What if the biggest thing holding leaders back isn’t a lack of ambition or skilL but outdated operating systems we’ve never questioned?
Mitch Shepard lives at the intersection of truth-telling, leadership, and systems change. She’s an Applied Behavioral Scientist, Chief Truth Teller, and CEO of HUMiN, Inc., and a trusted advisor to leaders at some of the world’s most influential companies.
In this unfiltered conversation, the throughline is clear: we must all embrace authentic leadership, equity, and courage to be fully human at work and in life.
This is a bold, honest, and expansive conversation about legacy. How leaders can do truly great work by creating equity, telling the truth, and inviting men and women alike to bring all of who they are so we can solve hard problems together.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- How leaders can stop performing and start telling the truth
- Why can’t we keep focusing on “fixing the women” and instead must confront the systems we operate within
- The tension and power between masculine and feminine leadership, and why embracing both makes leaders stronger
- How societal expectations shape what we teach young men and women about success, and how we can model something healthier for our kids
- How to sell your strengths better when they defy outdated norms
- How to honor people for who they are, not who the system rewards them for pretending to be
“If you observe environments, it turns out men really are more likely to have the masculine traits in excess or higher quantities, women are more likely to have feminine ones. But this is where the narrative has to shift. None of us are off the hook on learning ALL the skills.” — Mitch Shepard
Episode References:
- Outward Bound: outwardbound.org
- The Athena Doctrine: goodreads.com/book/show/16250170-the-athena-doctrine
- “Prime Minister” Documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34965625/
The Empathy Edge:
- Ilana Ben-Ari: How the Empathy Toy is Changing the World
- Claude Silver: Leading with Heart at Vayner Media
About Mitch Shepard: Chief Truth Teller and CEO, HUMiN, Inc.
Mitch Shepard is an Applied Behavioral Scientist and trusted advisor to some of the world’s top leaders. She began her career leading wilderness expeditions through the rivers, canyons, and peaks of Utah and Colorado, guiding teams to achieve bold goals in unpredictable environments.
That foundation, combined with a formal education in Economics and Behavioral Science, prepared Mitch for two decades navigating the equally wild terrain of corporate America. She has since built three companies and coached hundreds of leaders across tech and biotech – from scrappy startups to the Fortune 500.
Mitch is known for her candor, warmth, truth-telling, and sharp strategic mind. She is also an author, mama, wife, sought-after speaker, cancer ass-kicker, social justice warrior—and passionate global citizen.
Mitch’s first book, Lessons From My Daughter, will explore the generational updating of our operating systems from one generation of women to the next.
Connect with Mitch:
HUMiN Inc: humininc.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mitchshepard
Facebook: facebook.com/mitch.loomisshepard
Instagram: instagram.com/mitchshepard
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. What if the biggest thing holding leaders back isn’t a lack of ambition or skill, but outdated operating systems we’ve never been taught to question my guest today, Mitch Sheppard, lives at the intersection of truth telling, leadership and systems change. She’s an Applied Behavioral Scientist, the chief truth teller and CEO of human Inc, and a trusted advisor to leaders at some of the world’s most influential companies, from scrappy startups to the fortune 500 mitch’s path to this work is anything but conventional. She began her career leading wilderness expeditions through the rivers canyons and peaks of Utah and Colorado, guiding teams to achieve bold goals in unpredictable environments. That foundation, paired with formal training in economics and behavioral science, prepared her for two decades of navigating the equally complex terrain of corporate leadership. Along the way, she’s built three companies, coached hundreds of executives across tech and biotech, and earned a reputation for her candor, warmth and fierce clarity. In 2018 Mitch and her husband sold everything, packed one backpack each, and traveled the world with their two young kids, a year long field trip that reshaped how they saw leadership, family and possibility that experience and Mitch is deeply meaningful. Relationship with her daughter planted the seeds for her forthcoming book, lessons from my daughter, which explores how we update our leadership operating systems from one generation of women to the next in this unfiltered conversation, we go many places, but the through line is clear, authentic leadership, equity and the courage to be fully human at work and in life. We talk about what authentic leadership really looks like when we stop performing and start telling the truth. We discuss why we can’t keep focusing on fixing the women and instead must confront the systems we operate within. Mitch shares how she coaches leaders, many of them white male executives, using empathy and how she decides when to be curious versus when to be fierce. We discuss the tension and power between masculine and feminine leadership, and why embracing both makes leaders stronger. We also have a talk about how societal expectations shape what we teach young men and women about success and how we can model something healthier for our kids. We’ll talk about how to sell your strengths better when they defy outdated norms. And finally, what it really takes to build spaces that honor people for who they are, not who the system rewards them for pretending to be. This was such a bold, honest and expansive conversation about legacy, how leaders can do truly great work by creating equity, telling the truth, and inviting men and women alike to bring all of who they are to the table so we can solve the hardest problems we face together. Enjoy this one. Take a listen. Welcome Mitch Shepard to the empathy edge podcast. Oh my gosh, I want to fan girl you for a little bit, because I have been following you, slash stalking you on LinkedIn for a while. And we were just talking about, I don’t even know how we were connected, and I think we connected the dots back and figured out how, but your work and your voice and your message on LinkedIn about everything from leadership to, you know, inequality for women to toxic masculinity, like we’re going to kind of go in a billion different directions today, and I love it. So welcome to the show.
Mitch Shepard 04:33
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. And honestly, my favorite kind of podcast is where I have no idea where we’re going. I have no idea what you’re asking me, because it’s just so much more fun. I just showed up. I did go through my hair.
Maria Ross 04:46
Amazing.
Mitch Shepard 04:47
It was not a common
Maria Ross 04:49
I did not, which is why I’m wearing my did not wash my hair hat. Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 04:52
but I’m really happy to be here.
Maria Ross 04:54
I’m so happy to have you. Okay, so, you know, we heard your bio and your very, you know, impressive credentials and the work. Work that you do as a leadership coach, but tell us how you got to that work. Tell us a little bit about your story.
Mitch Shepard 05:06
Yeah, okay, it’s a long one, as is often the case, but I’m going to give you kind of some of the highlights that led me to where I’m at. So first, where am I? I’m in Seattle. I’ve been an executive coach and a consultant and a truth teller for years, I am a mom and a wife. I’ve got a 15 year old son, 19 now, 19 year old daughter who just went off to college. And now let me sort of back up so I got my start. I thought I was going to be an accountant. I went to UCSB, studied business, economics and accounting. I love a good problem. I love math, I love business. I love money. There’s a part of me that is all business right. On the side, I did this adventure programs as a volunteer, mostly because I wanted to go on these outrageously fun outdoor trips, and ended up just completely falling in love with that. So instead of going in being a CPA, I went and became an outward bound instructor for 10 years, and I led wilderness expeditions all over the country with all kinds of groups, from teenagers to corporate executives to people going through major life transitions. And I didn’t know the words diversity, equity, inclusion. I didn’t know the word coach, even besides off a court, I didn’t know there were people who had professional jobs, facilitating conversations, facilitating personal growth, coaching people to be the best version of themselves, right and when? But what kind of clued me in is that some of the courses I led, one in particular was called dclf, Denver Community Leadership Forum. I don’t know if it still exists, but part of this two year program was that they would bring leaders from all over the Denver metropolitan area, from nonprofit, government, public, private, educational institutions, to solve Denver’s like, toughest problems. And that was that was a moment of like, wow, this is powerful stuff, because so we would take these leaders out into the mountains, where most of them are pretty uncomfortable, and we would watch the way that they built trust, connection, empathy, right? Just the bonds that they would build would then accelerate their problem solving abilities, right? And I just fell in love with that model, with that model of deep humanity, fear, discomfort, big problems that are hard to solve, that the outdoors was like a really nice level playing field.
Maria Ross 07:31
Yeah.
Mitch Shepard 07:31
So anyway, spent a decade doing that. Then was like, wow, I’d really like to have a permanent address in a family of my own, and not, you know, throw everything in my car and move every four months, and so I settled down in Seattle for grad school and never left. Met my husband, got a master’s in behavioral science and jumped from the outdoor facilitating coaching space
Maria Ross 07:53
to the boardroom
Mitch Shepard 07:54
over into the like, you know, from the great outdoors to the great indoors and but never lost my sense of adventure. So after about 15 years of that, you know, building that business from scratch and hiring different consultants and growing it, when Brad and I first met, we had this dream of traveling the world like before we even had kids, before we were even engaged, one of the things that really bonded us was, wouldn’t it be great if? And it was, we call it dream day, even to this point, to this day, and we talked about, wouldn’t it be great if we could take our kids around the world someday, if we could expose them to other cultures? Like we both deeply believe that wherever you go, people are people,
Maria Ross 08:37
right?
Mitch Shepard 08:38
And we both deeply believe that there’s just the best way to learn is by just falling in love with people all over the
Maria Ross 08:44
world, and it’s the best way to learn empathy as well. Is, oh my exposed to different people and different lifestyles. Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 08:52
so much. And so we did that trip. We did that trip, thankfully, right before covid. We left in summer of, June 2018 got back June 2019
Maria Ross 09:01
oh, my god, 24
Mitch Shepard 09:02
countries, six continents, the most incredible life enriching experience. And we didn’t stick to just like the safe and easy places, right? Like, well, all the places were safe. But, you know, we were trekking in Nepal, we were volunteering in Rwanda. We were in some pretty off the beaten track places around the world, and having spent the prior 15 years in corporate spaces where people really, you know, international companies with a lot of melding cultures in one place, like I’d coached Israelis, I’d coached people from India, China, Japan, Australia, Prague, France, right now we’re in these places, and I’m learning their cultures and customs, and I have this moment where I think, wow, how much of these people that work in the US like, how much they have to like shut off parts of themselves to be. Successful here, and how painful that must be, because when you’re in their world like you’re the one adapting, and I find that beautiful. I love to learn, and I love to adapt, and I love to be curious about that. But so when I came back, I just had a passion even deeper than the well of passion I left with, to build spaces that truly honored and valued what people bring to the table, and some of that is the cultural stuff, right? Like, one of the teams I worked with at Amazon years ago was a website, Application Platform team, and you know, they have to build different versions of their website and different look and feel and different cultural standards like all over the globe to be successful. And so this room I was in was filled with people from every country you can imagine, and leading them through these exercises where they were able to share the ways in which their culture informs the business decisions.
Maria Ross 10:58
Yep,
Mitch Shepard 10:58
was just amazing. So anyway, that’s kind of what I do. Then, long story short, I got cancer shortly after covid. And I don’t know how else to say it, except that it just eviscerated my filter. It did. I don’t know what happened. Part of it might be the estrogen drop, like when you go through chemo, truly. I mean, there’s science to this, like, estrogen is the thing that makes us nice,
Maria Ross 11:21
yeah.
Mitch Shepard 11:22
And like, chemo just shut my estrogen down, and suddenly I could, I had, like this sub zero tolerance for bullshit, and I started, and I’m a writer, right? Yeah. So I’m a writer. I write. And so through cancer, I just wrote so honestly about my experiences. I have a blog on medium where I just wrote about this journey of just becoming more of who I was, and that’s how you found me on LinkedIn, because I never used to post things like that. If you look back at LinkedIn, I mean, it’s probably been maybe 18 months that I’ve actually been honest and said what’s real, and decided to put honesty and transparency above my own business success, my own safety, my own like, ability. Like, there are plenty of people who are like, whoa, who I’m sure think, oh, whoa, she’s really like, tripped off the deep end over here. Like, who did Whoa, who did Mitch? Because I will share
Maria Ross 12:23
with you. And I don’t know if you know this about my background, but while I was in, I joke around that we moved back to Seattle for four and a half years so I could have a near fatal brain aneurysm and recover from that, whoa. And so I get it Well, number one, mine is cognitive, of, like, my filter got broken, yeah,
Mitch Shepard 12:39
like, literally,
Maria Ross 12:40
like, literally, and I’ve learned strategies, obviously, to deal with it. But I think it’s, there’s also something about when you face a medical illness or any kind of challenge like that, it’s not that I got all Zen, like in the moment I was dealing with my own recovery and just trying to, you know, like, walk my dog every day. Like, that was where I was at. I wasn’t some guru, but I, you know, I wrote a memoir about that experience called rebooting my brain. And I think that from that experience I can’t imagine, I started my business after being in corporate for most of my career, shortly before that happened, like the year that happened, and thank God, I didn’t have a, you know, hierarchical, politically charged organization to go back to, and I was running my own show because, to your point, you, there’s nothing left to lose, right? And it’s just, I’m going to say things the way I say things. I’m going to show tough love to my clients, and if they don’t like it, they’re not the right clients, like, you know what I mean? So I think there’s something about going through those profound what you know, those life interrupters, that you start to realize that what are you doing? Like, what are we doing, masking this? What are we doing, trying to hide who we are, not that I’m perfect at it every day. I still code switch when required. I still have insecurities, but probably like you, but it you just get this recharge, like, I don’t want to put up with the bullshit anymore, and I think that you know your story is so relevant to the work you do, because you have this lens of helping leaders embrace who they really are on the inside. And that’s what we talk about when we talk about authenticity. It doesn’t mean coming to work in your pajamas, it just means saying the things that need to be said and doing the things that need to be done. But you know, with my work, there’s a way to do that where you’re not causing harm to other people. So there might be some ways to communicate your truth in a way where you’re considering your audience right and considering the impact on your audience. And I hate when people say that those two things are mutually exclusive. I hate anybody that has sort of binary leadership thinking, but being who you really are, and also holding space for what someone else’s perspective and experience and feelings might be. You can we could do both. Yes, we’re smart beings, and it doesn’t mean we acquiesce to them. It just means maybe we adapt the way we communicate, maybe we soften our language. A little bit, maybe we find better timing to have the conversation. There’s these little tweaks we can make and still be authentically us. And so I’m wondering, from your work with leaders and given your amazing experience, which thank you for sharing that. And side note, we need to have an offline conversation about, how can I make that possible to travel the world with my son, because that’s a dream of mine. But what do you find is the biggest, or, you know, the biggest obstacles? Maybe there’s not one two leaders who don’t have a life altering experience like we did, to just finally get in the game and just show up as who they are and play to the strengths while also understanding their strengths might have shadow sides they need to manage and navigate, but what do you think is getting in the way? Is it corporate culture? Is it programming? Is it society? Is it their own insecurity? Like, what do you see as the biggest obstacles and then breakthroughs of your clients to be who they really are and lead as who they really are?
Mitch Shepard 15:59
Yeah
Maria Ross 15:59
That’s a lot of questions in there. But
Mitch Shepard 16:01
no, it’s okay. I mean, it
Maria Ross 16:02
resonates, yeah,
Mitch Shepard 16:03
yeah. I mean, I there’s, yeah, I’ve got stories on this. So first of all, I think when people the very first thing is that when people realize their natural, authentic gifts, talents, ways of looking at the world, expertise is a value, actually a value to accelerate towards the goal that the business has. That is first it is because otherwise, it’s real hard to talk yourself into I should show up as me, if showing up as you is is not proving to be effective, right? So that’s honestly thing one, but it takes a while. A lot of times when I’m coaching someone and I’m digging into what those unique gifts are, and how do they know, and what’s their evidence? Okay, so, example, I was coaching a guy at Microsoft years ago. He’s now retired, but he was kind of this person I coached from director, Senior Director, GM to finally, VP to finally, CVP, right over this course of a decade, off and on. And I will never forget the strength of character that he had around midway in this decade of coaching him on and off. I did this interview base 360 for him, because you asked this question, is it culture? Is it personal narrative? Is it this? Is that? And I would just simply say yes, yes, it’s all of that, right?
Maria Ross 17:24
Yeah.
Mitch Shepard 17:25
And even the culture. There’s the wider culture in, say, the States or any other country or region, but there’s also company culture. And at the time, Microsoft, this changed a lot since then, but at the time, it was a very cutthroat culture. It was like on the heels of gates in bomber, and bomber was actually still there, but where it was perfectly appropriate to call people an idiot in a meeting and, like, pound your fist on the table, and that was seen as, that was seen as good leadership. And so
Maria Ross 17:53
it’s where my husband left. He was there under the bomber regime, and it sucked his soul like he Yes, I had never seen him so downtrodden, and he was doing good work and getting good reviews, but it was terrible.
Mitch Shepard 18:06
This is why you’ll love this, right? Like this is a person who grew in place, who stayed true to themselves in place. Okay, so I bring this feedback back to him. So what I did do with when I do these is I interview 10 or 12 folks who work closely with this leader, up across, down, all around, partners, etc, and then I curate that feedback. And I love doing it this way, because I like people to use their own language, their own like it’s not some assessment you can easily throw on a shelf. It’s tell me about this person, right for better or worse, best strengths, talents, attributes, what should they shift or change? What difference will it make if they do? What’s the impact when they show up like this? What would it look like if they showed up like that? What does it look like if they show up in the way you’re saying that they should? And in this case, people said consistently, he needs to be bigger in the room. He needs to show up stronger. He needs to like one person actually said it would be, it would it would be good for him if he could just pound his hand on the table from from time to time like the rest of us do, because right now, he’s just getting like leveled. Essentially, he didn’t use the word level,
Maria Ross 19:11
right?
Mitch Shepard 19:11
So when I went back to my client, who prides himself, he knows who he is, he knows.
Maria Ross 19:16
Just want to say that’s really interesting of a male executive,
Mitch Shepard 19:19
it is, and they were plenty of examples,
Maria Ross 19:21
bigger. Yeah, interesting.
Mitch Shepard 19:23
Oh, right, I know well meaning. Like women get told that all the time, like you gotta, you gotta speak up. And then
Maria Ross 19:30
when they go slap down, yeah,
Mitch Shepard 19:32
exactly, you’re intimidating. You’re, you know people, people fear you. You know you’re never gonna get promoted if you’re not likable. Blah, blah, blah,
Maria Ross 19:39
right?
Mitch Shepard 19:40
But in this case, so when I gave him that feedback, he’s a person. He’s very highly emotionally intelligent. Really cares a lot about growth and doing the right thing. And he heard all the feedback, so much of it, he’s like, Good point, good point. And I get to that part, like, people think you can be bigger, stronger, stronger, you know? And he’s like, Nope, I. Hmm, he’s like, that’s where I draw the line. No. And I just looked at him, and I was like, congratulations,
Maria Ross 20:06
I love him.
Mitch Shepard 20:07
Me too. Me too. I mean, still to this day, we’re friends. Now he’s retired, but
Maria Ross 20:14
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 20:14
because that’s it, right? And I think in this climate we’re in right now, unfortunately, okay, that environment we talked about became unfashionable
Maria Ross 20:24
right
Mitch Shepard 20:24
now it’s back in fashion in our workplaces. This, this strength by power over this more autocratic style, this more like you know,
Maria Ross 20:36
even though the data and research all show us that leading with empathy and curiosity and emotional regulation and intelligence actually yields better bottom line results. It’s like,
Mitch Shepard 20:49
absolutely,
Maria Ross 20:50
yeah, it’s
Mitch Shepard 20:50
and so back to the bottom line,
Maria Ross 20:52
yeah.
Mitch Shepard 20:52
So why did this guy succeed as an outlier in that environment? Because he was killing it at results. His team had the highest organizational scores, you know, on the on the engagement. He hit his results time and time again. He shined above the rest, right? And so you don’t get to be an outliner, outlier in your behavior if your results suck,
Maria Ross 21:18
right?
Mitch Shepard 21:18
You get to be an outlier, and you get to be confident in yourself and in your authenticity when it contributes to the thing everyone would agree they want, which is this goal to be met, right,
Maria Ross 21:31
right?
Mitch Shepard 21:32
That’s why this thing about authenticity, authenticity, have empathy for everyone is is like important, but it has to be in the when in a workplace, especially, it has to be in the context of the business results. Like, why is empathy have a return on investment,
Mitch Shepard 21:48
right?
Maria Ross 21:49
Right?
Mitch Shepard 21:49
And why does authenticity have a return on investment? Because let’s talk about women for a sec. Someone comes in like, I have another story. This female partner at a very conservative, mostly white, predominantly white, predominantly male, law firm. The partner level was like all white men and two white women, one of whom I was in this conference with, where we were invited to be in the room with all men, intentionally, because it was about men essentially becoming more evolved, inclusive men in their in their workplaces? Well, there’s this panel of three men up there, and she stands up, her and I have been friends ever since this day. That was 12 years ago, right? And she stands up, and she’s highly respected in the legal industry, right? And has played along and learned how to speak man, and, you know, adapted to all the norms, and like, exhausted herself doing all the code switching to get to that partner level. And has never said this before, and decides to say it for the first time in a room of about 300 men.
Mitch Shepard 22:56
She stands up and she’s like, you know, it feels like I don’t know what happened, but ever since I turned 50, I just started bringing all of me. And she said it felt like me and all the other women in this firm, you know, we just like showed up at the soccer field on Saturdays, tied our right arm and our right leg behind us, and learned how to play soccer with our left side, our less dominant side, we just, we just learned how to play the game. And it was about a year ago or so that I just decided, no, you’re playing soccer with both feet,
Maria Ross 23:32
right?
Mitch Shepard 23:33
And I’ll never forget this moment, like she was so raw, so honest, and one of the panelists up there was deeply moved by her story. He had tears in his eyes, and he grabbed the mic, and he’s like, wow. He said, All these years I’ve worked with you like you are one of the most stellar people I know. I don’t even know I’ve learned so much from you, like I had no idea that you were containing yourself, changing yourself, adapting yourself, working this hard, to filter yourself,
Maria Ross 24:05
right?
Mitch Shepard 24:05
And anyway, it was just a beautiful moment, right? But this is it. It’s like so often we get hired because we bring a different thing to the table,
Maria Ross 24:14
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 24:15
but then you bring that different thing to the table and you get judged for it. You don’t get promoted for it. You get criticized for it. You get dinged in your review for it,
Maria Ross 24:23
right,
Mitch Shepard 24:23
right?
Maria Ross 24:24
Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 24:24
and it’s effective,
Maria Ross 24:27
yeah, that thing, well, well, you know, again, the research shows that if you have diversity in leadership or diversity within your company, you make better business decisions, because people are coming with a different vantage point. They’re looking at the same problem in a different way, and there’s no better articulation of this that I’ve seen. And I’ll put a link in the show notes to the episode where I interviewed the founder of this company. But they developed a toy called the empathy toy, and they use it when they’re facilitating with groups. And essentially, was it? What it is, is that. So you have a picture of what a finished product looks like, made up of all these different pieces of different colors and different shapes. And I did this virtually, because it was the pandemic, but they do it in person. So I don’t know how they do it in person, but virtually, what happened was everyone in the in the call there was, there was quite a few of us. We got a different personal version of what we saw the finished product to look like. And then there was one person who had, I think they had the actual pieces in front of them physically in, completely disassembled. And the goal was the group had to help this person put together the item as it was supposed to, quote, unquote, look. The problem with that is everyone was looking at a different side of it, so what we ended up discovering was how to work together, given our different vantage points, to accomplish the goal. And I will never forget the moment where and it’s just brought the whole value of diversity home in such a stark way, right? So I’m looking at my picture, and I’m looking at a picture with all these different shapes, and then the person putting the puzzle together says, Well, where am I supposed to put the yellow piece? And I’m like, there is no yellow piece. I don’t I can’t see a yellow piece. Someone else pipes up, Oh, I see the yellow piece in my version. You need to put it next to the purple. And then we started realizing, okay, who can see the purple, who can see the red, who can see but we all couldn’t see the same colors and shapes in our own versions. Yes, so sorry for the long winded story, but I just I was so impacted by that experience of like this is what we mean. We don’t when we talk about diversity, we don’t talk about lowering the standards, or no letting people in who are just unqualified. We’re talking about welcoming more perspectives to the table so we more quickly solve problems and get results.
Mitch Shepard 26:51
Yes, and Maria, I’m glad you told this story, because I I couldn’t help but think all the way through it that what this world would be if, especially in this online environment, we’re in the middle of this Firestorm where people only see what the algorithms deliver them, and they get more mired in their own point of view. That empathy toy, as you’re calling it. I think, gosh, if we can only put it in the hands of every human right now,
Maria Ross 27:16
totally, totally. I will put a link to her episode in the show notes, because it was, it was amazing, but, but what you’re saying is just reminding me of that, of that when we, when we hire people for the skills they bring, we want them to bring those skills. And I spoke to Claude silver a few years ago, and I’m actually going to get the chance to talk to her again soon. But she talked about the fact that in her own company, She’s the Chief Heart Officer at Vayner, Vayner X Gary vaynerchuks company. And she talked about the fact that there’s a lot of people, young people, that come in and they’re like, but I want to be like Gary. I want to, I want to run as hard as him and go as hard as him and work all the time. And she, I remember her telling me, you know, I tell them, we don’t want you to be Gary. We already have a Gary. We hired you to be who you are and bring your skills and your talent to the table. So don’t try to be someone you’re not. Be who you are. That’s why you’re here.
Mitch Shepard 28:13
You know, what else you should put in your show notes? Is the documentary about Jacinda Ardern.
Maria Ross 28:18
Oh yeah,
Mitch Shepard 28:18
she’s in my prime minister, because I’ve never seen a more beautiful movie about that, about bringing you to the table, because just one story that really touched me, and by the way, my daughter and all of her friends will be having movie night with me to watch this movie, because what I want to instill in them is how effective you can Be by being your authentic leadership self, and how much we benefit as a world when more femininity comes into leadership. And I say it that way, because femininity, feminine, historically, feminine traits labeled as feminine, can appear in anybody, any human right, not just women, but
Maria Ross 28:57
everyone has masculine and feminine traits.
Mitch Shepard 28:59
That’s right, but she displays it so beautifully. And she talks about how when she was elected initially to the Parliament, she went to this tough as nails kind of guy who’s like well respected politician, edgy, fierce, direct, all this stuff. And she said, I’m going to need some tips on how to have a thicker skin, on how to show up more fierce like that, or bold, whatever word she is, he said, no, they hired you. They voted for you.
Maria Ross 29:28
Yes
Mitch Shepard 29:28
just like Gary, we already have a Gary. It’s like the parliament already had a whoever his name was, right?
Maria Ross 29:33
Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 29:33
and so. But then when she becomes prime minister, you really see how,
Maria Ross 29:37
oh
Mitch Shepard 29:38
I mean, I was so deeply touched by this movie because she is tender, she is confident. There are moments she uses the F bomb. There are other moments where she’s deeply analyzing something in her pajamas on her living room floor. There’s other moments where she’s got tears in her eyes the way she’s meeting and by the way, empathy. I mean,
Maria Ross 29:56
I know her stories in the book. Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 29:58
her story is amazing. Incredible, how she met with the Muslim community after the horrific shootings in Christchurch, and how she got gun reform passed in four weeks.
Maria Ross 30:10
Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 30:11
right,
Maria Ross 30:11
yeah, it’s
Mitch Shepard 30:13
unbelievable. And yes, I know it’s a smaller country, but it’s like, I don’t think anyone could watch that movie and not say we need more women in charge,
Maria Ross 30:20
yeah, yeah. So I know you are, you’re working on a book right now. Yes, tell us a little bit about the book. It’s not out yet, but I know you’re, you’re working on it. So tell us a little bit about that, about that, and maybe share some sneak peek lessons with us from it.
Mitch Shepard 30:39
Okay, well, you might have to just stop me from going on and on, because I think this is a book that’s going to meet the moment. I think it’s really needed.
Mitch Shepard 30:48
And if there are any agents or publishers listening, please send them my way. But here it is. Basically, I’m a mom and I have a mom, and this book is about the generational updating of our operating systems from one generation of women to the next, but in told through story, told through just very real stories. I call it the mind fuckery of motherhood, right? The the mind fuckery of like what we it’s loud in here, most women will absolutely resonate with this, right? It’s loud in this head of ours, right? We think and we overthink and we contemplate a lot of things, and so much of that is conditioning, right? My mom came from a generation where, you know, she was made to wear lacy dresses and play with certain people and not other people, and be a polite little girl, she is us to be much tougher and independent and just incredible, the what she had to learn to be a different kind of mother than she had, and also the empathy and forgiveness and just acceptance of the mother she had right? then, when I became a mom, I had struggled With so many different types of things, like as much as my early life was marked with some pretty incredible adventures, confidence, becoming an outdoor wilderness leader when I was almost always the only woman with so many men all the time my whole life, right? But I struggled deeply with things like body image, diet, culture passed down from my mom
Mitch Shepard 32:24
and things like not speaking up, right? Like we teach a whole generation of women be strong. You’re capable of anything, be resilient. What we aren’t teaching women is, no, don’t put up with that shit, right? Like there are strategic ways to not just be like, I’m strong. Instead, it’s like, okay, so then your daughter is just gonna need to also be, just be strong, instead of slowly but surely shifting the system. So anyway, the book is, it’s light in times, it’s funny, it’s touching at times, it’s deeply fierce and uncomfortable at times. One chapter I write about the day when my daughter was eight and she said to me, Mom, why is Dad’s no more powerful than your yes?
Maria Ross 33:12
Wow,
Mitch Shepard 33:14
yeah. Or the day that she came home from school in high school, years later, and asked me, in a fit of rage, honestly, marches up the stairs I’m in the bathroom, like brushing my teeth or something. She’s like, Mom, can you just tell me? Why is it not okay to use any kind of racial slur like people know, like you’ll be canceled for that. That is totally unacceptable, totally inappropriate in this day and age. But why is it that at my school people still say things like bitch, cunt, ho whore on the daily? And I was like, what? First of all, okay, this is, like, mainstream manosphere kind of shit. This is system. This is not any one boy. Is this bad kid? These are, like, some of her friends. These are kids I’ve known since they were two. These are kids I know how their parents talk at home. These are kids that are hearing this stuff online, right?
Mitch Shepard 34:09
And so what will some parents will say? Like, in fact, true story. She finally stood up to a couple of her friends and did it very imperfectly, but stood up, and I was proud as hell of her for that, and the mom of those two boys said to me, well, it’s just, you know, sometimes she has this, like demanding energy, like she could have probably addressed this better. Was she wrong? No, she’s not wrong. But are you actually fucking kidding me right now,
Maria Ross 34:42
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 34:42
that’s what you’re gonna focus on. That’s the takeaway, the message, not what your kids said to deserve the like lashing that they got. Verbal lashing, let’s be clear, but it’s like so anyway, this is a story. These are kind of some of the. Fiercer parts, right? These are some of the awakening parts. These are some of the times where, like earlier in motherhood, I would gaslight myself. I would feel guilty about things. If I ever was less than perfect on something, I would just cycle and spin and beat myself up over it. It’s like this. It’s basically a story of growing up together, right? Like he grew up. My mom was growing up. I was growing up, she was growing up like we all have been so close through these generational transfers that we talk about this stuff out loud frequently, right? The book is really meant to just be. It’s not a teaching book, it’s not a self help book. It’s a memoir about how we grew together through motherhood, through business, through travel, and through cancer, and it’s just my daughter’s amazing. Like
Maria Ross 35:49
I love this so much.
Mitch Shepard 35:50
David, her operating system in ways that were so important. I raised a girl who likes herself,
Maria Ross 35:57
yeah, every
Mitch Shepard 35:58
girl who doesn’t mind fuck herself constantly. And I’m really proud of that.
Maria Ross 36:03
Yeah, well, you should be. I am constantly torn between, I’m doing a horrible job and I’m doing a good job because my son’s at an age where he doesn’t want to hear about, I don’t want to hear about you going to that rally. I don’t want to hear about this or, you know, I don’t understand. And it was really interesting. A year or so ago, he asked me this question very thoughtfully, and he said, Mom, why is it today that when when girls do something, everyone thinks it’s like, amazing and awesome and like, he’s seeing all the celebration of women that’s finally happening, right? And he’s like, but it’s like, I do the same thing. It’s no big deal. It was like, it was like, the after effect of what happens to boys, you know what I mean? And I was like, Okay, how do I respond to this? And I said, Well, I go, it doesn’t diminish you and what you’re doing. But I get it. I get why you might think that he’s like, when girls speak out, it’s like, this amazing thing, and if I speak out, I get in trouble at school, like it was that kind of thing. And I said, it’s just that you have to understand that there’s been a history of women not being able to say those things or do those things, or have the sports team go to success, or, you know, get the get the promotion, or get the job or get elected. And it was just he couldn’t wrap his little brain around it at that at that age. But it was just an interesting takeaway, and that’s where some of the conditioning, I know you’ve talked about this online, of this snapback to, you know, sexism and misogyny. You know, my answer may have been imperfect, but it was important, because in a different family, you could have had a dad who said, yeah, it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that women get to do whatever they want to do now, and you know, in my day, they knew their place. I mean, you can see how that same question could could happen in millions of homes.
Mitch Shepard 37:51
Yes,
Maria Ross 37:52
and it’s a valid perspective. It’s his experience, right? And he was asking it with all innocence and no malice. But you know how we how we handle that, that generational education, that generational like, how we answer those questions for our kids, it reminds me of when he was, like, four years old, three or four years old, and he’s in the back of the car, and he asks a question about a kid at his daycare. And he said, Why does so and so have two moms? And I said, Well, families come in all shapes and sizes. I was like, our family has a mom and a dad. Other families have two moms. Some families have two dads. Some families have one dad or one mom. It doesn’t make it less of a family. And he goes, Okay, 30 seconds,
Mitch Shepard 38:35
very matter of fact
Maria Ross 38:36
30 seconds of of but again, in my mind, I was like, Ooh, what if a kid asks that question of a parent who says, it’s wrong, it’s an abomination. It’s, you know, but that’s how quickly we can help them be good people and future good leaders. Yeah, how quickly we can turn them into racists, misogynists, bigots, all the things. It’s 30 seconds,
Mitch Shepard 38:59
yes, well,
Maria Ross 39:00
and that frightens me, like,
Mitch Shepard 39:03
absolutely well, and you’re not wrong. I mean, this is what is happening, right? Everything you just painted is exactly how it’s going. Those conversations are unfolding in homes across the United States and everywhere else, and,
Maria Ross 39:13
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 39:14
1000s and millions of different ways. But your story reminds me of a couple things. One, my daughter again, right? She’s just, I swear she’s had a few goes around the planet before this one, because she just was kind of born with this, like, deeper wisdom.
Maria Ross 39:30
Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 39:31
she’s kind of, yeah, exactly. But I had a sticker when she was little on my water bottle that said, Girls Rock. Or maybe she had it. Maybe someone gave it to her at school or something. And one day, she picks up her water bottle, and she said, Well, this sticker Girls Rock like, I mean, we don’t have stickers that say boys rock. I mean, isn’t this kind of unfair? And I said to her same, pretty much same explanation. I said, you know, it’s a really good point. I said, Boys also rock Absolutely. I said, the reason the culture swung the pendulum. Over here to really praising girls is because, believe it or not, like this is the world you live in, but for for so long, like you know, and even now, you know, there are ways in which women are oppressed. Oppression means a girl. You know, I explained to a seven year old what oppression means, and I’ve explained it to my son many times and through multiple lenses since, but that’s it. I said I can’t wait until we no longer need a sticker that says Girls Rock to show girls what they’re capable of.
Mitch Shepard 40:29
but it is also true that what we’ve forgotten is that in this generation where we’re teaching generations where we’ve now taught women do anything, you can be anything, you’re amazing. You can be a teacher or a stay at home mom or a scientist. You can you can care about money or not. You can be joining the Peace Corps. You can get married or not. You know, you can love women or men. I mean, we’ve given women. You can be bold and confident and self assured. You can also be tender and warm and kind and nurturing. We’ve let women, we’ve painted this entire rainbow of options for girls and women. And I mean, I got to be honest about this, like I didn’t, this has been a slow awakening for me, as well as, like, a fierce advocate for women over the last probably three years. Is when, as my own son, he’s 15 now, but as he’s grown up, really realizing, Wait a second, this is, this is, even before all the data was coming out, I was like, hold on, like, I have a boy who is all the things he is, he is, you know, he’s kind, and he’s warm, and he’s tender, and he’s all and he’s so loving, and he’s so empathetic, and he’s also, you know, can be stoic and kind of
Maria Ross 41:41
and they also can be dicks, like,
Mitch Shepard 41:43
yeah, and he can beat, oh my god. I tell him all the time, like, you are truly the most stubborn human being that I’ve ever met, right? He’s, he’s all the things too. And so forever I’ve been trying to tell, teach him and reward him. I give him compliments all the time on all the things that he is. Like, Ben, you give the best hugs. Ben, you really like, you might not say a lot of words sometimes, but I see you seeing everything. I see how much you are loving on Dad. Like, he’ll walk around the dinner table when you can tell my husband’s had a hard day and just wrap his arms around the back of his shoulders. We call it the table hugs. He’s like, famous, like, you can just feel,
Maria Ross 42:23
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 42:23
if someone needs some extra love, right?
Maria Ross 42:25
Yeah.
Mitch Shepard 42:26
But he, he is on this point of, like, you know, how are we teaching these boys? It’s like, the conversations we have over here. I might even take it a step further. So, like, what men are being some indoctrination that’s happening online is like, I’m so sick of women being ragey against men. I’m so sick of women complaining blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I say to Ben is, here’s the reality, women, not all of them, but many of them like the data shows one in three women are going to be sexually assaulted, sexually abused, raped, molested, etc, a very high percentage of women are going to be interrupted, dismissed. They’re going to be afraid when they walk down a dark street.
Mitch Shepard 43:12
They’re going to have horrible things said to them by men and boys. They’re going to have cat calling out windows of cars. And what’s going to happen is that, over time, they’re going to build up this, like resentment, for lack of better word about that. And you might be in a situation sometime where you hear where a woman, like goes off on you, like you said something innocent. You had one intention, but it landed with a really different impact, and everything in your body is going to want to defend. You’re going to want to say, not me, I’m one of the good ones. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s not what I meant. Why are you overreacting? And bud, you’re not wrong to feel that way. But here’s what you’re going to have to strap in for. You are going to have to strap in for female rage. I literally tell them that I’m like, it isn’t even about you. Yeah, you have a choice when you’re in the face of it. You can lean in and be like, Whoa. Like, tell me more. I can see that really hit you wrong. You can you can be curious with your girl friends and girlfriends. You can say, like, whoa, this seems like it has some history, like, what’s going on. You can be curious. You can be show empathy, or you can be one of those guys who backs up and is like, Jesus,
Maria Ross 44:31
Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 44:32
whoa, you know,
Maria Ross 44:33
right?
Mitch Shepard 44:34
And it’s like, we need more men who realize that our reactions to them, like, I’m a behavioral scientist, right? So right, you learn that when you’re working with a person and they have a when it’s historical, when it’s hysterical, it’s historical. So if you get a hysterical reaction, it’s historical. And the way to think about it is like there’s all these other people in the room, there’s all these other people in the. Room. They’re invisible. But it’s like, all these experiences, all these people, all the times this or that happened. Now I say something, and it triggers what you just said, Mitch, or what you just said, Ben, sounds a whole lot like all these other bozos back here, and I’m done, right? Like everyone
Maria Ross 45:18
reads that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say,
Mitch Shepard 45:21
Yeah, and it’s like, if we want our young men to be equipped to be great friends, great partners, great roommates, great, you know, professionals, we have to equip them with understanding why that’s happening. You know, because what I really worry about and spend a lot of time thinking about right now is the fact that the divisions are getting deeper, not we’re not coming together, we’re getting further apart. You know, you see all the reels online about, you know, you see the data on grade divorce. More and more women are leaving after the age of 50, when they’ve had enough. You see the data on younger women saying, marriage is not for me. And you see, then the reaction to that over here in this far extreme, like the Nick Fuentes, the Andrew Tates, the Dr K, who was recently on Diary of a CEO, like you see these guys over here saying, kind of doubling down and saying, women, it’s the women’s problem, like they’ve just lost their minds. Their expectations are just too high. They’re this, they’re that. So anyway, maybe we were kind of got off topic, but I think it’s incredibly important for us, anyone who’s listening, who’s a parent, to realize that we got to be having these conversations with our kids, and also to realize that if we are coming here through the professional lens, that this behavior is also showing up in our workplaces.
Maria Ross 46:46
Well this, this is where you get to it
Mitch Shepard 46:48
the time,
Maria Ross 46:49
yeah, and it’s, I love that quote of the hysterical is the historical because these people ultimately enter the workforce. They become community leaders. They become political leaders, yes, like, even if you don’t have kids,
Mitch Shepard 47:05
yes,
Maria Ross 47:05
the way these conversations are going down impacts you as a citizen of your country or a citizen of the world, right? Because those people are going to be the leaders. They’re going to be the doctors, the administrators, the principals, the CEOs, the whatever, right? The the head of the PTA, they’re going to be the head of the school board, all of these things. And so, you know, when we talk about improving leadership, this is why, in both of my books at the end, I talk about people that are working with young people,
Mitch Shepard 47:33
yeah,
Maria Ross 47:34
on how to flex and and build that empathy muscle from the start.
Mitch Shepard 47:38
Yes,
Maria Ross 47:39
that so that it just becomes part of their operating system. And that doesn’t mean that adults have no hope, because you can actually learn to build that muscle that has atrophied. It just has to be more of an intentional choice that I’m going absolutely I’m going to show up in a different way. I’m going to lead in a different way. I’m going to buck the trend of what society says I should be as a male leader, or I should be as a female leader. Yes, and you told a story earlier that just reminded me of another story I wanted to share with you, which was so profound early on in my empathy work, one of the first things I did was I spoke at a tech sales kickoff, so we’re talking like massive dude bros right in the audience, and the talk resonated with the group, and I had one guy come up to me after and said, thank you for talking about this, because I often feel like I have to come to work and be someone I’m not because that’s how they’re judging my success. But I can find success operating in a different way. And I was like, yes, you can. I showed you the data, and I shared the strategies with you, right? And it was just so moving for me. It was just like a quick interaction, but the fact that he came over, he made sure nobody else was, you know what I mean, it was just the fact that we have male leaders. I actually feel like, I know I’m rambling a little bit, this idea of expectations of leadership, and this old leadership paradigm of power over versus partner with
Mitch Shepard 49:07
Yes,
Maria Ross 49:07
has not been good for anybody, and it hasn’t been good for men. Now have to hide parts of themselves in order to fit into that mold we are to your point about, you know, the palette that you paint, that we paint for our young girls now we need to paint that palette as equally for boys. And hey, even if you’re a 42 year old CEO, male CEO, you still have options. You just you’re just gonna have to do a little bit more work at the gym, but there’s an option for you to operate in a different way. And what I always love to say is the paradigms of leadership and the paradigms of what is strength or what is masculine or what is feminine, those are human constructs. They’re not laws of physics. So we can decide we want to change the definition,
Mitch Shepard 49:52
yes,
Maria Ross 49:53
because,
Mitch Shepard 49:53
or we can decide any day that we want to embody more of one or the other, or turn the dials down and up on one or the other
Maria Ross 50:00
exactly,
Mitch Shepard 50:01
you know. Back to your okay, this is so good. So the let’s just paint the picture here, from kitchen tape, from dining room, table to board room. Yeah. Okay, so your young son, who asked that question?
Maria Ross 50:12
I know I wish he asked my youngs like that. Now he doesn’t anymore, but he used to ask more questions like that,
Mitch Shepard 50:18
yeah. Well, okay, but hopefully you’re still all of us are having those conversations around the dinner table that but okay, in fact, one of those recently, like, I was having a rough day because of an online hate comment I got. And I will show my son my sadness. I will, I will cry, and I’ll be like, I am having a really hard time like this really hurts, and give him the chance to have the empathy, give him the chance to hug me, Mom, what happened? Tell him the story. And I think sometimes we think as parents that it’s about teaching them a thing, when really it’s just showing up with all the beauty and all the pain and all the joy and all the advocacy that you contain, right and part of I’m so grateful to this guy, Jim, I coached years and years ago, who was it was way before ERGs were all the rage, and he was, he was the male executive sponsor for the women’s ERG at this tech company. And one day I and I was coaching him on totally different stuff, like about the business and his leadership. But I said, Jim, why do you care this much? Like, this isn’t me being skeptical, it’s me being deeply, like, curious about why, like, I don’t see a lot of other men in this role like caring so much. And he said, because my mom worked for the post office, and she would come home, and I can’t tell you, Mitch, how many tears I saw my mom cry at the table. She was told you should be home with your kids. She was treated poorly. She was underpaid, under, promoted. And I just I hated that. I hated knowing that that was what my mom went through, right? And so that empathy in we have to give our kids a chance to see our true empathy, not just through the lens of teaching them who we want them to be, but helping them just see and observe the impact that the current world has on us, right?
Maria Ross 52:12
Yeah.
Mitch Shepard 52:13
But that little boy, your four year old, and at the, you know, and
Maria Ross 52:16
at that time, yeah,
Mitch Shepard 52:17
13 year old, yeah, at the time, those are the guys that are going to grow up, and they’re going to be in the coffee room, or, you know, one on one meeting, where someone at work says something to the effect of, it doesn’t even seem fair that there’s a women’s ERG, okay? Like, where’s the men’s ERG? And our boys are going to be equipped to say, well, you know what? Like, men are important. Like, of course, and I would be lying if I didn’t feel that way sometimes like, left out, or kind of like, what about me? But at the same time guys, we got to realize there’s this history of oppression, there’s this thing called oppression, right? We are raising boys who will be able to identify victim stance, identify how they want to show up in that moment, right? And not, hopefully, be the generation of men we currently have which thinks, by and large, that it’s enough to just not participate in the misogyny, but instead have boys who actually resist the temptation to jump on board or think it’s enough to just stay quiet amongst those kinds of comments, you know,
Maria Ross 53:20
right?
Mitch Shepard 53:21
So, but these are the comments like I have 1000 stories from my own life and all of my clients about the kinds of things that men and women, too have said to them, because misogyny is in all of us, not just men. It’s not men against women, it’s we’ve all been marinating in a culture, the same culture, which means we adopt the same messages. But, you know, yeah, I mean, we know the data motherhood, penalty, fatherhood, reward. We know the data on how our behaviors show up so differently, or sorry, perceived so differently,
Maria Ross 53:56
well, and to your point, it’s impacted everybody. I mean, you know, I get asked the question a lot in my talks where it’s like, you know, are women better at empathy? And I’m not. I don’t, I don’t do the research from a gender lens. There’s other people that do a great job of that. Carol Vallone Mitchell is one of them who does a lot of research on on women leaders and what makes them successful. But I say, look, from my own personal experience, first of all, empathy is a human trait. We’re all innately born with it, barring certain psychopathies. And so it’s, it’s a matter of conditioning and environment, yeah, and yes, there’s, there’s neurodiversity aspects to it as well. But for some people, the muscle stays strong because of environments that they’re in and what they’ve been taught and rewarded for and what’s been celebrated and modeled to your point. Other people not so much. And you could take that to the workplace too. Some people are traumatized by workplaces that they’ve been in, and other people have been in amazingly supportive and thriving workplaces where it’s easier, quote, unquote, easier, to be empathetic.
Mitch Shepard 54:57
Yes,
Maria Ross 54:57
what I say is, you know, look, women do. Have a lock on this, because two of my worst, toxic, psychologically abusive bosses were women, and my most empathetic leader was a man. So you don’t get off the hook because of your gender. On this, this is a human trait that we all can develop, and you just need to decide if that’s the kind of person and if that’s the kind of leader you want to be, because if you make that decision, yes, it is. There are people like you, there are people like me. There are many, many other people who can help you get there. And there’s strategies and tools you can put in place to build that muscle, just like hiring a personal coach in the gym, right? So I, you know, I go, I shy away from the gender conversation about empathy in particular. And just little fun fact, when I was shopping my book, my first book, around to different agents, I had an agent in New York who was very interested, but the ME TOO movement was going on at the time, and so she was all about, what do the publishers want? What do the publishers want? And she said, if you make the book instead of empathy being a strict a competitive advantage. Can you make the book about feminine traits being a competitive advantage? And I said no, because it wasn’t the book I wanted to write. I don’t want to let it the book is for men and women leaders and every bit of the spectrum in between, right?
Mitch Shepard 56:16
By the way, that book about the advantages of feminine characteristics is been written John girsma,
Maria Ross 56:22
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 56:22
called the Athena doctrine. Yeah, another man went all around the world, and here’s where it is gendered, I think. But I understand what you’re saying. Yeah. I agree with it. And what they did is they just, they used kind of popular belief, right? So what they did first is they went around to all these countries, and they asked the question, what is needed in our world, in our leaders today, from all okay, so then they, first, they coded all that, what were the top 25 responses in terms of qualities and characteristics needed in our leaders today? And then they took that lit, that was 64 based on 64,000 respondents across, I think it was 132 countries. Don’t, don’t quote me on that. Okay? And then they took that list and they brought it over here to this other subject group, and they said, we simply want you to tag these characteristics masculine or feminine,
Maria Ross 57:16
uh huh.
Mitch Shepard 57:17
And then they map them together. And it turns out that nine out of the top, what was it? I have a slide on this somewhere in my repertoire, but it’s like, I think it was like nine were in the feminine category, five were in the more masculine category. Again, what I love about this, it doesn’t say men and women. It says masculine,
Maria Ross 57:36
right,
Mitch Shepard 57:37
feminine,
Maria Ross 57:38
right?
Mitch Shepard 57:38
Anyone can contain either,
Maria Ross 57:40
right?
Mitch Shepard 57:41
The fact is that if you look at, if you observe environments, it turns out men really are more likely to have the masculine traits in excess or in higher quantities, women are more likely to have feminine ones. But this is where the narrative has to shift. It’s like, just like you said a minute ago, you’re not off the hook on this. None of us are off the hook on learning all the skills, right? Some of the masculine ones were things like assertive, confident, decisive, or some that are,
Maria Ross 58:13
and those are, decisiveness is a pillar of being an empathetic and effective leader, no matter what
Mitch Shepard 58:17
absolutely
Maria Ross 58:18
gender you are. Yeah,
Mitch Shepard 58:18
absolutely. And over here were things like collaborative, consultative, Empath, I think empathy might have been on there. Relational, you know, more kind of, and I’ve seen this in real time, you know, I’ve had a number of women I’ve coached where, when I do that same 360 process I talked about earlier,
Maria Ross 58:37
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 58:38
some of the key feedback I often get particularly from men who work with this woman who’s up here at this level. The common themes over 20 years of doing this that I would say I hear more than anything else, is, she cares too much, like she consults too many people. Is one, like not decisive enough? Is two, goes to bat too hard for her team at the expense of, like, moving faster for the business. These are some of the things
Maria Ross 59:07
I hear right here. And
Mitch Shepard 59:08
maybe probably the fourth, and also very popular is some version of, you know, we’ll all be heading in a direction, and then she’ll be the one in the room that says, Wait, hold on. Have we considered the impacts on this and this and this and this, and it slows us, slows us down, as opposed to, thank God for her, right, right? So that one on, you know, consulting too many people, I mean, many women I’ve worked with would call that their superpower, right? So again, it goes back to, is it effective? Did you get the result? Which is why, when I work with women leaders, and they get that kind of feedback, I help them change the narrative around that to be results focused. So if they’re getting feedback, that’s like, you really need to be more decisive, or you really need to move faster for them to be able to advocate for it. Let me, let me, let me, let you in on a little something. These partner teams over here when I came into this role, were burning dumpster fire because the command and control wasn’t working
Maria Ross 1:00:09
right.
Mitch Shepard 1:00:09
I now have built really trusting relationships with Team A, B, C into a little longer but look how aligned we are now. We’re on track or we hit that goal, so it’s not Oh, you’re right, boss. Gotta make the call faster and become autocratic, right? It’s sell believe enough in your own strengths and capabilities and superpowers that you know how to sell them.
Maria Ross 1:00:33
Yes, right? Exactly
Mitch Shepard 1:00:35
you know how to sell them. Because, if you can come back to the business case for whatever it is you’re doing, or however it is you’re showing up, you have a much higher chance of being rewarded for those behaviors, as opposed to docked for them
Maria Ross 1:00:51
exactly. Oh, my God, I love that. What a great story. Because I think that is so important on how we’re how we’re positioning things. Because what I see sometimes is I see women who women leaders, who are collaborative and are, you know, maybe they’re not getting ahead, or maybe they, maybe they read a book about leadership written by a man 30 years ago. And sometimes I see them swinging the opposite way, just to prove credibility, just to prove worthiness, and that’s where it you know, with maturity and years distance, I can be a little kinder on those two female
Mitch Shepard 1:01:27
sure
Maria Ross 1:01:28
leaders, because I think that their methods were what they thought they needed to do to survive. They thought they need I doubt they were that way with their families, with their kids, with their partners like their the ability to be cruel was so pervasive with these two, and I know it was probably now I know through more mature eyes it was probably it was never about us. It was about their own insecurities, their own fears, their own. This is the way I have to lead otherwise. No one will take me seriously.
Mitch Shepard 1:02:04
I love so much that you said that like I feel so touched by that story that,
Maria Ross 1:02:08
yeah,
Mitch Shepard 1:02:08
Grace, empathy, forgiveness, perspective that you just brought to that
Maria Ross 1:02:13
right
Mitch Shepard 1:02:13
is beautiful. I have chills because I want more of that, please. Yeah, world, because it’s like so often that thing you said that so many of us say, Oh, well, actually, my worst boss was woman. And what we don’t say next is the part you just said,
Maria Ross 1:02:30
but I understand why,
Mitch Shepard 1:02:32
yeah, and it’s like we can be so hard on each other as women, and I am so craving an environment where we have more love and grace and forgiveness for each other, we have to leave we have to hold a boundary. We have to move on. If we’re in that situation, just like you did. You know, years later, being able to say it and the way you said it, I’m just so touched by that.
Maria Ross 1:02:56
I appreciate that, because I also have to confess that about 10 years ago? No, my son was young. Was like, 11 years ago or so. I did see one of those bosses in a very large Superstore, and my husband and I both hid.
Mitch Shepard 1:03:09
Hey, you know what? You know what? No shame.
Maria Ross 1:03:14
You gotta do to survive, right?
Mitch Shepard 1:03:15
Whatever you have to do. I know nobody said you’ve got to face that person. Nope. Nobody said that’s a rule.
Maria Ross 1:03:22
I’m like Mitch, before you call me a martyr, like, let me just cop to this. I can talk to you all day long. I probably will at some point, but I have loved this very quirky, unique episode of us just talking about leadership and talking about social norms and talking about gender expectations and all of it so and I love that usually I’m featuring people who are promoting their finished book. And I love that this is unique in that we are getting a sneak peek into a book that I know will see the light of day, and we will be holding it in our hands. Thank you very soon, Mitch, I will have all your links in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. For anyone that’s on the go, working out, driving whatever, where’s the best place they can connect with you and find out more about your work.
Mitch Shepard 1:04:11
Thank you for asking. Okay, so I would say I’m just going to name one place and one thing. So one place is LinkedIn. It’s a really good place to find me, get a sense of who I am, my voice, who I’ve worked with, that kind of thing, my writing, and send me a message if you want to be part of anything I’m doing. And now the thing so I’m doing a few things. One, as you know, is I’m starting this thing called story time, because it takes a long time for book to get published. So what I’m doing is I’m reading some of my stories for anyone who wants to come. It’s like a virtual reading circle on Zoom. I’m launching it in a couple of weeks, so by the time people hear this, it probably will be well underway. But the way I do that is I read a story about a real thing that centers on a topic, like a. Guilt or perfectionism or gaslighting or resentment, just to name a few that are especially common to a lot of women. And I then just simply let people talk about like, how did this resonate? What did it bring up for you? What’s your own relationship to x? Okay, so I do that on a monthly thing. I want to just build community around some of the storytelling,
Maria Ross 1:05:22
and how can folks access that?
Mitch Shepard 1:05:24
So if you go to LinkedIn, then just message me and say, Mitch, I heard about your story time. Can you send me a link to sign up for that? Because I basically just have a landing page for anyone who can just register, and then I send them the invite.
Maria Ross 1:05:38
Okay. Great, wonderful.
Mitch Shepard 1:05:39
Then the other thing, as you know, as I do, he said, she said, On Thursdays with Joe gerstand, and we talk about the cultural just like the hottest cultural issues facing our us today, from politics to the manosphere to leadership to, you know, all sorts of things. And Joe and I both have a 15 year old son and an 18 slash 19 year old daughter, and we both have deep expertise in culture, behavioral science,
Maria Ross 1:06:04
nice,
Mitch Shepard 1:06:04
inclusion, you know, leadership and but bring such vastly different perspectives. So that’s on Thursdays.
Maria Ross 1:06:11
And how can folks access that
Mitch Shepard 1:06:13
same like just LinkedIn? That’s me, because then you’ll I can send you the landing page. You can just register yourself. Yeah,
Maria Ross 1:06:19
I love it.
Mitch Shepard 1:06:20
By the way, the links to these things are in my bio on LinkedIn. So if someone doesn’t want to have to send a specific message, they can just sign up that way.
Maria Ross 1:06:28
I love it, yeah, and I always give the PSA to everyone that if they connect with you, to personalize the note and say they heard you here. And this is specifically what they’d like to know. They’d like to know about story time, or they’d like to know about he said, she said, So that’s
Mitch Shepard 1:06:42
right, and what I’d like to know is, if someone reaches out to me, what did you What did I say or shift in you that made you say, like, wait, I need more of that. Because, you know, we need to know stuff, right? Like, I want to be giving value out there. I want to talk about the things that people find most valuable. So if anyone wants to even just shoot me a message to be like that quote stuck with me, or that story stuck with me, please do
Maria Ross 1:07:07
Yeah, I love it. Well, this has been a long time coming, and I I’m so honored that you’ve been here. Thank you for your insights and thanks. I hope more people would connect.
Mitch Shepard 1:07:18
Thank you so much, Maria. I just adore you. I love that you’re doing this. It was so fun to chat.
Maria Ross 1:07:24
And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review or share it with a friend 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.
