Most leaders think they’re doing fine. Their teams think otherwise. And that gap – hiding in plain sight across organizations everywhere – is exactly what my guest today has spent his career trying to close. David Grossman is one of America’s foremost authorities on leadership and change communication inside organizations. He’s a six-time author, and his latest book is The Heart Work of Modern Leadership: 6 Differentiators of Exceptional Leaders.
David shares findings from a survey he conducted in partnership with Harris Poll to find out what 2,200 employed Americans thought of their leaders and what they revealed about the dangerous gap between how leaders see themselves and how their teams actually experience them. We get into the three gaps preventing good leaders from becoming exceptional, why the poker face problem is quietly undermining your credibility and connection, and why David pushes back on calling empathy a soft skill. He makes the case that empathy is actually an intelligence system, and we discuss why exceptional leaders blend both heart and head skills, how vulnerability builds trust in ways nothing else can, and that the most important leadership skill might be learning to hear what people aren’t saying out loud.
If you think you’re a pretty good leader, this conversation is going to reveal how you can be an exceptional one.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- The three gaps that good leaders aren’t thinking about but should be.
- The six differentiators of exceptional modern leaders.
- Why David wants to get rid of the term “soft skills” and start talking about the “human skills” necessary to be an exceptional leader.
- How to move past the Poker Face Problem.
- Modifying your leadership style to handle times of uncertainty.
- The advanced listening skills everyone should work on.
“Part of our responsibility as leaders is to help create stability for our folks. We create that stability by being predictable, by leveraging these all-important heart skills as a means to get to results. I want to ensure leaders hear the need for balance between strategic thinking and empathy, or EQ – this is not an either/or proposition.” — David Grossman
About David Grossman, Founder and CEO, Author, The Heart Work of Modern Leadership:
David Grossman is one of America’s foremost authorities on leadership and change communication inside organizations.
An award-winning author, keynote speaker, and trusted executive coach to the C-suite, he also advises academic institutions, offering guidance on curriculum and programs. David is the founder and CEO of The Grossman Group.
A media source for his expert commentary and analysis on employee and leadership issues, David has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Sun Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, the World Economic Forum, Directors & Boards, and CBS MoneyWatch, among many others.
David is a six-time author, and his latest book, The Heart Work of Modern Leadership: 6 Differentiators of Exceptional Leaders, is an Amazon Best Seller in Communication, Leadership & Motivation, Workplace & Culture, and Business Culture.
Connect with David:
The Grossman Group: yourthoughtpartner.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidgrossmanaprabc
Get the book! The Heart Work of Modern Leadership: 6 Differentiators of Exceptional Leaders: www.thegrossmangroup.co/edge
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Most leaders think they’re doing fine. Their teams think otherwise, and that gap hiding in plain sight across organizations everywhere, is exactly what my guest today has spent his career trying to close. David Grossman is one of America’s foremost authorities on leadership and change communication inside organizations. The founder and CEO of the Grossman group, an award winning keynote speaker and a trusted executive coach to the C suite. A former journalist whose curiosity never quit. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes fortune, Fast Company, Newsweek all the places. He’s a six time author, and his latest book, an Amazon bestseller, is the hard work of modern leadership, six differentiators of exceptional leaders today, David shares findings from a survey he conducted in partnership with Harris poll to find out what 2200 employed Americans thought of their leaders and what they revealed about the dangerous gap between how leaders see themselves and how their teams actually experience them, we got into the three gaps preventing good leaders from becoming exceptional. Why the poker face problem is quietly undermining your credibility and connection, and why David pushes back hard and rightly so. On calling empathy a soft skill, he makes the case that empathy is actually an intelligence system, and we discuss why exceptional leaders blend both heart and head skills, how vulnerability builds trust in ways nothing else can, and that the most important leadership skill might be learning to hear what people aren’t saying out loud. If you think you’re a pretty good leader, this conversation is going to reveal how you can be an exceptional one. Take a listen. David Grossman, welcome to the empathy edge podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about leadership and heart centered leadership and leading with humanity, all the things we love to talk about on this show, but most especially your new book, the heart work of modern leadership, which, as you can see, I know those of you listening, can’t I loved so welcome to the show.
David Grossman 02:54
Thank you. I appreciate you having me.
Maria Ross 02:57
So before we get to all the great insights you’re going to share with us about leading with heart and modern leadership. Tell us how you even got into doing this work. What’s your passion for it?
David Grossman 03:08
So I I asked a lot of questions. As a kid, I was that precocious child who wanted to know why and how come. And I’ll always remember a time my dad said to me, David, David, too many questions. And now that I have kids, by the way, I’ve got a 16 year old and a 13 year old, I love that they ask questions, but I’ve realized payback is hell, exactly.
Maria Ross 03:29
Karma.
David Grossman 03:29
Holy, holy, unprepared to answer many of their questions. Yeah, but I love that they’re curious. Asking questions helped me as a journalist early, early in my career, and then the past 30 years, asking questions has helped me help extraordinary leaders move through times of disruption and change, which I think is a great way to describe the world we live in today.
Maria Ross 03:52
I mean, 100% right? And you know you’re I know you know this, and I tell my listeners all the time, Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. So it’s because we, we tend to want to know what another person’s story is, rather than just guess and make assumptions about it. So
David Grossman 04:09
indeed, and you know, it’s so true, there’s too much telling happening from leaders inside organizations, and they would we would all be well served to do much more listening and to get that curiosity gene going, so all the great information that we can gain.
Maria Ross 04:28
Yeah, let’s
David Grossman 04:29
be smarter and better and win more.
Maria Ross 04:32
Yeah, absolutely. All right, so I just want to get there’s so many questions I have for you today, but I first, I want to talk about your research that you did going into this book, you partnered with the Harris Poll to survey more than, I think it was 2200 employed Americans about their leaders and leadership in general, right? What were you trying to find out, and what were you most surprised by?
David Grossman 04:56
So I’ve always been fascinated by the question of what makes great. Leaders great, and I especially wanted to understand at this moment in time, so we went to employees and we said, Tell us everything, the good, bad and the ugly about their leaders. And of course, they did. What we found was employees rated 16% of leaders today as outdated. So working from an old playbook, not surprisingly, on the other end of the spectrum, 30% of leaders were rated exceptional. So the best of the best, those are the leaders we all want to be working for, and that in the middle 54% of leaders were rated good. Now you may think good is good enough, but when we went further, when we asked employees, what does it feel like to work for a good leader, they identified three gaps and three blind spots every leader should know about, every senior leadership team should be thinking about. And I can tell you from my conversations with leaders today, they’re not thinking about these topics.
Maria Ross 06:03
Wow. And what are those gaps? Can you share those with us?
David Grossman 06:06
So three gaps, less than 20% of employees on each of these. So one is, employees don’t feel seen, employees don’t feel heard, and employees don’t feel like they’re reaching their potential. Surprise. Those steps surprised me because I thought I was going to write about a book about bad leaders and how to not be bad, how to be better. But what we found out is the invisible danger today these good leaders inside organizations because they were built for and trained for stable times. And of course, we are not in stable times today
Maria Ross 06:47
well, and that’s, that’s where our work intersects in this idea of the old leadership paradigm is dying, and command and control we used to work, and it has its place, maybe in times of crisis. But that’s like, you know, 5% of the time, right? The rest of the time needs to be spent building trust, building psychological safety, encouraging innovation and creativity, and to your point, all of these, these other aspects of seeing and hearing and valuing people, and that’s the place where so many leaders are, whether it’s a skill gap, whether it’s that they assume they’ll just figure it out. I mean, what do you think from the research and from the work that you do, I doubt any leader sets out to be outdated or even just good. So why do you think that gap exists for leaders?
David Grossman 07:37
So I think you know what’s so interesting, it’s not a talent gap, that’s the good news. It’s a training and awareness gap, and that’s what I hope leaders are going to take away from our time together today. Are a couple of solutions to get at these blind spots that are significant, that no one’s really thinking about or talking about today, and we need to, we need these skills inside organizations today,
Maria Ross 08:07
absolutely. So you know your book, the heart work of modern leadership, is about these six differentiators of exceptional leaders. Without going into too much detail or, you know, too many spoiler alerts, can you just quickly highlight what they are. What are those six differentiators?
David Grossman 08:22
Sure. So interestingly, there are three hard, focused and three head focused after we did all the all of the advanced statistics and research. So the number one differentiator is around gratitude, meaningful gratitude that speaks to not just the work that’s being done, but also to the person doing the work. And that’s one of the solutions. To get at this idea of people not feeling seen, is to help ensure you’re speaking to them as a person and what they value. So leading with gratitude, the second listening and empathizing, which I know is near and dear to your heart as well,
Maria Ross 09:03
absolutely
David Grossman 09:05
fostering an inclusive culture. So when I think about an inclusive culture, I think about this idea of we’re all in this together. Those are the three heart focused for exceptional leaders, and then the three head focused are around communicating with context and calibrating our communications to what employees really need, connecting strategy to employee growth. So that’s all about, and that gets at the third gap around employees not feeling like they’re meeting their potential, talking about not just the strategy and why we’re going there, but the strategy, why we’re going there and how it will benefit you and your development and growth. And then lastly, enabling employees to meet this moment so recognizing these the need for work life balance, and other kinds of needs that leaders can meet to help drive engagement with their firm. Folks, those are the six.
Maria Ross 10:02
I love all of this, and of course, I love that listening and empathy have a place in that model. To your point about gratitude and appreciation. We’ve done a few episodes about the power of gratitude and how it actually catalyzes teams to better performance, but it also, from a mental health standpoint, benefits leaders and any individual to operate from a place of gratitude. There’s been studies done on the physiology that happens within us of practicing gratitude and how it can ground us and how it can alleviate stress and anxiety. I just wanted to mention something really quickly. One of my upcoming guests, Catherine Ducharme, is a leadership coach as well, and she talks about the difference between appreciation and being seen or and gratitude, right? Appreciation is almost like the acknowledgement that you did something for me, like you have to prove something in order for me to appreciate, versus what you’re talking about, which is being seen, just being seen for who you are, meeting you where you’re at, and knowing that you are valued for that without having to be performative, without having to actually do something really great in order to be seen
David Grossman 11:10
Absolutely.
Maria Ross 11:11
Yeah, can you talk about that a little bit?
David Grossman 11:13
Sure you know what? And in our data, there are two stats that validate exactly what you just said. So there are two things that good leaders do well that they should continue to do. One is they recognize contributions of their folks, and then second is they provide support so you know, direction and answer questions, and there’s a subtle difference here, and you just made the point that I think is so important that gratitude is most valuable when we’re not just acknowledging the work, but we’re also acknowledging the worker and what’s most important to them, and from a biology standpoint too, anytime we’re in survival brain, it acts as a short circuit. Gratitude acts as a short circuit to that survival brain to get us back to that all important thinking brain.
Maria Ross 12:02
Oh, I love it. I love it. Okay, so obviously, you know, listening and empathy are one of the six differentiators, and I know you, you and I are kindred spirits on pushing back on the fact that empathy is a soft skill, and my leaders have heard, or my listeners have heard, ad nauseam, my perspective on that. What’s your perspective on that, given all the research and the work that you’ve done?
David Grossman 12:25
Yeah, so my wish is that we retire the term soft skills
Maria Ross 12:31
preach.
David Grossman 12:32
The reality is so from the research, we looked at what are the top 10 attributes of exceptional leaders today as well, and what we found out was nine out of the top 10 are heart focused attributes. The one head focus, by the way, is about leading with transparency. Now you’ll probably remember the Google study from 2009 sometimes called Project oxygen, where Google was trying to and they admitted this. They were trying to prove that technical skills were more important than the people in managerial skills.
Maria Ross 13:05
I love it because they proved themselves wrong. Yeah, that’s why I love that study, yeah, but things go on for those who haven’t heard about
David Grossman 13:11
it, yeah. So it was they looked for markers in those first of all, they found out that high performing managers had better retention rates and better results and much higher engagement. And when they looked at sort of the markers of those good leaders, nine out of 10 of the skills were what they call soft skills. So same result, different decade, different methodology, yet we still haven’t really invested in the skills. And My wish is that, I mean, these are some of the hardest skills to gain, and there’s some of the hardest skills to execute consistently and become predictable, and we should spend a minute on this idea of predictability, which I think is so important today, too. So my wish is, can we stop calling them soft skills? Because they really are essential skills. They’re fundamental skills. Maybe we just call them human skills that in this age of AI are going to become some of the true differentiators of exceptional leaders.
Maria Ross 14:18
Absolutely, absolutely. You also talk about empathy as an intelligence system. Can you explain what you mean by that?
David Grossman 14:26
So when you look at the hard focus skills like gratitude, listening, empathy, they’re intelligence gathering systems because of how much information they give us as leaders, when we’re curious, when we’re open, when we’re listening, when we’re asking questions, like, what am I missing? When we’re sharing sort of what we know and what we don’t know, and then listening for the questions that people have. It’s so interesting growing up, I viewed emotions as like an either or. Sure, and those emotions that were on the scarier end of the spectrum, I sort of pushed into this dark, black hole until I realized our emotions, all they are, are information for us that help us know how we’re doing and what we might need to do next. So I think about listening and empathy and our emotions, all of this under the banner of EQ has super helpful info to add to our intuition and gut to help us make good choices.
Maria Ross 15:30
Yeah, I love it. I mean, it’s this idea that none of that is wasted. It’s it’s context, it’s data. It’s, as I like to tell some of my more analytical, data driven folks. Think of empathy as information gathering. Think of it as like perspective taking, of trying to understand someone’s context so that you can move forward with the next right step together. Absolutely, the leaders that you studied, what were some of the things that they said around why that was such a powerful lever for them,
David Grossman 16:02
because I think it gave them a different perspective than they had going into a conversation, a meeting. So many of my clients are looking to innovate, and I don’t know how you innovate without a diversity of perspectives at the table. And so often we’re seeing today, leaders who learn to lead in stable times, really dipping in from a micromanagement perspective, instead of really stepping back to say, here’s some thoughts and perspectives. What would you add? What am I missing? What truths are you thinking about that would be helpful for us to advance and get to an answer here on whatever is the innovation that we’re looking for.
Maria Ross 16:44
Okay, in the book, you talk about the poker face problem. Can you tell us what that is and how we actually can get past it?
David Grossman 16:52
So one of the gaps I talked about earlier is not feeling heard. Employees not feeling heard. And when you hear that, you may think, Well, gosh, that’s a listening problem. I, as a leader, need to listen better. But the reality is, it’s a psychological safety challenge. More so, and I think so many of us leaders who are trained to leave our emotions at the door that work is about professional, not personal, that having a poker face or not, sort of showing what we think is what’s most helpful, that it’s almost like armor is useful to us in the workplace, when the reality is the opposite is is true. There was a great research study around two folks having a conversation. One was directed to have a poker face give no information or any cues or clues as to what they were thinking or feeling and what happened to the person they were talking with is they went into fight or flight.
David Grossman 17:51
So us not sharing what we’re thinking can cause people angst and anxiety and make work much more complex and difficult, and we already know people are bringing a lot of emotional weight into the workplace. There’s all of this uncertainty, and my belief today that part of our responsibility as leaders is to help create stability for our folks. How can we do that? And we create that stability by being predictable, by leveraging these all important heart skills as a means to get to results. And I should probably say, because I want to ensure as folks are listening to this, that they’re hearing the need for balance between strategic thinking and empathy, or EQ, for example, this is not an either or proposition. Nope. It’s both and leadership. Yes. How do you balance both and when do you need to lead with what? And our research is just saying today, there’s a greater need, in many cases, to lead with some of these hard focus skills, and that means many of us as leaders need to amp up on and fill those gaps well.
Maria Ross 19:04
And it’s so interesting that you say that, because there’s so many studies. I was just talking to someone the other day about a study done around with with global employees, where they talk about that, yes, that’s important, yet their leaders can’t give them that. And so what is getting in the way of of leaders being able to access that skill if they if they, you know, intellectually, know it’s beneficial. They’ve seen the data. They’ve read books like yours. What do you find to be some of the top reasons that they have trouble accessing that part of their skill set,
David Grossman 19:41
I think in many cases, and leaders would not admit this, that they don’t know how to do it. In many cases, they don’t quite know what it looks like. They haven’t had role models. They haven’t had the opportunity to learn the skill, to see it in practice, for example, like how do you. Sit with someone and talk with them about what what they’re carrying today, about how they’re doing emotionally in the context of work, how you can be helpful and supportive like all of like leaders trained for stable times were not trained to use or leverage or think about any of these questions. It was all about getting work done, and today we still, of course, need to get work done and get results, but it’s about pulling some different levers.
Maria Ross 20:33
Yes,
David Grossman 20:34
these hard focus skills that are going to help us get the kind of results we want from our folks.
Maria Ross 20:39
Well, absolutely. And that’s what I always talk to teams and leaders about, is, you know, these models existed because they worked at one time, like we talked about earlier, maybe in the industrial age, maybe in some other ages, maybe in particular moments. But we’re in a different we’re sort of swimming in a different pool right now because of the rate of rapid change, because of technological innovation, because of the stresses of the world. Of you know whether it’s whether it’s geopolitical, whether it’s cultural, whether it’s societal, whether it’s whatever it is, we’re dealing with a different set of circumstances, and it’s sort of like trying to plant the same plant in different soil and expecting the same growth result. And you can, you can say, well, you know, well, I don’t want to give them that soil like, that’s their snowflakes. I’m coddling them whatever excuses, right? It doesn’t change the soil they’re in. So you can rail against it all you want. Or you can be smart and strategic and say, I need to, you know, shore up these skills for myself so that I can operate and and, you know, so in this new soil, or reap in this new soil,
David Grossman 21:51
yeah, yeah.
Maria Ross 21:52
I’m mixing my analogies a little bit, but I think, you know, you get what I’m saying. It’s, it’s the people clinging to, like, Well, it used to be this, it used to be that, yeah, but times have changed,
David Grossman 22:00
yeah,
Maria Ross 22:01
and our and our problems are so much more complex, both from a business issue, a world issue, an environmental issue, wherever, whatever vector and so we need different strategies, and we need different leadership skill sets in order to deal and solve and manage through these thorny problems that we’re having?
David Grossman 22:22
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve thought a lot about what’s the relationship between all this uncertainty today and leadership and the employee experience, so when and so? So I’ve created three formulas here. Is to just think about the relationship. So if you take outdated leadership times uncertainty, you’re going to get paralysis, disengagement, collapse, like no surprise there on the other end of the spectrum, uncertainty times exceptional. Leadership gives us trust and stability and results all of what we want. It’s the middle equation, uncertainty times good leadership. Here’s what it’s getting us today. It’s getting us anxiety and complacency and drift. So where I’m going with all of this is the storm’s not going to change. The storm of this uncertainty is the same, the variable that needs to change is the leader.
Maria Ross 23:25
Yeah,
David Grossman 23:26
We get different results. I’m just corroborating exactly what what you said, just saying, in a little bit of a of a different way, the leader is both the problem today and the solution.
Maria Ross 23:39
So how does somebody know if they’re just hovering in that good space?
David Grossman 23:43
I think you need to ask your folks. And how I might ask them would be to say, Hey, I’m working on continuing to grow and develop, much like I’m trying to help you grow and develop, which gets to the third gap, by the way, and help me with give me one thing I do well from a leadership perspective, give me one thing I could do better from a leadership perspective, and give me one piece of advice. It’s the advice question I almost always find is the most helpful. So by asking we can get a sense of how we’re doing, so it reinforces what we should keep doing. And then hopefully we get a perspective on where some areas of opportunity for us where we could be even, even better and or get a coach. Yeah, asking, asking your people is a great way to do it all on,
Maria Ross 24:27
yeah, and being and, you know, and that’s where, you know, with my model, the five pillars of effective and empathetic leadership, that’s where you need the self care component, because you have to be primed to accept that feedback without defensiveness or fear. Your your capacity has to be full enough, your cup has to be full enough to be able to take that on in a constructive way, rather than feeling like it’s a personal attack.
David Grossman 24:50
Oh yeah, it’s the old you know, you need to know your mood elevator is at least neutral to positive before you’re going to before you’re going to do that. And then, by the way. When you ask these questions, what you say next is, thank you,
Maria Ross 25:03
yeah,
David Grossman 25:04
and, and what else so you you don’t get defensive,
Maria Ross 25:07
right?
David Grossman 25:07
And take time to, you know, reflect on what folks are sharing with you.
Maria Ross 25:13
You know, what’s so interesting when I was researching the ROI of empathy for the first empathy book, for the empathy edge, one of the organizations I spoke to had a really great way of gaging emotional regulation in their recruits during the interview process. And it was to give a piece of negative feedback in the interview and see how somebody reacted to it, and if someone met it with curiosity and sort of like, Oh, I’m, you know, I’m so sorry that that came across that way. What, what did I say? Or why do you have that impression they knew the person was meeting it from a from a full capacity, right? Versus if they were met with justification, excuses, you know, even defensiveness, fear or anger. And I think it’s that even when we get, you know, we’re talking about being curious when we’re talking about other people, and being curious when we look at problems in a different way. We also need to be curious when we get feedback that doesn’t align with our worldview or our self view, and that’s another opportunity to get curious. Why do you have that perception of me? Why you know what were the actions or the behaviors that I did that made you believe? X,
David Grossman 26:24
yeah, Help Help me understand that.
Maria Ross 26:26
Help Me Understand
David Grossman 26:27
intelligence gathering,
Maria Ross 26:29
yeah,
David Grossman 26:29
sort of ability that we that we all have, yeah, more curiosity, because I think that gives us such information and fodder, and at times it’s tough things to hear. Yeah, we need to hear it. And, you know, give us some time to reflect. I
Maria Ross 26:48
want to drill into listening a little bit, because I know you have, you have ways you’ve described listening in the book and with the research that you’ve done. So talk to us a little bit about the role of active listening in all of this. And really, how do you sharpen that saw?
David Grossman 27:05
Well, I think it’s a skill everyone can be working on, for sure. The advanced skill here, let me just start there is to be listening for what’s not said. That’s the challenge I give to most leaders and the cue or clue I find is something you feel in your gut, or your intuition is just not feeling right to you in that moment, or your spidey sense is going off, which might cause you to reflect on there’s something in this conversation, there’s something that’s not being said, there’s an undertone, there’s a tonality there, so that that’s the advanced skill for everyone to work on. And otherwise, I think it’s it’s mostly about being open to and gathering other people’s perspectives. And how do you continue to just ask questions instead of telling and I challenge. I was working with a leader the other day, and I challenged him. We did some role play, and I said, the only thing you can do is ask me questions. That’s the only thing you can do to gather information. Yep. And we went through a whole role play where all he could do is ask me questions, and at the end, there was so much information that he was able to glean from me that had he not asked those questions, he would not have gotten all of the information, and chances are, he would have made a different decision, because there was information that I had not quite shared with him yet, till he asked me something very specific about it.
Maria Ross 28:37
I love this because, again, it’s this difference between hearing and listening, you know, or even listening to understand versus listening to wait for your turn to speak, which I think is a common problem. I’m guilty of that too. I admit it like at times where it’s I I’m just trying to come up with my rebuttal while someone’s talking, right? And so it’s really trying to get in the moment and be present. And if you need to write down what comes to mind as someone’s talking so you don’t interrupt them, you know that’s those are different strategies that I employ, but this idea of active listening and then the getting curious, I do a role play in in my workshops, where when we have time, it’s folks giving feedback to each other. It’s a senior person giving feedback to a more junior person. And sometimes in the role play, the actual levels switch roles. They don’t know that they do, but they are right, and they each have a backstory that I give them. It’s sort of like dinner theater, right? Like murder mystery dinner,
David Grossman 29:36
yeah?
Maria Ross 29:37
And the My goal with them is to see how many of them can actually come back after the exercise when we debrief having discovered the other person’s backstory, because then that’s a sign that they’ve asked questions and they haven’t made assumptions, right? And I have some details in the backstory that are that are kind of little seeds I put in there to see if they’re actually. The having the conversation and asking the questions.
David Grossman 30:03
Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the gaps, of course, is around being seen.
Maria Ross 30:09
Yeah,
David Grossman 30:10
good leaders only are a small percentage. I think it’s like 14% of their employees feel seen. And to your point about backstory, every employee has their own let’s call it backstory,
Maria Ross 30:23
their own context, a
David Grossman 30:24
story, yes. And the question for you as leaders is, do you know their story? So I, I love Broadway, and
Maria Ross 30:33
as do I Yeah.
David Grossman 30:35
Okay. So if you’re a musical fan, you know that at some point early on in every musical, the hero steps forward, and they sing what’s called in the trade, and I want song. So for example, Ariel. Ariel, what does she want? Whole
Maria Ross 30:54
New World? Yeah, no, no, that’s That’s right. She wants to be part of their world. That’s what she wants. Yeah, exactly.
David Grossman 31:01
She wants to be human and part of their world. Of their world. Yes. Should I try another one? Elphaba from Wicked,
Maria Ross 31:07
yeah.
David Grossman 31:07
Elphaba wants to be known for who she is on the inside,
Maria Ross 31:11
right, not what she looks like on the outside.
David Grossman 31:13
Skill? Should we we’ll try one more here. Maria, so what does Hamilton want? What’s his I want? Peace.
Maria Ross 31:20
Oh, is it the my shot?
David Grossman 31:23
Yes. He wants to not miss his shot. So every employee has their own I want song which tells you everything you need to know about what they value, what’s important to them. And the question for leaders is, do you know their story? Do you know what they value? Because as we talked about what good leaders do, good leaders recognize contribution. Exceptional leaders recognize contribution in the context of the person and what’s important to them. So do you know the backstory? Do you know every employee’s story?
Maria Ross 31:59
Oh, I love that so much. I love that so much. Do you have an optimistic view that leadership is truly embracing this in the time that we’re in and that the majority of them are getting this I know I’ve been at this work for about you know, specifically the empathy work for about a decade. But I’m just wondering from you your viewpoint. Are you optimistic that this, that this approach is finally gaining traction in leadership circles.
David Grossman 32:26
Yeah, great question. So I have a mixed view. One is, I’m concerned about this invisible gap with good leaders, the sort of three blind spots that we’re talking about today. I’m nervous about that this that’s like the little drip of water behind the wall in the basement that nobody sees. Well, we see it today. We know it. So, you know, can we be proactive to address it? That’s one piece. Then the piece that gives me real hope is, I feel like in many cases we have leaders have a lot of these capabilities. So if you remember back to the pandemic. When most of us realize when the pandemic was sort of really real, we’re like, Well, this is this is serious.
David Grossman 33:07
What did leaders do? They picked up the phone, they called their people, they checked in with them. They said, How are you doing? How are you keeping safe? What’s your living situation? Here’s how we’re thinking about work. So they did basically an emotional check in with them. And so what gives me hope is we’ve demonstrated the capability in the pandemic to do some of what we’re talking about right? How do we do that today? And how do we help leaders build these skills that they so desperately need today that are very different than how they were trained.
Maria Ross 33:44
Absolutely.
David Grossman 33:45
That’s the opportunity.
Maria Ross 33:46
I love it well as we, as we wrap up, I would love for you to read a passage in your book that really spoke to me, and I know I gave you, I gave you the page number, because I would like to hear it from you. It’s at the section called empathy, creating psychological safety, and it’s on page 242 but I would love for you to read that to us, because I think it’s a great way to cap this conversation off and tell us so much about the role that this skill plays in exceptional leadership.
David Grossman 34:18
Yeah, fantastic. The most powerful form of empathy goes beyond emotional understanding. It’s about creating tangible support that demonstrates genuine care. Exceptional leaders use empathy as a strategic tool, recognizing that when people feel understood, they become more resilient, more innovative and more committed to collective success. This means creating systems and practices that show empathy isn’t an individual skill, but an organizational commitment to supporting the whole person, their challenges, their aspirations and their potential.
Maria Ross 34:55
Put a pin in it. I love it. David, thank you so much for this conversation. Conversation. Thank you so much for this book. It’s called the heart work of modern leadership, six differentiators of exceptional leaders and listeners. This is such a beautiful book. I mean, I’ve told you this before, David off recording, but the book itself is so beautiful. It’s it feels good. It’s got so many great call outs lots of actionable steps that leaders can take. And I feel like you actually designed this book so people could dip in and out of it was that just my perception or intentional?
David Grossman 35:31
Thank you for recognizing that it was totally intentional. It’s built for the busy leader. It is not a traditional book, so there are lots of visuals. You could read it front to back. You can pick a chapter that’s on one of the differentiators. You could pick a spread. There are 29 stories from exceptional leaders that
Maria Ross 35:50
those were great.
David Grossman 35:51
What we all can do today that give me hope as well. And then lots of tips and tools and time savers in the book as well.
Maria Ross 35:58
Yeah, it feels like a magazine a little bit, so something
David Grossman 36:02
you can come back to, yeah, and lots of people dog ear the pages, or put, you know,
Maria Ross 36:08
post its like, come on.
David Grossman 36:09
Love it. Love it.
Maria Ross 36:12
Well, this has been,
David Grossman 36:12
I’m super curious what you pulled out, by the way, but we can save that for another
Maria Ross 36:16
Yeah, let’s save that for another time. But David, thank you so much for your insights. Today, we’re going to have all your links in the show notes, including to the book. But for anyone that’s on the go right now listening to us, where is the best place they can find out more about you and your work,
David Grossman 36:28
sure you bet the Grossman group.co/books,
Maria Ross 36:33
perfect. Thank you. And this is not the end of our conversation. I’m sure
David Grossman 36:39
this was amazing, Maria, thank you so much. I love the conversation,
Maria Ross 36:43
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, 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.
