How much better does taking an empathetic approach impact not just your leadership, but your ability to bring the right products and services to market nd truly connect with your ideal customers? Turns out, it can help you avoid costly advertising campaign failures!
Today I talk with Lane Byrum, EQ coach and Director of Corporate Accounts for Five Capitals. Lane shares one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever heard about blending business with human connection, how empathy got real for him in that moment, and how it changed the team and consumer. He also gives a great example of how one company wasted millions of dollars on a brand-damaging ad campaign that missed the mark when it failed to dive deeper into empathy for your target audience – and how they put ego aside, took responsibility, and re-did the research to launch a breakthrough campaign instead! We discuss how empathy helps you break away from putting people into labels and boxes to form better connections. He shares three ways to get curious without sounding like you are interrogating someone. And Lane shares how to use empathy as a tool in a healthy, compassionate way with four steps to engage in a deeper connection at work – or at home!
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen for…
- The research project that made empathy real for Lane.
- Why empathy is first and foremost about acknowledging, not fixing or solving.
- Key steps to engage in a deeper connection with others.
- How to use empathy and storytelling as a tool.
“You have to be courageous in these times, because there are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t (be) that sound right, – until you use courage and empathy, you won’t understand how wrong those reasons are.” — Lane Byrum
Episode References:
- Always Like a Girl Campaign and Super Bowl ad from Leo Burnett
About Lane Byrum: EQ Coach and Director of Corporate Accounts, Five Capitals
Lane brings 18 years of experience in qualitative research with Fortune 500 companies, and now devotes his work to developing emotionally intelligent leaders and teams. As an Enneagram Type 2, Lane’s approach blends deep self-awareness and empathy to create lasting growth—one conversation at a time. Whether through individual coaching or team training, he helps leaders tune into their inner wisdom and the people they lead to build truly human-centered organizations.
Connect with Lane:
Five Capitals: fivecapitals.net
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lanebyrum
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. How much better does taking an empathetic approach impact not just your leadership, but your ability to bring the right products and services to market and to truly connect with your ideal customers? It turns out it can help you avoid costly advertising campaign failures. Today, I talk with Lane Byram EQ, coach and director of corporate accounts for Five Capitals. He brings 18 years of experience in qualitative research with Fortune 500 companies, and now devotes his work to developing emotionally intelligent leaders and teams as an Enneagram type two. Lane’s approach blends deep self awareness and empathy to create lasting growth, one conversation at a time, whether through individual coaching or team training. He helps leaders tune into their inner wisdom and the people they lead to build truly human, centered organizations. Lane shares one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever heard about blending business with human connection, how empathy got real for him in that moment, and how it changed the team and consumer. He also gives a great example of how one company wasted millions of dollars on a brand damaging ad campaign that missed the mark when it failed to dive deeper into empathy for your target audience and how they put ego aside, took responsibility and redid the research to launch a breakthrough campaign. Instead, we discuss how Empathy helps you break away from putting people into labels and boxes to form better connections, and he shares three ways to get curious without sounding like you’re interrogating someone. Lane finally shares how to use empathy as a tool in a healthy, compassionate way, with four steps to engage in a deeper connection at work or at home. So many great stories today. Take a listen Lane Byram, welcome to the empathy edge podcast to talk to us about, of course, all things empathy and helping people practically embrace empathy without being performative. So welcome to the show.
Lane Byrum 02:56
Thank you, Maria. Excited to be here. Have been following you for a while, so it’s always fun to get to talk to someone you’ve been reading their books and things like that. This is good.
Maria Ross 03:05
I love it. I love it. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So before we dive into all the goodness, I want to hear your story. Tell us a little bit about how you got to this work, what your passion is around it. We heard your bio earlier, but tell us, like, what lights you up about it?
Lane Byrum 03:23
Oh, my goodness, yeah. So empathy. I joined a qualitative research firm back in the early 2000s and we kind of did things the regular way. We went and recruited consumers, talked to them about the thing we were trying to sell or get them interested in. And it was rewarding, because it’s always good to kind of give someone something that they need once you understand that. But we found that our insights felt very surface, like maybe we could take our insight and use it over here or with that company, and your competitors could use it, and we wanted to go deeper. And so our as a company, we dove in on empathy and explored what it could mean that we used it as a tool in research at the time. Now, since then, I use it in my coaching. I use it I do the trainings and things like that. So I love, love empathy. But that’s where it started, was that that wonderful company I got to work at, named seek, was the name of the company
Maria Ross 04:15
I love that. I mean, you know, you and I both sort of, we have marketing background in different areas, and that’s always the key is really effective marketing is about empathizing and understanding who your ideal client is, your ideal customer. And that’s why I’ve loved partnering with research firms. I geek out about, you know, the insights you can get from people about how they really feel about a company and what problems are they actually trying to solve not just what the company wants to tell them, but what they need to hear?
Lane Byrum 04:45
Yeah, and it’s and if you’re just going to run with a verbatim that someone says, it’s probably going to fall a little flat, you need to get underneath that with the verbatim feels like the what, right? And we want to get the why behind the what kind of get to get up. Underneath that and find that. So, yeah, empathy is a great tool for that.
Maria Ross 05:03
Okay, so I want to hear your story about a particular research project and how empathy got real for you. Yeah, what was your big aha moment?
Lane Byrum 05:14
Oh, my goodness. It was a nice to have. For me, it was like, okay, empathy, cool. It’s a great way to connect. Yay, Oh, yay. Then I was on a research project in Mexico City. We were researching toilet paper, of all things, which is just a lot of fun, but if you’ve ever been into that culture, it is such a warm and welcoming culture. Every home we went to, we were doing immersions. Every home we go into, they’d welcome us. They’d wanna fix us dinner, or give us drinks, or try this new tequila we had. It was just all, all just a wonderful thing. We go to our last one, our team is like, on a riding a high because everything had gone really, really good, and knock on the last door, and the door opens, and this lady’s just sad. Her face is sad. She’s like, almost looks like she wishes we weren’t there. And we’re like, we’re here for the thing. She said, Yeah, come on in. Obviously, this is through an interpreter, right? And who were in a local moderator who we were using, right? But you built a vibe, oh, and walked in the door, and it’s like, something heavy is here, and I don’t know what it is yet. So we go and we sit down, and we’re like, hey, you know how research goes. We’re gonna ask you a lot of questions, and you’re always gonna have the right answer, because, you know, it’s your opinion. And she goes, Well, let me stop you there. You are not gonna ask me any questions that are personal. You are not gonna ask me about my family, and you are not gonna ask me about anything that goes inside. And we’re like, well, there goes the first hour of
Maria Ross 06:38
Right? That’s kind of why we’re here. Yeah
Lane Byrum 06:41
That’s the stuff we do. I looked over at the local moderator, and she’s like, are you ready to go? Would you just like to go? And I’m like, no, no, no, let’s I don’t know what’s going on either, but let’s go. She wants to start talking about toilet paper. Let’s do that. Yeah. So we’re like, hey, take us. Yes, we’re going to talk about toilet paper. Let’s run to the restroom and we’ll see where you store it, and things like that. On our way there, we passed this room and it’s just wall to wall books. It was like, like a little library in their home. And I stopped, I said, Hey, what are these books? Are these? Are these belong to the family? She goes, Oh, those are all medical journals. I’m a doctor, and so that’s and that’s not even half of them I have. My more current ones are actually at my office where I practice. I’m like, that’s incredible. It was like, a little bit more, not, yeah, who she is. And along the top of all these books were all of these trophies. And I’m like, Oh, those yours too. I see there’s golf and there’s other stuff. And she goes, No, those are my husbands and my son. I’ve never gotten a trophy for anything I’ve done in my life. And it’s just this, this heaviness came back out. Yeah, on the end, there was a trophy that I didn’t recognize. It didn’t have a sports figure on top or anything. I’m like, what’s that one? Because she seemed to be engaging. So what’s that one on the end? And she goes, Oh yeah, that’s my, that’s my and broke down, ran back into the room where the couch was and just sat down sobbing, oh my gosh. And again, my local moderator is like, Should we just go? I don’t know what’s going on, but this is really uncomfortable, right? I said, No, no, no, no, no, let’s go back in. Yeah. So this time I went back in, and I kind of broke a little bit of protocol. I sat down on the couch next to her. Usually, that’s where the local moderator sits the talk. And you kind of I sat down next to her and she’s sobbing, and the local moderators like, let’s just go. And I’m like, Just give it a second. Yeah? And I’m an empath, and I’m also an Enneagram too, so I’m very much dialed in to emotions of others and wanting to help. Yes, you’re very much. So I couldn’t sit there and just let her cry, yeah? And I reached over and grabbed her hand, and she looked over at me, I’m bawling. I don’t even know what I’m crying about in the right? I just know you’re crying. And I don’t I this is uncomfortable, and I know this is something heavy,
Maria Ross 08:52
Right? You’re just sitting with it in her, with her in it, yeah?
Lane Byrum 08:55
Being in the moment, just there. I didn’t have to say anything. She turned, her eyes just pouring in ice. And she turned and she goes, that was an urn, and that was my son, who I lost just two months ago. Well now we’re all crying. Everyone in the room is crying, and I’ve got both her hands, and we’re shaking. We’re crying so hard, and we’re an ugly crying, ugly crying going on. And she goes, but through that experience, I learned how to truly love, and so now I’m crying even more, and I’m like, I want to ask questions. And she said it was the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had. I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t do anything to help him. They were crying even more, and then she kind of stopped for a moment. She gathered herself, and she looked at me, and she smiled, and she goes. But I learned one thing, that I’m a damn good mom, and we and so we’re crying. I’m holding her hands, and I’m talking, I’m like, You are a good mom. I’m sure your son felt that from you. I’m sure you got all that we sat there for maybe two. Three more minutes and everything about her change. All she needed in that moment was for another human to be a human with her. Yeah, that’s all she needed, just another human. She bubbled. She became bubbly. Her husband came in. She was making fun of him. Are you out there playing tennis again? You’ll never be as good as Federer. But yeah, go back to the like, just all this banter back and forth. She wanted to make us a meal. She wanted, and we couldn’t. We had to leave to go run to another
Maria Ross 10:30
You’re also like, we have to ask you about toilet paper
Lane Byrum 10:33
Yes, yeah. We looped it back the toilet paper. Segue, yeah. We got some learnings there. But when we left, after having this deep, empathic moment, we went and sat in the van, about to leave, and just something hit me. And I said, we have to do something for her. We can’t just leave like that’s and then it hit me. We contacted the person that was our contact in Mexico City. We’re like, strange request. Do you know anyone that is a trophy maker or a sculptor of any kind? And they’re like, yeah, we’ve got someone. I described what we wanted and what we needed, and overnight, a local artisan created a trophy that was a mother holding a child, and on the plaque, it had her name, which I won’t use, but it had her full name on there, and all it said was world’s greatest mom. Oh my god, there was, there was no debate about putting the name of our company or the company that was sponsoring the research night. No one wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about that. It was about we had a reaction to what was going on, and we felt compelled to act on her behalf, and that meant showing her that we recognized something in her. You’re a great mom. You’re a really good mom. And so that, for me, was when empathy all it took was just sitting with someone in the moment, not trying to change them, not trying to talk them out of it, but sitting there and just experiencing it with them, yeah? And it was life giving for her, well.
Maria Ross 12:05
And I think that’s the lesson, is that empathy is not about the fixing and the solving, it’s about just being there and acknowledging and giving someone space. And I often talk about the concept of empathy, especially in the workplace, as you know, as a method of information gathering, right let me understand what you’re going through, what your context is, and then I can take a next right step. But that next right step isn’t I solve your problem, or I change my decision, or I do whatever you want me to do. That next right step you intuitively figured out it was sitting next to her. It was listening to her. It was acknowledging her pain. And then, you know, you went further afterwards of like, basically, I heard everything she said. And now let me go do this nice thing for her, right? But we so often jump into the oh, how do I solve this for you? Or how do I fix this for you so you don’t feel what you feel anymore, and I don’t feel uncomfortable.
Lane Byrum 13:04
Yeah, exactly right. That’s exactly right. I do believe that empathy has an action step to it, yes, because otherwise you can right. It’s the compassionate empathy, and I think without that, it borders on a little bit of sympathy, and kind of feels a little wonky. And Brene Brown has that absolutely beautiful video distinguishing between the two, yep. But if it has an action step, it almost becomes even more real. So, so what was beautiful? We had that trophy made. None of us wanted to deliver it. We didn’t want it to be about us in any way, right? We had someone courier. Well, they were supposed to take it at like three and then report back to us. How was she did she accept it? How did it go? 330 came, four o’clock came. Five o’clock came. 530 came. He finally reached out and goes, I’ve been trying to get away. She made me dinner. We drank her new favorite tequila. She showed me a video of her son that had just passed like of him playing golf with her, like he got trapped in that moment, but in the good way. And I’m right, we’re so sorry. He goes, Are you kidding me? That was the best meal I’ve had forever. She was amazing, right? So, right, there’s this, there’s an action step of it, and this, that’s true,
Maria Ross 14:13
and I’m going to challenge you a little bit on that though too, because the action is the listening, the action is the sitting. The action isn’t always the gesture, which was a wonderful gesture because you heard her and you acted on what you heard. But you know, just to help folks listening to understand that it’s not always about the solution or the grand gesture or the whatever the action, in and of itself, can be, the sitting and the listening and the acknowledging and the sharing and giving someone space, right? The other action, quote, unquote, that you took was you gave her emotions space. You didn’t jump right back into the reason that you were there, because it was, you know, well, this is why we’re here. And. Maybe if I just keep plowing through this, she’ll feel better, right? Yeah, so I just want to acknowledge that that that, in and of itself, was such a beautiful action of an act of compassion that you gave to let her just be and let her just feel right. And that’s the thing that’s so hard for so many of us, and especially in the workplace, it’s no my job as a leader is you’re coming to me because I need to solve your problem, right? Absolutely. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, after that epiphany, and after that, not even epiphany, but where that really came home for you, with your work with leaders and teams and helping them. What makes empathy so important? What are the things that you tell them? I know we talk about that on the show, but what are the things that have resonated for your clients that really bring it home for them without having an experience like
Lane Byrum 15:54
that in the culture that we currently live in, it is so important to recognize the human that is in front of you, and so often that that person in the other side of you has a label. You’ve labeled them by class, by race, by how they act. You’ve got all of these. You’ve put them in a box. Empathy, I believe, is a way to break out of that box and see the other person as a human, as someone worth connecting to someone that has a story. We walk around as the stars of our own movies, right where we are the leading role, and we have to recognize other people have their own movies going on. And if we can somehow step inside that and learn a little bit about who they are, and it gives us insight into what makes them tick, it gives us insight into how to deal with issues that might come up in a relationship, possible issues that come up at work, even if it’s performance, there’s always a story behind it’s not it’s really just, I don’t care anymore. It’s usually, there’s a story underneath it that gets to what’s going on, what’s actually happening, right? But we don’t get to those deep places very often. Right? Business, we really like to keep it very surface level, and because we have this vision that it’s messy or it’s ugly and it’s not, it’s beautiful, and yes, it may get a little messy for a minute, because that’s what emotions are, man, emotions can get messy. They really can’t, but they’re just a signal that something else is going on. And emotion is just a signal like, hey, there’s something else here. You should be paying attention to this. Yeah, well,
Maria Ross 17:29
and that’s why the curiosity aspect of like, oh boy, even the fact of what you in that story you were describing, you were curious. Your eyes were open, you were wanting to find out more. And I think some of the work that I do with leaders and teams is for those that are not necessarily touchy feely, emotional people, and they feel awkward, they feel like they’re interrogating someone when they ask questions. So have you landed on something with your work and your clients? That’s a more comfortable way for them to start getting curious and asking those questions, and to show that curiosity without making it feel like they’re just drilling someone with question with inappropriate questions, right?
Lane Byrum 18:10
Absolutely. And it’s probably just like three simple, simple things to remember. One, you got to remember that empathy requires courage, because it does. It is maybe one of the more courageous things you’ll do is to be a human with another human, opening yourself up to their experience. It’s a some writers call it deselfing, but deself a little bit allow that other person to share their experience, then a little bit of a heightened awareness of yourself. It’s not just what they’re going through, but what is what they’re telling you doing inside of you, because if you can recognize that, like that story, when she started sharing that her she had lost her son, you know what I connected inside of me was when I lost my mom, because I was trying to think, what would I be feeling in the moment of losing something like this? And I hadn’t lost a child, but I lost a mom, and I immediately that’s what stirred me even more, was recognizing what’s happening inside of me is because I’m connecting to that place because of her story. And then that last piece is just recognizing the remembrance of the common human bond we share more. What is it? 99.9% we’re exactly the same? It’s that 1% we spend so much time on trying to be different or an individual, we have way more in common than ever. So I was to your point. I was working with a team recently, and the leader of the team said, I like it. Empathy. Sounds cool. I don’t have time for it. I just, I moved to, oh yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got things to do yes and have time for that. And it took a while we walked through that, these three things. And he kind of got underneath a little bit and started recognizing so if I slow down, I can speed up on the other side. And for that has been a learning over time. Empathy is very much a slow down, right? And then you get to. Speed up, because after you’ve connected with the other human, you understand their story. You can on the back end, you’re functioning more as a team, more together, because you understand each other on a deeper level. So it’s actually a way to speed up your processes. Then slow down. Sure, you’ll slow down for a minute to connect and understand but the back side is where the payoff
Maria Ross 20:19
is. I always use two analogies to bring this point home. One is, you would never just launch into tactics without a strategy. That’s right. I mean, you shouldn’t, some companies and leaders do, but this idea of, yes, putting together a strategy takes time, but once you have the strategy in place, you can go, you can execute, and everything is aligned and everything is more effective. Secondly, car maintenance, right? If you don’t take the time to if you have a gas car, get your oil changed, get your mileage checkups, if you have an EV getting the battery tested, you know, whatever it is, if you don’t take that time before something goes wrong, then when something goes wrong, it’s harder to recover from. I love that. And you would never, you would never wait until you know you just ran your car into the ground. Because, man, that’ll take a lot more time to recover from, if you don’t make those stops along the way and take that time to go get the car maintained, preventative, right? Just like medicine, it’s preventative, and it just enables everything to flow much more easily. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I hear a lot from leaders, is just the heaviness and the tightness and the overwhelm of leadership right now. And I really feel like empathy is something that sort of loosens that a little bit that if everyone is, if everyone is understanding each other and honoring where everyone else is, it makes those tough situations flow more easily. It’s sort of like loosening the knot.
Lane Byrum 21:54
Yeah, I love that analogy. That’s a beautiful thing. And I think that leader that I was referencing came back to me later, and he actually corrected himself. He’s like, how do I not have time to stop and empathically connect with someone so good? And that’s where he got to. But it took the practice, right? It took the Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do the thing. And once he did it, he’s like, that changes everything.
Maria Ross 22:18
Yeah, once they see the results, right? Absolutely. So that’s, yeah, I was gonna say, how do you help? You know, I was referencing this earlier, and I’m just curious of your approach when you are working with those leaders that are sort of the, you know, arms crossed in front of their bodies. I don’t think this has a place in the workplace. I don’t think I need to get to know my team. They just need to deliver and perform. What kinds of responses do you have to that? Or what do you do to sort of open their eyes a little
Lane Byrum 22:47
bit? Yeah, I think my easiest way through stories, it’s always been stories. The more you can story is a great way to humanize the situation. It’s a great way to share the depth of humanity with someone. So we usually tell stories, and one in if we have time, I’ve got one story, not as long as the last one, but another story. We were working with a client team. It was actually the brand always that was we were working with and they had done this huge global research project.
Maria Ross 23:13
Well, we should level set for anyone that doesn’t know what that they’re familiar with that
Lane Byrum 23:18
yes, yes, always feminine hygiene brand that is one of many we were working with their client team, and they had just done actually weren’t working with them yet. Something happened before we were they did this global project, went into seven, eight different countries, compiled all their learnings, did ideation, handed off their learnings, the insights to Leo Burnett. Another, the advertising agency, yeah, absolutely wonderful agency to work with. They took what they gave them, and this is my thing. It’s like, the better content and the better insights, the depth of insight you can give to an agency like that, the better the product that you’re going to get. On the other end, the better the storytelling is going to be, right? But when you give them surface level insights to function on. They come back. In fact, the campaign they came back with was called, have a happy period.
Maria Ross 24:09
I remember this. I remember this because I’m a woman, and it’s like, that’s BS
Lane Byrum 24:15
And what man wrote it, right? What man wrote this campaign that’s absolutely well, as you can imagine, it bombed horrifically, so much so that they went through a few years of scrubbing it from the internet. It was that much of an embarrassment, yeah. But the good news is someone that was at that company had been through our empathy training, like, Hey, we should call this company. They use empathy, and maybe we can get a little bit deeper. So we redid. This is also a rare thing that happens. They redid. The research worked with us, and we trained the team on empathy, and we went back into those same countries, came back together and wrote a very, very different set of insights that came out of it, which. Led to we, by the way, went right back to Leo Burnett, yeah. We took insights, these new, empathic insights, went back to Leo Burnett, and they created the, like a girl campaign, yeah. And if you have not seen it, listeners, just go to YouTube
Maria Ross 25:15
to it in the show notes,
Lane Byrum 25:16
one of the most beautiful. I like, I still cry, and I’ve seen it literally, I think I account for at least one of the millions that have of how many times it’s been viewed on YouTube, because I use it and everything. It’s just a beautiful of this is what empathy net you. So when you ask, how, what do I do with leadership? I’m like this, yeah, look at this example. This is what it gets you, you know, a Super Bowl commercial that now has, you know, 10s of millions of views over the course of a few years. So if you can show them a little bit of the proof in the pudding, I think there’s something to that for sure that’s gone over, that’s been the most help. I think sharing stories similar to that
Maria Ross 25:51
one, for sure, what a great story. And I will link to that in the show notes, because I do remember that one as well. So and that resonated with me. So love it. Okay, as we kind of wrap up our final discussion point, what are some things that listeners can remember to use empathy as a tool? And let’s also talk about just even that language of using empathy as a tool, because we definitely are not advocating that folks manipulate with empathy, but empathy as a way, you know, as I always talk about, as a strategic advantage, as a competitive advantage. So what are some specific ways that listeners can leverage it and use
Lane Byrum 26:34
it? It is. There’s some simple steps to remember, and in the end, it may feel a bit mechanical as you first but every process is right. The more you use it, the more it becomes second nature. Then you’re not thinking
Maria Ross 26:46
about it. It’s just how you are. It’s muscle memory, yeah, 100%
Lane Byrum 26:50
so some of the simple things that we say is, is, and these may sound rudimentary, but they’re super they’ve been super impactful so far. There’s like four steps. It’s acknowledge, acknowledge that the person you’re sitting across from is different from you. It’s it’s they’ve got their I’ve mentioned that before. They’ve got their own story. They’re moving at their own pace. They’ve got their own set of challenges and difficulties in their life. Acknowledge that they’re different from you, right? So, good or bad, it’s different. Yeah, it’s just different. They’re gonna have their own way of seeing the world. They’re gonna have different reactions to things that you do, and that’s not right or wrong, it just is, and that should, we should start embracing that difference, instead of trying to all be the same. I think there’s beauty in that difference. So if you acknowledge and there’s a certain the next step is you’ve got to decide to connect. You have to decide to connect. And that is maybe the hardest piece in all of this, because once you acknowledge they’re different, that means if I’m going to decide to connect, I’m opening up myself a little bit like I’m going to lay myself bare a little, and that’s very uncomfortable and very different for a work setting. It just is. It’s not. We’re not used to going to that level of depth with people, so that whole deciding to connect after you’ve acknowledged the difference and then recognize what is going on inside of you. I kind of walked this out a little bit through my story, because you have to recognize what is coming up in you as you listen to what’s happening to them, because you don’t want to get your stuff on their story. You have to keep those things different. You can be I felt like that also, but in the end, it’s not the exact same story, so you’re going to have a little bit of difference. So recognize what’s going on inside of you, so that you can keep those two things separate. And then the last thing is, check back in. Go back to that sounds so simple, but it has worked over and over and over again, is check back in. Hey, I’m picking this up from you, and you said, this is that, am I right? Is that emotion that I’ve just called out? Is that even the thing, because what you’re going to get from there is you are listening. Is one, you listen to what I said. Two, you know what that is, the emotion that I was sharing, and here’s why that’s important, or that was close, but it’s really more this, right. Either way, you’ve got this beautiful, open conversation happening, yeah, and then it kind of can be cyclical. You go right back up to the after they say, No, it was this. You can acknowledge you’re right, acknowledge we are different, and so you are experiencing this different, and you kind of just roll through the process, and you may do that five, six times over the course of a conversation, where you just keep working that process over and over again, yeah. And in the end, there is a lot of writing and things about how empathy can be used in a negative way, in a manipulative way, yeah. And I would say, you’ve got to check your heart. That’s that whole Why are you doing it? What is what is the rationale? Is it? Are you trying to move them somewhere that you want them to be, right? Or are you trying to understand them, but you’re trying to understand them, then that’s it. That is a righteous reason right? Using empathy, it really is,
Maria Ross 29:58
for sure. And I. Love that, you know that idea, I’ve talked about this in other episodes, that reflective listening is just taking that step, taking that beat, and just making sure we’re having the same conversation, and also that like you said, like, I heard you right, right, like, and because if I’m if we’re going to move forward in the conversation, if I have an assumption about what you just said and it’s wrong, we’re never gonna get to a place of common ground, that’s right. And so I love that, because, like you said, the two outcomes are, yes, wow, you were listening. I feel heard, or no, let me correct you. Yeah, actually what I was saying is this, and it’s like, oh, okay, now I have a deeper understanding of what you meant. I was actually overlaying what I thought I heard on you, but really, you know, let me know what is actually being said here and what you actually mean by that. So I love this. This is so great what is sort of like a final piece of advice you can share with our listeners about embracing empathy as a leader, and maybe getting back to this idea of empathy taking courage.
Lane Byrum 30:59
Yeah, I thanks for calling that out again, because I think it does, especially in our current climate, and especially with just what has been traditional work settings. Yeah, using empathy feels foreign, because, like we’re not supposed to talk about those things at work, and in fact, it’s why check your humanity at the door when you come
Maria Ross 31:20
to work. That’s what I say all the time. We don’t. The reality is, we don’t. We can’t, right,
Lane Byrum 31:24
right, bring your whole self to work, bring all of it to work, and having tools of how to manage that and how to understand one another once you get to work is where the secret sauce is. But yeah, it’s you have to be courageous in these times, because there’s a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t that sound right? And until you use it, you won’t understand how wrong those reasons are right and how much you should be using empathy.
Maria Ross 31:48
I’m kind of feeling like lately, empathy is an act of rebellion.
Lane Byrum 31:52
100% 100% I love
Maria Ross 31:55
joy lately. But yeah, I really think that the harder we can push back against a lot of the rhetoric out there that empathy has no place in business, or empathy is weak. We know from the data and the research that that’s not true. So you know, the voices like yours, the voices like mine, like we need to keep we need to keep beating the drum on that so I appreciate you coming on the show and helping to beat that drum. Absolutely. We’re gonna have all your links in the show notes lane. But for those who are on the go or exercising, what’s one best place they can find out more about you and your
Lane Byrum 32:33
work, the easiest way is to come to our website. It’s fivecapitals.net that’s the easiest way.
Maria Ross 32:41
Awesome. And again, we’ll have that in the show notes. But thank you so much for this conversation today. Thanks for having insights. Really appreciate you, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a friend or 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 slicemaria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
