Unhappiness at work causes poor performance, disengagement, mistakes, absenteeism, mental health issues, and ultimately poor customer experience and anemic sales.
But defining happiness at work seems so squishy. Is the leader’s job to make people happy? Garrett Delph looks at happiness the way I look at empathy – as an intentional business strategy that can be operationalized and scaled.
Today, we talk about the causes of unhappiness in a business culture, why increasing happiness and decreasing stress are good for the bottom line, how clarity plays a huge role in engaging your people, and what it looks like from a process and operations point of view. He shares why culture is operational and that people need a structure that enables them to understand expectations, communicate easily and safely, and collaborate – or they will just leave. We had a great conversation about how empathy is linked to happiness and why it needs to be modeled and discussed from the top. Lastly, Garrett leaves you with two paths to take if you suspect your business could be more effective, so you can take the next right steps to improve results.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Clarity is a form of empathy at work – when we are clear, we help people avoid anxiety, stress, and confusion, which leads to greater happiness.
- You have to balance the load with your managers – if you don’t know what they are doing or who they are managing, you cannot understand where the workflow bottlenecks are.
- We are all needed for the business to function. And people need direction and instruction to ensure we’re all on the same page.
“As leaders, often we hire great people and we buy the lie ‘hire great people and set them free’ not realizing you can’t do that, or you fail the people.” — Garrett Delph
The Empathy Edge Episode References:
- Dr. Tracy Brower: The Secret to Happiness at Work
- Brent Lowe and Susan Basterfield: How Innovative Organizations Lead and Scale – No Managers Required
From Our Partner:
SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.
Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.
About Garrett Delph, Founder & CEO, Clarity Ops
Garrett Delph stands at the forefront of business transformational solutions for the new generation of leaders. He is the Founder and Chief Clarity Officer of Clarity Ops, LLC. A serial entrepreneur, he has established a track record of founding three successful international businesses that have collectively generated over $50 million in revenue. Garrett’s new-generation business solutions are created for leaders who need faster, easier, and more profitable step-by-step ways for scaling businesses.
Connect with Garrett:
Clarity Ops: clarityops.co
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/garrettdelph
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books
Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
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. I thought I was going to call this episode happiness at work, but it was so much more than that. Unhappiness at work causes poor performance, disengagement, mistakes, absenteeism, mental health issues, and ultimately, poor customer experience and anemic sales. It impacts the bottom line, but defining happiness at work seems so squishy. I mean, really is the leader’s job to make people happy today, Garrett Delph, CEO and founder of clarity ops, looks at happiness the way I look at empathy as an intentional business strategy and one that can be operationalized and scaled. Garrett stands at the forefront of business transformational solutions for the new generation of leaders. A serial entrepreneur, he’s established a track record of founding three successful international businesses that have collectively generated over 50 million in revenue. Garrett’s new generation business solutions are created for leaders who need faster, easier and more profitable step by step, ways to scale their businesses. Today, we talk about the causes of unhappiness in a business culture, why increasing happiness and decreasing stress are good for the bottom line how clarity plays a huge role in engaging your people more fully, and what it looks like from a process and operations point of view. He shares why culture is operational, and that even if you hire good people, they need a structure or frame that enables them to understand expectations, communicate easily and safely and collaborate, or they will just leave. We had a great conversation about how empathy is linked to happiness and why it needs to be modeled and talked about from the top, he shares a powerful case study of one client who bravely audited their operations to rebalance reporting structures, redefine roles and free their people to work smarter, which definitely made them all much happier. Lastly, Garrett leaves you with two paths to take if you suspect your business could be more effective, so you can take the next right steps to improve results. So many insights here. Take a listen. Hello, Garrett, welcome to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m very excited to talk to you today about the role happiness plays at work in building our empathy and most importantly, on the bottom line. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Thanks
Garrett Delph 03:16
so much, Maria. It’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to the conversation so you are
Maria Ross 03:20
founder and chief clarity Officer of clarity ops. We heard that in your bio, and we do in a second, need to talk about what a chief clarity officer does. But how did you get into this work? How did you get into this work of helping growth organizations align their systems and their leadership in order to deliver great results? What’s the passion there for you?
Garrett Delph 03:39
Yeah, great question, and thank you for asking it. I built a couple of global companies in last 15 years, and I did that really, probably, like many people, not knowing what I was doing, starting out and learned a lot.
Maria Ross 03:54
Yeah, raising my hand,
Garrett Delph 03:58
I learned a lot. And but as I exited those businesses and began to think about like, Okay, I’m at halftime, and what does, what does the future look like for me? And what was most important to me is to bring value. And so I started thinking about, what am I good at? What do I love? And it turned out that one of the biggest drivers of success in those businesses turned out to be operational infrastructure, which brought clarity to the people, the process and ultimately, the outcomes of the business and but what I noticed in my networks is most people were focused on leadership in silo. How do you help leaders be great leaders, but we’re always missing the other part, which I thought was vital, the other side of the coin, which is operational infrastructure that empowers leaders to be great. And the more I thought about that, the more I realized, number one, I love it. Number two, I think it is a huge strategic advantage to any. Business that’s looking to grow and scale in perpetuity, that is sorely ignored, in my opinion. And so I was like, Okay, well, this is like Disneyland for me. I have evidence based proof that, you know, if you get architecture right in a business actually works really well and have this whole cascade of amazing benefits to the people in the culture right, which really is well aligned for your professional acumen, your focus, your love, your passion, which is why I’m happy to be here, and that’s a big deal. That’s yeah, because, from what I can tell, there’s no great business out there without first them figuring out how to have great people. And, you know, great people who are empowered and are happy. I like to call it, you know, low stress, high happiness, yeah, inside of a well oiled machine. So that really, you know that backstory was the impetus to launching clarity ops and trying to make a dent in the historic stat that nine and 10 businesses go out to fail, or go to business and they fail.
Maria Ross 05:57
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you’re speaking my love language, because in the new book The Empathy dilemma that came out last fall, my third pillar of empathetic and effective leadership is clarity, and the fact that you know, often in the name of empathy, in the name of trying to make people happy, speaking of happiness, some leaders think They’re being empathetic by delaying a difficult conversation or overlooking an issue and hoping it will go away, or thinking that they’re being clear in their communication and in their expectations, and then trying to hold people accountable to an expectation that wasn’t clearly set right and so helping people to understand that clarity is a form of empathy at work, that when we’re clear, we help people avoid fear and anxiety and stress and confusion, and that ultimately, kind of, leading into your topic, makes us unhappy at work when we don’t have that. And sometimes it’s the leadership potential, the human potential of the person in charge. But to your point, sometimes it’s the hindrance of the operations or the systems or the structures that are enhancing the confusion for people you know, like a game of telephone, so to speak. So first, tell us, how do you define happiness or unhappiness in an organization? So
Garrett Delph 07:17
I’ll go in reverse order. Okay, I think unhappiness is reveals itself through symptoms that we see in business culture. In fighting, you have blame games, you have dissension, employment, churn, I think, is a great symptom of people being unhappy, gossip. So there’s you probably go on and on. So I think those are symptoms of unhappiness. People have frustrations, right? And so I think happiness. Want to be careful here, like, how you define happiness in a business of people and culture, it would be, might be systematic, I think an accurate alignment with managed expectations, you know, and so happiness sometimes, if we make it about feelings, could be misinterpreted as is, you know, if you always have joy. But you know, work can sometimes suck, right, right? No, it’s not always fun, but if it’s calibrated, where expectations are managed and people understand what they should be doing when things are due, what the outcomes are, how success is measured, for example, then I think that stress goes down tremendously, and like just feeling good perhaps, is maybe another way to put it, becomes a standard. Yeah, so those would be my two answers to your two questions. Well, I love
Maria Ross 08:41
this because, I mean, I feel like you’re teeing this up for me, because the fifth pillar and the five pillars is joy, and not that I would love for us to parse out a little bit. Because you hear people say, well, levity is important at work, and being able to relax and be who you are and show up as who you are is important. But how important is it to, quote, unquote, make people happy. Because I think sometimes that’s where empathetic leaders can dip into people pleasing versus empathy, because that’s their goal. Is like, let’s make them happy. But what I hear you saying is that you’re using a broader definition of happiness at work, more probably aligned to what I’m calling joy, which means that the work could be hard, but you could be finding enjoyment in the hard work. You could be have great relationships with people at work. You can have, you know that you have each other’s back. You can have moments of levity even when the work is hard. And so, you know, we don’t want any leaders to misinterpret that the goal of your leadership is to make everybody happy. Because what makes people happy is different, depending on each individual person, but there is, there are, like you said, there’s symptoms or markers of an effective culture, where you can probably make an assumption that, because all those markers are there, all those boxes are checked, there’s engagement, there’s camaraderie, there’s trust. Psychological safety, there’s clarity that probably leads to more joy and happiness at work. So let’s talk about that in terms of, how does if you’re not looking for the if you’re not working to build a culture like that, if you’re you know, drowning in unhappiness in the business, yeah, how does that actually hurt the vision and the performance and the profit of the company from what you’ve seen? And I know you come at this looking at their operations and their structures and their systems, how does that manifest as to bottom line impact? So
Garrett Delph 10:35
I have a little framework I call p3 which is a stands for people process and performance. Earlier, I think you’ve mentioned people process and tools. So you know, very similar in nature. And ultimately, if you know going back to this idea of when people have joy, you probably have a ton of really great strength there too. I think also another recipe or ingredient to the recipe of joy in people is aligning their strengths and capabilities with what they’ve been hired to do as well. I think that is critical path to this sort of, you know, formula of creating a great culture full of empathy. And so going back to p3 I think you know, if the end goal of the business is to succeed, however they define success, you have to demonstrate, in my opinion, care in an organized way. And so how do you care for people systematically in the business, so that it produces joy, where it gets rid of all of the sort of the cancerous behaviors? And so I think that the best way to do that is go after things like, Are you clear about your org chart? Within that org chart, Are you clear about job descriptions and reporting mechanisms? Are you clear about leadership agreements? Have you published? Have you gotten leaders together and have they all agreed? Hey, when we lead our teams, whether cross functionally or in silo, this is how we’re going to treat our people, and this is how we’re going to manage expectations about what we do, how we do it, and the people that we lead. And so are we all agreed on how we want to play. It’s our playbook. Some of the things is in terms of caring, demonstrating to the people that you care, because I think this produces Joy career paths, yes, and so like, imagine if the business valued career paths. And when you showed up as a brand new employee, and you get on ramp, they spend a half an hour or maybe 20 minutes, saying, Listen, you probably joined our company because you don’t want to be in the same spot making the same amount of money forever. You probably want to grow, get a better title, learn advance. Here’s how you do it. And in order to get from A to Zed, you need to follow this path, do these certain things, and as you do them, we’re going to help you grow and succeed more together. Yes, so there’s some examples of how does the business win and produce joy in people, so that the business gets the productive outcomes it wants, but also cares for the people, lifts them up and sort of supports and locks arms with them as they move forward. I think that produces joy and you get two really great outcomes. You know, joyous people. Yeah, happy people, I would contend stress goes way down, and the business gets it outcome, its outcomes as well.
Maria Ross 13:25
Absolutely. Yeah. I often talk about when I’m talking about empathy at work and what that means. It doesn’t mean always crying on the floor with your employees, but when you tell people tactically things like career progression maps are empathetic, they sort of do a double take, and it’s like, no, that’s a very operational thing. It is. But what it does is it answers questions. It gives people accountability to know how they need to advance to the organization. And often that kind of clarity can limit entitlement, because entitlement, in my opinion, comes from people not knowing what’s next or not knowing the path. It’s interpreted as entitlement, when it’s really just I don’t know, and you’re not telling me, and I need answers, right? So I love that, and I want to ask like a question off of that. You know, a lot of your work is around operations and systems and processes and structures and tools and all of that, right? What are, what are some examples of that being a lever to scale that kind of clarity and happiness in an organization? Can you give me an example of, maybe, with a past client, some sort of, some sort of function or process or technology they implemented in order to increase clarity and increase happiness in their in their organization,
Garrett Delph 14:53
totally Absolutely, and I appreciate your thoughts about sort of my i. Yeah, I like, I like the term work because it really is, you know, it is a work in progress. But I do believe that even culture is operational if it’s going to be effective, yes, and so maybe, to make that point, I’ll give a couple of examples to absolutely. So had a construction company here on the West Coast that I worked with in 2024 and they were bleeding 2 million bucks a quarter because of a bunch of problems internally. So as I went in as suspected, found that their org chart was in disarray, so they had no mechanism for how to set up reporting structures to managing leaders. And so first thing I said is, hey, let’s you know, where’s your org chart? What’s your org chart look like? And so they didn’t have one, but what we were able to do is map out who their leaders were, which functions they belong to, and how many people ultimately were reporting to each of these heads, right? And within, I kid you not, within an hour and 45 minutes, the CEO president, his jaw was on the floor because he had never seen this imbalance of people reporting to his leaders. One leader had three people reporting to them. Another leader had 27 people, oh my gosh, reporting 27 in their production division. Yeah, right. And so immediately he could see this imbalance of workload distribution. And so I just want to make a quick note, because I think this is fascinating stuff. If you know what we do as leaders often is we hire great people and we buy the lie, hire great people and set them free, yeah, really, not realizing you can’t do that, or
Maria Ross 16:52
you fail the people. And you have to give them an environment to function in. Do right? You have to
Garrett Delph 16:56
give them a framework, structure, scaffolding, you know? And so to this point, this President did not understand the idea of workload balancing. Just like the best computers of the world have figured out you have to distribute your workloads. This is why you have RAM and cache. It’s why you have, you know, processing optimizations inside of computers to load balance so things don’t crash right? So within hour and 45 minutes, we identified this. The next step is I brought to him a framework I built called the quad core management framework. And one thing we noticed as we broke apart his org chart is that he had leaders that were sort of all over the map in terms of their focus, yet leaders that were driving vision, but they were also managing people who were also project managing projects, who were also building process, right, goodness. And so again, you gotta, you know, maybe use a vehicle. For example, you have a truck that can bear one ton of weight, and you’re putting three tons of weight in the back of the truck, it can’t deliver. Yeah, all right. And so between those two examples, what we did is we redesigned the org chart, which load balanced their reporting structures and the people who report to whom, so that immediately, within, you know, two weeks that gave back, restructured focus to his leaders. And then another thing we did is we realigned where they actually focused so leaders that were were in charge of vision and strategy. We systematically removed from their plate managing people, and we systematically removed from their plate, being in charge of managing projects, and those were delegated to other people within the org. And over two months, their repair, in profit, in speed, in controlled outcome was, you know, began to have positive ramifications to the business, and now I think it’s been eight months, and they’re on their way to recovering that 2 million bucks in profit. Yeah, amazing stuff. So there’s a, you know, a quick three, four minute example.
Maria Ross 19:11
I love that so much, because there’s so many things in there. Number one is just you telling that story. I don’t know if this is my empathy coming through. I’m just feeling a sigh of relief for those people, like just the lightness in being able to to remove the sluggishness, like the mud in their tires, to enable them to go faster, and that ability to accelerate impacts the organization’s performance. It’s not just it. You know, I hate when I hear this like, well, I don’t want to coddle people, or I don’t want to, you know what? We have to spend time figuring out what what they’re doing and what they want, yes, because then you’ll go faster. So I love that, just this idea of, like, shedding the weight from that, and I. Why do you think that that’s so I think it’s kind of like when I do brand strategy work, right? I always tell my clients, it’s not rocket science, because I’m actually pulling the answers out of you. I’m shaping it, and I’m asking the right questions, and I’m I’m giving an objective point of view on this, representing the voice of the customer, but ultimately, you have the answers inside you. Why do you think it’s so hard for businesses to do this for themselves, without an outside guide, Sherpa, consultant? I mean, I kind of know the answer. But what have you seen be the issue? Why do they get in their own way of being able to sought to see that and solve their problem themselves?
Garrett Delph 20:39
Yeah, I’ll tell you, I have an advantage here to this question, because I’ve worn the shoes the CEO, yeah, right, and I did it for a lot of years, and so having been there, my experience has been you’re so busy chasing revenue. And I see that positively, right? Of course, yeah, that’s your charter. Yeah, you’re so busy innovating. You’re so busy trying to just protect the business for growth and from going under. You have so many things coming at you, as if you don’t as a business, if you don’t value change management, if you don’t value continuous improvement, if you don’t value infrastructure, then over time, these things begin to, you know, grow negatively internally, and you don’t see them, you know, because we’re just looking at our P and L and our balance sheet, and we’re looking at, you know, customer acquisition, customer churn. And we’re looking like, in general, in general, are we going in the right direction? But suddenly, when you start to have an opportunity to hockey stick and growth, or you actually begin to grow these things, these cracks that have been happening underneath, they show up out of nowhere, and they begin to bite, right? But I just think there’s so many moving parts in the business, and most businesses don’t think about these things. You know, I was in mastermind group recently, and I brought up this topic, and there’s a real estate guy in the meeting that owns a flourishing company. And I said, What do you think? And he goes, honestly, man, I’ve never even thought about continuous improvement. I’ve never even, never even thought about organizing the business internally so that we don’t break. Never even thought about it because I’m so busy focused on everything else, and you know that that’s been my experience?
Maria Ross 22:43
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m wondering if you also part of it, you know there’s, there’s all these changing paradigms we’re dealing with at the same time, right? We’re dealing with workplace culture change. We’re dealing with just a leadership paradigm shift from command and control to more partnering with your teams and supporting them and and being more about being an empathetic leader, which is why I do this work. And so I wonder if another thing that might get in the way is these organizations. I see this a lot with young founders, the desire to build like an anti organization, the desire to be like we want to be completely flat. We want to be completely democratic. We want, you know, we nobody’s had, nobody has job titles. I mean, I just hear that and I cringe. I would think I would be so unhappy in a work environment like that, where I didn’t know who I was supposed to be going to, who I was supposed to be reporting to, who was supposed to be reporting to me, who was I responsible for? What was I responsible for? So it sounds great in theory, and I know that there are people working on these sort of managerless organizations and org charts, but you still need the clarity for everyone to understand why they’re there and what role they play. I’m with you. So what do you think about that?
Garrett Delph 23:58
Well, I think they’re contradictory terms. I don’t think they can coexist. Yeah, I just, I actually don’t think it’s possible to coexist, to have a flat org chart with no rules, responsibilities, and everybody feels their way through right and simultaneously succeed. I mean, look at sports, look at art that has, you know, art that’s attached to systems. Look at, I don’t know we could go on. I can’t think of anything where that would work, by the way, didn’t Tony shade do this. He experimented. He’s the founder of Zappos, yes, yeah. Experiences, experience, experiments with a flat org, and it totally failed
Maria Ross 24:42
well and yeah, and there’s, there’s ways to do it correctly, but it always, always a part of it has to be a clarification of roles and responsibilities and operational systems. So what happens is, you get people that think it just means everyone just show up. No one has a title. What do you want to do? What do you want to do? Great it. There’s still a structure within the non structure. I actually interviewed some folks on the podcast a few years ago that talked about manager, manager lists, organizations. But there’s even rules around how you make that work. So there’s still a system. There’s still a structure that enables you to have that kind of environment, if that’s what you’re looking for. But I think a lot of people are misguided and think it just means you take away everything, you take away all the scaffolding, and then just see what happens. Let people be creative, right? And that’s never gonna work.
Garrett Delph 25:35
So it’s almost like a bunch of ICS that are razor sharp clear about what they should be doing, how they interact with other people, yeah,
Maria Ross 25:44
kinda, I’ll put a link to that episode. Okay, it was with Brett and Susan, and I’ll put a link to that episode in the show notes, but it was fascinating, and they wrote a book about that and but my point being, the plot twist is there’s still a structure within that. There’s still what you’re saying. There has to be operational excellence, there has to be a route to continuous improvement. There has to be clarity, and even more so in that kind of environment, and it has to be supported by systems and tools and structures and technology that will enable that to happen in a way where people are not freaking out every day, yeah,
Garrett Delph 26:25
yeah, right. It would have to, it seems like, if things are flat and not vertical, right? Probably even more so then, yeah, even more so systematic infrastructure for right? Yeah, yeah, fascinating stuff. So so as we kind of wrap up, I just want to ask, you know, generally,
Maria Ross 26:48
how do we increase happiness and decrease stress in a business culture? And I want to just inject in here, what is the role that you think empathy plays in all of this.
Garrett Delph 27:01
So I’ll start with the empathy question. First of all, empathy has to be valued at the top. And when I say valued, you know, you and I both agree this isn’t some a writing on the wall, right? So there needs to be some deep thinking about, like, what does empathy mean? And it has to be valued at the top and defined, and then and modeled and bottled and distributed. As the the chairman of LinkedIn said in a really great interview, this is when he was the CEO of LinkedIn. He said, My primary job is to be the chief reminder officer, and I, primarily, all I do is continue to remind our leaders where we’re going and how we’re going to behave, which is rooted in their values. And so if it doesn’t, if it’s your point, if it’s not thought about, defined, bottled up and then constantly served as water to the team, always so they constantly remind, are reminded with each other about how to behave. It doesn’t happen, right? So want to see, it’s got to start there, right? And then the the beauty, I think about empathy, that’s valued by leadership, is part of that is you’ve recognized, number one, the people you work with, they’re no better or worse than you. They’re fellow humans, that’s critical, right? And when you realize that there’s no sort of on better than you type thing. This is we all need each other. The Business engine, you know, in a vehicle, in a gasoline a gasoline engine vehicle, if the spark plug goes out, one spark plug, that engine ceases to operate. This is the truth. And so when a leader, from an empathetic perspective, understands that they’re going to value everybody, because everybody’s really important, I think another great thing empathy does is it constantly recognizes that people need direction. They need instructions. An empathetic leader, somebody that values empathy. They realize how important it is that they as a leader, be very clear, very clear to the people that they lead, and they recognize that there could be miscommunication and misinterpretation and clarity and so an empathetic leader, I think would make provision for, did you understand what I said? And do you have questions, right? Did I misspeak? Was I not clear? Give me that feedback too. And I think empathy recognizes these, you know, inherent exchanges, right, that need to take place in order for the joy and the happiness to show up. You
Maria Ross 29:47
know, absolutely, absolutely and so, you know, and a lot of that, you know, this is kind of where our work overlaps. Is talking about when you’re able to give that environment to people, when they’re able to operate you. Without fear and anxiety and stress, and engage their their cognitive skills more effectively because they’re not in self preservation mode. They have room to be more innovative, to creatively problem solve, to have more patience to collaborate with each other and listen and that ultimately, you know everything we’re talking about here, not only is it the right thing to do, it’s actually this is what I always say. Empathy is not just good for society. It’s great for business. Great for business. It will enable your business to flourish. And I think combined with that viewpoint that you so eloquently talked about, which is that much of this is operational, and I love that you talked about the fact that culture is operational because it’s a belief system, it’s a mindset, it’s it’s a mode of of action, it’s a mode of behavior. And so, of course, it’s operational, right? Yeah, and this is, this is also why good cultures can scale. That’s because, just like any good operational system, it should be able to scale. That’s right.
Garrett Delph 31:04
Yeah, that’s right. I mean, any business owner recognizes it would be foolish to pay people to stress out,
Maria Ross 31:14
to compete. Don’t all realize that, though, is the problem. I’m like, I always say they don’t. They’re walking around with resources operating at 25% capacity. How is that smart? Right? You wouldn’t. You would never invest in a capital expenditure that only worked at 25% capacity. Would
Garrett Delph 31:33
never? I love it. Never. Yeah, no, I’m so with you. And like, you don’t have to look far to find a plethora of studies about how stress is counterproductive to productivity and right and so all of this stuff. Yeah,
Maria Ross 31:55
I love it. So, so let’s, let’s leave folks on an action step here. So let’s say they sense. They’re having some operational challenges. They’re having some they think that there’s room for improvement around clarity, around how everything works together. What is a great first step, or first few steps for them to even start to tackle this? Hmm? Yes,
Garrett Delph 32:24
let’s see. So I’ve sort of two paths here. Number one, number one path would be, do we have enough time energy and resources internally to explore how to solve chaos in the culture and or chaos in the organization. And if the answer is we have the resources to do it, then I would, I would go back to the kind of are people being cared for? Do they have process to follow? Is that positively affecting their performance outcomes based on our vision and mission? They can do it like that’s like, that is simple ABC you can follow, and you’ll find a ton, a ton of stuff that you can fix just through that simple exercise. If not, go to an expert, find somebody that does this for a living, and have them do an audit, you know, have them do a quick, Swift evaluation of those components, and have them deliver to you a report on their findings and how to fix it right.
Maria Ross 33:35
And if you want to choose to work on that on your own, you can, and if not, you can hire folks to you know, not that we’re a commercial for both of our services, but it is true, like sometimes the easiest answer is the right answer, right? It’s, it’s really just taking the time to what I heard there was, be willing to explore what’s going on, and be willing to explore, especially if you have the resources and the capacity to really explore that. And then secondly, do an audit? Do figure out how to how to audit and get everyone involved in that audit. It’s not just an audit of the executive team, right? We’ve got to actually talk to the people that are being impacted by this every day. And I will say, you know where, where empathy ties into your ability to do that effectively is creating psychological safety. So if you have an environment where people are fearful, they’re scared to voice, they’re scared to fail, they’re scared for their jobs, they don’t feel safe expressing themselves, you’re going to have a very biased audit when you do that, and that’s not actually doing you any favors. So if you really want people to be honest with you about what’s going on in the business and even what are some of their ideas for improving how it’s going, it’s got to start with an environment of empathy and trust and psychological safety. And so if I you know, one thing I would say to folks listening is, if you run this audit and. You, you have a you have a spidey sense that something could be working better or is not working right, and you somehow get results from this audit that everything is hunky dory. Yeah, I would take that as a sign that, yeah, actually, maybe we need to go even further back and start to establish trust and psychological safety, because then I’m not getting the answers. I need to run the business effectively. Yeah,
Garrett Delph 35:22
yeah, that’s right. And if you don’t mind, I’d love to add to that you know, your your your data on feedback from, you know, top to bottom, left to right in the org chart is going to get really muddy if going back to the top has not declared that we value psychological safety, and more importantly, how are we going to how are we going to architect psychological safety? And the only way to do that is to get buy in from leaders and then have leaders agree this is how we’re going to behave as leaders, to create psychological safety, and create some exercises and time to establish that so that when you’re ready to start asking the tough questions to employees who are going to have to maybe give challenging answers to the people that pay them their sustenance, their paycheck that pays for their mortgage and puts food on the table for their kids. This is real stuff, yeah, and so it behooves the business that they really want it to go through those steps to prepare for it, because it doesn’t happen overnight. You know, this is transformational exercises that need to really be methodically thought through. It’s kind of it’s not heavy lifting, except for the architecture. You just got to understand how to framework it. But if you follow the framework and you’re committed to it, like you and I both know magic happens. What did Danny Meyer say? He wrote setting the table. He’s the founder of setting the table. He wrote that book. He’s got a really bunch of really great restaurants, but really great stuff. He said, a lot of businesses put their customers first. I put my employees first. Yes, when you put your employees first and you care from them, and you demonstrate with your behavior that you care for them, then amazing thing, things happen. And the very thing that you wanted happy customers, happens automatically.
Maria Ross 37:29
Absolutely, you said, auto, magically. And I know that that was a Freudian slip, but I love it. It’s so great. Yeah, automatically. I love that. But yeah, I mean, it’s true. It’s I have profiled successful leaders who are winning with empathy because of that philosophy. It doesn’t mean they’re not client focused, right? It means that they do everything they can to make sure their employees needs are met, that they feel they’re being treated fairly and safely and equitably, and their voices matter, and from that, they’re able to knock it out of the park for their clients, because their employees are 100% engaged versus 10% right? Yeah, so so much good stuff. We could keep talking forever, but Garrett, as we wrap up, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes. We thank you so much for your time and your insights today. Where’s for folks on the go, where’s a good place? They can find out more about you and your work.
Garrett Delph 38:24
Yeah, thanks so much. Maria website, it’s probably a great place. Clarity ops.co, great. I think.com was like 50 grand or something. So
Maria Ross 38:34
smart. Clarity ops.co, wonderful. And then,
Garrett Delph 38:40
yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. Yep, great.
Maria Ross 38:42
And if you reach out, as I always say, folks that you know my PSA about this, if you reach out to Garrett on LinkedIn, personalize the note and say You heard him on the empathy edge podcast so he doesn’t think you’re trying to sell him something. Garrett, thank you so much for your time today.
Garrett Delph 38:55
Yeah, thank you so much for you. I really appreciate the conversation, and thank you everyone
Maria Ross 38:59
for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast, if you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate, review and share with a friend or 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.
