Technology has always been a double-edged sword. As the workplace and culture shift, we as humans are seeing more collaboration, access, and the ability to communicate across borders. But, it’s also leading us to more stress, anxiety, depression, and social isolation. Those dopamine hits are no joke!
This all impacts how we need leaders to show up and lead. We have to upskill our leaders for more connection, conversation, and collaboration. AI will be taking over a lot of the drudgery, so leadership now looks different from what it did 20 or 30 years ago. And for some leaders, there is a big skill gap between intent and impact. Something my guest today calls the Awkward Zone as she helps leaders to Own the Awkward.
Today, Jen Marr shares the three forces behind our fundamental workplace shifts and how this has changed the role of leaders. She talks about that Awkward Zone and how to navigate through it. She shares the Barbell concept, necessary to build up healthy, productive employees. We have an interesting discussion about time – how leaders track it, spend it, and can find more ways to spend it on their people rather than on useless tasks. And Jen shares what may finally shake us up from the unhealthy ways tech has taken over our lives at the cost of real connection, and what that flashpoint might be for us.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- The three major trends that are fundamentally shifting the workplace.
- How to foster a healthy workplace with operational empathy and actionable steps.
- Why actions, not nouns, frame lasting change so we can better handle our emotions.
- How time tracking can help you be a more supportive leader.
“The awkward zone is that gap between our intent and our impact. Within that is a whole series of different habits, mindsets, and behaviors that get in our way.” — Jen Marr
About Jen Marr, Founder & CEO, Showing Up LLC
Jen Marr helps leaders Own the Awkward – the high-stakes moments that decide whether people stay or stray. As founder of Showing Up LLC, she built the first research-driven framework that turns relational skills into repeatable business practice. More than 150 certified facilitators now deploy her process across Fortune 50 tech, major-league sports, healthcare systems, and even the White House Leadership Program.
Her programs replace awkward and nuanced relational issues with clear, confident skills and conversation frameworks. Freeing managers’ time, boosting collaboration, and anchoring cultures where people want to stay and do their best work.
A former healthcare and business development executive, she blends three decades of frontline experience with partnered research. Her books—Showing Up and the new Lifting Up package, the playbook.
Jen’s message is timely and actionable: relationships run results. When leaders lift people, performance follows, and every metric that matters moves with it.
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Connect with Jen:
Showing Up LLC: showing-up.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenmarr
Book: Lifting Up showing-up.com/lifting-up
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Maria, welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Technology has always been a double edged sword as the workplace and culture shift we as humans are seeing more collaboration, access and ability to communicate across borders, but it’s also leading us to more stress, anxiety, depression and social isolation, those dopamine hits are no joke. This all impacts how we need leaders to show up and lead. We have to upskill our leaders for more connection, conversation and collaboration. AI will be taking over a lot of the drudgery. So leadership now looks different than it did 20 or 30 years ago, and for some leaders, there’s a big skill gap between intent and impact, something my guest today calls the awkward zone. Jen Mar helps leaders own the awkward the high stakes moments that decide whether people stay or stray. As founder of showing up, LLC, she built the first research driven framework that turns relational skills into repeatable business practice. More than 150 certified facilitators now deploy her process across fortune 50 tech, major league sports, health care systems and even the White House Leadership Program. Her programs replace awkward and nuanced relational issues with clear, confident skills and conversation frameworks, freeing managers’ time, boosting collaboration and anchoring cultures where people want to stay and do their best work. A former healthcare and Business Development Executive, she blends three decades of frontline experience with partnered research. Her latest book is lifting up the transformative power of supportive leadership today. Jen shares the three forces behind our fundamental workplace shifts and how this has changed the role of leaders. She talks about the awkward zone and how to navigate through it, and she shares the barbell concept necessary to build up healthy, productive employees, we have an interesting discussion about time, how leaders track it, spend it, and can find more ways to spend it, on their people, rather than on useless tasks. And Jen shares what may finally shake us up from the unhealthy ways that Tech has taken over our lives at the cost of real connection and our health and what that flash point might be for us. This was a great episode. Take a listen. Welcome Jen Mar to the empathy edge podcast. We have been circling around each other’s orbits, I think, for a few years, and I shared with you that for a while I thought you were a different Gen,
Jen Marr 03:23
there’s a lot of gens out there. What happens with social media?
Maria Ross 03:25
But welcome to the show. I’m so happy to be here, excited
Jen Marr 03:29
about this conversation. I
Maria Ross 03:31
am so excited to talk to you about helping leaders own their awkward and that includes their awkwardness around their emotional intelligence as well and their ability to connect with people. We’re not We’re not all skilled at being able to connect with people emotionally and connect with people from a care perspective. So this is going to be great. We’re going to dive in, and we’re going to talk about your books, including your newest one, which is lifting up the transformative power of supportive leadership. But before we get into all of that, can you share with us how you even got into this leadership work?
Jen Marr 04:08
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I this is not a path I had planned out to do. My background is business development, international business development, actually. And as I was raising three daughters, I had to take a career break because I couldn’t keep up the travel ended up being very close to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting tragedy, and where I was asked to come and help support that school. And four months later, was a half mile away from the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the bombs went off, and it put me on this deep dive into human suffering. And with my business development mind, I saw how we were really woefully inadequate as humans, responding to people going through hardship. And I just started every week at Sandy Hook, asking, what more do we need to do? I immediately really. Zeroed in on this area that I’ll call the awkward zone, that in that setting, everybody had empathy and compassion, absolutely everybody did. People just acted on it wrong. They weren’t. There were all these human behaviors that over the course of the last decade, I’ve been able to study and zero in on on what is that gap between people have incredibly good intentions, but the impact just always misses the mark. And so over the last 12 years, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve just dove into working with different researchers. Have done research studies with the New York office of mental health, worked with some great, amazing researchers from North Eastern University now working with Harvard flourishing program to really zero in on what are specific skills we can do to make sure that those emotions of empathy and compassion are acted on correctly, or even in the research studies we’ve done taken people with full on apathy and giving them the skills to do that cultivate the emotions of empathy and compassion.
Maria Ross 06:05
Wow, that is a lot, and I don’t think I knew that about your background as someone myself who’s very committed to ending gun violence and very supportive of Sandy Hook. Promise, it’s really interesting to hear you talk about diving into one of the most uncomfortable and awkward situations, right? So often, when those types of tragedies occur, we can have empathy, but it’s almost beyond it’s like we can’t even fathom what those people are going through and what that community is going through, unless we’ve, you know, sadly, gone through it ourselves. But what you’re saying is so important, this idea that, you know, I talk about empathy as innate to human beings, science has shown us that in, you know, barring certain psychopathies, empathy is innate to us as humans. But what happens is that muscle atrophies for certain people, if they’re in environments where it’s not modeled or rewarded or celebrated, and then you put these people with varying levels of empathy muscle strength in the same place at the same time, whether it’s at, you know, tragically in a community, or even just at work, and just the combustion that happens and the misunderstanding of people thinking They know what empathy is when they don’t. And that’s, you know, a lot of my work, but I want to raise us up for a little bit and just talk about this whole trend of empathy in the workplace, caring in the workplace. I know that when I started researching my book down back in 2016 people didn’t get it. And then the pandemic happened, and people started to understand like, Oh, we’re human beings at work, right? So there’s a lot of trends going on in the workplace, but what are, fundamentally, what’s from your vantage point, what’s changing in the workplace that we’re even having these conversations now, we’re having conversations about caring and mental health and all the things, and what do you think is driving that transformation?
Jen Marr 08:02
Yeah, I see three major trends coming together and shifting the way work used to be is you would go in, you would get your paycheck, and you would go home, go home to a supportive environment, a supportive community. And so work really was work, and school really was school. And you could have workplaces where the leaders would say things like, you know, leave your personal life at the door and, you know, send go to HR if you’re having issues. And that is the way many of us were raised, under that type of the workplace model, and that is all broken down now, and especially with three big shifts I see coming in. One would be the insanely fast adaptation to technology, with AI leaving hugely uncertain ways of knowing how to communicate, knowing how to connect, knowing what is your job, security, all these things so fast, so quick, and it’s resulting in enormous amounts of information throwing at us, but yet really poor interpersonal communication that people are being talked at but not talked with. And so that is number one. Number two, I would say, is the generational differences coming in so many, many changes in generational differences, a lot of which were also born out of technology. We can look at those generations as native analogs and native digitals. And just those differences just create cascading changes in the workplace. And the third area is just our world events, and every day is a new world event. Again. You can kind of even look at this as technology, because it it didn’t used to be the human body is not meant to be able to process everybody’s problems in every part of the world, and there’s constant division. And. And events and a lot of fear. So with those three things coming together in the workplace, we need to re look at what is an organization’s moral responsibility to their rights, and then also what is a leader’s role in that, and the old way of just go to HR with any of your personal issues, it doesn’t work anymore, and a leader has that role to be that guide through hardship.
Maria Ross 10:32
So many things in there, obviously, and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with a lot of these trends that are driving culture change. And you know what I wrote about in the first empathy book, the empathy edge was that these changes were already happening. This trend was already happening. It just got massively accelerated through the pandemic, because we were forced to right. But this conversation about demanding more respect at work, you know, seeing the whole person, all of these things, demanding work, life, integration was all happening. It’s just it’s happening a pace so fast that I actually have empathy for the leaders who are like, wait, what? Like, how am I supposed to lead? Now I was told to lead this way, and now I’m being told to lead that way, and it’s almost like we’re pulling the rug out from under them, but for very good reasons, right? So I have a lot of empathy for them, too, and this is where I really believe, like, what’s going to get us through this change? As true for any change is a growth mindset. We’ve got to be able to willing, willingly say we don’t have all the answers we don’t know, and put our ego aside to say, I’ve got to learn a new model, because this old model is not working for me anymore. So I love what you’re talking about here, and then you know the idea of AI, and kind of, I feel like the point you made about a fast adaptation of AI, and also this desire to kind of throw people issues on HR, just has to do with this whole desire to outsource empathy and compassion to other things in the organization, whether it’s to AI or whether it’s to HR. And so how do you help? How do you help redefine the role of a leader? Because, you know, we’re you and I are out there talking about, like, yeah, you got to change. You’ve got to adapt like, I’m sorry, but, but not sorry. So how do you define the changing role of a leader? What? What should we expect from a leader, and what should leaders expect to deliver? Now, that was not true before.
Jen Marr 12:35
Yeah, it’s such a good question, and I think what I want to do is take it a level up, because I think leaders aren’t even going to have the desire to change if they don’t understand the shifting narrative of the employee and over whenever we work with the organization, we go in and we do pre surveys, so we really kind of dive underneath the engagement surveys that are done with the HR department and really to understand what is the culture the temperature read. And over the last eight years, what we found is what we’ll call the 580 percents, right? That just is human behaviors that are happening in the workplace right now, and that is anywhere between 80 to 85 sometimes up to 100% in certain industries. People will say, I can tell when people are struggling, really pointing at like you said, your innate ability to have empathy and compassion. But yet, when we talk to employees then and say, where, where do you feel least cared for and supported in an organization, it will come back and at least 80% no one gets what I’m going through. So I can see you, but no one sees me. And then we ask them, Well, do you share your hardships at work? 80% no. But then the next question. So up until this point, you still could have that old model leader leave it at the door. But we ask them, do you wish you could, and always, over 80% I wish I could be more open with others, but I don’t feel that I can, right? And then that last 80% I have no idea how to navigate this space. I don’t know the boundaries. So we move from that into what we would call the barbell. That is, you know, how do we look at wellness as in general, for the workforce and for our organizations? And, you know, the two heavy ends of the barbell, I believe, have been very much built up over the last couple decades, which is excellent the right side of the barbell, let’s just say clinical care. So that is your clinicians, your counselors, things like that, through your EAP, you know, mental health resources. That’s not what a leader’s job is, right? That’s one side of the barbell. The other side is what we would call self care, and what we would call the individual’s understanding of EQ, like you might say, it’s what we would call inner work, right? Understanding my emotions, understanding how to take care of my body, take care of my mind, and when we are looking inward, it pretty much. On us. So these two ends of the barbell, if left alone, the barbell stays on the floor, but the barbell has a hand, and so that’s supportive care. I differentiate very much between looking in inward and understand your emotions and understanding the skills to act outward to other people. Mm, hmm. So the bar the hand of the barbell would be those outward facing supportive skills that someone needs. Otherwise it’s all on the employee. Otherwise it’s on the employee. Okay, I understand my emotions. I have to hire a coach, I have to hire a therapist. I’ve got to pay for all those things. I’ve got to do it on my own time. And guess what? The organization gets off scot free. And not only that, but it’s also it’s our moral responsibility to help people through hardship. So the role of a leader then has to say, if I can’t help my employees through hardship, I’m not going to have a productive team. I’m not going to have a cohesive team. I’m not going to have a team that stays together. So in a nutshell, then number one, understanding what’s happening in our organizations, also from an employee’s perspective of how they feel cared for and supported. Number one, two, what are the boundaries then that a leader has? And then number three, we can dive into that awkward zone as to what is holding you back, right, all those difficult conversations you need to have, right?
Maria Ross 16:19
Right? Well, it’s funny, because with the the latest book, The Empathy dilemma, I wrote about the five pillars to help you be an effective and an empathetic leader at the same time, and the first two are self awareness and self care, because we have to get our own house in order, in order to do exactly what you’re saying. Now, how can I now? How can I make space and be grounded enough that I can help someone else, or I can even see what someone else is going through. And the interesting shift that we’re seeing is leaders still clinging to like that’s not my role. My role here here is to get the job done, increase productivity, get results, drive growth, and that’s why you know, folks like you, folks like me, are out here also talking about the ROI of being an empathetic leader, because it does drive bottom line results. And, you know, it’s, it’s funny because you mentioned, you know, it’s our moral imperative to to help people. And that was actually what got me down the train of this was that I saw that the moral imperative wasn’t enough for some people. So I was like, Okay, we’re going to speak their language. We’re going to talk about data, we’re going to talk about research, we’re going to talk about bottom line results. And now I think that’s more of a conversation than it was before, where people actually, I think the most recent 2025, state of workplace empathy report said something to the effect of, and I might be quoting the stat wrong, 83% of CEOs see a link between financial performance and empathy. It still doesn’t mean they’re good at it. Within their organization, there’s still a huge gap, like you were talking about, but I don’t think that’s a finding we would have seen like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, when it was like, No, that’s not my job. My job. My job’s over here in this little box. But I think a lot of that had to do with us forgetting that these assets were human beings. And I’m using air quotes for people that can’t see me. But so I think that’s, I mean, do you see, I guess I’m getting to a question here is, do you see an awakening and an acknowledgement of the fact that, you know, we as humans are not capital expenditures that you can just, you know, capital assets that you can just burn out and replace, but that we’re really investing time and energy. Have you seen that shift with a lot of leaders that you’re working with? I think, slowly, slowly, yeah.
Jen Marr 18:41
I mean, everyone’s throwing the data out there. I mean, there is so much data on their ROI of this work, right? I don’t think there’s any shortage of data. And I think people recognize it. I think it, what it boils down to is just timing. And unfortunately, I think it’s going to get worse until it gets better. However, there are some people, you know, the people that are into this work right now are really either on the front end of the curve, you know, they’re the trendsetters, they see it, they get it, or they’re the back end of the curve that, literally, it’s going to, they have to have this work done, or they’re going to their their teams falling apart. So somewhere in the middle. And also, you know, working with a lot of college campuses that they understand students really need this, this work. And so I think it’ll get there. I mean, one of the stats that I love to share, the two stats I love to share is, one is the UKG study, where to 70% of workers, their boss has the biggest impact on their math equal to their partner. I think you know that one and the other one that I love is the Oxford study that came out earlier this year. I think pretty sure it was January, maybe January 2024 where they surveyed, like 46,000 workers in 233, organizations, and said, If you just do. Self initiated acts of interventions. Does it enhance well being? So these are things like, if basically giving it to the employee to take care of you understand your EQ, you go do stress management, you go do resilience training, and and we as an organization are scot free. If it’s all individual LED interventions, there is zero evidence of an improvement in well being like, it’s a massive study, and so if we are going to keep our organizations healthy, the consensus was It’s Dr Fleming out of Oxford, that it has to be the organization and not the worker. So I think as these things come out,
Jen Marr 20:47
ultimately we
Jen Marr 20:48
just have to stay the course, and someday it will be mainstream. I think we’re going to look back on this time, kind of how we looked at the fast food industry, like, wow. We had no idea what kind of junk we were putting in our bodies. Same with this? Yeah. No idea the kind of diet that screens and isolation and disconnection are having on our social health. Yeah. So we just stay the course. Maria, we’ll get there.
Maria Ross 21:11
I’ll stay the course. I’ll stay the course with you. That is just fascinating, because, I mean, that’s the thing it’s about. You can’t just hire your way to a caring culture or an empathetic culture, because it’s just like putting healthy seeds in bad soil, like, if the environment of what the organization and what the leader is providing doesn’t Foster, it doesn’t nourish, it doesn’t encourage it, then that’s what people see. Is they see, oh, that’s not how I find success here. How I find success here is this other way, no matter what the poster on the wall says about our values and our mission and our vision, right? So I think that’s such an important point that it’s about, how do we make this actionable for people, and how do we help them operationalize empathy in ways that are both sort of emotional, you know, affective empathy, but also cognitive empathy. How are we enabling our leaders and our people to just see things from another perspective, from another person’s point of view, and be willing to do that like that, right? There is the first step to empathy, right? So I want to talk about this because you mentioned this earlier about and we talked about how awkward it can be, and we’re acknowledging that, right? This isn’t easy work. It doesn’t come naturally for some people, but they are going to need to upskill. So how do you define the awkward zone and help leaders navigate through that when they’re like, Oh, this is all a little touchy feely for me. I’m going to feel fake if I ask people how their weekend was, you know, whatever other excuses they’re making, what is that awkward zone? Well, the awkward zone is
Jen Marr 22:48
that gap between our intent and our impact, right? And in within that is a whole bunch of series of different habits, mindsets and behaviors that get in our way. And so, you know, it’s a great little four square. Everybody loves a little four square, and the top two squares would be emotional barriers that they just stay in our heads, and the bottom two squares are when we’re actually in front of people, and we get our in person responding behaviors wrong. And in all four of these boxes, people will walk away saying they have no clue what I’m dealing with, right? Like they don’t get me. So it’s closing that gap between I can see people when they struggle, but no one sees me, right? So the top two, if you know of someone that’s dealing with something, you’ve got someone on your team with a bad project, or this or that, and you’ve not reached out to them yet, they have no idea you’re even thinking about them. These are what we would call emotional barriers. You will either be very doubtful, driven by fear, like, don’t think I should bring it up. It’s not the right time. I might just make it worse. I’m not sure. La, la, la. It’s that is, you are you’re caring, but you’re fearful that you’re just not gonna it’s not, I’m not the right person. It’s not the right time. I shouldn’t be doing that, so that that would be the doubter. Or in our workplace, we have a lot of deflecting. The deflector is like water off a duck, like, I don’t have time for that. That’s not my role. That can go to HR, I got my own problems. I can’t take that on. Yeah. And so it’s one of those two buckets. And so there are absolute skills that can be applied to either of those buckets to help people understand, I’m deflecting. All right, if I’m deflecting, this is what I
Maria Ross 24:29
should do. So on the bottom two those are barriers.
Jen Marr 24:34
We’re together, walking down the hall, in the elevator, in the parking lot, whatever person walks away, saying they have no idea this person will have either been a fixer and tried to overdo it, jumping and do this go there, you know, Vice giver, yeah, without really allowing that person to share, or you will have just completely avoided it face to face. I see you, Maria, but I’m not going. Bring that up, we’re going to just talk about things, and you completely avoided it. So, you know, in a nutshell, the top the four squares are either under thinking or overthinking or underdoing or overdoing. And so we develop a language to that that can be assessed. We have an awkward zone assessment. We also with that is a a time audit, and always just helping people to understand what stops me, what can I say? What can I do? How should I look at my time? And so in that we we help people through that but, but there are specific skills associated with whatever that is, and also to help people understand that we’re all going to fall into all these buckets. There should be no shame in it. And just like you said before, like you’re going to fall into different buckets on different days, depending on your season in life, depending on your relationship with this person. And that’s why it’s just, yeah, I’m going to be a deflector sometimes, I’m going to be an avoider. Sometimes it’s just who we are. So if we can normalize this language, I think it’s one of those situations where we don’t talk about it enough. Yeah, and if we if we have these concrete actionable skills, it’s with the research that we’ve done. It’s all based on verbs, not nouns. It’s all based on actions, not emotions. And so I think if we can give the actions, we cultivate the emotions, which is really what is to get people to to cultivate empathy when they’re maybe not even thinking about
Maria Ross 26:36
so true. And I just love all of this, because you’re absolutely right. It depends on and this is why, you know, self care is a pillar in in my framework, because if our capacity is low, we can’t make that space. We can’t we’re in self preservation mode. We can’t take on another person’s stuff or even show interest, because we’re like, oh, I don’t have time for this. I don’t know where this conversation is going to go right? And so I think that part is so important, and also about helping them understand that it’s not like you said. It’s about verbs, it’s about actions. It’s not always about the feeling. And this is where, you know, cognitive empathy can be a really valuable access point for certain people that are maybe more left brain or more analytical. They can practice things and practice habits that get them to you know, what we all want the outcome of empathy to be is compassion, which is empathy and action. And so if we can get there through our head, we might be able to bring our heart along too, but we can still get there. You mentioned something that was really interesting to me, in terms of your work with leaders, and that is helping them do time tracking. Because I I do see that a big excuse to the supportive workplace leader is there’s not enough time, there’s not enough time, and and I get it, people are overwhelmed and they’re overworked. So can you talk a little bit more about about the concept of time tracking and how people find time to be a more supportive leader. Yeah, it’s really interesting. And I think also, you know, back to the self care and being a leader. A lot of times we feel like if I don’t take care of myself, I can’t help others. But in all the work I’ve done over the years, there’s a lot of people that just can’t take the initiative themselves, and they need leaders to lean in. Like, don’t make me lean out. I need someone to lean in. And so sometimes, even if I am completely depleted, I need to know as a leader, if I help that person, it’s going to re it’s going to re energize me, and it’s going to bring us more into equilibrium. And so I think sometimes there’s a really important balance we have to make between understanding, yes, sometimes I need to care for myself first, but almost always, people are in need of connection, and a lot of times, if we’re focusing too much on ourself, it’s taking us down this isolation and this awkwardness that becomes harder to be around people. So I’ll just go there. But both I love that the whole barbell is needed, so don’t so don’t get me wrong on that. And so with the timing, really what we want to what we focus on is how, how are you spending your time
Jen Marr 29:23
all during the day on things that are not work related, especially on things that weren’t even around 10 years ago? So what? What happens right now, Maria and technology, is we get so stressed, and I think you can relate to this. We’re constantly we’re just done, we’re we have zoom fatigue, and we have information thrown at us, and it’s slack, and it’s email and it’s texts and it’s this, and it’s that we go to our phones and we’ve got six notifications on. And what we’ll do for relief is it’s just like, Oh, I’m just going to go play my saduko game. I gotta get my I gotta get my mind off everything, or let me scroll my LinkedIn feed. And what we’re how. Actually doing is we’re going for the quick dopamine hit instead of the relational oxytocin. And the quick dopamine hit is taking us down farther and farther of isolation. And so what we have to help leaders understand is you have a lot of these hours that you actually you know, don’t look at your LinkedIn feed. And here’s the data. The data is, most people, this is not even work related. These are things that weren’t even around, whether it’s gaming or, you know, Netflix and all these things. And don’t forget, like all of these things we’re doing by ourself. Now we’re even the TV used to be a group sport, right? And so adults, most adults, will have somewhere between 35 and 40 hours of screen time in those areas. And when we ask them how much time they could give up, people know, I’m spending too much time scrolling. I shouldn’t be doing that. I i get a notification of the news, and I go read the story, and it scares me, and I get stressed, right? All of those things are not necessary. And so if most people will say they can give up 12 hours a week, 12 hours a week, and not only that, their mental health is better when they’re not so scared about a new news story coming out. So we tell them to, you know, pull the notifications away and and just take five minutes a day to touch base with your key people and do this and do that like, it’s a lot of little things that build up that trust. So that’s kind of what we dive into with the time audit.
Maria Ross 31:36
I love this because I’ve, I often have said, when I’m doing talks about, you know, people saying, well, it takes too long. And I’m like, well, first of all, it’s that’s like saying, I don’t want to work on strategy because it takes too long. I’m just going to jump straight to tactics. But it’s also about, well, then you need to look at where you’re spending your time, because this is the stuff of leadership, and if you’re not spending if you don’t have enough time to do that, you need to look at where you are spending your time and prioritizing your time. And I love the fact that you’re, you know, you’re calling us out on really, are you, are you spending your time on the most productive things, or would it be more productive to put the phone down and have some conversations with the people on your team? Because that’s that’s your role. That’s what leadership is about. It’s all about health, too. I mean, the quick dopamine hits are hurting us. If they’re hurting us, and
Jen Marr 32:33
anybody will say, if you start having more conversations, there’s so much research out there, yeah, when I reach out to you that not only makes you feel better, it makes me feel better. Yeah, and that oxytocin is what overpowers cortisol, our stress hormone, dopamine, won’t do that. It almost adds to it in a certain way. And so if we want to get over exhaustion and burnout, we have to recognize that that’s going to be a key to do it.
Maria Ross 32:59
I love that, because that’s it’s funny, because that’s personally been my instinct in, you know, the last year, is when I’m sort of getting down or I’m getting depleted, I’m like, let me reach out to somebody. Let me, let me text a friend. Let me call a friend. Let me see what’s going on for them, and get the focus off of my little pity party I’m having for myself. Now, I do want to say not everybody’s, you know, issues are just little pity parties. They’re serious and they should be taken seriously. But I, for myself, have noticed that when I do reach out, it sort of gets me out of my own little hole. Yeah, a little bit more, because then you, like you said, you get energized by the connection. I love that. I love that.
Jen Marr 33:40
And all of those, you know, they’re all deposits in the relational bank account. And when our relationships are strong, our productivity is strong, our teams are strong, our health is better. It’s just, we’re just gotten a little off track that we can work on getting back. I have kind
Maria Ross 33:57
of like a off track question, but not, not Not really. It’s related to what we’re talking about here. But it’s kind of a big question. Do you have a perspective on when all of this technology and stimulus on us is going to come to a head, like, when are we are we ever going to get to a point where it’s like, we’re going back, we’re getting rid of the smartphones we’re going like, do you even ever think about what, what might be that, you know, flash point for us? You know, I
Jen Marr 34:30
heard a really good podcast last week. I don’t know if you ever listened to Guy Roz and how I built that. And he had on Justin McLeod. McLeod, I don’t know, the CEO of hinge. And his whole thing is talking about, he started this off saying, we’re an app we want people to delete, yeah, people get together and date, but then we want to be off screens. And he was talking about how 70% or 80% of interactions that we used to have together with. Friends has been moved to a screen. It’s, it’s alarming, actually. And he was asked that question, and he said, I don’t think we can ever go back, but he’s the one that said what I referenced earlier, I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a health revolution, whether it’s the same as the gym craze or, you know, the health food you know, we now know how bad health food is for us. And I think it’s starting people are going to recognize that screen time has to be limited, that being together with people is really needed. And I think there’s going to be some point where AI is going to take up a lot of this frustrating time right now, and it’s going to we’re going to be pushed into needing to be more human again, because AI is going to do all the drudgery work exactly, hopefully free us up so these human skills that we’re going to need to redevelop to bring back to the forefront, to be able to be more innovative and collaborative and Being together, we’re just going to have to really pull people out of it and help them understand why it’s needed and how it’s needed, and especially these native digitals that have such social anxiety that they won’t even go to a bank teller or won’t go up to a counter. Everything is has to on a screen because it’s just so socially awkward. We’re going to have to really help
Maria Ross 36:22
to pull them out of that. Yeah. I mean, I have an 11 year old, so I 11 year old boy, and it’s, it’s challenging, and I’ve often said that too about AI like empathy and those social skills, that emotional intelligence is going to be more marketable and necessary than ever, because the leaders hiding behind the drudgery right now to prove their value, will have nowhere to hide when, when AI starts automating all that, the only thing we’re it’s going to be left for leaders to show their value is how they’re motivating the team, connecting with the team, listening and respecting and innovating With the team, not with more stuff they can do on their laptop. You know, I had a really
Jen Marr 37:05
good example of this yesterday. I was flying back home after a week, a weekend away, and it was terrible storms, and I was in an airport with just so many delays, and the gate agents, the customer service counter, we’re just getting bombarded. And we’re getting, you know, thrown notifications on our screens like they’re trying so hard for technology to do everything, where people are just screaming, I just need someone to talk to that can help me, that can see me, that can do this. And I would envision five years from now where technology can handle a lot of it. And the humans that are on ground will be those empathetic voices will be those people that you know. In my book, we train people how to have that supportive conversation. How exactly do you have it? How do you display that empathy in a way that you know, where even I will say, there are a lot of people they they’re they’re having the worst day of their life, they can’t tap into empathy. They need to be able to say, if I do these skills, I am being empathetic. And so, you know, those are the kinds of things that I think that we have to find that balance. There are things that AI can do. AI could have helped a lot of people yesterday, you know, through all of these delays, and the people on the ground could have then just been good, compassionate voices to hey, we’re helping you through it, whereas right now they’re still bombarded with so many details, they don’t have the capacity to do that. So everybody in the airport was frustrated yesterday, yeah, I think that’s kind of where I would envision it, hopefully going,
Maria Ross 38:40
hopefully we can hope. We can hope. Well, this has been so great to finally connect with you and get your perspective live on all of these things I see you post about in social media. I just want to remind people the name of the book is lifting up the transformative power of supportive leadership. And this is a follow on to your book showing up, right, which is great, so I hope folks will definitely check that out. We will have links to that in the show notes as well as, can we get a link to your awkward zone assessment, something we do in workshops? Oh nevermind. That’s something we do in workshops. So you’re gonna have to contact her, but we will put all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s listening to us on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work? Yeah, probably the
Jen Marr 39:24
best place. Maria is showing up.com but it’s showing dash up.com or follow me on LinkedIn at jenmar.
Maria Ross 39:32
I love it. And my my PSA always for LinkedIn is make sure you tell her that you heard her on the show so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Yeah, I love it. I have a hyphen website too. Red dash slice. So I feel you that showing dash up, showing hyphen up.com. Jen, thank you so very much for your time and your insights, and I hope we stay in touch Absolutely. We will. We got a lot of work to do. We do. We got a lot of work to do. It and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
