing me Right, right? And you know, again, 1991 there was no Pharrell happy, you know, and I wasn’t happy, right? So the wonderful thing about that entire adventure is that, A, I stuck with it. B, I came out of it. 93 days, a very changed human being, a much stronger, much more confident human being. I understood teamwork. I understood what it took to survive with others, keep one another safe and healthy with others. You know, in the back country where there’s no no rescue, no one’s coming to get you, and so I started to understand the inner workings of teammanship and what I needed to do to show up, to be fully present as a member of that team, and not only the team, a leader, because that was the point, so that Thank goodness for out for that Outward Bound. I mean, it took me on a great adventure, and. I came out of it knowing immediately my purpose was to be not only of service, but to be of joyful service. And that hasn’t left me. And I was 19, and that’s, you know, and that’s where I am today,

Maria Ross 10:15

right, right? And you’re now, you know, your Chief Heart Officer at Vayner X, working with Gary Vaynerchuk and explain a little bit about that role, because I often describe your role, and this might be wrong, almost like you’re a coach within the organization, and people can come to you or get sent to you. You’re not HR, but it’s more about leadership capacity, about personal boundaries, you know, stretching people kind of being the coach that, like the leader that came up to you, of what is the song in your head? Yes, is that an accurate description that is

Claude Silver 10:53

Gary would describe it as I set the emotional framework for the company. I probably think I’m much more of the barometer, and that barometer goes up and down based on who am I speaking to the patterns I’m seeing or hearing. And also not just in America. I mean, it’s a whole other universe which has, you know, very different cultures than us. And so it’s, I would say it’s probably a high performance coach, quasi, a little bit of like psychology, although I’m not a therapist, but you know, enough to be able to spot someone’s imposter syndrome and then go there, right, right? Those questions that might be a little bit more therapy. And Gary would say, if he sat here right now, he would say, I want every single person to feel safe with Claude, and I want every person to feel trusted. And so, no, it’s a village, though, it takes a village to do this.

Maria Ross 11:50

And obviously, you know what I love about the company investing in that is they’re clearly seeing how that ties to results. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Claude Silver 12:00

Yes. So I’m glad we bring that up, because a lot of times people will push back immediately and say, well, what’s the ROI? Well, can you quantify the ROI? Okay, yes. Low attrition, high retention, word of mouth, referrals. We just had an incredible win at the Super Bowl with one of our ads. So what’s not the ROI of being good to your people? What’s not the ROI of taking care of your people? I just don’t know everything is. And so when we look at the growth from good to great and then great to exceptional, how do we get a steady performer to a high potential and then get a high potential to a top talent that’s all income, that’s all about retaining, and that’s all about, you know, all of us touching that person, whether or not that person needs to develop more client facing skills, maybe that person needs more attention to detail. Maybe that person’s doing great and they’re going to be the next CEO, who knows? So it’s a lot of obviously caring for people holding space, for people creating space, but not jumping in on their stuff. I’m not interested in doing that. Yeah, there’s a very clear divide, at least energetically with me on like where I begin and end, and where they begin and end, even though I don’t have a desk in this room, I don’t want a desk. I’ve never wanted a separation between me and anyone else. I’m very aware of an invisible boundary that I have to have if I’m going to do this work every day, right? If I’m going to have all of these conversations or listen, you know, is a lot to take in, right?

Maria Ross 13:41

Well, and I think that’s the challenge for a lot of people is, you know, and that’s why in my most recent book, I talked about not only people in performance, but personal boundaries as well. Yeah. And so before we dive into so much about the book that I have questions and I would love to discuss with you, can you talk about, what are the strategies you use to set that boundary, because I think that’s a really important point for people of and also why they shy away from empathetic and authentic leadership is because they’re afraid they’re going to lose themselves. They’re afraid they’re going to be too vulnerable. They’re afraid they’re going to get caught up in someone else’s drama. So what has worked for you? Because you’re having these conversations all day long. And if anyone can master it, it would be you. So what are some tips you have for people?

Claude Silver 14:26

Yeah, I do a lot of energy work. And okay, that sounds all you know, woo and nebulous. I do energy separations with every single person that I am with. Physically energetic separations have nothing to do with the person’s personality or anything like that. It is literally. This person has straight hair. I have curly ish hair. This person doesn’t wear glasses. I wear glasses. This person had on black pants. Today I have on red pants. This and I say, the person. Was, you know, this person had, this person lives in Brooklyn. I live in New Jersey. This person is in this department. I’m in this department. They are all very normalized, equalized. They’re not charged. And then I like, just go like that. And I, I, you know, fortunately, I have the Hudson River right here, so I throw it outside to the river on energetic separations for a very long time. Also, I am a recovering codependent, and I know how important it is to have boundaries, because I’m an empath and because I have had that tendency to get immersed, it’s not healthy for me, and it certainly isn’t healthy for the other person. So I know that there is somewhat of a ring fence here, although no one would ever know. And also keep the meetings to 15 minutes, in minutes, and so that, in itself, not only allows me to talk to and listen to a lot of people, but there’s a beginning, middle and end. I know the course of this. I know that at It’ll be over soon. I just couldn’t feel, yeah, yeah. I’m just very I know what I’m here to do. I’m not to get saturated in someone else’s web and they are not here to get webby with my right? I don’t want that,

Maria Ross 16:17

right, right? I remember interviewing a C cmo for the book, who talked a lot about her team, was very connected to her. She’s the person they come to. They, you know, even when she doesn’t ask they, she just has that manner about her. And I asked her the same question, and she said, Well, I’m very, very clear that about my reason that I’m here, and she’s like, and I always stay focused on that. I want to support my team. I want to be there if someone needs to talk. I have a box of tissues in my office at all times, right? But she goes, I also know I’m here to drive growth. Yes, I am not here for you to lay on my couch and tell me about your you know, boundary issues with your mother in law, I think, is what she said. They don’t pay me for that, right? So she had a very clear sense of still remaining present, but keeping that purpose in mind, keeping that North Star in mind, of like, if this is getting to a point where it’s bleeding into therapy, it’s bleeding into I’m starting to get impacted. Now I need to look at the resources we have available to refer this person out or to, you know, provides that support. But it’s almost like it’s that meta skill, right? Of being able to almost watch yourself in the situation and see like, Oh, you’re slipping, you’re slipping, you know, and be able to be present for the other person without getting caught up in the fear of, Oh, I hope this doesn’t go there. I hope this doesn’t go there, because that could be the inner monolog we’re having as well, right? And then that just takes you out of the conversation. Exactly, exactly,

Claude Silver 17:47

yeah, no, I think that is exactly right. This is a business. I have a job to do. At the end of the day. We are here to put out a product into the world and increase our P and L, like, right? It’s pretty black and white, right? There’s a lot of other stuff that goes on in that minestrone soup, but I noticed, I know

Maria Ross 18:08

my pains, yes, exactly, and I talk about this all the time, that both and leadership, you can be there for all of those things and still lead with heart and lead with humanity. It’s not either or

Claude Silver 18:20

1,000% Yeah, 1,000% that’s 1%

Maria Ross 18:26

okay, so let’s go to some of these questions. How do you know when your culture is thriving? What are some signs like, if you are working on it and you’re like, Yeah, we want to have a thriving culture. What’s that?

Claude Silver 18:38

I love that question because I just took a video of it at lunchtime. I walked through the kitchen here in New York office, and it was so loud. Every single seat was taken. People were eating with each other. It was so loud I took a video and literally sent it to the leadership team. I was like, This is what it’s like on a Tuesday. Here. Huge part watching people, you know, Knick Knack chat, chat in the hallways, because that’s where culture is made, right? It’s in the little moments. You know, watching people go into their meeting rooms and seeing, you know, are there smiles on their face? Are they just is everyone looking at their phone? I mean, right? That kind of stuff. I listen for sound. I listen for laughter, I listen for noise, I listen for chatter. See when I walk around, people out of their chairs, looking at someone else’s laptop, those are the types of things that I see, which means, okay, there’s collaboration going on, right? Utopia, it’s not utopia. I can’t see all the shadows, right? It’s human behavior, right? But literally, I base it on I also, I guess I base it on noise and and camaraderie, but I base it on output of work, yeah, and we have a certain measurement in terms of the product we put out that Gary has asked us to subscribe to. And I can also tell. All, if we are hitting our marks, that also means, okay, well, we’re successful, yeah, science thing, we’re successful, right? We’ll add to the whole pot of, you know, we like it here. We’re challenged.

Maria Ross 20:13

It’s a vibe too. And it’s also, you know, there’s not, it’s not a one to one. Causation of like this led to this amount of revenue. I like to think of it as a recipe. Yeah, and it’s the spices, it’s the salt, like it’s going to make it better? Yes? So empathy, or thriving culture, or whatever you call it within your organization, that’s not necessarily the end metric. You don’t want to measure that for that sake. It’s what is it contributing to? And if I didn’t, you know, Can I do a pre and post? Can I do a here’s what it was like before we focused on this. Oh my god, here’s what we’ve been able to achieve after. And that’s like, I said, that’s like adding the salt to the recipe.

Claude Silver 20:53

It’s so funny. You say that because I talk about it as a minestrone soup. If the oregano isn’t in there, it’s not a minestrone soup, and we’re missing that, or the bay leaf. And that’s why we need all of these people and all this diversity. And, you know, we are a microcosm of the macrocosm,

Maria Ross 21:11

and so well, and the bay leaf doesn’t generate the revenue. The bay leaf doesn’t make the soup, no, adds to it, and it kind of supercharges it, you know, additive.

Claude Silver 21:20

Yeah, additive. And I think the other thing that I’m very vocal about, but I’m also looking for, is no one here is smarter than anyone other. No one here. Everyone brings something curiosity. I’m educated in here, a different culture, a different language, and so it’s something I say a lot, who’s the smartest person in the room? Everyone’s looking around. Oh, is it David? Is it whatever? And I’m like, it’s the room. It’s the room. And then they just take a breath. Oh, great. It’s not okay. Thank you. Normalizes things,

Maria Ross 21:55

yeah, yeah. So when we, you know, and we talk about authentic leadership a lot, but I I really like the very practical way that you look at it. And it’s that, and I would love for you to describe it when you think about being an authentic leader. What does that mean?

Claude Silver 22:12

If you are a giraffe, stay a giraffe, do not become a zebra. There is no reason, no need for you to be a zebra. Authentic Leadership, to me is that you are guided by what you know to be best, because you are educated, you have done it, you’ve lived by example, and it’s who you are. I’m not trying to put on I don’t put on Gary’s baseball hat every day and say, I work at VaynerMedia and I’m second in command to Gary Vaynerchuk. Don’t I look like him? No, in fact, what do you think people say to me all the time? You and Gary work so closely together, he’s so loud. So for me, when a person is real, they are not carrying the burden or the weight of any other facade. They are not they haven’t walked in the building at nine o’clock or turned on their laptop and been okay. I have to put all of Claude away, and now I have to speak like I really know what I’m talking about. My work voice, yeah. And that the cost to me, that the cost is an extreme cost, and I don’t have enough cash to pay for that anymore. I have tried to do that. People try to do that, and they leave. They try to do it, and it’s not working. They try to do it. Their performance tanks. They try to do it. They have Sunday scaries. They miss the mark. And so to show up as you are, we’ve already spent three months looking for you. We’ve already interviewed you seven times. That’s who we want. Mm, hmm, not the all of a sudden that you come in in a suit and tie because you’ve had a hoodie on all these times. Please don’t do that right yourself, because that’s who we hired. Yeah, that’s what we want. We want your curiosity. We want your your introversion, extroversion. I don’t really care, but we want you. So the idea here is you do not need to give up yourself or your soul be yourself. And by no means am I subscribing to go and into the deep end and do a cannonball. No, right? I’m saying put a foot in, put another foot in, then put your knee in. That might be all you do this year, right? You share that much. This is up to you. Please know that when you don’t share yourself, it just stunts everything. Everything gets backlogged because we’re not getting from you what it is we thought or, you know, maybe we haven’t created enough psychological safety or a space where you feel like you really belong and fit in, then that’s on us.

Maria Ross 24:52

So I have a curveball question for you, because I get this one is, what if who you are, and I kind. Know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. What if who you are is not a very nice person, or what if who you are is very dictatorial? Yeah, is that really who you are, or those behaviors you’ve hidden behind? Yeah?

Claude Silver 25:12

I mean, that’s fear. It’s complete fear and insecurity of being found out. You want to micromanage and control everything, because you know you’re going to be looked at at the end of the day, it’s your project. Well, not really. It’s a whole universe that comes together and works on something. You’re not an independent control contributor here, right? You’re not on an island. And so when people have that facade of being mean, nasty, cynical, well, there’s something under it. So now we need to go figure out what. You know, I had someone in here earlier today, very, very seasoned and senior person who has been here for a year and has not been vocal enough with the powers that be. And we, as large as we are at 2000 people, we are a very small place, and so it’s very important to make yourself known to Gary, to make yourself known to whomever Claude other people. And the question was, because it’s been a year, and I knew this person has not reached out to Gary, what do you think is holding you back? I hear it all the time. He doesn’t have time. He’s so busy, you know? Yeah. So we all are busy. None of us have time, so forth and so on. But here you are where you know your CEO wants to hear from you. What is it that’s holding you back? You think he’s going to go into that text message and just like, pop it open. No, he’s going to say, Great. How many, how much engagement did you get on that post? How’s the team post, Super Bowl? How’s the, how’s the, you know, the environment, the vibe, like he’s a person. So I go into that in a hey, this will become a vulnerability for you here, because it’s actually something that is required at your level. It’s required. So either let’s do it today, or let’s talk about why you’re not going to do it today, but you’re not going to leave this room until you and I agree, yeah, to do something,

Maria Ross 27:20

yeah, well, and that’s the clarity piece. That’s the like we need to understand how things are done around here, and not just assume everyone knows. And that’s where we give people the opportunity, and where I, you know, when I’m coaching folks, it’s, it’s, oh, this is happening. Okay, well, have the expectations been made clear? That’s kind of always the first question is, let’s assume positive intent, and let’s assume maybe the person doesn’t know that’s allowed or that’s expected or whatever it is. And we could be talking about anything. We could be talking about unsaid rules, unwritten rules, and I’m using air quotes here for people that can’t see me, which should be written down or at least discussed right in a meeting. We always challenge a person if they have an idea, yes. Are we writing that down, or are we springing that on somebody their first meeting in our organization? Right? So all of these things that are that are unsaids, yeah. Can we make them sense? Can we make them so it’s very crystal clear to people, and also from the hiring to your point, so they know what they’re getting into, and then they can have agency to say that might not be the right fit for me.

Claude Silver 28:26

That’s right. That’s right. If I’m supposed to commit, I’m an introvert, and if I’m supposed to communicate on text to whomever once a week, I don’t I don’t know if I can do that. It might be out of my realm, and that’s okay. But I love what you said, because this is the other is the other way this this happens. Congratulations, Maria, you’re a manager. You got $10,000 rage and now a raise, and now it’s a senior manager on your title. Bye, yeah, we’ll see ya. And you’re like, what does a manager do? Right? And so you go off and you try to figure it out based on other managers you’ve had, yeah, or the old paradigms, yeah paradigms. And then soon enough, two of the people you manage come in, and I hear from them, and, you know, a couple different week separation, I say, Oh, how’s it going? You know, has your manager talk to you about, you know your the roles and expectations. No, I haven’t met with my manager yet. Oh, okay, interesting. Or have you had a one on one with your manager? What did you talk about? Oh, we just talked about football, so you know that. Yeah, those are those questions I love. It’s like, okay, we have work to do.

Maria Ross 29:41

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, okay. You mentioned a situation in the book where you talk about that we have accountability backwards. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Claude Silver 29:55

Yeah, the first thing I’m going to say is. So accountability for us is one of our core competencies, and that means, no matter where you are, what role you’re in, it is still a core competency. You might be learning to be the bigger person in situations, or if you’re an executive, you are the bigger person in every situation, you point thumbs first instead of fingers. What did I do? We are so used to blaming other people because we are so used to victimizing ourselves, generalization, right? Generalization, I didn’t get a promotion because maybe your manager didn’t sit down with you, but I need to know that a lot earlier. But I’m going to also imagine that you didn’t you didn’t hit the marks. What did you do? Did you ever take work home? Did you ever study? Did you practice AI like we’ve talked about every day here? What are you like? Look at yourself first before. Blame other people. And I think leadership, if, if one doesn’t do that, then they’ve completely devalued their entire team. If, if a leader comes in and says, immediately, what’d you do wrong? This is all wrong, you know. I mean, how do you feel?

Maria Ross 31:16

Yeah, that doesn’t get us anywhere. Shame and blame is not going to improve the person’s performance, yeah,

Claude Silver 31:22

not at all that person will be crying in the corner. And then we have a whole another deal on our hands. So I find that there’s a a lot of unlearning that needs to happen, myself included, on a daily basis, but especially if you come from the old school, if especially you’re like, clients always right. Clients always right. And you’re working with Gary Vaynerchuk, and he’s like, whatever. Like client I’m more interested in, in the consumer who’s picking up that, you know, the milk shake. I don’t try it. These are all things that we need to take into account when we think about accountability. Agency. I have agency over the choices I make. It doesn’t. You don’t have agency over Claude. You have agency over you. And that’s like even in the book the first chapters, you are the CEO of you. But let’s get grounded. And it’s going back to, you know, Claude. You better change the song in your head. Only I can do that right, right, but I have to feel like I have skin in the game, accountability, agency, and that there’s something at the end of there’s a responsibility, and at some point I will have a check in somewhere, yeah, and I will be told how I’m doing. You know, someone else will be accountable for my growth, as well as me. So I think about, I think about how we have accountability backwards a lot, especially when it comes to creating spaces where people want to belong. And I think we all think it’s very easy to create that space

Maria Ross 33:01

by just saying it’s safe, yeah, like it’s What are you talking about? Well, I told you it was a safe space, right? I didn’t show you with any of my actions or any of our practices, but I’m telling you it’s a safe space. I’m telling you you

Claude Silver 33:13

belong, even though you’re the only person that didn’t dress up like we all did today, because we agreed to, you know, dress up as clowns, whatever it is, right? There’s like this. It’s a it’s a hole, it’s a big hole that need to fill in. What you just said is what I love with action, with specific actions, show me how, show me what is expected of me. If you tell me, maybe I’m, maybe I’m a visual learner, maybe, right now. So, yeah, there’s a whole it’s all again. It’s a whole other strongy soup. Yeah, but how wonderful does it feel when you actually can take accountability for your actions, even if you have to say, You know what? That’s on me. That was my bad.

Maria Ross 34:01

Yeah, and I also have this twist on this, because we always think of accountability in terms of when someone messes up, but we also have accountability for the good stuff too. We have accountability for the energy we bring into the room. It’s almost like accountability is not just blame when stuff goes wrong. Accountability is also me knowing that I am responsible for bringing this to the table in a positive way. And this kind of goes back to your point earlier, about if you know yourself, if you’ve got your own house in order, you understand what you bring to the party. Yes, you have accountability for bringing that to the party. If you said you were going to bring the potato chips. That’s why we hired you. That’s why we asked you, you better bring the potato chips. Yeah, the mashed potatoes are already taking we got that right. I needed that. You shared such a great story The last time we spoke, and I, you know, to full credit to you, I use it all the time where you talked about people in your organization, because Gary is such a such a figure. He’s such. An icon, bringing people in who tried to kill themselves, keeping up with his pace, or being exactly like Gary. And I love this thing you said, where you said, we already got a Gary. We hired you for you, yeah, not because we needed another Gary. Yeah.

Claude Silver 35:16

So don’t try to change. Yeah. Like true belonging means being who you are, not changing who you are, because you think you need to emulate that person, like right? And I remember the story I told you, because this was years ago, when I said to him, I think you need to stop using the word hustle, because mostly young men are coming in here and they’re saying, I can’t hustle as hard as Gary V it’s like, what? Sure you can’t like, he’s one on one. He chooses to work 18 hours a day. You don’t have to that right choice. You’re going to find your own rhythm. And he didn’t, he hasn’t. I really don’t think he’s used hustle since then. Yeah, really don’t. Yeah, you know, I talk a lot about labels in the book, labels are for soup cans. And there are, you know, labels just get us into a mess, like, oh yeah, he’s a hustler. Yeah. Hustles hard. Well, she does her job, yeah, okay, well, she does her job. Okay, good. Well, she does her job. He hustles hard. What did you just tell me? I don’t know if he does his job or if he’s just a hust. Is he just right?

Maria Ross 36:26

There’s a lot of activity going on over there. Clarity, yes, yes, yes. I love this. Okay, you wrote in the book something I thought was really profound, because we talk about how empathy softens, I guess what’s the word I’m looking for, fades a little bit the higher up in the organization you get, because you’re you’re protected, you’re surrounded by, yes, people. So the higher up you go. There’s been studies that show that you kind of lose touch with your empathy of the people on the ground or even the customers or the clients, but you also wrote, the more power you have, the less truth you have, the less truth you hear. That’s what you wrote. The more power you have, the less truth you hear. Yeah. Can you explain that and talk about what the antidote to that is, especially to leaders that are listening, yeah.

Claude Silver 37:21

So I you know you actually opened it up with you get yes a lot, or you get the rose colored glasses. Everything’s fine. Nothing to see here. Yeah. And it’s like, Is everyone fine? Because I did hear that that person was crying today. So what happened there? Or, yeah, that person’s mom is in the hospital. Well, that’s something I’d like to know leader, right? Yeah? Like, know that. And so, yeah, people want to, they don’t want to take up your time. So they don’t want to get into the Misha gos of it all, or the mishigos is something I want to get into. And they’re like, I gotta go. Everything’s fine. Yes, you don’t get the data, and you don’t really get the context, how things, how the sausage was made. The other thing I think happens is, as we get higher in the organization, we forget what it was like when now I work in an agency, in an agency there, sorry, there is natural growth. You go from this role to this role, to this role to this role. All I’ve been at an agency for many, many, many years. I am a Chief Heart Officer, but before that, I was on the path of a strategist up the wrong once I became a VP of strategy, I had to remember what it was like to be a first or second year strategist. You have to, you have to figure that out. So. But back to the antidote. The antidote is literally, I think, a couple of things. One, letting people know that you need to have context. So maybe they need to write you a weekly email in summary, what the aches and pains are, what the client is saying, and how we how we deliver, make it up right? Three things that from all of your direct reports, if you are a leader, you need to know and you need to be able to then ask questions, not because anything’s wrong, necessarily, but like, you need a why. As a leader, you need to know why this happened, or why we’re going to do that right, why we’re going to go this route. I told you maybe try this route. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. Great. So you want that route, what happened? And so we need to be, I think not only asking questions, we need to be given context. Yeah, information, and if it’s a healthy culture, hopefully you know that it comes in peace. No one’s here to attack you with that information. Yeah, people are moving fast. We just need to know or tech. Just like I was just saying to that person, the phone and text your CEO and let him know about the meeting you had today with your clients. Give him a little piece of information, otherwise he’s not going to know. And what ends up happening is we only remember our last interaction with that person? Well, the last interaction was, I didn’t have an interaction. Where’s the person? Yeah. Last interaction was amazing. We had a great client dinner. And, you know, now we are, we have a project based on that client dinner. Yeah? So there’s, there’s, it’s a two way street, is what I’m trying to say. Yeah, as leaders, we need to set expectations, because people can’t read our minds. Have to remember we couldn’t read our leaders minds either.

Maria Ross 40:49

Right, right? One of the most powerful exercises I’ve ever done at a workshop is we had a mixed group. Sometimes I’m talking to just leaders, sometimes I’m talking to across levels. And it was an accidental thing that happened, and I totally trying to replicate it wherever else I go. So I have this role play where it’s a it’s a manager giving a difficult performance review to an employee, and it’s like a murder mystery. They have their back stories that I give them, yeah. And the goal is to see how many of them suss it out, right? How many of them go there versus, like, one of them where they’re like, the result was he quit. That’s like, okay, that’s not the result we want. But one of these where we were mixed levels, we happened to have a very senior executive with a brand new manager, but they didn’t know what parts they were getting, because it was just part A and part B, yeah, so the younger person ended up with the role of the person giving the review, and the senior exec was the one getting the difficult performance review, and what came out of it was the younger person said, I didn’t realize how hard it is to give difficult feedback to somebody. The more senior exec said, I had forgotten what it was like to get a performance review and feel like I was in, you know, in my principal’s office right now, you could talk about a whole other thing, of, why aren’t the senior executives getting performance reviews? That was a different question, but it was just that exercise of that was empathy right there, of, oh my gosh, I’m sitting in your shoes now, which I don’t like saying that phrase, but I’m seeing things from your perspective. Yeah, now that I’d for him that I had forgotten about and for her, of like, oh, wow, now I have empathy for my boss, yes, which I didn’t think I was supposed to have. And I’m like, No, it’s supposed to flow both ways.

Claude Silver 42:39

It is. It is an ecosystem.

Maria Ross 42:41

Yes, exactly, exactly. So this is a great time to segue into this idea of psychological safety, because, to your point, it gets harder to get that information if people don’t feel psychologically safe, or that their career or their, you know, livelihoods are not in danger if they tell the truth. So you talked in the book about the dangerous byproduct of silence, and how psychological safety is the antidote to that. So can you talk a little bit about cultures of silence? Yeah, and how they even start and what, how can you break out of it without scaring everybody of like, all of a sudden, we’re going to talk about everything, right?

Claude Silver 43:21

God. You really need to. You need disruption in order to do that. You know, I always say, I don’t want anyone here suffering in silence. That is what I will say. And why do people suffer in silence or choose silence because they’re afraid to get found out imposter syndrome. They’re afraid that they’re not smart enough. They’re afraid that, you know, whatever else, they’re not the coolest person, they’re not the coolest cat. And also, they might sound funny, or, you know, you don’t have any time for me, or, you know, I’m just, I just get triggered when people interrupt me. There’s so many excuses for silence. There’s so many excuses, but the culture becomes secretive, the culture becomes political, the culture becomes clicky, and that’s when any one of us, myself included, be like, I don’t want to be involved in that zip, and I just stopped contributing, right? I don’t want to be or I’m not. I don’t get invited to those dinners. Well, then I start to move myself outside, and I become a bit of an outsider with a company. And I’m not going to a feel safe, feel like I belong, but I will definitely not tell you what’s on my right, you know, or all painted, and everything’s everything’s good, everything’s good, you know, every now and then I will ask someone point blank, are you a flight risk? I will come out and ask that if I’m feeling it, I will ask, especially if we don’t want that person to leave. And it’s amazing when people actually. To tell me the truth, and I’m so happy when they do, because it’s like, okay, well, then I can do something about it, you know, or not, right? Not up to me, but cultures that have higher, such a hierarchy and such a we’ll just call it maybe an old boys club culture of holier than thou. I’m the smartest person you are not. So you shush, right? Someone’s going to shush, right? Do that, right? The antidote to that is again, creating a space where people can speak what they normally are afraid to speak. They can speak their mind. They can say, I have an idea, Maria. They can say, I’d love to talk to you offline about this. Whatever is comfortable for them on a zoom the introvert might say something, might raise their hand, might put an emoji up things that we have to be watching for right. Listen with both of our our our ears and our eyes and our entire body, right? Someone is exhaling, or if

Maria Ross 46:08

they’re exhaling, right? I was just in a in a leadership coaching session before our call, and we were talking about, you know, what what you tolerate becomes culture, what you what you ignore, or what you’re silent about, compounds. And you think no one knows, but they do. They sense it, and it just becomes this bigger thing than sometimes it even needs to be, right? It could just be a quick conversation to clear the air and but you spend months, you know,

Claude Silver 46:38

ruining it, ruminating, yes, and what we do that all the time as humans being, you know we we instead of saying what’s on our mind in relationship or boss or to whomever we’re like, no they can read our minds. They know no one can read your mind. No one can read your mind. I wish I could. I can’t, right? Actually, don’t wish I could all the time, but Right? Had an incident once upon a time, and I had to go to Gary and say, You know what, I really think this person thinks I’m dumb. Now that’s claude’s past limiting belief. And he said, well, then you need to go clear it up with him. And I went and took the person to lunch, and I, once we were settled, I said, You know what? I have this feeling every time I say something, you just look at me like you are dumb. And he was like, Oh, my God, the opposite. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this, this and this, and it’s like, Oh, I’ve been carrying that for three years,

Maria Ross 47:41

and I’ve been a seasoned leader, yeah, yeah. I have been convinced my whole career, through change management, through marketing, through all the work I do now, 90% of our issues at work are because of miscommunication. It’s like, I call it the Threes Company moment, where you you make assumptions, or you think you overheard something, or you think you saw something, and you know, hilarity ensues, but sometimes it’s not hilarious, right? Yeah.

Claude Silver 48:05

I mean, I could have left over that, yeah, exactly. And people do leave when things are unresolved, right? It’s not so hard right to talk about the empathy. I’m sorry. It’s not so hard to talk about the elephant in the room, if you have coaching around that, right, right?

Maria Ross 48:22

And, and this is, this is kind of related, but I have to point this out before we wrap you. Mentioned in the book, this part about not conflating emotions with communication God, and it spoke to me because it was about people who say, I don’t want to get overly emotional at work. And I’m like, That’s not emotion. You’re just not saying what’s on your mind. That’s a different thing. So can you explain that to us?

Claude Silver 48:49

So you’re just hiding. You’re just saying, Don’t come near me. I don’t want you close to me. And do not come near me, because we are not going to get close. And so that’s what that person is in highly protective mode because they think again, whatever they think from their childhood, whatever their trauma is, right? We all bring that in and so they don’t want to get emotional. Well, we are emotional creatures. We don’t have a choice, right? We don’t you can shut that off for as long as you can, until you have a heart attack. You can shut that off for as long as you can. But here in this culture, we want to get to know you. We want you to dip your toe into the swimming pool and then dip it, that’s all. And in order to do that, you need to be met in the same way. Yes. So either a leader starts that conversation is like, you know, remember, in covid, I would get on the phone on Mondays, and I’d be like, Okay, how many different ways did you make chicken this weekend? Like, we’re all experiencing it. Yeah, it’s a joy. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a shared reality. Yes, or, you know, you hear that someone’s dog is sick. Oh, my dog, you know? Like, yeah. Come on, we’re human. And it’s, it’s, I think it’s highly impossible to not share emotions for an extended period of

Maria Ross 50:07

time well, and to not be scared to share them, when that’s actually a method of connecting. It’s a method of communication. And again, I always tell my people, you don’t have to be crying on the floor to be an empathetic leader, like you can embrace empathy from whatever, from wherever you are, from wherever you’re comfortable, and that includes people are neurodiverse. People have different backgrounds that, like you said, they have different histories, yeah, whatever you’re comfortable with, but that we’re together more than with the people we work with. Then sometimes we are with our own families. And you know, we can have a whole other conversation on whether that’s good or bad, but it’s reality, and so why not make it a place where we can see here and value each other as human beings? And by the way, with AI coming, this is the whole thing I’m talking about, with empathetic leadership, helping to navigate the change the people who are shutting off that skill set for themselves as leaders like no, I’m you mentioned it earlier. The person that just is a great doer, and they get thrown in the leadership role, and they’re like, I just am doing more like, what, you know, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The ones that are hiding behind the tasks and the doing because they don’t want to have the difficult conversations, they don’t want to get to know their team, they don’t want to appear vulnerable. They’ve got all the stuff. They’re going to have nowhere to hide. That’s right when, when we’ve got aI handling the tasks for you, what’s left? It’s connection, it’s mentoring, it’s supporting, it’s collaborating, it’s all the human stuff. It’s creating a psychologically safe place so we can innovate. Right?

Claude Silver 51:39

Yes, yes. It’s all of that. It’s not ghosting people like, yes, all the above. And we need people to bring their humanity into the workplace more than ever right now, absolutely.

Maria Ross 51:56

So what’s I mean, there’s so much in this book, and I want to encourage everyone to go out and buy it, be yourself at work the groundbreaking power of showing up, standing out and leading from the heart. What’s a final gem you can leave us with before I read for everyone this wonderful passage from your book that I just can’t resist reading to everyone. But what’s a final gem or word of encouragement you have for folks,

Claude Silver 52:21

I would say, as a leader, what I would encourage everyone to do after listening to this podcast is either go on Slack or go through their contacts and find three people that you haven’t connected with in a while. Hey, I’m thinking about your hope you’re well, love to get some coffee soon. How’s it going? I know you and your family moved. How you doing? Just reach out for no reason other than you can, and it takes less than 30 seconds to do that. That’s what I would say. And I would say on the on the for all of us, really is to remember the cost to ourselves, the depletion we feel when we try to be someone else. We deserve better.

Maria Ross 53:09

It stifles so much innovation and so much collaboration and happiness and happiness and joy, right? Like joy is my fifth pillar of being an empathetic and effective leader. Yeah, okay, so I’m going to read this because I just love this. This was closer to the beginning of the book, I believe, but I just, I think it’s a great encapsulation of everything you’re saying. So while I refuse to accept environments that demand silence and conformity, I also know that pushing for change looks different for everyone. Not everyone can or should bear the weight of fixing a broken system, but for those of us who can speak up, who have even a bit of security to challenge the status quo, we must do so, not just for ourselves, but for those who can’t. No one should have to sacrifice their humanity for the sake of professionalism. No one should have to choose between belonging and survival. We can build workplaces that honor the fullness of who we are, but that requires us to see, to listen and to make space for those who have long been

Claude Silver 54:09

told they don’t belong.

Maria Ross 54:13

So good, so good. I am warning everyone, when they read this book that you’re going to have a million post it notes of quotes up around your computer. Yes, Claude, this has been amazing. Thank you for going a little bit longer with us and sharing the wisdom. Like I said, everyone will check out the book, and we’ll have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s on the go, taking care of themselves, exercising right now, where’s the one best place they can find out more? You know what?

Claude Silver 54:38

Go to Claude, silver.com, my website has it all. And then you can go to LinkedIn, where I’m pretty active, but like, check it out. Write me, challenge me. I’m into it. I love it.

Maria Ross 54:50 Thank you so much. Thank you very 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 review and. Share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm there. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Dr. Claire Yorke: Can Empathy Fix Broken Politics?

It’s easy right now to believe that the divisions we see are simply too deep to repair. That empathy has become a liability. That listening has been replaced by winning.

And yet, I still believe, perhaps more than ever, that empathy remains our greatest tool for healing even the most jagged fractures in our world, not as a naïve ideal, but as a courageous, strategic choice. And that choice has the power to transform entire systems.

My guest today, Dr. Claire Yorke, has devoted her career to studying exactly that possibility.

We explore what empathy in politics actually looks like, why empathy is essential for effective leadership, the challenges empathetic leaders face in polarized environments, and why we can’t simply wait for more empathetic political leaders to emerge.

We also talk about hope. Not passive hope, but participatory hope. The kind that invites each of us – as citizens, leaders, and humans – to model empathy, practice deeper listening, and engage in shaping healthier political cultures, whether through community dialogue, civic participation, or simply choosing curiosity over certainty.

This is a conversation about what’s possible when we choose empathy, not as an escape from reality, but as a path forward through it.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The relationship military leaders have with empathy and their job.
What it can look like to have empathy in our politics, regardless of country.
The impact of citizen assemblies and civic engagement.
Why do we need to change political culture so that it attracts and rewards politicians who embrace empathy and can stop battling?
Maintaining an ideal vision of what’s possible and what to do to make it a reality.
Steps that can be taken at the local and national levels to make changes.

“We need to change our politics. So it’s much more about building relationships, building that sense of connectedness, both between politicians and the public, between citizens and their communities, and seeing this as an ecosystem.” — Dr. Claire Yorke

References:

The Empathy Edge:

About Dr. Claire Yorke, Senior Lecturer at Deakin University, Author of Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming our World:

Dr. Claire Yorke is an author and academic. Her work focuses on the role of empathy and emotions in international affairs, politics, leadership, and society. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Australian War College, Deakin University, Canberra, where her research and teaching focus on these topics. In 2025, she published Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming Our World with Yale University Press. She is writing two more.

Claire received her PhD in International Relations from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She has a Master’s in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, and a BA in Politics, International Relations and French from Lancaster University.

Connect with Claire:

Website: claireyorke.me

LinkedIn: Dr Claire Yorke

Instagram: @theempathydoctor

BlueSky: @claireyorke.bsky.social

Book: Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming our World

Connect with Maria:

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

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

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

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Dr. Claire Yorke 04:13

Thank you so much, Maria. It’s such a pleasure to join you from Australia today.

Maria Ross 04:18

I love it and can before we get going, and there’s so much we have to talk about, but I’d love for you to share your story and how you got into this work, because, you know, we heard in your bio, your experience is very impressive, and the work you’re doing is so important to kind of bridge this gap between empathy as a theory and empathy and practice and how It impacts millions of people’s lives at the same time, through government and through community. So share with us a little bit about how you got into this work.

Dr. Claire Yorke 04:48

Oh, yes, so thank you. It has been a journey, and I probably began when I was very young. I love languages, and I love meeting different people, and I discovered that languages are. Opened up new worlds to me. I grew up in the northwest of the UK, and we didn’t travel a huge amount, but I just had this fascination with how different people create meaning, and how you gain access to that through speaking different languages. And then when I did my Master’s in Middle East politics, I had this view that I was going to go and live in the region and do things and life had other plans, and I ended up working in politics in Westminster. So I worked in the British Parliament for a front bench politician, and did defense in that role for three years, helping him with that portfolio. And then I worked at Chatham House, which is a international affairs think tank in London, for four years, and in that capacity, I managed the international security research department. And what I found in those roles was that I was exposed to a lot of people who really cared about the world, and they had this real passion to create change and do something differently, but that wasn’t always translated into what we needed in policy and politics and so working in those environments gave me a real understanding of some of the systemic and structural problems that we have in those spaces. But also it did give me quite an enduring sense of hope that people in those roles do care. They don’t conform to this sometimes very negative view we have politicians, and I wanted to do something with that when I started the PhD. And I started the PhD at King’s College in 2013 and initially planned to look at this idea of complexity and strategy and policy. How do we create good policy in a world that is ever changing and complex, and empathy kept coming up in that, and I kept finding that the way it was spoken about in the academic literature was great and very hopeful and very kind of visionary, but it didn’t always correspond with what I had experienced and witnessed working in Parliament and working with all these international policymakers and practitioners at Chatham House. And so I wanted to do my research on that intersection. What does it mean when empathy starts to be applied? Where does it encounter resistance? So my PhD itself was on empathy and diplomacy, through the case of Nixon going to China, which is not a usual case study, because he’s not a leader you would associate with empathy. And then from that, I got a postdoc, obviously, at Yale, that enabled me to dig into that a little bit deeper. And then I worked in Denmark for two years doing empathy and international security with a European Union grant. And so I kept finding that there’s a lot here that we’re not talking about, and there’s a huge amount of work that people are doing that should be in different spaces. Both practitioners should be heard in academic space and academics in those practical spaces. And it just felt like once I made that shift in my topic and in my focus, all these different doors and avenues opened, and I’ve just really loved exploring it. It constantly expands. And Yale University Press invited me to write this book, because obviously they knew my work on empathy, and I had a lot to say. Having worked in politics for a while, yeah. And then I moved to Australia, and now I teach senior military leaders and public servants about what empathy can mean for strategy and geopolitics, which I love. I think I have one of the luckiest jobs.

Maria Ross 08:24

I mean, God bless you for the work you’re doing. I there’s so many things we could talk about your storied career and the work that you’ve done, and I think you trying to thread this needle of number one, helping people understand that there are people that go into politics to serve others. I think there’s a very jaded view of why people put up with the shenanigans of politics that you need to in order to do it, but that there still are people in the world, and we see this a lot with the younger generation, too, as they get more politically active and as they get more socially conscious, that desire to make things better and do things differently. And, you know, somewhere along the line, it gets, you know, kind of beaten out of us by the system. And so if we can change the system, and then change what we’re expecting of leaders in that environment, but also giving those leaders hope that they can be values driven and still have an impact, and still, you know, rise in the ranks and be part of the system that they’re trying to change. The, I think the better quality of candidates we’re going to get, you know, because we’re not attracting always the best of the best, because they’re not the ones attracted to all the downsides that go along with being in politics and being in government. So, you know, I, for me, I saw a lot of this in recent years here in the US, where the majority of civil servants, the majority of people working for government, are genuinely trying to do the right thing. And there’s been this, this false narrative placed around them. Because of a few, you know, maybe a few bad apples, of people that are corrupt and people that are jaded and people that are just trying to get by, right? They’re trying to get by for their own purposes. But your work, especially the work around what you’re doing now, in terms of working with military leaders, I’ve had several military leaders on the show, and they talk about the fact that empathy is a very important part of strategy. It’s not just command and control that only works in the heat of battle. That really where you build the trust and you build the loyalty and you build the engagement, is the other you know 90% of the time, where you’re getting to know the people in your troops, in your army and your navy and your you know Marine Corps, and being able then to create that trust so that they will follow you into battle, right? It doesn’t happen in the moment of crisis. It’s a foundation that’s laid. So I’m just curious, before we dig into all the juicy topics here, with the work that you’re doing now, are you finding a different mindset among military leaders than maybe before, what tell us a little bit about what their reaction is and what their appetite is for learning about empathy in terms of the very tough job that they have to do?

Dr. Claire Yorke 11:18

Yeah, and it’s such I find it such a rewarding role, and you’re right, it has such an integral part of what military leaders need to do, not only for creating teams that are resilient and inclusive and connected, but also for how they understand and know what it is that’s needed in any operation, whether that is a conflict zone or is a humanitarian relief space that understanding your audience, knowing how to connect, build relationships, and really understand what’s at the heart of an issue is is vital to do those kind of roles well. And I found that one of the things I find very rewarding is that the people I work with are intrinsically very curious. They’re very disciplined. They work really hard. They want to improve, get better, become the best leaders that they can. And so I find it’s a bit of a journey, because ideas like empathy, as I’m sure you know from your own work, can feel quite abstract to people. Maybe they do it naturally and they don’t think about it, or maybe they see it as a concept that’s a little bit soft, it’s a little bit fluffy. And so there is that sense of journey for some people, of, oh, I now see what you mean. So it becomes about learning that skill set, understanding the kinds of environments you have to create, both for yourself and for your team, so that the right kind of questions can be asked, that you can process more nuanced information and make the right decisions. I found that it’s been a really receptive audience. And what’s been really encouraging, at least in Australia, is there’s a lot of talk about strategic empathy, and there’s a lot of talk about its value. We’ve got people in very senior positions, including the Governor General, who talk about empathy as a vital leadership skill, and so that sets the tone where people go, Okay, this is something we need to get better at, and especially in transforming military culture, ensuring that you don’t have some of those more harmful elements that we have sometimes seen with the rates of, for example, in Australia, of suicides among veterans and those who are enlisted. It’s a way of trying to address some of those elements that are not as conducive to a healthy and effective force. So, yeah, I’ve been encouraged, and I think it is growing,

Maria Ross 13:30

yeah, well, and I think a lot of it probably your work. I know my work is about busting the myths that are out there about what it means to be empathetic. I mean, one of the biggest ones we talk about a lot on this show is that empathy is a sign of weakness, and there couldn’t be something that requires more strength, right than being able to listen to another person’s experience or point of view without defensiveness or fear. You have to have your own house in order and be incredibly strong in your own values and your own thoughts and your own boundaries to be able to even make space for that, because if you don’t, you’re too porous. You’re going to take on all of their issues. And so I just find it laughable that people say, oh, people are going to see me as weak. I’m like, actually, you need a lot of strength. And I think you kind of in what you were saying, I feel you answered one of the first questions I was going to ask you, which is, why do we even need empathy in our politics? And maybe we could take it a step further. I mean, you talked about the need for collaboration and problem solving and changing cultures and changing systems. But also the second part of that is, what should that look like, regardless of country, what are some examples, or what does that look like to have empathy in our politics?

Dr. Claire Yorke 14:46

Yes, and there’s many reasons, and I’m sure we could talk for hours about why we need it. There is, as you rightly pointed out earlier in our conversation, this disconnect right now between the public and politicians. There’s a lot of growing mistrust. And distrust about politics. I think we’re seeing people feeling apathetic about their capacity and their ability to affect change and to see something different at the top. And for me, empathy and politics is very much about putting people first. We need to change our politics. So it’s much more about building relationships, building that sense of connectedness, both between politicians and the public, between citizens and their communities, seeing this as an ecosystem. And in the book, I talk about politics as an ecosystem, and empathy has to operate as part of an ecosystem. And it’s not enough for us as citizens to wait for an empathetic leader. And I know we spoke earlier, before we went live, about some of those leaders who inspire us, and there are people like Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who’ve shown that empathy is possible and can have a real impact at a leadership level. But we also shouldn’t be waiting around in our politics for that one leader who decides to bring care and empathy to their role and need empathy in our politics so that we can have those harder conversations. What does a good society look like to you? What does it mean to bring in more people who are maybe isolated or marginalized into how we create that idea of a vibrant, resilient society? How do we make sure that we’re addressing the problems and not sweeping them under the rug, that we’re actually giving voice to people who say, Look, this vision you’ve given us isn’t working. This is what we need. This is what we want to see transform. It’s about making people feel in that very way that we define empathy, like they are seen, like they are heard and like they matter, which is a vital skill of empathy, and building that into a system and a structure so that we start to feel a part of our politics again, we start to trust that those people in power are operating in our best interests right, and that they know that we understand what’s required to lead a country or to lead a community, and that we also step up and engage and participate.

Maria Ross 17:01

So I love that thought of like we can’t wait for that empathetic leader, so we need to be creating those spaces and those places. And what are some things you’ve seen that have worked? I kind of think of this almost as like Citizen politics. And by the way, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book citizens, but it’s profound. It’s amazing. I’m going to put another link to put another link to it, because I mentioned it all the time, and just the hopeful examples that they had of groups of people coming together to make change, and they weren’t waiting. So can you give us some examples from your work or your research that you’ve seen about groups that didn’t wait for the empathetic leader to show up? What did they do?

Dr. Claire Yorke 17:39

Yeah, and this is a quote. There’s a whole chapter in the book on this idea of what citizens do, what communities do. And John Alexander’s book on citizens is such a great book for detailing this power. I’ve actually seen it all over the world, and it’s something that’s really gives me that sense of hope and that sense of people want change. I was living in Denmark for two years. And there, there are a huge number of organizations that are very citizen led. So in the book, I detail this example in Aarhus. And any Danish speaker, I’m very sorry for my Danish accent, but saya de zamla And there, it’s very much about creating this hub where citizens in the city of Aarhus can come forward to the team and say, I’ve got this problem. I’ve got this idea. And they would then do initiatives. They would have support to launch their ideas to show, for example, how the streets in our house are maybe not disability friendly. They’re not very good for wheelchairs. So someone would take politicians out and say, Did you realize that actually it’s not very convenient for people who are in a wheelchair to get into the shops and do their daily shopping. They also have, for example, someone who said, We need to have a better sense of connection between city design and architecture, that urban landscape and the animals within it. So they then bring forward this kind of Council of Animals, where people imagine they are one of the city’s animals, and talk about, what does it mean if a building is this high, if you’ve got barbed wire on the top, what would it be like if you are an animal? So that’s, I think, one way where citizens are saying, This is what our community and our city looks like from us. How can we do something different in America, in Canada, there’s some really great citizens assemblies going on. Oregon, for example, does a number of these great citizens assemblies, which really gives citizens the chance to say, this is what we want to see changed and transformed, and to be a part of a dialog with people who are maybe across the aisle from them and how they vote. But through that dialog and understanding, they get a sense of the complexity of an issue, and that’s been very effective in places like France, where citizens assemblies in Paris have had real impact on policy, there’s a great organization called democracy next, which I think is well worth people looking up if they’re interested in that. Because they have guide books and advice for how people can go about doing this. But also it’s about creating change at a local level. I think some of the initiatives around library spaces and civic spaces, and I write about this, are vital for creating that connection in community. Your general, Surgeon General in America, a few years ago, wrote about the loneliness, yes, and Dr Murthy, exactly. That’s one of the challenges we’re seeing is that we spend so much life, so much of our life online or at home or in our small bubbles, we’re not getting out, and we’re not seeing that even people who think differently to us or who vote differently to us actually have a lot in common with us, and that’s one of the key pathways to building that empathy and building that societal resilience. We’re all in this together. We all want to see our communities safer, healthier. We want to see children in good schools, parents being looked after when they reach old age. You know, share those kind of similar values, so civic spaces are vital for that.

Maria Ross 21:02

I mean, everything you’re saying sounds amazing, and I’m guilty of it too, of being too busy to be involved in local politics or find out what’s going on. But I think, and I don’t know if this is true in other countries, but I know in the US, that kind of momentum, except in pockets, it feels like the people that get involved in local initiatives are either the people that are just the rabble rousers, right, who are kind of off, you know, their their ideas are a little bit out there, right in terms of what they want to do, but they seem to be the only ones that show up to the city council meetings or to the school board meetings or no one else is spending that time. And I it’s almost like I’m thinking about my brand strategy background, like we need to rebrand civic engagement because it’s so not sexy here in the US. It’s seen as fringe. It’s seen as you don’t have anything else to do with your time but go and cause problems for the City Council, right? So there’s this, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the American TV show Parks and Rec, but that’s a very good glimpse of what goes on sometimes within local government and local city councils. And it’s a humorous take on it, but it’s also very based in reality. And so I feel like we need a whole rebrand and reset of what it means to be civically engaged. And that starts with the fact that, at least again, in the US, so much of civic education has been taken out of schools. Right when I went to high school, we took a government class. We took a class that taught us how the three, you know, parts of government are supposed to work together, and how laws are enacted, and how, you know how everything kind of works. And even then, that was just a primer that wasn’t, you know the details. So it feels like there’s a, I guess what I’m saying is it feels like there’s some headwinds against this ability to get everyone involved. Because there’s a there’s a jadedness and a pessimism around if it’s going to even make a difference. So how have you seen groups or, you know, again, anywhere in the world, overcome that, overcome that, that pessimism and that defeatism around it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t matter if I go to the city council meeting. It doesn’t matter if I go lobby for the for the civic spaces. It won’t make a difference. How do you How have you seen groups combating that apathy? Yeah, I

Dr. Claire Yorke 23:27

think for me, it’s about being those groups being taken seriously by people who can then affect that change that people know it’s not just going for a talking shop, and it’s not going to lead to anything. That means leaders who can take decisive action who are invested in engaging with citizens, and that’s a problem, because you sometimes see that sense of mistrust working the other way, where politicians maybe don’t trust citizens, don’t trust them with good decisions, don’t trust that they’re going to know what’s in their best interest. And we have to transform that narrative. Actually, citizens are far closer to the solutions to the problems realize because they’re living it, and they need to be involved. And we need politicians who will go out there and say, What do you need from me? How can I use my office or my role to make change? One of the countries I found who does this really well, and I featured there in the book, is Finland. They do a lot of civic engagement, and I spoke to one of the people who actually writes the textbooks there for the high schools, and it’s built into education from a very young age. And they will admit it’s not perfect. You’re still going to have people who are very jaded with politics or who just prefer to, you know, go on social media in class. But actually what it does is it says to people, look, politics is not a passive activity. You have to be active agents within it. And these are your rights, but these are also your responsibilities. You know how you show up, how you take part, and this is what is needed, and they do really well. For example, countering. Misinformation and disinformation, which is a problem in the country, given it borders Russia, but they also do a good job of building that sense of connection, and I saw that in a lot of the Scandinavian countries I visited, that there is a sense of social responsibility that means that people feel like they can affect change, even at a local level, yeah, and that’s also part of the change. Is we don’t need to a small, small action to translate into a big policy change. Immediately those small, micro actions add up,

Maria Ross 25:33

right, right? I was looking as you were talking, because I recently had the chance to speak to Sam Daly Harris, who wrote a book called reclaiming our democracy, and he had a very similar hopeful viewpoint on the possibility of what happens when people engage with empathy, when people engage with to your point, it’s, you know, politics is not a spectator sport. It’s being able to get involved and and have have the conversations, but also have the uncomfortable conversations. And I think that kind of the same traits that enable you to strengthen your empathy muscle can be really valuable to you in that forum as well, because it’s about learning about someone else’s experience, lived experience. It’s about keeping an open mind. It’s about saying maybe you don’t have all the answers, maybe other people collectively can come up with the right answer. And so there’s a, you know, putting the ego aside. All of those things are things I talk about in terms of strengthening your empathy, but they also are handy tools when it comes to creating a a political system that works for everybody. That’s kind of what I’m I’m hearing from you, what? What do you what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Claire Yorke 26:42

Yes, absolutely. And that’s really about the skill that’s both what we want to see from our leaders. So we want leaders who demonstrate that they’re not swayed by every passing emotion that they feel, that they can hold space for different conversations and bring people in and say, I’m here to serve not just the people who voted for me, but for everybody within this community or society, right or this nation, we need to see that, and that requires that kind of strength and that courage and that decisiveness and emotional agility. I love the work of people like Susan David on emotional agility. You know, knowing what it is you’re responding to and what you’re feeling and how that affects how you show up and engage with people. And I think then for us, we can practice that the citizens at the local level, around the dinner table, at family events, or, you know, in class, when we’re engaging in topics and someone disagrees with us. And there’s organizations in America that are doing a really good job, yes, like bridge USA, like brave, braver angels.

Maria Ross 27:43

I was gonna say we had Monica Guzman on our show once before. I’ll put a link to her episode.

Dr. Claire Yorke 27:49

Yeah, and who were doing a really good job of saying, We all occupy this space. Let’s get comfortable talking to each other across our differences. And that’s a muscle that we can flex and that we get better at. And I think the more we do that, and the more we start to see that people we disagree with have the same sense of humor as us. They support the same football team, or, you know, they love the same place for their annual holiday, or whatever it is that makes you connect the same music. It helps you realize that this shouldn’t be so combative that there are ways through and we get better at that art of conversation, and that’s politics. Is about dialog. It’s about how do we learn to coexist with each other, exactly, and that’s what we have to keep practicing and showing up for

Maria Ross 28:35

so good. So tell me about the challenges that leaders face when they are choosing to lead with empathy. And what do you find marks the successful ones? Yeah.

Dr. Claire Yorke 28:47

Oh, great question. I think the challenges are manifold. One, as you’ve already mentioned, is that it can be seen as a weakness, and there can be a gendered component to that, that often we reward male leaders who express empathy in a different way to how we might reward women leaders who express empathy because we don’t trust that it is going to be matched by strength or decisiveness, which is doing a disservice to both genders. We should have people in power of all genders who show care as a matter of priority, because you are there representing people. So I think that problem with weakness, some of it is also the way that our politics works, and it depends partly on the political culture. So in countries like America, the United Kingdom, where you have much more adversarial setups, where you have one party who dominates the political system at the expense of another, it then becomes harder to demonstrate the kind of bipartisanship or the cooperation and collaboration that we want in the current culture. That’s not to say political leaders could not say, I’m going to do things differently, right? But they tend to conform to that party politics that tribal. Them at the expense of setting up commissions to address welfare or health or whatever it is, where they bring a lot of people around the table from across the board. And I think countries where you have more collaborative and consensual, consensual politics, they are more used to consensus based, sorry, politics are more used to that dialog. Where do we find compromise? Where do we bring in a little bit of that minority party into what the major party is doing? Because we need to find a way through this collaboratively and collectively.

Maria Ross 30:34

What are some examples of countries that have that kind of setup?

Dr. Claire Yorke 30:37

So countries like Denmark, Germany, wherever you have kind of coalition politics where people have to come together again. Scandinavia is another example where they do this quite a lot. You find that then there is more of an incentive to work with parties that are maybe more on the fringes or smaller, right green,

Maria Ross 30:58

instead of discounting them, you bring them in.

Dr. Claire Yorke 31:01

Yeah, yeah. So like in the United Kingdom right now, the Green Party is seen as a very small party, even if it collects quite a few votes. The same with the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, they get, may get a lot of votes nationally, they’re very small in terms of how that translates into seats. But in a place like Germany or Denmark, where you would have more coalition style politics, they might be the king maker in terms of those few seats actually tip the balance so but you still then have to meet parts of their agenda. Right, right?

Maria Ross 31:33

Yeah, this is the challenge with the with the US system is there’s so much money in the party system that even if some politicians wanted to break away from what their party is saying or doing, they literally can’t, because of their funding running dry, right? And that’s the sad part. Is when you know money gets injected into the equation, it’s then you create a power block, or, you know, you create a cartel, basically, of, you know, then no, you’ve got to toe the party line, or we will not support your primary bid. We will not support, you know, we will. We will take our money somewhere else and put it somewhere else. And so we really just need bravery. I mean, when it comes right down to it, we need people that are, getting involved for the right reasons and saying, you know, if it’s funny, in my naive childhood thought process, when I was a kid, I never understood, you know, well, if you’re a politician, you just say what you believe, and if people agree with what you believe, they vote for you. And if they don’t agree with you, then they don’t vote for you. And that sounds really good in a Pollyanna way, but then you put into impact, the power and the money, and yeah, all the other and it’s like, no, I’m going to tell you what you want to hear so that I get into the position of power, and then I’m going to do what I want anyway, right? Yeah, so,

Dr. Claire Yorke 32:59

and that’s, yeah, yeah. That’s a key weakness, and that’s the key obstacle to empathy, because then you’re having politicians who are bought by lobby groups who can no longer be the authentic self that they wanted when they went into it. Yeah, and America, particularly is has a huge problem with lobbying, and there’s efforts in Australia right now and other countries to limit that impact of big money, because we should have politics that’s much more about the people where it doesn’t matter your background, whether you’re from, you know, a poor neighborhood or a rich neighborhood, you should still be able to get into politics to represent your interest in your community. And the moment you get lobby groups, it silences people. It means people are worried about upsetting the status quo, and that makes it very hard for that more natural care, driven, empathy based politics to come through.

Maria Ross 33:51

I mean, yeah, that’s a big talk about the headwinds we were talking about earlier. That’s a big headwind to being to like you said, be authentic with your values. You know, we just one example. And you know this is regardless of listeners, your politics or your stance on things, but there have been many studies that have come out. I’m very involved with Moms Demand Action, which is a common sense gun organization, grassroots, actually taking my son to go to the the advocacy day at the state capitol, so he can see how things work right and be in on conversations with local representatives and things like that. But they’ve done study after study showing that the majority of Americans are for most of these measures that these groups are trying to get across the line in terms of closing loopholes and background checks and safety procedures and banning certain types of weapons or certain types of peripherals that can be added. The majority of Americans are for those things, and yet you’ve got blocks of politicians that are voting no on those things, even though they’re people. People and their constituents want them because of the few that are holding the purse strings. And so that’s that really does get in the way of their values, of empathy, of trying to understand what their people actually want. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy,

Dr. Claire Yorke 35:17

and it would be so easy to sort some of these issues out without that influence.

Maria Ross 35:23

Absolutely, absolutely. So I would just love to hear, you know, do you think it’s possible, given where we are? And you know, I know, again, different countries are at different phases of this, but if you take some of the worst case scenarios, like right now the United States, or is it even possible for us to get to that vision that you’re painting? Because it sounds amazing and it sounds wonderful, and you know, number one, do you truly believe it’s possible? And number two, what needs to happen to make it possible other than what we’ve already talked about?

Dr. Claire Yorke 35:58

Yeah, so I’m a pragmatic idealist. I think it’s important to have a vision and an idea of an ideal end state, but I also know, because I’ve worked in these spaces, that it’s never that easy. So I do think it’s possible. I don’t think it’s going to be within a short timeframe. I think what matters is how we each start to take responsibility and show up and see that change in our communities. Because I do think we talk a lot about trickle down, but I think there is also this kind of feed up, Trickle Up, grassroots initiative and momentum that can change things. At the end of the book, I’ve got this plan of action where I talk about what needs to be done, and it is at a national level, at a community level and at a citizen level. There’s a lot of different points there, but I think at the national level, what needs to change is we need to see leaders start to look across the aisle and build that bipartisan connection, and then also go out far more to citizens and start saying, what is it you need in those citizens assemblies, taking account of that, being active and going out there and listening and learning and taking that back to their decision making role. So we need to see that. We need to see change in political culture, so trying to create political culture that is less toxic that doesn’t burn out our politicians so that they don’t have the capacity for empathy because they’re constantly firefighting or battling with the media that’s trying to tear them down. So there’s questions there about transforming a little bit our media while still retaining its importance of free speech and accurate representation and accountable and holding our governments and politicians to account. I think we also need to start thinking about creating collaborative groups on core issues that matter to everybody. So minimum wages, welfare, health care, education, gun crime, violence. You know, let’s start to have some collaboration, yeah, and then I talk about the community level and how we change that is reinvesting in these civic spaces, community halls, town halls, libraries, sports centers, trying to there’s some really interesting movements going on in places like the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, getting people offline, getting people to connect in the real world, over sport and hobbies that I think are really important, and then getting people to volunteer and see their role and see more civic education in schools as part of that. And then at the citizen level, just how do we reflect on how we show up with empathy, so that we model it and we get used to seeing it and used to seeing its value across dinner tables. Yeah. Also, one of the big ones is transforming our media diet, stepping away from new cycles that are just toxic and doom scrolling. But also not just reading the same feed that is fed to you because of your algorithm, read around it, read what other people are thinking, and start to engage far more with curiosity. When you encounter someone who thinks very differently, without becoming defensive and putting up your walls and arguing your case, lean in. What is it you think? Why do you think that? Where have you come from with that view? Right? What isn’t working? And then see if you can find common cause, even if you’re still able to express that boundary, like we spoke about empathy, should have boundaries. I don’t agree with you on this. I don’t believe in this kind of language, or I don’t subscribe to views that are racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever, but tell me where maybe we might find something, and I think that’s how we start to see it is across those different arenas. It starts to become a norm, and it starts to grow and amplify.

Maria Ross 39:51

I mean, I love it. It all comes down to, you know, how we show up and how we interact, and, to your point, how we model that for others and for ourselves and the people around. Around us. It’s really interesting, because one of the things you you spoke about is these, you know, collaborative groups, and there’s a group near me starting up around getting together parents not to be part of the school board, but to create a coalition that influences the school board and so in and keeps them accountable and make sure that there’s parents weighing in. And it’s a model that someone developed, and it’s being brought to my community, and someone locally is spearheading that model implementation here, and I’ve been roped into that of just as a parent of a future high school student, and I, I’m just, I’m want to get involved, even though it might be very, you know, stressful for me and heartbreaking, because I’m just curious about the process. And from what you’re saying, it sounds like that’s exactly the kind of thing. I think what’s overwhelming is there’s so many causes you want to get involved in, and you feel like, if you pick one, you’re making just like, it’s like a drop in the bucket. But then I tell myself, and you know, I invite listeners to understand this too, we have to start somewhere. And I had someone on my show in the past. Elisa came Hort Page, who wrote a wonderful book called roadmap for revolutionary. She co wrote it with two other women, and one of the things she spoke about was this idea of activist triage. I don’t know if it was called activist triage, but it was this idea of triage, of like you can’t solve all the problems, so build communities for yourself of people that are committed to action in different ways, and then you can sort of feel like an Avengers team, like you feel like someone’s on it, right? Like, whether it’s immigration or gun control or, you know, whatever it is, you know, the economy. And I just love that idea of, let me create my own little superhero team. And it’s like, Okay, I’m going to focus on this thing, because this is important to me. But I know that Claire and Jane and Bill are focused on this other thing, and so between us, we can feel like we’re making a difference on all the issues that we care about.

Dr. Claire Yorke 42:12

Yeah, I love that, and it speaks to that core idea of start where you are. It’s so tempting to want to go right to the end and go big. But so much is done when you start where you are with the power and the strength that you have that you then amplify in concert with others and where you also are. The expert. You know your local area, you know your circle of concern, build on that, and then see where it goes, and you don’t know how it will inspire other groups to stop where they are, like you said, I think that’s such a key way of doing this that we don’t get overwhelmed by what right now feels like we are being bombarded by news. To overwhelm us intentionally so we disconnect. We have to just start being active and present where we are and build on that.

Maria Ross 43:01

I love it so much. I would love to talk to you further, because you’re just filling me with hope and energy. And I’m going to put a bunch of links in the show notes for folks about various other episodes, some of the ones I mentioned, and then a few others, one about media bias and our media diet and all that kind of stuff, because I think it’ll be a valuable resource for folks. So I’m going to put those links in the show notes, as well as all your links and the lead link to your wonderful book, which, again, is called empathy and politics and leadership, the key to transforming our world. So we will definitely be digging into that. Oh, I love it. She’s showing it on screen for our YouTubers, but for anyone that’s on the go right now, Claire, where is a good place they can find out more about your work that you can just tell us audibly. Yeah.

Dr. Claire Yorke 43:46

So my website is Claire york.me, Claire with an i and an E. Yorke with an e.me, and I’m on LinkedIn, and I post a lot of the work I do and build a lot of kind of collaborations through that, so I can be found there. Amazing.

Maria Ross 44:02

Thank you so much for your not just your time and insights today, but your work. I mean, your career has been a testament to hope, and we need the light bearers like you in the world. So thank you for doing your work and for sharing it with us here today.

Dr. Claire Yorke 44:15

Oh, thank you so much you do the same. So it’s so lovely to be able to connect like this. Thank you so much for having me,

Maria Ross 44:21 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 and colleague and next time, until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please. Follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen: Managing Without Power to Balance Humanity and Performance

Balancing performance with human leadership can be tough for some leaders. The goal is to strike a healthy balance, while always remembering that taking thoughtful care of your people, recognizing their unique contributions, and creating an environment where they can thrive can lead to the stellar performance results you seek.

But how would you lead if your title or position didn’t give you any power?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen is a leadership trainer and the award-winning author of Managing Without Power. Joris shares his unique journey at Google, watching the culture and leadership he loved so much shift as his managers changed, and why he’s committed to helping companies capture that early magic and scale it as they grow. We discuss recognizing and respecting your power dynamic while also understanding that the title does not give you power, but consistent, intentional small behaviors will ensure your team will help you meet your goals. Joris shares how to balance people nd performance through the five basics of his interconnected, practical, holistic leadership approach. And he shares how to solicit and take in upward feedback to help you effectively support an employee’s journey, ensure high performance, and make tough decisions when needed.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How managers can shape microcultures and establish team norms.
Upskilling leaders to avoid conventional traps and pitfalls.
Providing ongoing support to learning, not just one-time training.
The five basics of his interconnected, practical, holistic leadership approach.
How to solicit and take in upward feedback to help effectively support an employee’s journey, ensure high performance, and make tough decisions when needed.

“The problem I see is this balance between human-focused and performance-focused leadership. I regularly meet leaders who think of them as opposites, but you need both of them in a certain balance…in order to create a high-performing team and organization.” — Joris Merks-Benjaminsen

Episode References:

Joris’ Book: Managing Without Power: Creating high-performance teams and organizations in your own human way

How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

Google re: Work – Guides: Give feedback to managers https://share.google/nhB0hREQOztuqQwOV

About Joris Merks-Benjaminsen, Leadership Trainer, Author of Managing Without Power:

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen is a leadership trainer and the award-winning author of Managing Without Power. Joris had a leading role in Google’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives, and was one of the highest-scoring managers in the company’s history. Today, he trains managers and leaders to help find the right balance between humaneness and performance pressure.

Connect with Joris:

Managing Without Power: www.managingwithoutpower.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joris-merks-benjaminsen-5673384/

Connect with Maria:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 03:02

Yeah, sure. So nowadays, I’m self employed trained managers and leaders, and I’ve had a career working for a variety of companies for about 20 plus years or so. First half of that was media and advertising, eventually market insights, and I joined Google somewhere half my halfway my career as their head of marketing sites. And so at that company, I’ve had a journey of 12 years in total. I’ve had like five or six different roles. I had like nine or 10 different managers, and then during the last six years, I ended up running an education team called Google digital Academy. We were running education programs with Google’s largest customers, and most of my views around management and leadership have been formed during those 12 years at Google. And interestingly so the best manager I ever had at Google was my very first one, and I didn’t realize it at the time, unfortunately. So I joined Google because I read the book how Google works. And so they describe this company who wants to redefine work life with these rules, like, you can be serious without a suit, you know, like, so you want to have real impact work on real things. You’re serious about the business, but it’s also joyful. And, you know, so all of that, and I read that in a book, and I thought, Yes, that’s what I want to work and so the first three years, I literally had that. So it was precisely the way it was described in the book. And I thought that this was because this is just how Google is. And then at some point, I ended up leaving my first role, and I ended up leaving that team, because my profile of expertise was gradually moving away from marketing side. So I started presenting on conferences, first about research about shifting consumer behavior, and that then became digital marketing transformation. Conversation, and then it gradually became org change and leadership. And I realized I’m no longer a researcher. I was no longer a fit for the market insights team, yeah. And so I started to look like, okay, where in the organization would I then fit? And I ended up finding a new job working with Google’s largest customers. But from there onwards, in the next three years, so I gradually became less happy. So I enjoyed my work less, like I got my energy was draining, and that got to the point where I considered leaving. I was actually already applying for different jobs. I had job interviews and everything. And then I realized, thinking back, like I listened, I have this old Google that I used to experience right, that I loved, and I felt connected to it, and I never asked myself the question where my energy was coming from. And now I have this version that almost feels like a different company. And so I started analyzing it because I wanted the old one back. And then realized when I was moving up the chain of command, the management chain I was under. And I realized I was under a leader who was kind of a management by fair style of leader, and also very much command and control. And that style trickled down layer by layer, and it influenced how I the version I got from Google, right? And there was also the moment when I realized that, like, I first thought that Google just became political, you know, like, because it became larger, but, like, it was already 60,000 when I joined, so it was already large and political, right? So I realized that the manager I had at the time was the one that very consciously shaped that version of the organization that she still knew from the early days, because she had been around in those early startup days, and she shaped that very consciously for the team.

Maria Ross 06:50

Yeah, I mean, definitely she set the tone in that micro culture, it sounds like. And we always hear that adage of, you know, you join companies, but really what makes the difference is your immediate manager, and the culture that they create and how they lead and how they grow their people. So you experience that firsthand.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 07:07

Yeah, exactly. And it was a huge contrast. And so when I realized that, I thought, Okay, I need to be in a different chain of command, and then maybe I get my old Google back. And so that’s when I started deliberately moving. And so after that, I probably had, like six, seven more managers in different roles, and I found one above me, who was the founder of Google digital Academy, who was similarly deliberate in creating that particular culture. And I also realized, when I became a manager, I want to create that culture for my team, right? So I became very deliberate about building that culture, which then eventually led to me creating a track record upward feedback ratings, which was among the highest of the company.

Maria Ross 07:53

That’s amazing, I mean, and again, it’s just a total case study in the fact that the manager shapes the culture. And when you see good leadership model that becomes the model for the kind of leader you want to be, and that’s how we exponentially increase impact of leadership and sort of have that legacy, right? So absolutely, you know, your book and your trainings are called Managing without power, and it’s that mindset that leaders need to understand that their power doesn’t come from their title. It needs to come with how they are interacting with and connecting and engaging with their team. So you talk about you want to help leaders lean less on the power that’s inevitably connected to their roles and instead invest more genuinely in teams. So number one, first, can you talk to us about what are the problems that get in the way of leaders being able to do that? What happens in organizations? What are some of the three main problems that you see?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 08:51

Yeah, so the first one is this balance between human focused leadership and performance focused leadership. I see a lot of managers and leaders who are either good at one of them, but they’re not so good at the other one or the other way around, right? And I even still like regularly meet leaders who think of them as opposites that you Yeah, right. But reality is that you need both of them in a certain balance and also in orchestration, in order to create a high performing team and high performing organization, right? So the idea that they are separates. That’s probably the first problem already.

Maria Ross 09:24

I call that the binary thinking of leadership, of it’s either or when it’s really both and

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 09:29

yeah, absolutely, yeah, you need both, and it’s not easy, but that’s at least the first thing to realize that you must have both, right? And the next thing that then happens is the power position that is inevitably connected to your role as manager. Like day one, you become someone’s manager. You get the power to decide about their pay, about the promotions, whether they have a job at all. You are the one that tells them whether they’re doing a good job or not. You know, there’s loads of power that is the one. You want it or not you have it. And I sometimes still meet managers who are relatively new to the job, whether the first time managers, and they say when I say this to them, I said, No, no, no, I’m still one of the team. So even if you don’t realize you have that power, right? They know that you’re going to make those decisions. And because of that, there are certain things they will no longer tell you that they would tell to their peers, and there are certain things that are going to say to you because they think it’s what you want to hear. So day one, you become a manager, these dynamic changes, and the more senior you get, the worse it gets. And what that does to a manager, if you’re not sufficiently conscious and intentional, you can very easily drift away from becoming the manager who you want it to be. You’re under pressure. There’s always too many things to do, and it’s very easy not to do certain investments in your team because they don’t complain. So a good example of that is when you have a meeting between a senior person and junior person in a relatively large organization, the manager is likely to be a bit too late. The manager is likely to not have done the prep work. The manager is likely to struggle with attention. They talk a bit more, they listen a bit less, they leave a bit early. And you could say this is, well, they have a senior job, so they’re busy, but the reality is, all of these things, if it would be a meeting with their senior, they wouldn’t struggle with those things. They would show up on time. They wouldn’t struggle with attention. They would listen more. They would also try to bring a person along based on their intrinsic motivation, ask more questions, instead of just saying, we must do X, you know, and all these small behaviors that you don’t do for your team, but you do it for seniors, they illustrate how you casually lean on the power that you have and therefore fail to make the investments that are needed in a team to make it A high functioning team.

Maria Ross 12:00

So when we talk about

Maria Ross 12:02

upskilling our leaders to avoid those traps and avoid those challenges, I understand that you see some challenges with the way conventional training and leadership development is done. Can you talk about what those are, and how do we fight against that?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 12:17

So you if you would say kind of in black and white, right? Right? Like you would roughly, have two types of trainings that I’ve personally been on in a variety of ways. When I was a manager, you had had some of these trainings where they bring you on an inward journey, you know, to try to explore yourself. And then hopefully you have some kind of Revelation, and you come out with great intentions to do things differently, you know, and then you go back to the same job under the same pressures, and it’s very hard to actually change. So that’s like one end of the spectrum, and then the other end of the spectrum is more practical trainings. And my personal experience there has been, I got loads of training. I think if any company invests a lot in manager training, it’s Google, you know, I think many people become manager and just expected to figure it out. I was lucky enough to have lots of training. But even then, it was just many isolated topics. So I would get a training about giving feedback, a training about how to manage low performers, a training about how to write good OKRs, etc. But the reality is that all the topics that you do in management, they have a relationship with each other. It’s, for instance, very hard to give a person fair feedback if you’ve never been clear about expectations. And it’s very hard to be clear about expectations if you don’t have a solid strategy that you translate to goals, that you translate to what your visual Yeah. So I created a set of five basics, essentially to cover the practical element of training. And I do this in a holistic way. And at the same time, this inward journey is also important. So this inward journey, the only thing is that I believe that this inward journey needs to happen on the job, yeah, kind of needs to get that voice from the team. You know, the things that people no longer say to the manager get that voice going, and so that the manager starts hearing what their team needs from them, and what consequences of their actions are on the team, both positive and negative. So if you create that layer where on the job, they become more conscious of their impact on the team, what the team needs, and you give them a practical, holistic toolkit that you train them on. That’s when you start to make a real difference. Yeah.

Maria Ross 14:30

I mean, I love what you’re saying, and it’s really interesting, because just recently, I came across a study that showed that when you do traditional trainings where you know, you just put your employees or your leaders through a course

Maria Ross 14:42

or through a workshop, they lose

Maria Ross 14:45

70% of what they’ve learned in the following 72 hours, and they lose 90% of what they’ve learned within the next couple of weeks. So monies are companies are spending all this money on training programs, but they’re missing this consistent action of. Coaching, they’re missing this consistent of now, let’s take the learnings and apply them and provide you ongoing support. So when the situation comes up that you learned about in your training three months ago comes up now for you in your actual job, do you have support? Do you have a place to go? Do you have a coach or a mentor to actually role play or remind you of the key learnings, or, you know, whatever it is that you do within your organization. And instead of treating training like a one and done, we really have to treat it as an ongoing nurturing environment, right? It’s like watering a plant once and then expecting it to flourish over time, right? We’ve got to keep watering it. We’ve got to keep checking the soil. We’ve got to keep adjusting the light, all of those things. And for some reason we are we as companies, are willing to throw away millions of dollars in training and development because we think it’s just like, oh, we rolled out this curriculum of these courses, and that’s it. Good luck. Bye. You know, hopefully you’ll remember that five months down the road when you need to do that difficult performance review, or you need to, you know, have that uncomfortable conflict in your organization. So, you know, you talk a lot about this idea of, like a practical, holistic approach. Can you share with us the five basics, sort of the basic tenants of that, and give us some examples of each

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 16:21

Yeah, yeah, sure. So these five basics, they’re actually things that most companies have and that most managers do, however. So you could look at this as a collection of many small behaviors, and they’re very easy not to do when you’re under pressure, when your team doesn’t complain, you know, and when you consistently do all of them in a way that reinforces the different aspects of management, you put your team in an upward spiral. But when you ignore some of them because there are relations between them, all of them become weaker,

Maria Ross 16:53

right, right? So, so let’s talk about them. Let’s get to them. So what’s the first one?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 16:58

The first one is, I call it genuine conversations about career, personal growth and life. Second one is very much about how you set goals and strategies. So I call it collaborative setting of goals and expectations, and I typically would use OKRs, but that objectives and key results. Third one is discussing and agreeing team norms with your team, so how you work together? And then you will also have to cultivate them. The fourth one is about tracking progress, course correcting and always on feedback. And then the fifth one is fair, predictable decisions about reward and progression, right? And if you have that, if you have all performance system, people get ratings, you know that also means para predictable outcome of the performance system, right? You can already see there the relationship between them, because there’s no way to ever give a person a fair, predictable outcome of a performance evaluation

Maria Ross 17:51

if you haven’t clearly set the expectations. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it’s funny, because these track so well to my five pillars of effective and empathetic leadership with decisiveness and clarity and joy and self care and all of these things. So let’s get down to brass tacks. So just let’s briefly talk about each one. The first one is genuine conversations about personal growth. So tell us

Maria Ross 18:15

what that looks like. So the

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 18:17

typical thing that I see happening there at companies like almost every person who has a manager has some kind of conversation maybe once a year or so where the Okay, let’s have a look at next year. You know, yeah, but what very often happens, and that they make it feel like a tick the box conversation, so you get a performance evaluation, or at least some evaluation about how last year went, and then they say in the same meeting. Okay, now let’s look ahead. You know that total meeting takes about one hour or so, and if you do it that way, if you combine those two conversations in one performance evaluation and a career conversation, the second one is going to be the tick the box, almost by definition, and the reason is because they’re fundamentally different. So one is looking backward, and there’s an element of judgment in it, which makes it somewhat unsafe. And then career conversation, if you genuinely want to see the person who they are, you know what their aspirations are, where they want to grow, the scenarios to see in work, in life, you know, that’s an expensive conversation, and it requires safety and trust. There’s no way that conversation is going to open up if you combine it in a one hour conversation with a performance evaluation. So the first thing I say is, like you have to split them, and if you are very good at managing these five basics, the performance evaluation can easily be a half an hour video call, because it’s just a summary of all the things you already discussed throughout the year, if you were disciplined investing, right? The other one, I would definitely not do off a video call. I wouldn’t even do it in the office. I would spend about 90 minutes on it and practically go for a walk in the forest. And then you have a completely different environment, which creates a different setting. It creates a more. Rich conversation, right? And you kind of start in the here and now, right? Do you like the job? It gives you energy. What drains your energy? You start off in the job over time, and then you move outward and outward and outward, right? To future scenarios in work and life, which includes scenarios beyond the current job and beyond the current company, right? But if the trust is low, they’re never going to tell you exactly. That’s the important element of trust there, for sure.

Maria Ross 20:26

And I think that also not everyone has the luxury of being able to take their employees out for a walk in the forest. But you know, basically, I hear what you’re saying, which is, sort of get out of the normal environment. How do you recommend people do that if they’re doing hybrid or remote leadership

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 20:41

this, I’ve actually had to do this remote for three years because it was covid when I’m still at Google, right? So I had a remote here I was in the Netherlands, and all of them were spread across EMEA, and normally I would fly to them, you know, like twice a year, yeah. Or they would come to my country, and then we would do something nice together, right? And suddenly, during covid There was no longer possible, yeah. And then we still agreed that we wouldn’t do it over VC, because it would have been just another meeting, right? And so what we did instead was we decided to go for a walk, uh huh, in a nice environment, each in their own nice environment.

Maria Ross 21:16

Uh huh. Oh, wow.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 21:20

Okay, if you do that, you sit in a forest on a bench or whatever, and there’s some kind of quiet environment, and you have someone very close in your ear on your headphone, suddenly it starts to feel like an intimate conversation, which is completely different than the whole sequence of video.

Maria Ross 21:34

Calls Interesting. Interesting. I love that. Okay, so the second one is collaborative goal setting and clear expectations. And I talk about this a lot, that we can’t really set. We can’t hold someone accountable to expectations that we haven’t clearly set. And so when there’s conflict around that, and you’re having you’re struggling with being empathetic with your employees, or they’re struggling to be empathetic with you, it’s probably because there’s a misalignment, there’s a misunderstanding about there’s assumptions going on about, Well, we I assumed you know what we meant by this or that, or the other or and so whenever I catch leaders saying like, well, this is something everyone knows, or, you know, we’ve always done it this way, or I assume they understood when I said X, I’m really seeing that in the second point. And I know you talk about aligning what the individual wants with what the team and the organization want. So what does that look like? Can you give us an example of work you’ve done around that? What that looks like for someone to do collaborative, full setting and clear expectations?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 22:31

This is where the link with the first conversation is, right? So that conversation leads to very rich picture of what the person wants now and in the future, right? And the reality is, some of that may not even match with their current job, but it may not match with Right, right? And so when you go into the second basic it’s all about cascading company strategy, team strategy, to individual goals, right? And so you have to write a very clear strategy roadmap for your team with milestones, etc, and then need to have conversations with all the individuals that work under you, like, Okay, if this is where the team needs to go, and we had that conversation about where you want to go as a person, you know, yeah, how much of that still overlaps? And if it overlaps, then great, you can put them on projects that are good for the team, good for the person over time, at some point, either the team direction changes or the person changes, and that overlap becomes smaller, right? And then you can have an honest conversation where you say, Listen, I think you’re reaching the end of your time in this role, or even in this team, or even in this company,

Maria Ross 23:32

right, right? I

Maria Ross 23:34

love that. Okay. So the third one is establishing and cultivating healthy team norms, and I talk about this a lot in the clarity pillar as well as the joy pillar, which is really about let’s write down all our unspokens. Let’s articulate, really articulate, what our mission and our values are, not just for the company at large, but for our team. How are we going to interact? How are we going to get work done? So how do you This is where I really see the role of synthesizing diverse points of view and diverse learning styles and diverse motivations. Tell us what this looks like for a leader to you know, if they’re like, how do I establish and cultivate healthy team norms?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 24:14

I like that. You call it the unspokens. Yeah, because this is a topic I never got trained on, and I rarely see trainings on Team norms, thing where you just start collaborating, and then you hope that people figure it out, but they don’t exactly. And so when I do this as part of my trainings, I typically start with focusing on very practical things, right? For instance, establishing norms about communication channels, like, which communication channels do we use for what purpose? What is a reasonable response time for email? What is the reasonable response time for a ping? I also talk about remote work, like, How often should we be able to work from home? When should we come to the office, and why? So lots of practical topics. Yeah, get them to discuss. Across those things, yeah, have different opinions, right? Those opinions about the practical topics to actually get the level of their values right. So I had some people advocating, for instance, for no meeting days because they felt there was overload of meeting but no meeting days also make you less flexible and autonomy to plan your schedule flexibly is also something new for their well being. So you have meeting overload, which is good for well being, but flexibility, autonomy is also good for well being, right? And they start conflicting with each other. So you have a conversation about the values you have in work life and in collaboration based on practical things, right? You agree with each other, okay? If these are the values we want to live by, then let’s make decent disagreements, you know, like email, yeah,

Maria Ross 25:50

like, how are we going to, you know, what’s an acceptable response time? You know, if you’re on vacation, we don’t expect, unless it’s an absolute crisis, we don’t expect to have to reach out to you when you’re on vacation, whatever those norms are, and not only dictated by the leader, but collaboratively created, right? And what’s coming to mind for me, as you talk about this, is the reality that teams evolve. Right? Teams change. We don’t always have the same set of 10 people for three years, so how often do you advise people to revisit the norms as new members come and go.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 26:24

So I would definitely do it at the start of a team, or when you are a new manager to the team, right? But actually the biggest work, so it’s first discussing agreeing, right? Then the biggest work is cultivating, and that’s where the role of the leader is, right, and cultivating is role model, amplify, tolerate. So it starts now. For instance, if I want to establish effective meeting habits, and someone needs to do note taking, you know, if I would say who does who wants to do note taking, it’s always the same people raising their hand, and it’s always the same people who avoid it. And also these people who avoid it are also the ones who typically avoid the projects that nobody wants to work on, you know, like, and so instead of asking who wants to do notes, I would say, Okay, we’re going to have a rotation system for doing notes. I go first. And so when I’m the most senior person in the room and I’m not above taking notes, yeah, everybody gets the signal like, okay, nobody is above the dirty work. You know, everybody does cleaning. Yes, that’s the role modeling. And then amplifying is a bit of a spectrum. Amplifying starts with if someone demonstrates desirable behavior, so they did the notes, they were fast, they were good. You give them a public compliment, amplify it. But it’s also in your reward system. There are many behaviors and jobs that don’t get rewarded in a reward system as a consequence. Just know, well, I could do it, but in the end, nobody cares, right, right? So, and then there’s tolerate, is giving people a nudge when they don’t demonstrate desirable behaviors, or if it’s really extreme, you know, if it’s a manager who hits KPIs but burns out the team exactly, and say, Well, it’s a high performer. We’re not going to fire that person. So then your culture becomes what you tolerate. So eventually you’re going to have to fire a person if they really cross the line, right, right?

Maria Ross 28:13

Yeah, definitely. It’s those toxic rock stars. That’s really people are going to look at your actions more than just what’s up on the posters on the wall or what you say as a leader. So I love

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 28:23

that, but most of the time with if you cultivate, well, you don’t have to redo this exercise very often. Yeah, it might just be that every now and then there’s new people and you want to refresh on a particular sub topic or something, but you don’t have to follow it anymore.

Maria Ross 28:36

Or if someone new comes in and has a new idea, at least creating an environment where you know when they come into the team, say, we have these established norms, but if there’s anything you come up with that you want to add, or you think we should talk about to add to this, please do that, right? These are not, they’re not etched in stone, right?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 28:56

I had a team member who was very structured in how he used calendar, and he felt passionate, like, Okay, I’m so frustrated how we’re doing this as a team, you know? And I just gave him the floor, and then we just had a whole session about calendar, and it should be open. How you do focus time? Don’t plan over focus time, those types of things. Yeah, see that?

Maria Ross 29:16

That’s great because we there’s so many of those things we don’t talk about, and then they’re just resentment builds up and misunderstanding builds up, right? Okay, so continuous feedback and progress tracking, so talk to us about that.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 29:29

What is that? When I say to leaders tracking progress, the first thing they think is KPIs and but the reality is, 80% of tracking progress after you have been clear about strategy, goals, expectations, etc. Those shape the meetings people need to be in. They shape the agenda as the meetings need to have, which project teams there are. And then, as a manager, you know in what meetings you should be joining to observe people at work. Essentially. Mm, hmm. If you do that in a disciplined way, you plan enough time and attention for your team to be alongside them on the right moments that is 80% of tracking progress right. You don’t just get to see whether or not they hit the KPI Exactly. Get to see how they do it, how they collaborate while they do it. And so you get a huge set of information that enables you to give people in the moment feedback in a way that is so thoughtful that every single bit of feedback you learn builds trust with them, because they realize how much attention you’ve been paying to them being at work, right? Well, and then

Maria Ross 30:34

there’s no surprises, you know, yeah, exactly, if you wait until the end of the quarter to get the spreadsheet, that’s it, say what went wrong. So I like that, and just making that a habit, that that actually is your job as a leader, is to be popping in, is to be, you know, tracking, not waiting till that end of quarter, you know, QBR, or whatever you’re doing within your organization, to figure out three months later that you could have course corrected something

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 31:01

earlier, exactly, and you still do the spreadsheet right? Yeah, you still can already know what’s coming right. And then also interesting if, for instance, someone is bluffing their way through the spreadsheet right, you already know Right,

Maria Ross 31:14

exactly, okay? And then finally, fair and predictable decisions on rewards and progression. And I love this one, because decisiveness is a really important pillar for me of helping people understand not dictatorship but decisiveness, that you really need to perfect that art of synthesizing multiple points of view, but making a swift decision, not letting it go on and on and on and on. So talk about what you mean by fair and predictable decisions. What does that look like for a leader?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 31:42

Yeah, I spoke earlier about the need to not unconsciously use a power on the wrong moment, right? And most of these first four basics, a lot of that work is alongside where you have to step down from your power position. You know, spend enough time shoulder to shoulder with your team every now and then you still need to make a top down decision. You know, then when you step in, etc, but most of it is shoulder to shoulder, right? But that moment of a decision about reward progression is inevitably a power moment, and the only way for that not to damage the trust that you have with your team is first of all to get the first four basics right, and then to make that decision from your power role way that is crystal clear, how you got to the decision that is based on solid and I call it fair and predictable. So fair means without bias, yeah, means that the impact people bring and the qualities they bring to the job, they should define the outcome right? And not how many coffee chats you had at the boss, not whether you worked on the most visible projects, but not whether you were in the same office. You know, not whether you are a white, tall heterosexual man. You know something else, right, impact and qualities you bring to the job and the team, you know that should define the outcome and then predictable. Essentially means that if you get a performance rating, it should be one you already expect. Yeah, if you get feedback, it should be just a summary of feedback you already received, or moments you could still act on it. So it’s just like a half hour summary of things you already discussed with your team, and then you move on, right?

Maria Ross 33:18

Yeah, I love this, and I love what you’re saying. Because, you know, we started out saying that a lot of your work is about helping people balance humanity and performance, and there’s really no like one thing you do to do that. And I love that you have this framework of these five components that if you are practicing these intentionally and working on them, and you’re not going to get them right all the time. But if you are just practicing these consistently, you will be balancing humanity and performance like that’s the outcome of it. Absolutely, yes,

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 33:49

that’s also why they’re created that way. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You can still also give someone a low rating and even fire them, you know, but it’s still fair and predictable, right? If you invested consistently in these basics. You’re doing everything in your power to set them up for success, right? You’re giving them warnings, you’re giving them coaching, you’re giving them support, you’re giving them a good team around them, and then they still don’t deliver. At some point, you can fire them in a way that’s fair and predictable, and that’s good for the person, and it’s good for the team that deserves you doing it exactly.

Maria Ross 34:20

We’ve talked on in the past on this show about the fact that whenever you have to let someone go, or if you have to have a layoff, all eyes are on you from all the people that are left, and they’re going to see if you’re treating people with respect, with empathy, with kindness, with humanity, or they’ll see you’re not. And then now the people you have left that you’re counting on are going to be paralyzed by fear and anxiety and doubt, so you’re not going to get the best performance out of them. Yeah, I want to talk, as we kind of wrap up, I want to talk a little bit about your notion of creating an environment where doing the right thing pays off. And you’ve mentioned Lee. With data, mind and heart. Can you tell us what that means, and how can leaders listening look at those vectors for themselves?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 35:09

Yeah, so I mentioned like, there’s essentially three layers that are important, right? The first one is creating that consciousness about the impact of the power on your behavior towards your team, getting the voice from the team on again, and I typically would use upward feedback surveys, using Google’s oxygen the 10 behaviors of great managers, right? So upward feedback, second one is consistent behavior with these five basics. Those two are not enough, right? Because the reality is that in most organizations, depending on which flavor you have, if you are in a survival of the toughest, where this harsh culture the performance is the emphasis on performance is there, but the human is missing. Or you’re in survival of the nicest, where the human is good, but the other one is missing. If you try to establish a leadership style which goes against the one that exists in the company, yeah, then it becomes harder to do the right thing than the opportunistic thing. So if you are part of a survival of the toughest culture, and you spend lots of time investing in your team, you risk being looked at as someone who’s too nice to their team, too soft, you know, and the other way around. If you’re part of an organization that is surviving the nicest where it’s very easy not to deliver. If you are the one you know what, we are going to have impact. You’re going to have to walk through the mud Right, right? So then it’s much easier to just do the opportunistic thing, which is going along with whatever culture is already there. So if you want people to go to a training and then actually apply it consistently, then you’re also going to have to create an environment where doing the right thing pays off more, and we’re doing the optimistic thing pays off less exactly, survival of the toughest culture, and you have a manager hitting KPIs burning out the team, it should have consequences. If you have a manager who is hitting KPIs and building a great team, they should get rewarded compliments and maybe even reward and promotion. It’s a bigger team, yeah,

Maria Ross 37:06

well, you get the culture you reward.

Maria Ross 37:08

And so you really have to think about what is it you’re incentivizing within your organization? And again, you can say you’re incentivizing doing the right thing. And we value integrity, we value empathy, we value collaboration, but if people see you rewarding and promoting and keeping the people that constantly

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 37:28

do not exhibit that, they’re going to know that that’s just talk. So this is

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 37:33

especially put your money where your mouth is exactly, exactly so.

Maria Ross 37:37

But I want to talk a little bit about this because I love this concept of like data, mind and heart, and being able to lead through all three modalities. So obviously, data is about, you know, measuring what you can measure, looking at the numbers, tracking all of that, what, where for you. How do you define the mind and heart part of it? Yeah.

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 37:57

So my background is a research this is where it comes from. Yeah, I used to do ROI research, so measuring the ROI of advertising, and what I realized is the things that matter most are typically the hardest to measure. So long term impact always harder to measure than short term impact. When you try to optimize efforts and the impact of these efforts, it’s very easy to do it in silos, but it’s hard to do it across teams. Yeah, and then when you try to predict what will happen if you make an intervention, it’s relatively easy if the intervention is close to what you were already doing, but it’s close to impossible if it’s a fundamental innovation. So if leaders are not conscious of, and these are universal limitations of data, like even an AI model, which is super smart, will still have those problems then. So if you create a KPI dashboard and that becomes the leading thing of steering your organization, what will happen is people will do short term, optimistic wins. They will start working in silos, and they will stop innovating, or they will innovate in a way, and they will try to hide it from seniors, so nobody can stop them, right? So what you need is data, mind, heart. So mind is essentially the strategic roadmap and also the holistic roadmap. So you need to have a clear picture where you want to be with the organization and the team three years from now or so very clear milestones between them. So you kind of make the things that are harder to quantify. You make them slightly easier to quantify, right? But also a holistic roadmap, so that you can give teams who need to contribute to a joint goal. You can give them joint oprs, which you then sponsor with senior leaders. So then if somebody brings teams together. You know, they get visibility for the senior leaders. Yeah. And then the heart is very much about the principles you want to live by, both internally and externally. So it’s like, how do you want to work together? Yeah, what do you want to be for your clients? What do you want to be for the world? You have to not just articulate the principles, but also translate them to behavior. Years and behavior should count when you make decisions about reward and progression, because otherwise it’s just pretty words, and everybody knows, well, if I hit my KPIs, nobody cares if I support the world, you know, nobody cares if I burn out the team.

Maria Ross 40:14

Yeah, well, as we I love all of that, and I just think it’s so important. Like, yes, that’s all very hard, and it’s a lot, but that’s also why you’ve been put in a leadership position. Yeah, if it was easy, everyone would be able to do it. And so, you know, I have empathy for leaders that have so much on their plate right now, because we’re talking about all this other stuff that have to that has to do with the people and the team and getting work done. We’re not even talking about the actual work that has to get done, right? So I know there’s a lot on leaders plates, but this is the job of leadership. And actually, if you invest like you’re saying, If you invest the intention in it, you create the micro culture like you got to experience. The rest takes care of itself, absolutely, because then you’re creating again, you’re creating that fertile soil for everything else to grow. It’s not like you have to work on all this and then you have to work on the other side of it. You know what I’m saying, like the actual work and the results and the delivery will follow if you make these investments first instead of I

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 41:16

very often get that reaction right? So when people realize there’s not one simple solution, but you actually have to approach it holistically and consistently, right? They feel like, okay, but I’m very busy. I don’t have time to do all of that. Right? To me, that is an individual contributor mindset, and it’s also short termism, yes, because, like, the impact a well functioning team can have is always 10 times bigger than what you can have as an individual, right? Right? The only problem is that it’s an investment now that pays off a bit later.

Maria Ross 41:46

It’s like not doing strategy before tactics like you have to take some time to step back to create a strategy before you start spending money and engaging resources and tactics. Otherwise, what are you doing? Right? So this is the this is that strategic investment time to help your team run better. Absolutely. Yeah. So this has been such a great conversation. What would you leave leaders with who are like, wow, I am overwhelmed. This is a lot love this holistic model. And I know, again, I know it’s not easy, but what’s sort of a good first step, or a few first steps you can offer of like someone’s leading a team, they know it’s suboptimal. There’s not a lot of trust. They know they’re actually conscious enough and self aware enough to know that they could be doing better. Where within that holistic model, would you advise them to start?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 42:37

So what I try to do is first create your holistic picture, right? And then, among all of these things, probably two thirds of them, they’re already doing well, just in their own way, right? So those things, you don’t have to change. And then the other bits, you just have to find, kind of the weakest link in the chain, and you fix that one first, yeah. And the way to find that biggest link is by using an upward feedback survey. We didn’t talk actually about the oxygen survey, right? But yeah, I was a manager at Google. I was evaluated by my team every six months through the 10 behaviors of great managers. And it has been by far. It was mandatory for me where I do I would do it wherever I go, even if it’s not. It has been the best tool I ever had. Once, your team tells you, in a very structured way, what is the most important thing that they need from you, and you can then change your behavior, and you can see the data shift. It’s very motivating, and that tool, it’s freely available. If you type in a Google oxygen survey, you will find a website from Google. It’s called Rework, and they have open sourced it because they want work life. You can literally take that survey, run it every six months with your team, right? The important thing there is then debrief your results with your team, have a conversation about it, right? Behavior, right? Yeah, every time, pick one thing that you’re going to change, which is the weakest link cycles, and eventually you will find that you do all of it.

Maria Ross 44:05

I love it. I’m going to put a link to that in the show notes for people, but I think that’s a great place to start. If you’re not sure it’s ask them, ask them what they need, right? And I’ve talked in the past, and a lot of my work about you have to put ego aside to be an empathetic, human, centered leader. You have to take feedback as a gift and as an opportunity for growth, and we have to understand that we don’t have all the answers as leaders, and that it’s okay to hit up against our leadership edge, and as long as we recognize that, and as long as what we’re taking in as feedback from our people. The goal of that is to help us get past that edge, to move that edge, to extend it. And if you’re not, if you don’t have that continuous growth mindset, it’s sort of like, What are you even doing? Right? If you think you’re

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 44:53

there and you’ve got all the role model, the growth mindset?

Maria Ross 44:56

Yes, exactly, because no one has all the answers. And if. You’re a leader who claims to have all the answers. People just assume you don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re not going to have respect for you. They’re going to go, this person is delusional, right?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 45:09

Yeah, so there is one thing about asking them, right? Because some leaders go to their team members, and what do you think of me? Yeah. Reality is, when you ask it verbally from a power position, team members might say things to you, but many will not, and especially not the sensitive things, right? And good thing about that oxygen survey is that it’s a combination of quantitative behavioral statements, and there’s an open question like, What is it that I like that my manager does? What would I like my manager to change? Right? These open questions, they will be very careful in the beginning, yeah, the closed questions, they can actually give you very actionable feedback, right? And when you have the conversation, change your behavior, you build trust, your role model, growth mindset, and suddenly they start being critical in the open questions, yeah, yeah. And if you do that consistently, yeah, they might just come to you and say, Listen, you did that thing wasn’t, okay?

Maria Ross 46:01

Yeah, you create that trust. Because if they, if you do that kind of an upward survey, upward feedback, you do something with the results. First of all, the worst thing you can do to, you know, if you want to really ruin trust with your team, is give them a survey to ask their opinion, and don’t do anything with the results, right? So if you take it, then the next time they’re probably gonna, like you said, they’re gonna open up a little more. They’re gonna open up a little more, maybe the a little more. Maybe they’ll start talking to you outside of the survey, right? You start creating that environment where, you know, people ask a lot, well, how do I build trust with my team? And they want like a magic pill? Yeah, this is a very safe and structured way to create that, build up that element of trust within your team, and it won’t happen overnight, because no one trusts someone overnight, right? Exactly?

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 46:48

It’s so journey easily off like a year or longer, exactly, exactly.

Maria Ross 46:52

All right? Well, this is all so great. Thank you. Yours for your time. I want to mention again, the book is called Managing without power, and we’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and

Joris Merks-Benjaminsen 47:06

your work managing without power.com. Perfect. Awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me,

Maria Ross 47:14

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

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

Kasey D’Amato: Making High-Stakes Decisions Requires Empathy and Self-Compassion

What happens when you’re standing at a pivot point — the kind where your next move could shift everything for your business, your team, or your career? In those high-stakes moments, success doesn’t come from spreadsheets alone. It requires empathy, emotional intelligence, and even self-compassion.

Kasey D’Amato knows this firsthand. A keynote speaker, executive coach, and strategic advisor, Kasey has guided founders and corporate leaders through major transitions with clarity and resilience. In our conversation, we dug into her four pillars of holistic leadership and how self-regulation shapes better decisions. We explored the “decision threshold,” why every choice has three outcomes, and how to balance head, heart, and gut when the numbers don’t tell the full story. Kasey also shared why grounding yourself is key to hearing other perspectives without defensiveness — and how empathy and self-compassion aren’t soft skills, but strategic advantages when the stakes are high.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Finding the balance of the decision threshold – that point between gathering information and making the decision.
Why does every choice have three outcomes?
The Four Pillars of holistic leadership and how self-regulation shapes better decisions.
How to balance head, heart, and gut when the numbers don’t tell the full story.
Utilizing the Two-Minute rule to move out of indecision.

“I believe it is the critical moments of decision and how you handle your emotional intelligence in those critical moments and pivots that set you up for success, no matter how big your failures are along the way.” — Kasey D’Amato

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge Podcast Episode: Ilana Ben-Ari: How the Empathy Toy is Changing the World

About Kasey D’Amato, Business Leader and Holistic Coach:

Kasey D’Amato is a keynote speaker, executive coach, and strategic business advisor who helps business founders and corporate leaders navigate high-stakes decisions and transitions with clarity, confidence, and resilience — without burning out in the process.

With over 20 years of experience across healthcare, entrepreneurship, and business consulting, Kasey brings a unique blend of business acumen, human behavior expertise, and emotional intelligence to her work. She is a former Dermatology PA who went on to launch multiple ventures — including a global skincare brand, a healthcare consulting agency, and an executive leadership advisory.

She’s consulted with Fortune-level companies, led workshops across the healthcare and financial industries, and spoken at major institutions like UCLA, USC, and the University of Miami.

Kasey is known for her dynamic, actionable, and emotionally intelligent approach to leadership — guiding ambitious entrepreneurs and executives to think bigger, lead better, and align their next move with both performance and personal fulfillment.

Connect with Kasey:

Website: https://www.kaseydamato.com/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kasey.damato/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaseydamato/?hl=en

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

Kasey D’Amato 02:26

Thanks. Thanks for having me, Maria. I’m excited to chat with you, and as

Maria Ross 02:30

I do with all my guests, we want to know a little bit about your story. So tell us what your story is and how you came to this work. What’s the passion in this for you?

Kasey D’Amato 02:39

Yes, you know, that’s a great question. I love sharing my story, and I’ll keep it brief. I think, like so many leaders, we go through different iterations of our professional journey, and then we reflect and we feel compelled to pay it forward. So you know, my journey started in pharmaceutical sales right out of college wholesale startup company. That’s where I learned a lot of people skills and negotiation skills. From there, I actually went on to medical school pa training at USC, and became a dermatology PA. I practiced dermatology for 20 years in Santa, Monica, California, and in doing that, I started to get interested in the business side and leadership side of medicine. And so I started managing the practice, learning how to manage people, how to communicate better, how to improve systems and operations, how to understand cash flow, right? So I started my first consulting business for medical professionals. I still own that business today, and it’s still very much passion of mine. And then fast forward to I started a skincare company, and I raised capital, and over a 10 year period, went through different distribution channels eventually found a global distribution partner and made an exit in that process. Now, those of us that have gone through different pivots and iterations in our journey understand that each phase of our journey, we learn new skills about ourselves, new skills about how we operate. And in 2020, after I sold the company, and I essentially retired from clinical care at that time. I took a sabbatical. I took a step back, and I thought there were some very, very hard moments in the journey, in the pivots, in the shifts from, you know, I swung from big professions, right, from practicing clinical medicine to entrepreneurship, leadership, management and everything in between. When I reflected back about some of the dark times, the hard times, the significant burnout, the significant physical and mental challenges that were almost debilitating, those very dark times that people don’t talk about, where your mental health is suffering, finances might be suffering. The business might not be going as expected. Whether you’re the owner or a leader, your department might be underperforming or what have you and, you know, I really reflected on those times about, you know, how did I navigate that and how could I help other people? Because there are things the mistakes I made, certainly, and things that I did, that I navigated well to then come out now this point in life, you know, a certain stage of life where I have two homes. I have, you know, financial freedom and. Have built a life of what I consider fulfillment with a lot of contribution, and it’s really my mission to pay it forward. So I believe that it’s in the decisions that you make when you pivot, whether you’re a corporate leader, whether you are a business owner, whether you are leading a team, leading yourself. I believe it is the critical moments of decision and how you handle your emotional intelligence in those critical moments and pivots that set you up for success, no matter how big your failures are along the way. So that’s what I do now. I help people, both one on one, in group environments and teams, navigate these big pivots and understand your emotional intelligence around making big changes in your business, in your life that are impacted by extrinsic forces and intrinsic forces

Maria Ross 05:42

so good. I mean, there’s so many things in there, right, that we could talk about, but just this idea, you know, obviously, since 2020, and some of the seismic shifts, like people have been talking about pivot and pivoting so much, and then we’re also just living through cataclysmic transformation, whether it’s AI, whether it’s workforce and workplace culture, whether it’s the changing leadership paradigm, we are in this moment of change, and not that we never are, are not in those moments of change. But to your point, this is something actually I’m talking a lot about, in terms of empathy as a catalyst for thriving through change, yes, and understanding that it’s the people component, it’s the change management component, that actually gets us through those moments. It’s not, for example, AI is not just a technology issue or challenge. It’s a people challenge, right? And there’s so much there’s so much emotion, there’s so much fear, there’s so much excitement that is wrapped up in that that we can’t compartmentalize these changes. The commonality is that they all impact us as human beings. Number one, our capacity to absorb the change. Number two, our reactions to the change, our psychological and our emotional reactions to the change. So this is going to be such a rich conversation. I love it. So before we kind of go into the like, really drilling down into this decisiveness aspect and making those how and what we can think about in those moments where we have to make tough decisions, you have this model of the four pillars of holistic leadership that I think is relevant to kind of setting the table for that conversation. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Kasey D’Amato 07:22

Yes. So I’m to me, the four pillars of becoming a holistic leader is looking at yourself and then understanding your industry, your team. So basically, the four pillars are understanding business as a whole. You’re the industry that you’re in. How does it work? It’s a living, breathing thing, right? There is something going on with your industry. There is changes with the industry. What’s happening in the marketplace? Are you paying attention to everything from the financial side of things, if you’re in a public company or whatnot, or just industry changes? Do you understand the business acumen of what you’re doing? That is pillar number one. Pillar number two is your self leadership. Are you developing that mindset, muscle, that resiliency, that you can overcome the challenges, whether they are extrinsic coming from outside forces, which is regulatory, economy and industry. Those three things are your external in a professional setting. How are you navigating those from a self leadership standpoint? So that’s pillar number two. Pillar number three is your team leadership. How is your communication developing? How is your systems and processes? How are you elevating others around you, whether it is in the workplace or at home? How are you leading the people that are in your ecosystem, in your stratosphere, day to day? How are you leading them in a way that is impactful and is empowering for them. And the fourth one is industry leadership. How are you establishing yourself as a thought leader? How are you making yourself irreplaceable? How are you finding your place in your professional journey, in your industry and becoming known? And so you don’t need to become famous by any means, and this could be something very much internal. But how are you finding your place in your industry, that you are uniquely different, special, and you have this unique skill set of being you as part of your leadership, your core leadership, and understanding your true identity as it relates to your industry well?

Maria Ross 09:16

And this is so important, right? It’s really, it always seems to come back to this idea that I talk about, which is getting your own house in order before you can effectively lead and impact change. Yes, in other people, in your organization, in the world, in your community, right? It’s making sure that we have this awareness and that we’re taking stock of what we bring to the table, what our strengths are, where we might need some upskilling, all of those areas. And I imagine the reason I wanted you to talk about that first was because I imagine that that’s creating the foundation as well for decisions. Don’t live in a vacuum. That’s it so. And if you’re making decisions and you are scattered, you are on. Moored. I guess you could say yes, you’re not going to make the most effective decisions. So talk to us about your approach to making those pivots. Do you classify pivots in different ways? Do you classify decisions in different ways?

Kasey D’Amato 10:15

Yes, definitely. So the first thing when it comes to assessing Is it time for a change. Right Decisions come because we all have to change and adapt. Whether it’s a season of life for ourselves, whether it’s a season in our industry, change is happening around us. We can’t stop it. And so we navigate the change exactly we navigate the change. And to your point, how do we be empathetic and understand human emotions related to change? And so the first step I look at is an assessment between the extrinsic change and the intrinsic change. So extra meaning those big three, industry economy and like regulatory things like that. If we’re thinking about professional what’s happening outside of our control that we don’t have a whole lot of control over, then intrinsic what’s happening within us or in our very nuclear, small setting. So what about us as a person, or maybe our intimate relationships in the home, you know, environment, things like that. Because if we are disrupted, or we’re disrupted with our life partner, or something like that, that’s going to carry over into what we’re doing. So the first thing I look at is what’s changing, and I would create like a matrix in the external world, what’s happening that we don’t have too much control over, a little bit, but not a lot, in regulatory and economy and industry and then internally? What is changing about us? Are we going through a season of life? Are we becoming, you know, something new happening? Kids are going to college, or, you know, we have some impact on our finances? Is there something happening internally or within our personal, very intimate, personal relationships. Can then from

Maria Ross 11:44

can you look at internally, also from a team perspective? Yes, not just yourself, but yeah, what’s going on within your company, within the with correct? What’s going on for each of your team members?

Kasey D’Amato 11:57

Right? Correct. So usually when I’m doing a workshop, I draw like a bull’s eye, so it’s the self in the middle, and then it goes out right from each layer of people that we’re in contact with. So definitely, team in the environment, 100% can be sort of that, like intrinsic. That’s the people that we’re around all the time, because we have a lot more control over our intrinsic, our self, our team, our relationships at home, right? The people that we’re contact, in contact with all the time, we have control over how we want to show up, which then will influence how others perform in that space. And so the extrinsic world is out here, and it’s changing, and it’s doing all the things that it’s that’s going to do. And then we have to take control over adapting, and we have more control than we realize. And so when we’re facing these, you know, the way I look at it is there’s three outcomes to every decision. You are either feeling torn or you’re feeling stressed, or there’s some emotion, there’s some negative emotion that you’re feeling, and if that is happening, that means that it’s time to face a decision. And there’s only three outcomes of every decision. One is you choose. You intentionally choose to accept status quo, and you choose. I’m going to accept it. I’m going to stop allowing myself to feel negatively about this, because I chose this, this path, and I prefer it over any other path, and so I’m not going to be annoyed, frustrated, stressed, whatever. I’m going to choose to reframe the narrative and look at this in a different way, and accept status quo by changing my mindset and things like that. Then there’s all sorts of tools, I’m sure you have as well to do those sort of things. The step two is I’m going to find a solution that’s a win win for the other people that are in my intrinsic world. So there is a solution to this current situation, this current challenge, that is a that will have a positive outcome on my team, on the business, and on myself simultaneously. The challenge is to find that solution, to not be stuck in the problem and the negative emotion, to switch that to being solution focused in a way that is going to benefit everybody. And when you can solve that, that’s when businesses take off, and that’s when you know fulfillment. That’s when you get ready to top places to work, like all those things. And then the third door is You’re done. You’re burning it down, like Game Over. Peace out. I’m shutting this thing down. I’m exiting this I’m quitting, I’m out. That’s it. There’s the door and, you know, there’s dust on my heels, and I’m running for it, and I’m not looking back. And so when people are feeling the negative emotional state, whether it is, you know, stress, burnout, frustration, you fill in the blank, right? You know, I would say there’s three options here. We’re either going to use the tools to accept it. We’re going to use tools to find the Win, win outcome, or we’re going to choose, like I am emotionally done. There is no tool in the world. I’m out and that’s it. There’s three outcomes, right?

Maria Ross 14:53

So on those first two, when you say you accept it, but then you’re parsing out the second one is actually to. Adapt to it.

Kasey D’Amato 15:01

Yeah. The second one is different, yeah. The second nothing changes except your mindset around it, status quo. The second one is, there’s actual real changes, the whether it’s your operations, whether it’s your communication, whether it is, you know, other elements of the team, whether it’s products or services you’re offering. Like, there’s actually tangible change like the we’re going to sit down, we’re going to restrategize this, we’re going to shake up the snow globe, and things are going to look different.

Maria Ross 15:27

We’re going to embrace it better. We’re going to embrace it.

Kasey D’Amato 15:30

The first one is nothing changes except your mind.

Maria Ross 15:33

Can you give us an anecdote, even if it’s anonymous, with a client that you’ve worked with, and what their specific scenario was, and how kind of approaching it from this perspective, what that resulted in?

Kasey D’Amato 15:45

Yes, I’ll give a couple examples, one from sort of a employee leadership standpoint. And this comes up a lot with, like, compensation negotiations, things like that, people that feel like they’ve hit a glass ceiling. And so this is a very common tool. We use this in the medical consulting business quite often, and there’s a negotiation happening here, and this person is, you know, at the top, and they feel like there isn’t any more room for compensation. So they either a accept that, and they accept that they’re probably not going to grow that way. They’re going to have to think about investing in things outside of their current w2 role, right? And do some other things outside, because it’s not going to be here. Or they get innovative with the facility they’re working at. And they think about, Okay, what if we launched a new division? What if we started doing research studies? What if we expanded in this certain way, or did a satellite location, or something like that? And the third option, when it’s the exit, would be, you know, what the personalities here? Maybe it’s the owner or what have you like that the environment is a bit toxic that I’m not sure it is worth the conversation on the expansion, even though there could be a lucrative outcome here. There’s other elements where, you know what I’m done with this situation, yeah, and so that’s a common one that could come up with, with someone who’s negotiating on more like leadership and growth side. A lot of times, I work with people who are serial entrepreneurs. They have multiple businesses, or they may be working in a very high powered w2 and they have a business they’re growing on the side. This is another common one. And so we have this decision about, okay, what are we going to do here? Because at some point we’re going to have to make a hard decision on, you know, are we going to keep growing this business on the side, and you’re going to hire a CEO, and you’re going to hire a leadership team, and you’re going to keep working as a w2 or you’re going to make a change and shift what you’re doing and take that risk. And so again, we’re looking at the doors we’re looking at, are we going to accept status quo? If there’s too much pressure on your time, you’re going to have to, you know, hire some people, right? That would be door two, find a solution. That’s a win, win. And door three would be like, I’m going to exit one of them. One of them

Maria Ross 17:53

is done. Yeah, well, and we talk a lot on the show and in my work around the fact that we’re looking at decision making and a little bit of a different lens in terms of making decisions as a company or as a leader for your that impact your team, right? It could be, it could be a positive decision, like we’re rolling out this new strategy, it’s great. It could be layoffs, right? It could be lots of different decisions, and we talk a lot about the role of empathy in synthesizing multiple points of view, yes, and being able to do that swiftly, yes, so that you can actually make the decision and not kick the can down the road. Yes. So for you, what’s your approach to helping leaders who might struggle with that? Right? It’s because sometimes it’s easy, quote, unquote, easier. Yeah, if I am decisive, I just want to make the decision myself, and I want to be able to communicate that to other people and have them accept it, right? But that’s not always reality, like we talked about. There’s there’s emotions that happen. So how do you help leaders understand that other points of view can be additive to the decision making process, and also how to balance it without like there’s so many, so much input coming at me now, I’m paralyzed to make a decision because I’m trying to chase an elusive decision that makes everybody happy. Yeah, no such decision exists, right? So what are some of the tools or strategies you use to help leaders do that dance between synthesizing and being open to other ideas, but then knowing when they’ve collected enough to

Kasey D’Amato 19:28

make a call. Yep, I call that the decision threshold. And so the decision threshold, in my perspective, is the balance of your head, your heart and your gut. So you’re collecting information that’s your head. You’re collecting the data around this decision this decision, getting ready to launch something, or you’re getting ready for layoffs, right? So you’re collecting the data. What do we know, from a numbers perspective, business, cash flow? What do we know? Like, let’s get all the objects, just the facts from everybody, just the facts. Let’s get it all on a whiteboard, on a spreadsheet. Let’s get all the objectives. Of facts. Okay, so that’s process number one. Process number two is the heart is the emotional piece of this, which is, what are we holding on to that might not be serving us anymore in this decision? So what are we holding on to? Because there’s an emotional connection, whether it’s loyalty to the team, if you’re thinking about layoffs, things like that, there’s human emotions there, or is there something else about a product or service that we’re particularly emotionally connected to, because a lot of work went in to build it, but it’s maybe not the right piece we, you know, so that the heart part of it is, what are we holding on to that may not be serving us when we’re looking at the head part, right? And so. And then, you know, it’s not always the answer is not always in the numbers. So that’s the tricky part, because the human emotion, the emotion does have some influence over the numbers as well. So these are sort of independent quadrants. And then that gut reaction is, you know, the numbers say this, the emotions say this. But my gut reaction is the opposite, and I can’t explain why, right? And so then we, you know, kind of put all these things together, and we’re looking at the numbers, the heart, the emotions, what are we holding on to that it’s time to let go of and that gut feeling. And then really do some process where you sit down and you really think, okay, if I’m making decision based on one of these things, that’s not good. We need to be making a decision based on at least two out of the three. Need to be in an alignment if we’re leaning on only numbers, but the emotions and the gut check are saying something else. We might have some regret. We might have some recourse at the end of this, some damage control on the other side of this, right? So two of those three must be in alignment, and the third one has to be, you know, able to adapt and see the other way. So you know, to your point where you have to get the information somehow, some way at the beginning, but then at some point, you have to make that final call, and you have to be able to balance the head, the heart and the gut, and be able to understand, okay, how do we align these in a way that’s going to allow us to feel ready and confident in this final decision?

Maria Ross 22:09

Oh, I love this well, and it’s also the way you’ve laid this out, makes it very apparent why you need to have multiple voices at the table. Yes, because you might not see everything correct. You might not. There might be things you don’t know, because maybe you’re the Senior VP, but you don’t know what’s actually going on on the ground or with customers. So you have to be open to getting from your people. Like, look, I know I don’t have, I only have one angle on all of this. It might be the highest angle, yes, but I don’t see the details. So I need to be open, and I need to create an environment where my team can come to me and say, I don’t think you’ve thought about this. Yeah, I don’t think you know about that, and that helps them not only avoid risks, but uncover opportunities, right? Definitely. So if you’re going at it thinking that the decision is x, but you actually get input from people, and you realize, no, the decision is not that. It’s actually why that’s right, that’s right, right? So how do you help leaders make that leap of feeling like they’re the ones that have to have all the answers to being open to saying, of course, there’s things I don’t know, because I only have one vantage point,

Kasey D’Amato 23:18

1,000% and I think that’s why I mean, I love the fact that more and more people are doing workshops, the ones that you host, the ones that I host, right? And they’re being more open minded to seeing this. Because you need the collective leadership team to come together to workshop this out. Essentially, you have to have multiple voices looking at the data. You have to have multiple voices talking about, what’s the emotional Why do we feel so connected to the thing? Yeah, what is the emotion around it? You have to have multiple it cannot be you in a vacuum making this decision. You know, I suppose in a perfect world are not a perfect world. In the alternate world, it could be only you making that decision, but there will be negative outcomes to that, right, right?

Maria Ross 24:00

Yeah, right. Well, research shows us that diversity of thought makes for better business decisions, right? And it’s, it’s reminding me, and I’m going to put a link for my listeners to a past episode I did a few years ago with a entrepreneur named Alana Ben Ari, and she has a product called the empathy toy. I think I can’t remember what the name of her company is, but it’ll be in the link to the episode, and it’s this toy that they use in workshops where one everyone in the group knows they see a picture of what this is supposed to look like when it’s constructed, and then one person or group is given the pieces, okay, and they have to rely on the other people to figure out we did this virtually, because it was during the pandemic, but she also does them live. And we had to someone, had to get instructions from everybody else on what, how to put it together. Okay, what we didn’t know is that we were all looking at a different side of it. Okay, so you might see a purple square and a green. Triangle in your view. But the other person is, like, there’s no purple square, right? What? I don’t even that’s an extra piece. I don’t even know why you have that, right? Yeah. So it just brought the point home. And then we had to figure out how to communicate that, yeah. So where we landed was we basically, you know, after trying to say, Well, I see this. I see this. That was just confusing her more, right? So what we did was we said, Okay, pick a piece and tell us what it is. And she would pick up a piece, and someone would go, I see that piece in my picture. It is connected to this yellow thing. And someone would go, I have the yellow I can see the yellow thing, right? It’s now connected to this purple thing. It was just so fascinating and so simple. Yes, to understand the power of perspective of lived experience, in that it doesn’t matter what level you are in the organization, it doesn’t matter how much education you’ve had, it just depends on your unique vantage point. That’s it in making those decisions, and I think it probably still holds true, you know, I know you help individuals with pivot points and decisions, not just teams, you know, get that perspective from other people that might have a vantage point about that person. Yes, that’s maybe a perception gap for that person. So how do you encourage them to be okay with gathering feedback and be in a place, from an emotional intelligence standpoint, where they don’t take that feedback defensively

Kasey D’Amato 26:30

as as criticism? That takes a lot of work with leaders. So I work a lot with the core leader, either founder or CEO and their executive team, which is great because most of the people I work with, the founder or the CEO, is open to the feedback. Now, it’s not always easy, and a lot of times, you know, they’ll receive some feedback, and you know, it sits a little harder than is comfortable for them, but at the end of the day, you know, even if they resist, they hear it, and we’ll start to make changes. And so I think communication is probably the biggest roadblock, is that the feedback oftentimes from the team is that they won’t always feel like that founder or the CEO is hearing them, yes, hearing what the executive team or the leadership team is sharing and sharing with ideas, or sharing what’s going on, or sharing feedback, right, you know, from the numbers or from the emotions. And so I think it’s really the communication of that top leader, yeah, being open to receiving in not just criticism, just ideas in general, and being 100% with that. And I think as soon as they open up and they see, oh, wait a minute, if I open up to the brainstorm idea, I can also be open to the criticism on your suggestions. I should say, Yeah. On the way that they operate, yeah. And as soon as they see that, and they see the small shift and the pivot and the morale improve in their team, and now next thing you know, the bottom line improves, right? Well, now they’ve been positively rewarded. Now it’s Pavlov’s dog. We’ve given them the treat Exactly. Now they want more. And now they’re like, let’s do this again.

Maria Ross 28:05

Let’s so do you have any strategies that you’ve used with leaders to help them get over that hump?

Kasey D’Amato 28:10

You know, everybody’s different because everybody’s personality, style is different, and I think it’s very the situation is different from a founder and someone who started the business from the infancy to a corporate leader, right? Who’s hired into a role. So there’s different emotions around from the founder standpoint versus a CEO standpoint, or executive leader that comes in and it’s one of their jobs in their career, and they take it very serious, but it’s different than the founder. So I think it’s a person by person approach, and the first steps that I look at is I look at them as a human and I look at what are they doing with their personal relationships outside of work. I look at what they’re doing with their hobbies. The very first thing I ask my clients is how they’re feeling, not that they’re happy or sad, but from an energy state. I want to know if they’re energized today or if they’re feeling heavy. And then I you know, I wanted to see how well rounded their life is. The more well rounded they are outside of business, the more the faster they will be open minded to their team, the more the workaholic they are, the harder shell crack that they have to to crack.

Maria Ross 29:14

Well, they’re putting everything in that identity, in that situation, and that’s why, you know, pillar number two is self care, because you’ve got to build up that capacity. You’ve got to replenish that tank, yeah, so that it’s in a place where I can take this in, I can absorb it without defensiveness. I can I can understand that it’s just information. It doesn’t impact my identity, it doesn’t impact my self worth. It’s not a criticism. It’s just information.

Kasey D’Amato 29:41

That’s it. That’s it. There’s a question I ask. I call it the three who theory. So if you have three who’s surrounding you, I know that that person will move fast and will get significant. The change will happen quickly and relatively easily for the three who’s is, is this particular leader? Do they. Have a collection of mentors and advisors, people with different skill sets that they lean on for different things. Do they have a collection of kind of peers and colleagues that are different than advisors? Advisors are people that have significantly more experience in a certain area of business or life, and it could be anywhere from faith advisors to business to life coaches, do therapy, any of those things, right? And the the middle tier of who’s is really their peers and colleagues. Are they in networking groups? Are they surrounded? And so they’re hearing other ideas from colleagues. They’re hearing, oh, I met, you know, Sally, and she’s in a similar role in a different business, doing this, and Joe’s doing this, and they’re hearing other peers, and they’re being a little more open minded to what others are doing. Yeah. Do they have the right support team underneath them? Do have they brought on the right people in the right places? And are they utilizing those team members in the right way, right people that build the right three levels of who’s become unstoppable, really?

Maria Ross 30:59

Yeah, yeah. And that’s what, you know, it’s so, I mean, I love doing my workshops for teams, but you know my two hour workshop is not going to solve all your leadership issues, because what happens in those moments where the scenarios come up and you need the reinforcement and you need the practice and you need the sanity check and the role playing ability, right? So building those coaching circles in for my clients, or even for like senior executives outside of their organization, the power of that community. I have studied hundreds of successful, empathetic and effective leaders through my research, through my podcast. That’s how the empathy dilemma book was built one of the pillars of self care was about, do you have a peer group, an advisory group, whether it’s ad hoc, do you have because to a T, all of those leaders that I interviewed, that I was deconstructing the recipe from had something like that. They were part of a mastermind. They were part of a coaching circle. They had a growth mindset. Yep. And it was like you said, I love the way you said that you’re able to accelerate faster,

Kasey D’Amato 32:06

so much faster, so much faster. You You know, when you have those three you’ve got your peer circle, just like, you know, your programs, you’ve got the right mentors and coaches. You really, truly, there is no problem that’s going to come up, because, let’s face it, all the problems that come up, all the challenges. It’s a mindset issue. So when you can get your mind to overcome the challenge, then the actions you know follow, yeah, and so yeah, when you have those groups surrounding you, the right people, right? You overcome those. You barely stay in that, that point, yeah, time you know, more than a few moments or a day, but it’s quick. You move past that very, very fast,

Maria Ross 32:45

yeah, well, and those moments don’t all come up within the nice confines of a two hour workshop, correct? You know? And that’s the challenge with a lot of learning and development curriculums, or professional development curriculums, is that they’re one hit wonders, right? Like I’m checking the box, and we did all this for our people, and then we never revisit with them again. That’s all right on these particular topics, to help them. I mean, that would be like, just like this. The example I love to give is my son, when he was like, seven or eight, took like, two taekwondo classes, yeah. And yet, when people would ask him, like, even a year or two later, he would say, Oh, I know taekwondo. I took a class, right? But I was like, No, you’re not practicing it exactly like I love the confidence, babe. But you know, it’s you’ve got to continually be in an environment and provide that environment for your employees where it’s constant growth, it’s constant it’s and giving them the support for when they try it and they stumble. That’s right, right? Critical piece, that is the critical like, maybe they’re not facing the major decision when you come in and do the workshop, but if they’re working with you as an ongoing coach, that’s right, maybe the major decisions are down the road, and that’s where they’re really going to need to lean on you and lean on a support team

Kasey D’Amato 33:57

to come together. That’s right. I meet with sometimes after a workshop. It will be either monthly meeting or will be quarterly, depending on who I’m meeting with. Yeah, going through that head, heart, gut, every time we’re looking at data, we’re looking at their project. We’re working on, what are we celebrating for KPIs and all the nerdy number stuff? Yeah. And then the next question is, how we’re feeling about this, how are we feeling about the team? Are we feeling about the project? How are we feeling at the program? How are we feeling about what’s the emotional like? First, when we look at the objective data, we celebrate the highs. We’re going to troubleshoot, you know what it was challenging from objective then we’re going to talk about, are we feeling energized about this, or is there something that’s feeling heavy, in which case let’s address that. Yeah, by the way, right, yeah.

Maria Ross 34:36

I love it. I love it. So kind of, as we wrap up, what’s your final piece of advice for people that are in transition, in a pivot and feeling paralyzed by that strategic decision making process.

Kasey D’Amato 34:50

Yes, the first is to accept it. The first is to accept I am in a decision making process, and then to say, How long do I want to stay? In this place. I call it the two minute rule. So you know, when I was a young, young child, apparently had a small tantrum. I barely remember this, and went to my parents and my cousins and all my family were kids were playing in the other room, and instead of my parents saying to me, you’re going to have a timeout, you’re misbehaving all the things they said, everybody else is having a good time, and you are in this state of mind where you’re cranky. How long do you want to be cranky having a tantrum before you want to have fun? And I said two minutes. So now I use the two minute rule as an adult. I use it over time. We joke about it in my family, yeah, because how long do you want to stay in the indecision? How long do you want to torture yourself? And so to me, it’s the first to say I’m in a state of indecision. How long do I want to be here? Is it two minutes? Is it one week? Is it one quarter? Put it on your calendar and say I am choosing to decide or get people, resources, help, support from mentors and coaches to make this decision, because the first is to accept you’re in the state, and the second is to acknowledge, how long do you want to be in the state of indecision, because nothing is moving forward while you’re staying in this moment of indecision. So you put it on the calendar. Is it one more day for you? Is it one week? Is it two minutes? What is it? Put on your calendar, and then if you feel still stuck that you commit to getting coaches and mentors and community to get you through it.

Maria Ross 36:26

I love that I talked to my teams, my attendees, about putting a deadline on your thoughts, exactly, which is similar. It’s the whole like, No, literally, put it in your calendar. Yeah, that’s right, and communicate that openly to wherever you need to get the input from, like, Hey, I’ve put on my calendar that Friday. I’m making this decision, so if you’ve got any input for me, yep, come see me, email me, call me. Let’s make a meeting. But I’m making the decision on Friday, so speak now and for or forever. Hold your peace. Kind of a situation, right?

Kasey D’Amato 36:58

That’s it. That’s it. Put the timeline on it. Yep. Two Minute Rule.

Maria Ross 37:01

I love it. Kasey, thank you so much for all these great insights and nuggets today. Such a rich conversation. I will have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that might be exercising while we’re talking, can you give them one place on the air that they can contact you?

Kasey D’Amato 37:17

Yes. Kasey D’Amato, which is k, A, S, E, y, D, A, M, A, T, o, so it’s Kasey D’Amato dot com, same on LinkedIn or Instagram. So shoot me a DM anywhere I’m in the process of writing a book. Probably when this comes out, my book will be out. So awesome. Share it at that time. So yeah, connect with me. Would love to share and bounce around ideas.

Maria Ross 37:39

I love it. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks Maria and thank you everyone for coming to another episode of the empathy edge. 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 the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Rebecca Geshuri: When Good Moms Feel Bad and Why Supporting Them is a Leadership Imperative

What if the problem isn’t that moms are failing—but that we’ve built systems that quietly ask them to do the impossible and then blame them when they struggle?

My guest today, Rebecca Geshuri, sits at the intersection of motherhood, mental health, and compassion in a way that feels deeply needed right now. We talk about why so many moms feel like they’re failing even when they’re doing everything they possibly can. We unpack the crushing mental load, the lack of structural support, and how quickly shame spirals take hold when moms feel they’re “not good enough.”

This is a conversation about empathy, support, and the quiet strength of caregiving—and why taking better care of moms in the workplace and beyond ultimately makes all of us stronger.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why having healthy and supported mothers is key in our organizations and society.
Lessons businesses and organizations can learn from mothers.
How to stop assuming and do more noticing and learning about the mothers in your organization.

“Don’t count moms out. They’re working their tails off, trying to be everything to everybody, to care for everyone. They have parts of themselves that are planning things and organizing things, and seeing things that don’t exist yet. Moms are visionaries and strategists.” — Rebecca Geshuri

Episode References:

Book: When Good Moms Feel Bad: An Empowering Guide for Transforming Guilt, Anxiety, and Anger into Compassion, Confidence, and Connectedness by Jessica Tomich Sorci and Rebecca Geshuri
Maternal Mental Health Hotline: 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262)
Second Street Collective: secondstreetcollective.org

About Rebecca Geshuri, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Co-Author, When Good Moms Feel Bad:

Rebecca Geshuri, M.A., PMH-C, is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She holds certifications in Internal Family Systems, Perinatal Mental Health, and Brainspotting. Rebecca is the co-author of When Good Moms Feel Bad: An Empowering Guide for Transforming Guilt, Anxiety, and Anger into Compassion, Confidence, and Connectedness.

In addition to seeing moms, their partners, and their babies in her private practice in Campbell, CA, Rebecca teaches workshops to therapists, physicians, doulas, and yoga practitioners. Rebecca is the Founder of Second Street Collective, which provides psychotherapy and support to moms and their families throughout California. She has presented at the IFS Institute and Postpartum Support International conferences and has been featured on several prominent podcasts. Rebecca’s work is grounded in the profound and extraordinary experience of being a mom to three daughters.

Connect with Rebecca:

Rebecca Geshuri LMFT: https://rebeccageshurilmft.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-geshuri/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccageshurimft

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebeccageshurilmft

Connect with Maria:

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

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

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

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Rebecca Geshuri 03:36

Thank you so much for having me, Maria. It’s just really a wonderful opportunity, and I appreciate it very much

Maria Ross 03:42

well, and it’s been delightful to get to know you over all of our pre recording calls and your work. So we heard your great bio before we dig in and learn more about your book. When good moms feel bad, can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you even got into this work? What’s your passion for it?

Rebecca Geshuri 03:58

Oh, gosh, well, my passion. I mean, I mean, I always knew I wanted to be a therapist when I was, like, 18 years old, but I did not actually go to school yet for that, until I had three kids and everybody always, there were a lot of people that said to me, what are you crazy? You’ve got three little kids. My youngest at the time, when I really started thinking about it was about 15 months old, and but I rolled over in bed one day and I said to my husband, it’s time I gotta go back to school. And the reason for that is that I knew that moms needed more support, and so I was really driven to the work because of motherhood. You know, I trained to be a prenatal yoga teacher before I became a therapist. And I thought, Oh, well, I’ll do that. But what I realized is that what I really loved about it wasn’t teaching the yoga poses, the asanas, it was we would have a. 45 minute discussion about motherhood, yeah, what it felt like to be pregnant or postpartum, and you know how it felt to go back to work, and what your issues with your partner, right? And so, like, all of those things were really what I wanted to dig into, yeah, that was kind of the catapult into becoming a therapist and going back to school. Well, weren’t you in corporate? I was I worked in corporate for about seven years before I became a mom, and then, you know, I had my first daughter, and I went back to work earnestly. I really thought that I wanted to work, uh huh, but I realized that it was too difficult. You know, financially, child care was an issue, and I was really pulled in two different directions. I really wanted to be with my daughter. It took a long time to get pregnant and to, you know, have her, and so I just wanted to be with her all the time, and I didn’t want to have to split my attention. So I did end up staying home for about 10 years with my kids, and I loved every minute of it. Well, I shouldn’t say that I didn’t love every minute. I was gonna say, Yeah, let’s be real. I did not. I did not. There were lots of things I didn’t love about it, but overall, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do that, right? So yeah,

Maria Ross 06:27

and I love that, because that’s it’s, you know, to there’s a lot of narratives that are out there that are not helping women right now, where folks are saying all women feel that way, no, and not all women feel that way, but it’s about what’s right for you, and what’s right for your family, and what lights you up to be the best version of yourself that you can be. For your kids, right? And for you, it was, I want to be present with them, and that’s great for other women, it’s I need to feel fulfilled outside the home, and that’s great. So I love that. You know, there are places and spaces there need to be more where women can have that flexibility, because it’s only beneficial to our society and to our families to give it’s not accommodating women’s whims, as I’ve heard it described negatively before. I know it’s just about For some women, it is the right fit. For other women, it’s not. And the more that we as a society and as a workplace culture accommodate that, but you know, then you hear horror stories about some bosses who just assume a woman’s not going to come back, or she’s not going to travel anymore. Or, you know, we got to stop making those assumptions, right?

Rebecca Geshuri 07:31

Yeah, yeah, of course. And we have to be having an honest conversation about it too, because, like you said, it is different for every person you know? I mean, I have had countless moms in my office who cannot wait to go back to work, because it’s the one thing that makes them feel like they’re, you know, whole, right? They feel competent, they feel capable, they feel appreciated, they feel smart, right? And so I think it’s important for them to have that be true. And also, there are moms who couldn’t imagine doing it right. And then there are plenty of people who can’t afford not to go back to work, right? Are we caring for those? Those people right our workplaces so that they don’t feel overlooked and abandoned. Honestly, yeah, yeah,

Maria Ross 08:26

lawyers, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we mentioned the name of your new book is when good moms feel bad and empowering guide for transforming guilt, anxiety and anger into compassion, confidence and connectedness. So you in your practice, like you said, you work with a lot of moms, so give us a sneak peek behind the scenes of like, why moms feel like they’re failing. Why is there all this angst and guilt? What’s causing it?

Rebecca Geshuri 08:50

Yeah, there’s so well, there are several factors, right? Yeah, there is sort of the society at large, right? That there are lots and lots of messages that moms are getting about how they should be, how they should look, how they should act, how they should parent, and there’s not really a good playbook for any of that. And so we are internalizing those messages, and they turn into what we would call perfectionist parts, right, right parts that are really critical of how you are showing up in the world. And then, of course, there’s also family of origin stuff, right? That you know, how you were raised, what your childhood was like, what the messages you got from your own parents, or, you know, and even if your parents were the most loving, the most attentive, whatever your makeup is, sometimes we perceive things in ways that that you know, make us feel bad, and so yeah, they those are two major reasons why moms feel like they’re failing.

Maria Ross 10:00

Know, right at the time, right? It’s funny. I always think there’s sort of, like, these three audiences that are the most detrimentally affected by social media. Number one is teenagers, yes. Number two is moms. And number three, I feel like, is young men getting great, really horrific messages on social media. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, the struggle is real, like I’m, you know, I’m a mom, and it’s that constant battle of, you know, every moment of your day is taken up with a thought of, Am I doing enough? Am I being enough? Am I setting the right habits? Am I setting the right traditions, you know? And getting to the point where your kids get old enough, and at least for me to be really vulnerable, you feel like, Oh my gosh. I feel like, I wish I could start over, because I feel like I already screwed everything up. Oh gosh, I wish I could, like, it’s like an etch, a sketch, right? Wait, shake it really. I didn’t do all the habits I said I was going to do, and I didn’t do all the traditions I said I was going to do. And now this, you know, so I it’s crazy. It’s just crazy. So why do you believe that having healthy moms. You wrote this book to help us have healthier moms and to understand moms a little better. So anyone, even if you’re not a mom, read the book, because you’ll understand the moms in your life, the wives, the partners, all of that. Why is having healthy moms so important to society and even like how we run our workplaces, what’s the benefit to us of making sure that our moms are healthy and feel supported

Rebecca Geshuri 11:27

parenting, mothering. And when I say mothering in this context, I’m not just talking about a cisgender female mom, right? I’m talking about like, the act of mothering, the act of caregiving, when we are doing that from what we would call a self led place, like a heart centered place, a place with compassion and curiosity and connectedness. When we’re doing that, when we’re leading from those places, we’re actually creating really good energy. It might sound Woo, woo, right, but we are. There’s a ripple effect, right? When we treat somebody with compassion and curiosity and kindness, there is a ripple effect in their system. And so it’s really important for us to have that across the board, whether it’s you know, parenting your child or in as a leader, treating our employees with that same kind of compassion and curiosity and kindness that honestly, right? It’s like the golden rule, right? What you would want for yourself, right? And if you can imagine that kind of rippling out into the world and right, imagine what the world would be like, right? It was more like that. That’s my hope. So by writing this book, The hope is, is that my mom’s helping to untangle their complicated feelings and become a little bit more calm, a little bit more grounded in themselves. Then in return, they’re more present and more more curious, more open for their kids, for their kids to have their experience, whatever that experience might be, right? So just a very simple little example. I had a client I was working with for a really long time, and she said to me once, I was so proud of myself because my kid had their usual meltdown on the way to school, but I didn’t melt down also, yeah, I was able to stay calm. I was able to stay present with my child, and that, in turn, calmed her down, right? So, I mean, it’s not rocket science, right? No, but it’s having some awareness of what your inner landscape is. And if we don’t have awareness, we can’t change anything so, right?

Maria Ross 14:03

Well, and I also look at it so much more simplistically than that, whereas you were raising tiny humans, yeah, and if we’re not supporting moms, whether we have kids or not, that impacts us, because those are humans that become adults in the world we all live in. They become our neighbors, our teachers, our political leaders, like it’s in all of our best interests to make sure that kids are being brought up in healthy environments. And that starts with making sure moms are supported and healthy. It’s for me, it’s inextricably linked. And I don’t know if that’s just because I’m a woman and I’m a mom, but I’m like, How can you not get it? How can you not get that you, as a single childless person, still have a vested interest in how moms are supported and how children are raised, and to ensure that moms have everything they need to raise the most healthy, well adjusted adults that are going to be your co workers, they’re going to be your leaders. Teachers, right? They’re going to be your pastors and your nurses and your doctors and your lawyers and your partners and your partners, right? So it’s just really interesting that some people don’t make that connection. Of like, Well, I’m not a parent, so I don’t need to worry about this. It’s like, yeah, you kind of do. Yeah, you’re gonna live in the world with other people.

Rebecca Geshuri 15:19

You do, you really do, right? So tell me a little

Maria Ross 15:22

bit about I know you have an opinion about what businesses can learn from moms. We have lots of professional leaders who listen to our show. What can we learn from them that we’re missing?

Rebecca Geshuri 15:34

Oh, gosh, so much. It’s so funny, because when I first went back, let’s see, so I was working in a high tech company many years ago, and my role was to manage the reception desk, and I needed to hire somebody. And my boss at the time a man, and I will always be so grateful to him for this. Actually, we had a bunch of resumes in front of us, and there was one person who had not been in the workforce for about 20 years because she was raising four kids, and she had chosen, you know, not to work outside the home. She was staying home with her kids. And I remember saying to him, and I was, you know, I don’t know, 23 at the time or something. I said, Well, she doesn’t have any experience. And he looked at me, and he said, Actually, she has a ton of experience. And of course, I wasn’t a mom yet either, right? You didn’t get it? Yeah, no, I didn’t get it yet. But I will always remember that we hired her, not only was she the best employee, I think we ever had, she just kept moving up the ranks, moving up the ranks, moving up the ranks, and was just an amazing person, but an amazing employee. So her skills, staying at home with her kids, raising her kids, all of those skills that she learned in that period of her life, right, translated into the role that she was chosen for at work. And that was a huge life lesson for me. A, to be open minded and curious, and B, to, you know, be able to see the forest through the trees in a way. And, you know, don’t count moms out. They are working their tails off, trying to be everything to everybody, to care for everyone. They have parts of themselves that are planning things and organizing things, and, you know, seeing things that don’t exist yet. But yeah, they can see

Maria Ross 17:41

going down the horizon. Yeah, exactly the pitfalls and the opportunities.

Rebecca Geshuri 17:45

Yeah, strategists, right. Moms are visionaries and strategists well

Maria Ross 17:50

and adaptable ones, because no one, no two days are ever the same. So if you want someone who’s adaptable, who can think on their feet, who can multitask, who can communicate with different constituents, who can negotiate well, amen. I mean, I’m not saying every mom is great at that, but like for the most part, those are the skills you and you do end up developing as a mom,

Rebecca Geshuri 18:14

yes, being flexible and being able to pivot, right? Yes, and those are things that leaders really need in their employees, in their senior staff, right? They need to be able to pivot. So, yeah, hire a mom.

Maria Ross 18:31

That’s the net net. We’re trying the net net. Yeah, I love that. So tell us about your modality. You work with moms, and also this can actually help leaders in a modality called internal family systems. So can you tell us how that helps keep us in relationship with each other, instead of being detached and also just defensive and activated all the time? I know it stems from your work with moms, but you definitely have a an angle to this of like, how this kind of thinking and approach can benefit leaders as well, because it’s sort of any human who’s in charge of other humans, right? Yes, moms are leaders. They’re leaders, of course, they’re leaders of their families. So share that with us.

Rebecca Geshuri 19:16

What’s that all about? Yeah, so the concept of internal family systems. And this, this modality of therapy was created by Richard Schwartz, and his philosophy is that we are all made up of many different parts of ourselves. So for example, one part of me really was excited to come on this podcast with you and have this conversation, and then maybe there was another part of me that was a little nervous or like, oh gosh, you know, what’s she going to ask me? What am I going to say? How? Right? All of those parts actually have good intentions, and they’re necessary in your system. So we’re talking about the internal system. What’s going on inside of the. You. And so do you want me to explain a little bit more about

Maria Ross 20:04

what those parts are? Yeah? Sure, just, just give us a little bit of a deep dive, yeah,

Rebecca Geshuri 20:08

so briefly. So there are three different kinds of parts. So there are manager parts, and those parts are proactive. They are the ones that are planning things for you, or organizing things for you, or making sure that you stay out of pain by being proactive, okay? And then there are firefighter parts which are reactive, right? And their name firefighter is, you know, very apropos, right? They just take out a hose and they douse whatever is in the way. If you’re feeling pain inside, they’re just going to come and douse it. And you know, examples of that might be scrolling on your phone for four hours, or having a few drinks or watching TV. My firefighter can be ice cream, because I love ice cream.

Maria Ross 21:00

Sometimes it’s a firefighter necessary. Let’s be real. No, just

Rebecca Geshuri 21:04

Well, that’s important too, right? Sometimes it’s not really like a firefighter. It’s not a right, ice necessarily, right? But, and then those parts are really trying to protect you from feeling pain, and those parts that feel pain, or what we call exiles, those are often sort of little kid like parts that are inside that hold beliefs like, I’m bad or I don’t matter. You know the shame, essentially, right? They’re holding the shame. And so the concept is that we have to get to know those parts of us. So we’re building a relationship inside ourselves with a strong, grounded what Dick Schwartz would call capital S self. In our book, we call it the inner mom, because with moms, it’s really easy for them to relate to the fact that you know they’re mothering other people. And so you can turn that energy back inside you know how to Mother your your child. Can we turn that energy back to you? Right? And so it’s like your inner leader. So that’s the one that you really want, kind of running things, as opposed to leading from your angry part, which might have a knee jerk reaction that you know, screams at your employee that they did a crappy job on their project, right? So by having that relationship inside, you can notice, again, I said earlier, you can’t change anything if you don’t have awareness. And the way to do that is to turn back inside yourself. And ifs calls that a U turn with a u dash t, u r n, which I just think is really cute, so that you can bring some awareness inside yourself. Notice, oh, I’m feeling that bubbling in my stomach right now, when, you know my employee is saying X, Y, Z to me, but I don’t want to lash out at them. So can I turn back inside myself and notice, what is it that I need right now? Because there’s always some need that isn’t being met, right?

Maria Ross 23:17

Yeah. I mean, so much of this is also wrapped up in, you know, our triggers, and, like you were saying earlier, our childhood and the patterns we learned from when we were younger. And we bring all of that into the workplace as well, right? Like I bring my, you know, perfectionist tendencies and my, you know, people praising me because I got straight A’s and the disappointment that I experienced when I got my first b I brought that into the workplace with me, when I started when I started leading and I started performing. And people would always say, like, oh, wow, you’re just, you’re such a go getter. You’re so you know, you’re and I’m like, because I have to be right, yeah. So yeah, bring all that in with you. And I mean, that’s why self awareness and self care are the first two pillars of my five pillar model of being both an empathetic and effective leader. And you and I talked prior to recording that so much of that is relevant to motherhood and parenthood. Yeah, because it those are also the same five pillars that will help a mom gain better balance over, how do I balance nurturing and being empathetic with my child, with holding boundaries and right, you know, clarifying expectations and setting guardrails, and all the things you need to do when you’re raising a human so I love that you’re talking about this, because this is such a, you know, this is obviously a Professional modality of how to look at your self awareness and dig deep that I have never had access to. So I really, I really appreciate you sharing that with us. How do you think we can help leaders can help moms better in the workplace? So we’ve got lots of leaders here, some of them are moms. Some of. Are dads, right, but likely they’re leading someone who is a mom, and what are some things you want them to know about those moms in the workplace, and what, how can we create more empathy for them to have, for those moms to understand what they’re going through, and what would be the best course of action to support them?

Rebecca Geshuri 25:19

Well, I was reading your book last night too, which, by the way, thank you, great. Yeah, you’re welcome.

Maria Ross 25:25

I did not pay her for that. No, not at all.

Rebecca Geshuri 25:29

No, I wanted to know, like, you know, how are you thinking about this too, obviously. And I was really grateful that you said in there that people are bringing their stuff into work, you can’t avoid that. It just is the truth. Yeah, we are whole people, and we can’t just split off parts of ourselves and leave them behind when we go to work. So I think it’s really important to, again, lead with curiosity for on the outside, but also on the inside. Right, we need to be curious about what’s happening for us inside. But when you are encountering a mom, let’s just say, for example, a mom’s coming back from maternity leave, you know that can be a very scary experience for her, and she likely is going to feel pressure to perform and to perform well, and, you know, and I’m not saying she shouldn’t perform, right? She has a job to do, and you’re paying her for that job and everything, but just know that that might be really difficult. She might have a three month old baby at home that is, you know, nursing primarily, and so she’s having to pump at work for milk. You know, there’s just, like, a lot of factors that I think people need to be aware of, even if you never actually have a conversation with the person because you feel uncomfortable or it’s inappropriate. I want people to have awareness. I do want people to be having conversations and be honest about things, but, you know, sometimes it’s too vulnerable, so I’m good on that. So does that make sense?

Maria Ross 27:11

It totally makes sense. And I think that that’s the thing, that you don’t have to have an answer. You just have to be knowing that this might be what this person is going through, but also balancing that to your point with also, don’t make assumptions, right? So even if it’s just, hey, I know today might be difficult for you. It might not, but it might be really difficult for you. Let me know what you need. What can we do for you? Put it proactively out there. Even if they’re like, I don’t know yet. I’m good, right? They might not know that they’re going to start crying after lunch or, you know, whatever, but, but also being able to put those operational things in place to accommodate moms. To your point, does she have to pump don’t make her go into a disgusting bathroom stall? Like, do you have something within your organization that’s like a pump room? Or can she store it in the company refrigerator. Yeah, be thinking about these things ahead of time, yeah, so that you know that that’s the support. And again, the worst thing you can do is assume, assume all moms are on that same journey. So that’s why just ask,

Rebecca Geshuri 28:14

and also know what your resources are inside your company and even outside your company would be helpful, right? There is a maternal, maternal mental health hotline that we can put the number in your show notes if you want. Yes, absolutely. But, you know, but within your company, do you have an EAP program if you notice that your your mom employee, seems a little off, you know, based on where they were before. Yeah, don’t. Don’t ignore that. Don’t shame her, and don’t make her feel uncomfortable. Let’s be really clear about that. But you know, if you’ve got resources that are available, then please share them so that she can get the help she needs.

Maria Ross 28:56

Yeah, know the resources, and it’s also a great opportunity to as as they go through their journey of being a mom in your workplace, check in on what ideas they have for how can we improve the experience for moms so we hire more people that are great at strategizing and multitasking and being flexible, right? And just like you would change chair heights for people of different heights, and you would, you know, put in ergonomic desks, find out from the moms, what would be helpful to have in the workplace, or that the company can offer to make their work life easier, so that they can be more productive, more innovative, more engaged, because that’s the goal, right? It’s not just about accommodation for accommodation sake. Like we’re trying to help create the most productive and innovative workplace we can, and we do that by asking people what they need to make that happen,

Rebecca Geshuri 29:55

and when people feel appreciated and seen and understood. Should they are much more likely to do the things that you want them to do. Yeah, they’re going to be more productive if they feel cared for.

Maria Ross 30:10

Yeah, absolutely. And do you have any different advice for colleagues? So you know, I’m not the manager. I can’t put programs in place, but, but how do you think colleagues can better support moms in the workplace?

Rebecca Geshuri 30:24

Again, I think it really boils down to curiosity. You know, are you interested in what your colleague is experiencing? You know, I know that people don’t necessarily want to be friends with everybody that they work with, right? Let’s be honest about that too, but, but again, I think it boils down to people being appreciated and understood, and you’re not going to feel that way if the person you know walks by you with their eyes down and you know doesn’t say hi to you, because, oh my gosh, I don’t know what to say to a new mom right after I’m back from maternity leave.

Maria Ross 31:04

You know that I love that? That’s what you say. I’m glad you’re back, right? I’m glad you’re back. I don’t know what to say right now. What? Yeah, what lunch Do you what was it like for you?

Rebecca Geshuri 31:13

Though, that’s right, exactly. Or, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, right, there are moms who are launching their kids off into adulthood, into college, right? And, I mean, I’ve experienced that twice now, and it is rough, so you know, possibly they’re going through something as well, or maybe there’s a mom who’s got a kid with special needs and she’s having a really hard time. So I just think there’s so many, so many things to be curious about, and we’re human beings in relationship with each other. Yeah, you know, I’m a therapist. I’m all about relationships, yeah, oh,

Maria Ross 31:56

I love it. So I want to get into some goodies from your book. So my my mom professionals listening out there, what are, what are some of the ways, what have some of the biggest takeaways from your book that you can give us a little sneak peek here?

Rebecca Geshuri 32:11

Well, I think the biggest one, truly, is that, quote, unquote, good mothering is really about having a good relationship with yourself, and so take the time the opportunity to understand yourself a little bit better. That’s really what this book is about. It’s about helping moms untangle their complicated feelings and helping them understand how that came to be for them in a very accessible, gentle, non shaming way. We don’t want to perpetuate more shame in the world. There’s just too much of it. So we want to acknowledge that becoming a mom comes with a lot of complications. And, you know, sometimes it’s hard to become a mom, just at all, but also, as you’re parenting it, your kids are going to throw things at you that you never expected them to throw at you. And sometimes it’s like looking in a mirror, and it’s activating. And so, you know, really getting to understand how that affects you is important work, not just for you, but, like we said earlier, for your kids, ultimately,

Maria Ross 33:36

and everyone around you too. So yes, so I have not had a chance yet to pick up the book. I can’t wait to get my hot little hands on it. But for all of our listeners, can you share what’s one of your favorite stories or golden nuggets or concepts from the book?

Rebecca Geshuri 33:52

Yeah, well, one thing that I keep coming back to over and over again is this concept of the good mom, bad mom loop. So moms are constantly kind of thrown into this loop, which can be really uncomfortable, and it’s, you know, set off essentially, because we have these polarized parts inside of us, right? So, like we were saying earlier, there is one part that feels one way and another part that feels another way, and they tend to be a little bit at war with each other. So in the book, we call that team kid parts, or those are, quote, unquote, your good mom parts, right? Because those are your parts that are solely focused on the kids. And then there’s the team. What about mom with a question mark and an exclamation point and italicized, right? Yes, wait, but what about me? I matter too, right? And so when those part when Mom has like a part that’s wanting something, but it’s in common. Conflict with what she wants for her kids, or what her kids need, or maybe even what society is telling her she should be feeling. She kind of gets thrown into this loop, and it can be really uncomfortable and send her into shame if she reaches that breaking point, right? However, there is a way to not reach the breaking point, and that’s what I was talking about earlier, about turning back inside yourself and noticing, okay, what is it actually that I need right now? And can I give that to myself, right? Sometimes it’s just as simple as I need a snack. I didn’t eat lunch, yeah, right, and so I can’t think clearly when I haven’t eaten. But I just fed my kid. And now, you know, now I’m just nibbling on the rest of their leftover

Maria Ross 35:58

eating the mac and cheese over the trash as you’re about to compost it. Yeah, hypothetically, I’ve never done it.

Rebecca Geshuri 36:05

Yeah? No, me neither. I didn’t eat the rest of my daughter’s toast this morning for breakfast at all. Of course not. Yeah. But you know, so, so there is a need, there’s some, some need that needs to be met there, and also sometimes it’s just that there’s some grief present, that there is something that that has changed, that maybe you’ve lost, and the identity shift into motherhood. And you know, since we’re talking to people who are working to write the identity from a person who works and is not a parent into the person who works and is a parent. That’s a huge shift, and there may feel like there are some losses that come with that. Yeah. So, you know, bringing that grief out into the the light, instead of having it in the dark. When it’s in the dark, it turns into shame and and that’s, again, not, not what we want.

Maria Ross 37:07

Well, speaking of that, you know something that I describe, which is not in your clinical terminology, but I call it the emotional whiplash of motherhood, especially when your kids get to an older point. My son’s 11, and it’s the like, them meeting you and wanting you and being nice to you, and then 10 minutes later they hate you. You’re awful. You’re the worst. Like, just having to deal with a a creature that, yes, is putting you through that mentally, yes, it’s a lot like, it’s like, okay, I 15 minutes ago, I felt great about our relationship, and now I’m like, Oh, my God, I’m the worst mother in the world. I’ve scarred him for life. He’s going to be a sociopath. Oh, like I can predict, you know, you go down this rabbit hole, right?

Rebecca Geshuri 37:52

I call that the spiral of doom. It is the

Maria Ross 37:55

spiral of doom. And just like I, you know, I am fortunate enough that I get to work for myself. I’ve worked from home since 2008 but I used to be in corporate, and I, honestly, I I would be a little bit like, I need a minute if that was, you know, if I had to go into a workplace with other people all the time and navigate those relationships and that, those politics and all of those things. So having not that, not that women and moms can’t, but having that grace for them. Of like, this is a little peek into what’s going on in their lives right now. Like, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, maybe, if I’m a little snitty in a meeting, that might be why, right? And that’s why I’m a huge proponent of groups that can bring that joy into their team, you know, bring that ability to know each other as people do the level set at the beginning of a meeting to say, how was your weekend? How was your day? So maybe the moms can say, you might want to stand back a little bit today, because here’s what I’m going through with my kid, right? And then nobody’s making assumptions about why people are reacting badly to good ideas, or they’re getting snitty, or they’re getting, you know, short tempered. If we can just be honest with our teams that we’re working with every day of just like, here’s my check in for today. I’m actually going to need a wide berth today,

Rebecca Geshuri 39:09

right, right? And also, then respect the wide birth, and then

Maria Ross 39:13

respect it, right? But also, but also, be able to say, I had, oh my god, I had such a great weekend with my kid. We did this. We, like, connected. Like, wow, okay, that person has a little bit more capacity. So maybe we can, we can count on that person a little bit more today, right? But if we don’t do those check ins with each other as human beings in the workplace and get out of our like, we just need to discuss business at the meeting. You know? Well, I think you make a

Rebecca Geshuri 39:37

good point, because one another little thing that I think is really important is slowing down. Yes, because we are, you know, I’m going to make a wide, broad generalization here, because I live in Silicon Valley. Oh, yeah, but, you know, we are, go, go, go, produce, produce, innovate, innovate. You know, keep it moving at all costs. Mm. Hmm, and that’s not actually how humans function, right? And so when we’re in relationship with each other, we need to actually slow down so that we can see and hear and feel what the other person is experiencing, or how they’re showing up. And sometimes, you know, it doesn’t mean that you’ve got to take 15 minutes, but just a breath to slow down a little bit and notice, oh, what’s what is actually going on here? Does this person need something, yeah, that they’re not getting right now? Yeah.

Maria Ross 40:38

I mean, I see that all the time in both my parenting and sometimes in work relationships where I so want to jump to the solution. Yeah, because, of course, because it alleviates my stress. I don’t like not knowing. I don’t like being in limbo. So I want to jump right to the solution, the conclusion, the main point. And you know that means sometimes I exhibit behaviors, like talking over people making assumptions about what they’re about to say, you know? And I I see it more starkly with my kid. And luckily, I have a kid. I have raised a kid to use his voice, and he uses it, you know, he’s like, Mom, stop interrupting me, right? Like, okay, you’re totally right. You’re totally right. But I was so stressed because I didn’t have capacity, that I just I was trying to solve your problem quickly so I could get it off my to do list,

Rebecca Geshuri 41:27

well, and Bravo to you for well, for no, for one time well, but for saying to him, you’re right, for acknowledging The fact that he noticed it, yeah, and not getting yourself into a shame spiral about it, right? Saying, Oh gosh, you’re right. You You just noticed what I was doing. And right when that happened, we got out of connection with each other, right? When you’re in the midst of a part like that, like a part that wants to talk over somebody you’re not actually in connection with that person. And, you know, we can’t really be into a relationship with people if we’re not in connection. So I think it’s such a good example that you you

Maria Ross 42:16

shared, yeah, and you know, we do. We see that kind of behavior in the workplace as well, right? So it’s like, what is going on for you? And it’s funny, because now that I know more about this work, I’ve studied it. I’ve researched it for years. I talked to brilliant people like you. I’ve gone through therapy, you know, I’ve looked back at at, you know, very psychologically abusive bosses that I had in the past, and I didn’t have the capacity. I was in my, like, late 20s, early 30s. I didn’t have the capacity to be sure enough about myself, to be like, Hmm, what’s going on for you, right? You know I was, I was just trying to protect myself and survive, right? And so it’s one of those things where the more you learn, the more you you look back on situations, and you’re like, who? Here’s what I could have brought to that right to make that a better workplace relationship. Again, we didn’t have to be best friends. But you know if, if, and hopefully, we’re raising a generation of kids again, this is where it benefits everybody, right? We’re raising a generation of kids who will hopefully call those things out and be a little bit more emotionally intelligent and be able to see things and see patterns that way as soon as their brains get fully formed, right?

Rebecca Geshuri 43:29

Yes, yes, well, that is the benefit of being an adult, right? Yeah, out of that adolescent period, right? Completely have the same wherewithal to think these things through your frontal lobe is more developed, I should

Maria Ross 43:43

say, for sure, for sure. And there’s, there’s always work to do, right? It doesn’t matter whether you’re five or 50 or 105 there’s always more work to do.

Rebecca Geshuri 43:51

100,000% could not agree with you more. So.

Maria Ross 43:56

So the book, when good moms feel bad, available all the places, yes, all the places. I love it. I love it. We are going to have all your links in the show notes to your work. And also, I just want to mention a side, a side hustle of yours, not really just another project of yours called the Second Street collective. Can you quickly tell us about that, in addition to your your own personal

Rebecca Geshuri 44:18

practice, sure, Second Street Collective is a group of private practice therapists, and we’re all working in community here. We’re located in Campbell, California, so we have an a physical office, but all of our therapists are able to, you know, do telehealth throughout California as well. That’s amazing. And, you know, everyone kind of runs the gamut. There are lots of people who specialize in motherhood in particular, but also we have therapists who specialize in families and in couples and dads and kids and babies and like the whole the whole nine yards,

Maria Ross 44:54

all of it, all of it. Yeah, I mean, I mean, get a therapist. It’s very worthwhile.

Rebecca Geshuri 44:59

Um. And you know, wherever you need,

Maria Ross 45:02

wherever you need, bias, yes, yeah, clearly biased, and you mentioned it earlier. But we’re also going to put the maternal mental health hotline number in the show notes for anyone who wants to have that available for their employees as a resource. So, Rebecca, you’re delightful. I need to talk more mom, talk with you at some point in the future. Thank you for coming on the show and like I said, we’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s on the go, where’s the one best place they can connect with you, just

Rebecca Geshuri 45:30

my website. Rebecca Geshuri, lmft.com,

Maria Ross 45:34

great, and we will have that link in the show notes as well. Thank you for your time and your insights today.

Rebecca Geshuri 45:39

Thank you so much, Maria. This was delightful, and I can’t wait till we get to talk again.

Maria Ross 45:43 And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

February Hot Take: Leading Humans in a Hurting World

In today’s timely hot take episode in this heavy world, Maria discusses the importance of empathy in leadership during challenging times, emphasizing that emotional connection at work is crucial. She highlights how unaddressed employee emotions lead to disengagement and reduced performance, and offers 3 practical ways for leaders to connect with their employees, regardless of how high their discomfort with emotion.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why emotional connection at work isn’t a “nice-to-have”.
Why avoiding emotion is actually costing you more.
Three practical ways to connect emotionally with your people, even if you’re deeply uncomfortable.

“Empathy isn’t about fixing emotions; it is about acknowledging reality. People don’t need you to fix everything; they need to know they’re not invisible.” — Maria Ross

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

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 friends. Welcome back to the empathy edge. I want to start today a little differently, because let’s be honest, the world feels heavy right now, and I know I’ve talked about that before, but people are carrying grief and fear and rage and exhaustion, uncertainty, sometimes all at once. And even if your employees aren’t saying it out loud, it’s showing up in their energy, their patience, their focus, their capacity. And here’s the tension. I know many of you are sitting with as leaders. I get that the world is on fire, but I still have targets to hit. I still have a business to run. I need to keep my job. I’m not a therapist. You’re right. And also, this is exactly why empathy matters more, not less, right? Now, today, I want to talk about why emotional connection at work isn’t a nice to have in moments like this, I want to share with you why avoiding it is actually costing you more. And then I want to share with you three very practical ways to connect emotionally with your people, even if you’re deeply uncomfortable with what you might call the squishy stuff, there’s not going to be any incense, there’s no group hugs, there’s no feelings free for all, just real leadership for real humans in a really hard moment. Now here’s the truth that we don’t say loud enough, your employees don’t stop being human when they log into Slack. I know you’ve heard me say, they don’t park their humanity at the office door. They don’t magically shed their anxiety about the world, their families, their safety or their future when they show up to your meeting. So when leaders pretend work is work and everything else should stay outside the door, what people actually hear is what you’re carrying doesn’t matter here, and when people feel unseen, they don’t disengage loudly. They disengage quietly. They stop offering ideas, they stop flagging risks early, and they do the bare minimum to protect themselves emotionally. That’s not a motivation issue. That’s a trust issue, and trust is the currency of performance. Which brings us to the uncomfortable part. Many leaders avoid emotional connection because they fear opening a door they don’t know how to close, or saying the wrong thing or losing authority. But here’s the paradox, when leaders avoid empathy, people don’t feel strongly LED. They feel alone. Empathy isn’t about fixing emotions. It’s about acknowledging reality. You don’t have to have all the answers. You need to show awareness. And that brings me to three ways I’d like to offer you to do this without turning your job into group therapy. So number one, I want you to name the moment without drama or denial. And one of the most grounding things a leader can do right now is simply name what’s true. This can sound like I know there’s a lot happening in the world right now, and it’s affecting people differently. I don’t want to pretend that doesn’t exist. That’s it. You’re not taking a political stance, you’re not inviting debate, you’re signaling awareness. And when leaders don’t acknowledge the moment, people fill in the silence with their own story, usually that leadership doesn’t care or isn’t paying attention. Naming reality builds credibility. Silence erodes it. Number two, ask better questions and then actually pause for the answer. Empathy doesn’t require deep, emotional conversations, it requires better questions and actual listening, so instead of everyone good any issues, try what’s been hardest to focus on lately. Where are you feeling stretched thin right now? What would help. Do your best work this month, and then this is the key pause. Don’t rush to solve, don’t defend, don’t explain away what you’re hearing. Listening is not passive. It’s an act of leadership restraint. People don’t need you to fix everything. They need to know they’re not invisible. Finally, number three, adjust your expectations without lowering standards. Key difference this is where empathy and accountability actually meet. Empathy does not mean lowering the bar. It doesn’t mean letting bad performance slide. It doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations. It means asking, given what people are carrying, are our expectations realistic and are they clearly prioritized? That’s the discussion that needs to happen at the exact level right now, because many teams are overwhelmed, not because they’re incapable, but because everything feels urgent, and they are in trauma mode. They are in fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Empathetic leaders create focus. They clarify what matters most, and they reduce unnecessary friction. That’s not softness, that’s strategic leadership. So let me talk a little bit about the why. What’s at stake if we don’t do this, because if leaders don’t create emotional connection right now, three things will happen. I guarantee it. One, burnout will accelerate. Two, trust will erode quietly. And three, your best people will start looking for the exit, not because they don’t care, but because caring without support is exhausting. Empathy is not about being emotional. It’s about being human, aware other people in the room besides you, and in moments like this, awareness is leadership. If this feels uncomfortable, or if you’re realizing you were never actually taught how to do this as a leader, you’re not broken, you’re not flawed, you’re normal. We don’t teach this to our leaders, and that’s exactly the work that I do with leaders and teams is helping them build emotional intelligence and empathy and understand how to leverage it and wield it in a healthy way that supports performance, clarity and resilience, not chaos, right? Not crying on the floor with your employees. So I want to offer myself as a resource to any of you listening, any of you leaders out there who are like, where do I start with this? Whether it’s through privately coaching with me or doing a workshop or talk with your team, let me help you and your leaders level up their capacity to connect and engage at a human level right now, from wherever they are, whether they lean too much into empathy and need some pullback so they don’t burn out or let performance slide, or whether they’re very pragmatic, analytical leaders who aren’t sure what role emotions play at work. My goal is to bring people to that crucial balance in the center between empathy and accountability, the both and leadership model that you know I love to talk about, and by the way, let me help them enrich their own personal relationships beyond work as well. So I want to leave you with this empathy isn’t about being nice, it’s just about being awake and aware, awake to what your people are carrying, awake to the cost of ignoring it, and awake to the kind of leader that this moment is calling for, because we know Leadership isn’t tested when everything’s going great, when things are easy, right? Anyone can be a leader in that situation, for the most part, true leadership is revealed when things get hard, and this right now is one of those moments take care of you. Take care of your team. Thanks for listening, and as always, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well, be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Michelle Feferman: How Leaders Create Psychological Safety When Employees Are Afraid

I had to get this urgent episode to you sooner rather than later, given the climate of fear in the U.S. in current times.

For many employees right now, work doesn’t feel like a safe place. It feels uncertain, frightening, and deeply personal. In moments like this, how leaders respond matters more than ever.

Michelle Feferman has spent decades helping organizations navigate complex DEI and workplace culture challenges in ways that protect people and strengthen the business.

We talk directly about what leaders can do to support employees in the face of ICE raids and immigration-related fear, how to create real psychological safety at work, and why most DEI efforts are still entirely legal if you’re focused on risk mitigation, clarity, and care.

We also unpack how retention, engagement, and productivity are tightly tied to DEI and empathy work, and the key elements leaders need to think through right now to support their people while capturing the full business benefit.

This is a practical, compassionate conversation for leaders who want to do the right thing without panicking, posturing, or staying silent.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Creating a diverse team that goes beyond old-fashioned quotas.
Key benefits of having a wide pool of differing viewpoints within your organization.
Actions to put in place to keep your employees safe and informed about handling ICE raids that could be used as a template for other crises.
Tips to create an FAQ that matters

“If you can take the time now to get these things in place, the majority of people will relax, to some extent, and feel like they can come to work and just focus on work. People will relax more and be much more productive at work.” — Michelle Feferman

Episode References:

Michelle’s article: It is Imperative to Create Psychological Safety at Work Amidst ICE Raids: https://mfeferman.substack.com/p/12868206_ice-raids-and-psychological-safety
Book: DO DEI Right: Cut Through the Noise and Drive Lasting Results

About Michelle Feferman, Founder and CEO, Equity at Work, Author of Do DEI Right

Michelle is passionate about helping organizations have a profound impact on their employees, businesses, and communities through their diversity, equity, and inclusion work. She is the Founder and CEO of Equity At Work, known for creating innovative, customized solutions for even the most complex DEI and workplace culture challenges. Her clients outperform their peers in revenue and margin growth, productivity, engagement, and retention.

Michelle is the author of Do DEI Right, co-host of the podcast Your DEI Minute, and on the Investment Committee of RevTech Venture Capital. Before this, she spent 25 years working at Accenture, Kurt Salmon, Macy’s Inc., and The Walt Disney Company.

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Equity At Work: https://www.equity-at-work.com

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093183559876

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/equity_at_work

Substack: https://mfeferman.substack.com/

Connect with Maria:

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

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Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:00

Michelle Feferman 02:58

Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here so

Maria Ross 03:01

you and I know each other through a group that we’re in called Samudra that I reference a lot on this show, and you know, very complimentary work. You are a dei expert, the author of do dei right, which recently came out, and the CEO of equity of work at work, which we heard earlier. So tell us a little bit first before we dive into the details, tell us a little bit about how you even got into this work. What’s your story?

Michelle Feferman 03:26

Yeah, I mean, it’s funny when I look back. So I, I started equity at work about eight years ago, and I came out of 25 years in retail, most of that in retail consulting. So like, very different background, very deep in one industry. And if I, when I look back on my career, you know, I went in very wide eyed and assuming that, you know, once you got into the business world, everything would be equal and fair, and if you just worked really hard, you could prove your worth, and you would get promoted, and all the things, yep. And as so many women experienced, that, you know, did not exactly happen, or it happened until a certain point in my career, and then very much stopped happening. And for me, I, you know, I hit my ceiling between from me going from manager to partner, right when I had just had my first baby, and I was up for partner, but got delayed because, then, because I’d had maternity leave. I, you know, took some time off and so then that they didn’t really know what to do with me because I hadn’t, didn’t. Then have three years of consistent metrics or whatever, even though my performance had been great, so angry and not just personally, but because I saw we were losing so many wonderful women because of that, right? So I was determined to then get over the hump before I had my second child, or I knew I would have just have to go like I just didn’t have the patience to start over. You know, that much later on. But once I made it over to partner, and then later became a senior partner, I became determined to completely retool the system that we had in place. I just felt like. It was a disservice to our employees, a disservice to our clients. It didn’t reflect our brand and the values that we said that we really, you know, wanted to live up to, and so I helped start one of the first women’s networks. Gosh, it’s almost 20 years ago now, and we it was before, you know, before zoom and all those things that we have little groups across all the offices, and everyone was kind of nervous, because there were never more than a handful of us in any one office, and the men would make a lot of fun of us. And, you know, make jokes about, oh, there’s so much estrogen in that room, and God, and, you know, but finally, we got really serious about, you know, what is it we’re really trying to push for? And it was really retention of more women and promotion of more women. And I will never forget presenting to our senior leadership team, which I was part of, but I was the only woman on that team, and I was just like, not getting through with them on the language we were using, and the examples everything kind of got chalked up to, like, well, that’s just that one person’s situation. Or, you know, oh, that would never happen again. Or, you know, whatever, yeah, I went and dug up an org chart. HR wouldn’t give it to me, so I just sort of very scrappily cobbled my own together, yeah, and I figured out the male female ratio for each level in our firm, and I created one slide. And, you know, because I’m a good consultant, I had to put it in PowerPoint right? Created a slide that showed, you know, the ratio. So at the consultant level, we were great. We were one to one. At the Senior Consultant, the early manager level, one to one. Super balanced. Senior Manager started to fall off. And then it was like this nose dive cliff, where for every one of me as a partner, there were 14 to 16 men, and there were only two to three female partners at any given time. And it really wasn’t until I had that data in front of this team that they it was like a slap in the face, like, oh my gosh, that’s not who we want to be, right? But they just didn’t see it. Otherwise it was, like, too personal, or, you know, there’s always a story something, and I just saw the power of what that information did, present it that way, as as data, like something you just can’t argue with. And I ended up then using that other places that I worked, where I would sort of naturally get involved in helping more women or people of color, or, you know, any sort of underrepresented community, tried to advance, and ultimately I ended up getting just burned out on retail. I mean, it was wonderful experience, but at the end of the day, we were helping companies sell more pants more profitably, and, yeah, yeah, didn’t really fill my bucket after a while, so I decided to take the leap and start a consulting business focused on dei and really focus on data analytics, built out a whole analytics toolkit to help people do what I did, but even in a more, much more robust way, but just help organizations understand this is part of a business strategy. It’s a core part of running a really well run organization is that you you set everyone up for success, that you bring in. I mean, that’s what all of us should want from our employees, that we can help them get to their full potential, be as productive as possible. A lot of that comes down to fair treatment, and, you know, equal pay and getting biased out of all the systems and so forth. So, yeah, that’s what led me to start equity at work, and I get to bring all of my, you know, transformational change management knowledge with me, and you know how to work with lots of disparate groups, and all those things that I learned through on my retail consulting days. So yeah, it’s been a wonderful experience.

Maria Ross 08:37

Wow, that’s amazing. And, you know, I mentioned that you, you recently came out with the book do Dei, right? And was, is that really just a collection? Is that a is that a framework for people so that they can they can maybe do this for themselves or seek outside help?

Michelle Feferman 08:53

Yeah, absolutely. So when I started the business, I really had a mission to make my knowledge and my team’s knowledge as accessible to people as possible. So whether that be, you know, if you’re a giant organization with tons of budget, we’re thrilled to come in and do a large project with you. If you’re smaller and you need a phone, a friend, we can be a phone a friend, kind of one call, you know, dei experts if you’re having a crisis, right? But there’s still a lot of people where their organization is under resourced, or they just, you know, they’re all part time, kind of volunteers who have a passion for this, but don’t have a ton of budget and resources. So the book was a way to get this knowledge into anyone’s hands who wants that. And the book is built around a dei maturity model that I built that helps. Because what I find is a lot of people say, Oh, you’ve got to have ERGs, and you need, you know, better benefits, and you need these policies, whatever. But nobody explains how to go do that, or right, what order do you go in? Or where are the dependencies? Where are you going to get pushback? How do you deal with that? So I wrote it in a way that would make. It’s super accessible, really practical, easy for anyone to implement, and it’s built around this maturity model that shows, not just what do you do when you’re kind of setting the foundation and then you’re operationalizing it, and then you’re kind of like in, you know, best practice land, but also, what are all the cultural dependencies that you’ve got to have in place for any of this to work, but especially to move from kind of one step in the maturity model to the next into the next. So that’s where things like empathy that you talk about is really important, being an inclusive leader, psychological safety, transparency, you know, lots of kind of core great cultural things that need to be in place that, yeah, you know, we had so many clients. Like, I don’t what is culture, our culture and di different? Do they go together, you know? And it’s like, yeah, there’s a lot of they yes to both questions, you know, right? So we wanted to make sure we help people understand where those two things connect and where to kind of invest their time, right?

Maria Ross 10:55

And we’re going to dig into psychological safety in a minute here, you know, we I’ve done a lot of episodes on the show where we’re talking about the business case for empathy, for inclusion, for dei from your perspective, tell us a little bit about the results that you have seen with your clients, who believe in this, who invest in it, who commit to it. How does it impact? What are the business implications?

Michelle Feferman 11:21

Yeah, I mean, this is one of my favorite parts of this work, is that you do you can actually find ways to put an ROI on the work if you’re really intentional about it. And I think when you can do that, then it’s really hard for any leader to argue that you shouldn’t continue to do the work. So we always lead with that. And to me, the benefits are on one side, from a kind of growth and opportunity perspective, when you have it’s not just the diversity, it’s really making sure that and whatever the diversity looks like. I know most people think about, oh, it’s race, it’s gender, it’s sexual orientation. There’s really so much more totally diversity of experience, of economic, background, education, you know, or do you have a disability? Is it visible or invisible? Do you have a veteran in your family? Are you about I mean, there’s so much that goes into that, but anything that brings in a better way to add creative thinking to great breakup group think, to look at risk, creatively, to look at opportunity more creatively, to represent, you know, your consumer base or your client base, any of that, that all drives, you know, revenue growth, innovation, margin growth. And I will say, I before the long before all the business studies came out about that, we proved that with this women’s group and the initiatives that we did all these years ago at my old firm, where, after investing in changing the systems and getting not only did we get more women promoted and retained, it ended up opening opportunities for really anyone who wasn’t kind of the traditional mold of the past. And through that, we had the highest margin in the history of our firm. We started selling more strategic projects. Our clients stayed with us longer term, and a lot of that was because we were bringing much more diverse solutions to the table for our clients, and our clients who maybe had invested in more of that, because retail is actually pretty decent at that, felt like they were better heard and understood because we, you know, sort of matched up when we when we met in those organizations?

Maria Ross 13:23

Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, for me, it’s the whole thing about bringing people together that see a problem or an opportunity in different ways, so that you don’t miss anything, right? And so sometimes, when I’m asked, why does it matter? And this is, you know, empathy fuels it. You can have all the diversity initiatives you want, but if no one’s being empathetic, you’re really not harnessing that value of it, of exactly trying to get to know someone else’s perspective. But the reason it’s important is not because you’re trying to, you know, dei wash your company, or be right popular, or it’s, it’s really about being smart business. And that’s that’s the amusing thing to me about the recent backlash, because it’s coming from people who either understand and don’t want to admit it, or, quite frankly, are too ignorant to understand that there’s huge business value when you have different experienced and different life experiences and different abilities looking at a problem, because they’re going to see different facets of it. We’re going to be able to point out those risks or those opportunities that some people miss. And if you all think the same way, you’re all going to only see the same thing. And I, I’m kind of a game show junkie, so bear with me on this analogy. But I watch, I’m a huge Jeopardy junkie, but I also watch some of the mind numbing stuff, like family feud and things like that, yep, and the teams where it’s like a team that has to think of answers right to something, I always see this. It’s pick the people that think differently to be on the team, because you’re all going to try. Brought out the same answers, if you all think the same way. But if you have someone who you know Zags when other people Zig, right, yeah, those people are going to come up with answers that you can’t come up with yourself, right? And so you see it play out. You see it you see it play out. I mean, we all can relate. We see it play out in sports, right? Completely. Not everyone on the team has the same talent. In basketball, you’ve got,

Michelle Feferman 15:24

like, yeah, we’re not going to do well actually,

Maria Ross 15:27

for sure, you’ve got rebounders, you’ve got centers, you’ve got forwards, you’ve got the people that are more aggressive, the people that are more adaptive. And we understand that analogy in sports, and for some reason, there’s too many people that don’t understand that analogy in business, right? And think it’s just either, you know, well, we’re just going to hire people that are less qualified. No, no.

Michelle Feferman 15:47

If you’re not giving anyone a pass, that’s not, not what this is about.

Maria Ross 15:50

Exactly, exactly. So tell me where you are in terms of what’s going on with dei and the backlash and the executive orders. Yeah. What’s your take on it? What conversations are you having with clients and what misconceptions are you going to bust for us right now? Okay, because there’s a lot.

Michelle Feferman 16:09

There are a lot. Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, since the executive orders came out last year, I think it for at least six months, it was just constant confusion, fear, chaos. You know, nobody knew what to do. You saw some people like, do an extreme retreat and then pay the price for that. If you think, like, targets are the perfect, perfect example of that. You saw others step up and like, lean in really hard and still do well. So Costco was a great kind of counterbalance to target in that example. And then a lot of companies just sort of in between, trying to figure out, okay, if I just change the name of this, can I does everything go away for me, like, is it still fine? Do we have to pull back completely? You know, we spent a lot of time and are still doing this, like helping people really assess their risk related to the executive orders. And I think the way that those came out, the language, in the orders, and the flurry of activity that followed, I think, was all very intentional to create confusion and fear, and it worked for a good period of time. Now we’re at a point where people are like, Okay, I see this happening everywhere in everything that’s being touched by this administration. And I say this, you know, regardless of your political affiliation, like to me, di is not political This is about like doing right by your people in the workplace, so that your business does well and your people do well. So it doesn’t matter what political party you affiliate with, anything else. It has nothing to do with that. But in the environment we’re in, there’s just sort of chaos, confusion, crazy, kind of everywhere. And so I think what’s happening now is people are realizing that was a tactic, and they’re swinging back to, okay, I’ve got to go back to kind of the basics of I got to figure out what’s right for my business. So based on my brand, my culture, my business model, my customers need, what my customers need? How much do I have to be like in touch with, sort of the end consumer things like that. They’re, I think they’re getting back around to like, we need a strategy for what’s happening now, not just a reaction set of tactics, which is a good thing, because we’re at a point now that research is showing that the demand for this is back at the high that it was in 2020 from employees. I predict the minute the job market starts to loosen up, you’re going to have a lot of people that are saying, my company didn’t stand up during this time, I’m going to go and it’s table stakes. It’s baseline expectation for Gen Zers, a lot of millennials and above. I mean, I mean, I think a lot of women in leadership roles in particular, like, you know, if you didn’t stand by me, there’s during this time I’m going to go lead somewhere else, right? So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. But I do think we’re having a swing back to like, let’s recalibrate for where we need to, know, go, you know, from here on, after surviving the the fear, right? I will say the companies that are very and we work in nonprofit as well, and so a lot of those folks just have been,

Maria Ross 19:08

you know, well, their funding hangs in a balance. Yeah, exactly, yeah. You know, if you’re

Michelle Feferman 19:13

dependent on federal money, it’s a very different story. And if you’re, you know, it’s if you’re, if 1% of your business is federal money, versus 20% it’s a very different equation. So if you’re, you know, 20 or more percent of your business comes from federal money, like you have to keep the lights on. You need to keep people employed, like you’re going to have to pull back on some things, more than companies where they either don’t have that or it’s a very, very small, you know, part of the equation for

Maria Ross 19:38

them, right? Well, in the conversations that I have with some of those folks is many of them, obviously, they’re in that space, so they think it’s ridiculous, yeah, and they’re sort of just keeping their heads down until the storm passes. That’s what they’re hoping, is, how do I still continue to commit to this work and benefit my organization and our stakeholders and our shareholders? Dollars, yes, through this strategy, but stay out of sight. Yeah, not, you know, yeah, and not hiding, but

Michelle Feferman 20:06

you’re right from the right, don’t. You don’t have to go scream it from the rooftops. But I think where, and we’ve certainly had some clients that have gone into, like, major stealth, what they’re calling stealth mode, because it’s just hard to, you know, they feel maybe they’re dependent on state money, or, you know, some other things that they’re like, we just have to be extra careful, right? I think the risk there is if you go too far into stealth. Do your employees not even know that the work’s happening, like the HR knows it’s happening, or other leaders know so they’re, you know, it’s tricky. Every company has to find their own strike the right chord for them. But you know you want to make sure you’re doing enough that people inside

Maria Ross 20:44

still know that you’re committed. Yeah, important? Yeah, I have a question for you, because I’ve heard this from some folks that I’ve been out talking to, which is, perhaps it’s there’s a silver lining to this in that companies are realizing that it can’t be this own separate function and separate initiative. It has to be a pervasive mindset that’s built into the system so that you’re almost you know, someone once told me, my hope, someone in this space said, my hope is that we don’t have heads of dei anymore because we don’t need them. I agree. Do you kind of see it that way too?

Michelle Feferman 21:20

Absolutely, and we really, when we do projects with our clients, we really, the whole focus is like, how do we help you embed this into just the DNA of your company, like, how it normally works, and it’s not labeled di, there isn’t a DI lead. There may be someone kind of on point to just, you know, almost PMO, the whole thing kind of, you know, track everything and make sure nothing goes off the rails. But it really should be a C suite imperative, you know, and each of them to sort of have an area of responsibility related to it, but it just becomes part of how everybody works, right? And then, then you don’t really have to deal with this, all this nonsense about, is this legal or not? Because it just is. You’re not calling it a diversity initiative, right? You just naturally have taken the bias out of all these processes and right? Good business anyway, and

Maria Ross 22:08

that’s legal. It’s legal 200% legal. Legal to be a welcoming culture that where everyone belongs. It’s legal to hire diverse talent and expand your recruiting pool, expand where you know your pipeline, it’s legal. Good, yeah, it’s legal to up level the people in your organization that have maybe been forgotten. And absolutely all of those things are things that dei addresses, but, but those initiatives and that strategy and that mindset, it’s all still legal folks, right?

Michelle Feferman 22:39

It is. It absolutely is, yeah. So in terms of myth busting, yes, it’s, you know, when you and I had to read those orders over and over and over again, because the language is so fuzzy and, uh huh, you know, I don’t know, just very inflammatory, and so it sort of makes you angry, and you think, which I think, again, is purposeful, so that it’s hard to get down to, like, what is this

Maria Ross 23:00

really saying? Well, they’re trying to distract So, yeah, I think that’s the goal. Yeah, yeah,

Michelle Feferman 23:04

but there’s very little that is illegal. You should not have quotas. But I think we’re in an age where hopefully almost nobody had quotas anymore anyway. So you don’t want to hire say, We want three women, two black men, a disabled person and a gay person on my leadership, like that. No, that doesn’t have anything good for them. It’s not good for the company. Like, it’s bad all around yeah. So no quotas, which is fine. You can still have goals of, like, you know, balancing your representation a little bit better. But like, as long as you’re not, like, hiring heads for specific to hit certain numbers, that is fine. ERGs need to be open to allies and other people that are interested, so which we’ve been encouraging people to do anyway, because it, you know, ERGs, you want to have a safe space for people without affinity to connect. But if you go too far, you end up siloing yourself out of the rest of the companies. So you want to have something that’s a little more fluid, right? That’s fine. And, you know, the thing that broke my heart was to get rid of programs that were really focused on uplifting some folks that, you know, just came in more disadvantaged than others. And I, you know, I think the way we’ve helped people get around that is keep the program, maybe expand the criteria a little bit, because there are still other people that need to be lifted up as well. And hopefully this will kind of come back around, and you’re you can still achieve the goals you’re going after, but Right? Maybe expand some of the criteria a

Maria Ross 24:30

little bit, right? I mean, in things like pay equity and transparent compensation strategies, and that’s all still fine. You know, leveling to the market when you need to, like we should be doing that anyway.

Michelle Feferman 24:42

Absolutely, it’s good business. That’s how you retain your employees. Yes, they know that you’re taking good care of them well.

Maria Ross 24:48

And you know, to your point, from earlier, I mean, this is the thing that I’ve studied a lot within the empathy space, and not that I’m a generational expert, but, you know, I did dig up a lot of data around Gen Z and younger millennials. And. And the reason they’re demanding so much about out of the cultures that they’re joining is because things are transparent. Now, right? Yes, when I was a teenager, and, you know, the 80s, when I shopped at a store, I had no idea how they treated their employees. I had no idea how they you know, the ethicalness Is that a word of the ethics of their supply chain. Oh, no, we had no idea know what shenanigans were going on within the organization in terms of how they treated employees, or how they treated customers, or, you know, even, you know, even at that age, sort of what their what their customer policies were, yeah, that’s the difference. Is that we have younger generations that are savvy to this. They know where to look. They’re looking and they’re saying, No, we’re going to call you out, or no, I’m talented, but I’m not going to join

Michelle Feferman 25:51

your organization. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that’s a huge thing, yeah.

Maria Ross 25:56

So let’s talk about psychological safety, because that’s obviously a huge component of creating a culture of inclusion and belonging. Yeah. Again, we’ve had a lot of folks on the show, but what’s your definition of psychological safety through the lens of the work that you do? Yeah.

Michelle Feferman 26:10

I mean, to me, it’s it really goes so I don’t think you can have effective dei work, or whatever you want to work culture, work, inclusion, work, and any work. Out. And you know, when I came across this term, it was like a light bulb went off for me that explained I finally had a term I could use for all the times I just felt like icky in different situations at work, or unprotected, or kind of like vulnerable in the wrong way, or like nobody exposed. Yeah, exposed, or I was being kind of hung out to dry potentially, but I there was no word for it back then. So I love this term, and it really says that if there’s cycle. So what I really love about is psychological safety. Yes, it’s a cultural it can be a cultural kind of mission, but it is very situational. So from meeting to meeting, team to team, obviously, situation, situation, it can vary. And so you’ve always got to figure out, especially as a leader, am I creating a space at this moment where people can ask questions, they can speak up, they can have different ideas. They can approach me about a concern, and they don’t feel like it puts their career at risk, or their job security at risk, or they’re going to be penalized in some way. And so if you can really embrace that, and I think the challenge is to the leader, to really set the tone and role model that it, you can still have healthy competition. You can still have, you know, a lot of the things that people are kind of depending on, you can still have a focus on productivity and great output, and I would argue you get more of that by focusing on this, because people feel like you have their back. I mean, it’s really that simple,

Maria Ross 27:50

and they’re not wasting their time looking over their shoulder and worried about politics. Because I was just having a conversation with someone earlier, it does, and I was having a conversation with someone earlier about what a waste of productivity that is. Oh, completely keep someone in that mindset of, should I or shouldn’t I? Can I or can’t I? Like, Oh, I see this risk, but if I point it out, I’m going to make my boss look stupid. Or, you know, or I have this great idea, but if I throw it out there and it doesn’t work, I might lose my job. Think of all the opportunities and the productivity you’re missing out with people just churning on that in their minds and not staying focused on the work. And that’s where I’m like, this is about this is not about coddling people. This is about not helping them engage their frontal lobe and their executive skills and not put them in fight or flight or freeze or fawn, yes, which I just learned as a fourth one, yes. So yeah, it just makes sense, right? So in that vein of psychological safety, the reason I wanted to talk to you sooner rather than later is you published a fantastic article on LinkedIn that we will link to in the show notes around how to create psychological safety at work, amidst in specifics, the ICE raids that are going on in the United States. Now, we could probably insert any other sort of fear based crisis in here, but you had some great operational and very practical points to make in this article, and that’s why I thought it was it was wonderful because as we spoke before we started recording, so much of the advice out there is just help your people feel safe. Check in with them, yeah, make sure they know you’re available, right?

Michelle Feferman 29:29

Yeah, it’s so loosey goosey. I don’t think anyone knows what to do. And I also think leaders, especially frontline leaders, that are on the ground in these locations where this is happening, you know, if they’re coming into your building, your store, your distribution center, whatever it might be, you know, they’re immediately stuck between, like, am I supposed to be the voice of the company? Am I supposed to be the voice of this building? Am I supposed to be the voice of my employees, my team myself, like it’s sort of this mad scramble, and I think a lot of people just don’t know what to do. So, you know, was. With all the ICE raids, you know? I mean, there’s just, there’s so many things we could talk about related to that, but I think, you know, obviously you’ve got to, you have to be set up to follow the law. You know, you’ve got to be able to coordinate with your local police, but really, you’ve got to make sure that your company policy is outlining all of the things that could potentially happen, so that everyone knows very clearly what the company can do and what the company maybe can’t do, or even thinks where there’s a gray area, just so people know going in and have that well communicated. I think people in these times, you know, I think back to covid. I think back to different, you know, where we’ve had, you know, a massive recession, or, like, economic uncertainty, I mean all kinds of different disasters, like Mega things that happen. And I do think a lot of the temptation is to freeze or be like, I’m not going to deal with that until it’s in my face and I have to figure it out. I think what we’ve learned from all of those is you’ve got the more you can communicate and try to be proactive and just even, sort of even if you create different scenarios and kind of like, practice your response, the better everybody will feel every day dealing with this, because at least you’ve thought it through. You’ve, like, had a moment to think it through. So creating those policies and making them very, very clear, I think, is an important sort of initial first step,

Maria Ross 31:17

yeah, and I think the thinking that, Oh, if I bring this up, I’m going to scare everybody is a moot point, because they’re probably thinking about it, and we’re already Yeah, and I should add, it doesn’t matter if you employ a lot of immigrant workers or people from other countries because US citizens are getting pulled into this as well, or if they suspect someone is on your facility, or in your store, in your office. So everyone needs to be prepared for this. We can’t just be like, Oh, our office is fine because we’re all, you know. We’re all from Kansas, where you know whatever, whatever you want to say. So I loved that you had very specific questions to ask. And so if you wouldn’t mind going through those and saying, These are the things you should put in place or think about. And you know, again, for folks listening, flex this to whatever the next crisis of fear will be for your office or for your The sooner you get out in front of these and actually have these policies and these protocols in place. It’s like a fire drill. Hopefully you never need it, exactly, but don’t ignore it. Yeah.

Michelle Feferman 32:27

So without eternity, I grew up in California, I still remember getting under my desk and holding my head for an earthquake drill, for the earthquake drill. And you know, if the earthquake was really bad, that really wasn’t going to do any good, but it made us all feel like we’d had something to do, you know, and so it just created a sense of calm. So I think this is a very, you know, similar kind of situation. And and I, before I go through the questions, I do want to reiterate, Maria, I mean, you brought up a really good point. This isn’t just about immigrants. Everybody is freaked out. And, you know, what started with? You know, terrible racial profiling has expanded into like, political profiling. And are you just speaking up? Are you just asking questions, like all of those things, people are being, you know, tased, they’re being sprayed in the face. They’re being pulled they’re being hit, they’re being knocked down. I mean, horrible things are happening. So I think the the fear is very widespread at this point, but the questions that some of the questions I started with, because, again, our my focus is, like, I want to tell you how to do these things, not just what you need to do, and kind of help you take it a few steps further, like, connect the dots down to, like, what the employee really needs and how you make that happen. So beyond the communication piece and the policy stuff that I talked about before, you know, making sure you have something like a hotline, whether it be a phone, an email box, whatever it might be for your employees to voice their concerns, I think is really important. The extent to which you can make that confidential would be even better. Because I think a lot of people, again, if they’re not sure about this safety, you know, kind of related to job security, whatever they want, to know that they can at least raise the question without, you know, sort of being identified as the one who asked the question. Right? Have you, you know, figured out, like, legally, what an employee can do and who to reach, who they should reach out to if ice suddenly is on one of your premises. So, you know, I know people have been slamming some of the retailers where ice has gone inside the store. For all we know, those store managers had no idea what they could and couldn’t do, right So, and then all of a sudden, you’ve got ICE agents interacting with your employees, potentially some of your vendors and your customers, so making sure that you know some of this frontline leadership is really informed on what they can and can’t do, and who that you know, who they what’s sort of the chain of command. If they see ice coming, they get, you know, whiff of this coming. Whatever. It might be versus and, and, of course, on the premises. Another thing I think a lot of people are forgetting about is, you know, many EAP programs have

Maria Ross 35:10

actually assistance programs, right?

Michelle Feferman 35:12

Yes, thank you. Have access to some kind of legal counsel, usually for a couple hours. You can get some free or discounted legal advice, making sure that number one is that included, and hopefully it is. But secondly, are those people who can help with citizenship questions with, you know, if I’ve been detained, or my colleagues been detained, or a family member, you know, are they equipped to answer some of those questions? If not, can you get Can you kind of shore that up so that people have some sort of legal representative that they can reach out to at a, you know, affordable cost, and then thinking through, you know, if you’ve got employees who either have to miss work or leave early because they’re in fear of being detained, or just in fear of kind of this situation in general, now that it’s become so unsafe for kind of anyone involved, can they miss work? Will they be penalized for that? What if they can do it? How do they do that? What you know, do they use PTO? Do you have some kind of like emergency days that they can tap into? Can you pull some days so that you’ve got a group of employees that, if they don’t have it, someone else is willing to share. This is a great place. A lot of people feel. A lot of you know they want to help. And so you may have employees that want to donate a couple days off so that others can do that. And then, if you have an employee who was wrongfully detained and missed work and then is released, are they penalized? Do they have a job to come back to do their benefits continue? You know, you have to kind of think down. This is where empathy and compassion and like, you know, really sort of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes really pays off of, like, pretend this happened to me. What are all the questions that I would have exactly, you know, and try to anticipate that and more and create, you know, a Frequently Asked Questions document with answers that are that’s available to everyone. This is an area to totally over communicate in. So if you have a physical location, putting up, you know, information physically around the building is great. Having on a portal, having emails go out, you know, I mean, I’ll just have it come from multiple sources, but also that someone can get to the information without having to ask someone or log into something. I think this is a case again where people just want their privacy, so helping them think through that, I think, is really, really important.

Maria Ross 37:35

I want to say something about FAQs, because I helped my son’s school his old school, several years ago through a crisis that they had, and my first advice I was on the board at the time was, we’ve got to create an FAQ document. And I was like, We don’t care if we have the answers or not. Let’s just document all the questions, all the questions we can think of, all the questions you know, we’re getting from other people yes and start to populate that document. And for the ones where we didn’t have an answer yet, is we’re working on it. We’re trying to find the answer, but being able to sort of brain dump that all of those different questions and just get them out there, even if on the FAQ it says we’re not sure yet, but we’re working on it alleviates some stress for your employees, that it’s at least on your radar, right? So don’t be afraid to put the question there, just because you don’t have an answer for

Michelle Feferman 38:28

it yet, absolutely, and make sure you give a couple points of contact if people want to follow up or they need more information. Having a, you know, generic suggestion box or email, you know, like an email box where people can send questions confidentially. It’s also great, but yeah, and that whole we’re working on it and give a date and time when you’ll get back to people and then really do it right, you know, and again, communicate. We’re continuing to update this, you know, once a week or every day, or whatever the you know, place is,

Maria Ross 38:57

because what it also does for people is, if you disseminate that, and there’s questions on there that you’re not sure of. Maybe there’s someone in your organization that does Yes, and part of the call to action is, if you have knowledge of any of this, please come to us and let us know, and we’ll populate it into the FAQ for other people. Yeah.

Michelle Feferman 39:16

And you know, this isn’t as scary as this time is, and and scary isn’t even the word that captures all the feelings. But just to run with that for a second. You know, people want to help, and they want to come together and support each other and be part of the solution. I mean, it’s been really amazing to see how communities have rallied. People that you would never have expected to be at a protest are coming out, just even everyday, small acts of kindness are huge right now, and so giving a way for your employees to participate in some of this brainstorming and providing solutions would be amazing. I mean, that also is part of psychological safety that they get to contribute to the solution. That they’re just as valued as an hourly worker or a low level manager, whatever it might be as some of the leaders in charge, that also takes the pressure off the leaders to have to figure everything out by themselves, because none of us can anticipate everything that someone’s going to wonder about right now, it’s just would be impossible.

Maria Ross 40:17

So what’s your take on a leader hearing all this, a C suite, a VP, and going, this is a lot. How am I supposed to get work done? It is a lot.

Michelle Feferman 40:26

But you, I mean, unless you’re in a tiny business, which even, you know, I’m in a small business, and we still find ways to leverage all kinds of people and resources people want to help here. And so tap your network, you know, whether it be an internal network, and divvy it up across your team, create a task force, you know? I mean, this is something people are very passionate about. They want to provide solutions. I think you’ve got to really tap into the boots on the ground people that are whether it be, you know. I mean, everyone has different business models, but you’re going to have different perspectives, you know, if you talk to someone who’s in kind of back office operations compared to someone who’s running a distribution center. So you’ve got to really tap into a lot of different voices and perspectives on this one to make sure you’re thinking through you know, but it’s, I think this is one that is much less about, let’s get to perfect to let’s get, let’s get the communication going, right? Make sure people are feeling safe, not just physically safe, but psychologically safe, right? And you can iterate on it as things continue to evolve. You probably have a in house counsel. If not, you got a, you know, external employment attorney that can give you great advice from a legal policy perspective. But then a lot of it’s really down to figure out, like, what are people really need right now, and how can we help them feel safe and cared for?

Maria Ross 41:47

And you know, you are, yes, you are doing all this while you’re still getting work done whatever your business is. But it goes, I think it goes a long way to let your employees see that you’re at least working on it. And it gives them a little bit like, Okay, I know I’ve gotten my briefing. I know this is happening. Maybe I can take a few hours to kind of focus on on what I need to be doing from a work perspective, and it alleviates that whole do they see me? Do they know I’m here? Do they know caring about this? Do they care that I care that I’m upset that I didn’t sleep last night. So we’re not saying, you know, everyone gets a free pass to avoid work, but

Michelle Feferman 42:26

no, and I really think the more you if you can take the time now to get these things in place, everybody will, maybe not everyone. The majority of the people, will relax to some extent, and feel like I can come to work and just focus on my work now, because I know they’re working on this and they’ve got and they’ve got me exactly whereas, if it’s not happening, there’s such a it’s like in the back of your mind all the time, and you’re just constantly distracted. You’re wanting to keep checking the news. You want to check in with other people, like non stop. So this will alleviate a lot of the temptation to do that. People will relax more, be much more productive at work, absolutely. And we’ve seen that. And I will just very quickly share a story of one company we work with. They’re it’s a global, buoyant brand, and they have distribution centers all over the US and and globally. And, you know, I don’t see this is one of my passion points, is investing in di with an hourly workforce, and a lot of people don’t do that because they immediately think, I can’t afford to take them off the floor, to put them through training, and that, do we pay them? What have we have all these shifts and this and that. How do we get everyone covered? Blah, blah, blah. Well, this company figured it out, and it did not take a lot, but we invested in dei work with them, and a lot of it was around building psychological safety and teaching leaders to lead in a non kind of task oriented way, and in more of a people motivation, motivational and care kind of way. And in those buildings, they have, the retention is through the roof, and the productivity is through the roof. And the productivity and the first one we did outpaced every other building in their entire network, the first time that we did it, wow. And it just goes to show that little and it was a little bit of communication, it was a little bit of coaching, of some leaders, a little bit of education, and then activities, and, you know, like engagement, kinds of things around the building and whatever didn’t require tons of time off the floor. Didn’t ask people to come in off shift a whole bunch, like any of that. But the payoff they got from that was tremendous. And so now we’re helping them now with this, you know, the I stuff and sort of, how do we, you know, incorporate that thinking into this? And it’s the same thing. I mean, I see it over and over with a little bit of investment. It just, the payoff is tremendous. So, you know, we talked about revenue and white space and customer centricity and all that beginning. There’s another side to it, which is the retention, getting the turnover down, the engagement, the productivity that comes from this too. And so I think it’s another one with all this, you know, ice, the horrifying ice stuff. If you invest in that psychological safety, like your people stay cared for, they will stay with you when this passes, you know, they will be very loyal to your company. They’ll give it their all. I mean, it really will make a big difference in your business.

Maria Ross 45:13

So true. So true. So I will put a link to this article that has kind of these, I would say, checklist questions, but they’re not really, but I’ll put a link to the article in your show notes, and just thank you for your time and for being willing to jump on a call with me and do this, because I just think this is really powerful information we need to get out there. Your book is called do Dei, right. Your company is called equity at work, and Michelle, we’ll have all your links in the show notes so people can contact you. But for anyone that’s on the go right now, where’s the best place for them to find out more about this work?

Michelle Feferman 45:48

So our website is www, dot equity, dash at dash work.com, we’re also on sub stack, so you can get all of our pot. We have a podcast called do di write. You can get our podcasts, blogs, articles, everything on there. I’m a pretty active poster on there. So you can find us there. If you look up do di rate or Michelle pfefferman, you’ll find us and otherwise, reach out. I’m so happy to talk to anybody who just wants some guidance. You need some brainstorming, anything you can go to the website. There’s a Contact Us button. You can find me on LinkedIn. Just reach out. I’m very happy to help so awesome. You’re free to do so awesome.

Maria Ross 46:25 Thank you so much, Michelle for your time and insights. Really appreciate it, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review or share it with a friend and colleague. And remember, cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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