No matter what side of the aisle you fall on – employee or leader – you may have uttered these words, “Why can’t I just fix them?!” Building strong relationships either way is both an employee AND a leader responsibility because empathy must flow both ways.
Today, I talk with Molly McGrath. She reveals some biases that leaders can break free from to be more effective, how to merge the perspectives of boss and employees to better understand each other, and you’ll love her actionable tips and examples on how you can initiate healthy communication, build trust, and create a more positive and high-performing environment with less drama and more impact. We also talk about the importance of re-dating and re-committing with your employees on a regular basis!
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- If we’re only hiring to the résumé, we are going to be missing out on a lot of the people skills that aren’t written down.
- Self-awareness and self-care are two of the key pillars of empathetic leadership. We have to get our own house in order to understand our blind spots, triggers, and strengths, and know what we’re bringing into the conversation.
- The work of leading is spending time with your people. You need to understand how each of your team are hardwired.
“You have to re-date your employees and re-enroll (your employees) every single day.” — Molly McGrath
Episode References:
- Empathy Edge Podcast: Daina Middleton: How to do Layoffs with HUmanity, Inclusion, and Compassion
From Our Partner:
SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.
Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.
About Molly McGrath:
Molly McGrath is the Founder and CEO of Hiring & Empowering Solutions and the author of Amazon’s top #1 Best Seller: Fix My Boss: The Simple Plan to Cultivate Respect, Risk Courageous Conversations, and Increase the Bottom Line. She is also host of the Hire and Empower podcast.
Molly is a thought leader with 27 years of experience in the CEO space. Since the late nineties, She has coached, consulted, and directed presidents and founders of national organizations and over 4,500 law firms in executive-level leadership, continuous improvement, and team empowerment initiatives to infiltrate new markets, leverage partner ecosystems, and produce profitability.
Molly has 27 years of specific skill set experience in legal marketing, fractional CEO roles, conversation intelligence coaching, team development & empowerment, intrapreneur talent acquisition, Kaizen leadership, root cause analysis, revenue mapping, and action-based project management.
Connect with Molly:
Hiring & Empowering Solutions: hiringandempowering.com
Instagram: instagram.com/hiringandempowering
Fix My Boss: The Simple Plan to Cultivate Respect, Risk Courageous Conversations, and Increase the Bottom Line: amazon.com/dp/1636801765
Hire and Empower With Molly McGrath podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1460184599
Connect with Maria:
Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com
Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
X: @redslice
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, no matter what side of the aisle you fall on, employee or leader, you may have uttered these words, why can’t I just fix them? Building strong relationships either way is both an employee and a leader responsibility, because empathy must flow in both directions. Today, I talk to Molly McGrath, founder and CEO of hiring and empowering solutions, and the author of Amazon’s top number one best seller, fix my boss, the simple plan to cultivate respect, risk, courageous conversations and increase the bottom line. Molly is a thought leader with 27 years of experience in the CEO space since the late 90s, Molly has coached, consulted and directed presidents and founders of national organizations and over 4500 law firms in executive level leadership continuous improvement and Team empowerment initiatives to infiltrate new markets, leverage partner ecosystems and produce profitability. She’s also the host of the hire and empower Podcast. Today, she reveals some biases that leaders can break free from in order to be more effective, how to merge the perspectives of boss and employee to better understand each other. And you’ll love her actionable tips and examples on how you can initiate healthy communication, build trust and create a more positive and high performing environment with less drama and more impact. We also talk about the importance of redating and recommitting with your employees on a regular basis. Lots of gems here today. Take a listen, and a big welcome to Molly McGrath today for being on the empathy edge podcast. Welcome to the conversation.
Molly McGrath 02:31
Oh, thank you for having me, Maria. I’m excited to be here. I
Maria Ross 02:35
am really excited to talk about your book, fix my boss, the simple plan to cultivate respect, risk courageous conversations and increase the bottom line. And before we get into it and give people all the goodies and insights and actionable nuggets, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this world of coaching and executive leadership and all of that. What’s your passion there?
Molly McGrath 02:58
Yeah, well, at one point, I was an employee, so at the tender age of 27, years old, back then, when you would apply for a job through a classified ad, which is a newspaper for some of our younger listeners that might not resonate with that term, and had to mail in your resume, walk your resume. And I was really, blessed to be interviewed by a boss, if you will, a leader, actually CEO of a national organization for lawyers, which, if anyone knows anything about lawyers or the top intellect, everything is about skill set, knowledge, years of service, but they’re always interviewing from the resume or CV. And when I went through the interview, I had a phenomenal leader that really knew how to facilitate a conversation, how to lead with servant leader communication. And he said to me, you’re not totally qualified for this position. And he said a key word after that yet, but I see your energy. I see in this back in 1997 where energy and intuition, all that was so out there, woo, woo and was not commonplace in the league, in the workplace, they said to me, I’m going to take a chance on you, because it’s up to me, as a leader and a mentor and a coach, to really give you the framework where you can be set up for success. You have hard working. You have beautiful mindset, you have confidence, you have confidence. And the rest of it is on me to really provide you a place to grow and lead. So I started my, you know, career as an employee shined from a administrative assistant all the way up to CEO of the company. Then became a partner within the company because somebody took a chance on me, and they took their job description as a leader seriously. And through that, I would go to all we did conferences all over the world every quarter, and I would have our clients come to me at the cut. Tail reception, coffee break, what have you. And they’re like, Where can I find one of you? How can I clone you? How can and I’d hear this over and over again. And then I really became very passionate about the employee side, about really creating what I call in my first book, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs world. Love
Maria Ross 05:21
it, and so then you just kind of got fell into executive leadership coaching and doing the work, and you’ve worked with 1000s of leaders and founders and people all over the world. So we’re really going to be appreciating your insights today. I want to start first with some of the biases that leaders need to break free from in order to be more effective. What are some of the biases that we want them to be aware of?
Molly McGrath 05:47
You know, number one, I would say, is in regards to getting seduced by the resume or the CD Cv of people. So often they have to remember they’re hiring human beings first, human doing second. So a lot of times they’ll be say, I need somebody batteries included. I don’t have time to train on board or what have you. I’m like, great. You assume their batteries included, skill set, knowledge, work ethic, all that. Guess what? Now you still need to spend time with them. Might not be on training the specifics of how to do their job or your process or procedures, or what have you. But they’re a human being, and this a personal, relate, two sided relationship, so you’re still going to have to give them time, attention and feedback. So regardless if they need a little bit of skill set training, or they come in perfect, they have the years of service, skill set, all that you still need to spend time with your people outside a Slack channel or communication, ping pong, through email and other do just stop hiding out behind technology. Yeah,
Maria Ross 06:54
I think that’s so important, is you’re not going to get those people skills, that emotional intelligence, that emotional regulation, if we’re just hiring to the resume, and it doesn’t mean someone has the potential to strengthen that and build that, but that requires commitment, that requires time, that requires mentorship, and if we really, you know, if the goal, I always go back to the ROI, if the goal is that you have a high performing team and A high performing employee, then yes, spending the time is worth it. Because I hear that a lot is like, well, I don’t have time to be empathetic. I don’t have time to get to know but that’s your job as a leader. That’s actually where you should be spending your time. So I love that you talk about that. Are there any other biases we need to be aware of that are getting in the way of us being more effective leaders?
Molly McGrath 07:40
Yeah. Number two is that you have not won, and you can’t wipe your brow once you hire somebody and you have a high performance team, is retention is the biggest thing that most people look over. You hire someone, you get them, they give you entrepreneurial freedomship, time freedom, financial freedom. And we think that we are smooth sailing. Yeah, I’m always about gamification to keep up, especially myself as an entrepreneur. I’m running a team. I’m all to keep yourself on your toes. You have to redate your employees and re enroll them every single day. I always keep myself and healthy check to assume that there’s any given day that I could come in and somebody’s resigning, and then I always hear we’re like, oh my God, how did I not know you were unhappy? How did you get recruited and poached away from me? I have a recruiting side of my business as well, and I’ve had that for 30 years now, and it’s fascinating that you say so often when I’m interviewing people like, why are you talking to a recruiter today? Why are you looking for a new position? And the knee jerk responses, there’s no opportunity for growth. Blah, blah, blah. Like, let’s get real here. Talk to me, and 100% of the time, it’s abandonment. It’s the leaders not giving them time and attention feedback. And I believe in our job descriptions, whether you’re owner operator or your C suite or your HR or what have you, the number one bullet point in our job description is to grow our people up and to pour into them, make them feel like they matter and really it has to be authentic, if you know it’s not just something that you’re checking a box
Maria Ross 09:34
on for sure, and I’m so intrigued. You know you called your book fix my boss. So is your book meant for employees, or can leaders sort of pick this up to get into the mindset of what their employees are thinking.
Molly McGrath 09:47
Number one question I get about this book, the first title of this book was called, fix my employees, because that’s the question the phone calls, the emails that every time. 100% of the time it fixed my employees when people call me. And so going through the book, that was the title, and as I was sharing that with the C suite leadership entrepreneurs like, oh my god, I can’t wait to give my team this book, right. And my publisher is like, no, they’re every business book out there is written in the perspective of the leader. There’s something wrong with the employees. And the employees always tell me, they get handed all these business books at team development programs or what have you, and it’s written in the perspective of the entrepreneur. So we were like, my publisher, and I was like, visualizing running through the airport, and a business owner sees this book right in the window. It says, fix my boss, and the needle scratches. They’re like, well, if I You’re the leader, you’re like, Whoa. What is this chick telling my people? And so they’re going to buy it and 100% it’s for them, but employees gonna see it, and they’re like, Yes, finally, someone got has us. They understand us, and they’re actually gonna read it and digest it and implement it. Because this entire book, and there’s a company workbook with it, is not meant to be a one and done and read it is a book written for both of them with a very empowering title, I believe that’s going to cause each whatever seat you sit in, to kind of pause, but also maybe have a healthy level of fear of like, oh boy, what’s she going to be saying?
Maria Ross 11:37
Exactly. And, I mean, I think that subtitle of the simple plan to cultivate respect, risk, courageous conversations and increase the bottom time, not line, is really a, you know, a little teaser, a little appetizer for folks to understand what some of those secrets are. To fix your boss, but also it’s about fixing the relationship between the boss and the employee, and so I want to dive in for a second on how do we merge those perspectives? This is where empathy really comes in. We’ve I’ve talked a lot. I’ve been guilty of it too, as many empathy advocates have, of talking just to the leaders about empathy. But empathy is a two way street, and we’ve also got to teach that those skills to strengthen and flex your empathy muscle to everyone at all levels in the organization, so that empathy flows down, but it flows up as well. So how can we merge the perspectives of the boss and employees so that they understand what the other person sees?
Molly McGrath 12:38
I talk about this and train this all day, every day. I mean, what’s the saying? Leaders go first, so you have to make it a safe place, first and foremost, for people to use their voice and share sometimes in a courageous conversation of what’s not working or what have you in that regard. So how to have it both ways? The greatest hack that I have, especially for new employees coming on, and I’m using the word employee might be an independent contractor, overseas state side. I’m just using it very general, especially if you’re using overseas support team or contractors, is to actually a model that I have, which is, teach, show, do, go, grow. And what I mean by that is I say at the very first day, when you’re onboarding a new employee, have them walk around and shadow you right, and go through and watch you sit in every meeting, what have you. And then I debrief at the end with the boss and the leader and the employee. The employee, 10 out of 10 times is in tears. There they will say to me, my boss didn’t have a meal all day. They never went to the bathroom. They were in back to back to back meetings with existing clients, doing sales meeting trying to, you know, do diffusion on a certain department or a team, and they are just like this has got to stop there. Then they have a back for they have your back so they have an appreciation for what it takes to get clients. Service. Clients, get employees. Service employees process production, profitability, all that. So when they can walk in your shoes all day long, and they understand it and then debrief with you after that is the first way to get empathy. 10 out of 10 times when I hire new people and take them through that boarding process, I’m talking from a receptionist to an executive level person, they have such completion. They have such complete compassion for what you’re dealing with on the daily. How
Maria Ross 14:47
practical is that, though? How realistic is that for if you’re talking about a larger company with 10s of 1000s of people, and your person is remote and they’re not then they’re not in your backyard, how can a lead. Or do that with a new hire.
Molly McGrath 15:02
I have 10 full time remote people, Philippines, Honduras, Belize all over and I make them sit. And first of all, I make them watch my calendar every single day. And so I have a marketing coordinators, I have recruiters, I have executive assistants. I have coo I will make them sit in the Zoom Room every single meeting that I have. I have a virtual company. I have for 30 years now, and I make them sit and watch every single meeting. I tee them up. I’m like, here’s the goal. This meeting, it’s an hour long. Here’s what we’re walking into, etc. If it’s a sales person, you’re onboarding. Same thing. I just hired two sales people. I’m on boarding them right now, and they’re spending time and shadowing me for the entire week, seeing the meeting, seeing the follow up that comes out of every single meeting, right? And what have you. So do you think they’re going to march in my office when you back to back meetings or ping me and say, Do you have 10 minutes to puke all over me and dump on me. No, you know, I train too and the team. Another way to have empathy is to batch your communication. Don’t blow up your boss. Leader, HR, I’m working with a big company right now. They’re in 17 countries, big law firms, and their HR team is, I can’t even I’m witnessing what the employees do to the HR, and I’m getting them to sit in their perspective and understand that. So you know, before you send Lori an email that Susie just showed up late and looked at you cross eyed and did blah, blah, blah, they’re all remote, I want you to look at what’s on her calendar the hour before, yeah, you see she might have a 10 minute break, or you see she has no break at all, and pay attention to what she what happened in her day before, this emergency conversation you had to have. You know about your PTO, or whatever it is, and what look at what she’s walking into because she’s not able to be present. There’s a time and place for data and information and be aware of it in regards to what they’re carrying on their back for the day, for the week, for the month. And
Maria Ross 17:14
then how do you flip it so that the boss can have empathy for the employee? Oh,
Molly McGrath 17:19
I love this question in regards to it’s really the same way as well. So instead of pinging them and emailing them and say, did you do this? Are you doing this? Words have way and words matter. So I train a lot of times you mentioned emotional intelligence early. We’re getting ready to kick off a three month series on emotional intelligence, which I’m a huge fan of as well, but having that self awareness right? And that’s really what we’re talking about perspective and self awareness and self governing and self regulating. So for the boss, in the same way they can clarify, verify before, meaning, there are times when I need you to drop everything. I completely understand what’s on your plate right now. I completely understand what’s going on for you, but right now, this is an SOS. I need support in that. And just even when my bosses and leaders frame, you know, sandwich the conversation, it is all about what comes out of your mouth, the intentions and delivery. Your intentions might be pure. We need to do this, or we’re going to lose a client, or there’s real risk attached, but it’s all in the delivery and and sometimes it comes out sloppy or a brass or whatever. That’s okay, because, as you said, it’s a relationship. So if I’m an employee, I train my employees that if they’re like, did you do this? Like, don’t give it story and meaning in the moment. You know the urgency of this matter, or what have you de energized, and don’t make it personal. Give it now when you have your weekly meeting, one of the frameworks I have is what worked and what didn’t work about last week. And in regards to it might be that what did not work is there were 4000 emergencies. So something’s broken in our process or a system, right? Sometimes you might snap as an as an entrepreneur, leader, what have you. We’re going to hold space for that, but we’re not going to shut down, not do our work, or have to have this huge emotional conversation in the moment, always training and they teach us in the book time and place for debriefing,
Maria Ross 19:33
I love that. Yeah, with the new book coming out, the empathy dilemma, the five pillars to being both an effective and empathetic leader, to your point that you just made the first one is self awareness, because we have to get our own house in order to understand our blind spots and our triggers and our strengths, and we know what we’re bringing into the conversation. We know what we bring into the room when we enter it. And so the you know, the first two pillars of my five pillars are. Actually about self self awareness and self care, because then you can be in a place where now I can come in and maybe I won’t come in all guns blazing about this is an emergency, and to your point, empathy is not always about the decision that you’re making, because you have to make tough decisions as a leader that people won’t like. And I’m using air quotes here. People can’t see me, but that’s not the goal. The goal is not to make decisions that everybody likes or even agrees with, but you can be an empathetic leader in the way that you communicate information, and so it’s not just the decision you’re making. I did a whole podcast episode. I’ll put a link to that on layoffs with compassion. Sometimes it is just a business decision and it isn’t personal, but we also, as leaders, have responsibility to deliver that communication in an empathetic way. Do some people need time to process and come back and ask questions? Do other people want to ask all their questions right away? Do I know what questions they are going to have? Am I prepared to answer them when I tell them the news, and then what support might it? Might they need on the back end? So it’s doing all that preliminary thinking before you communicate with your team. And you know, as you know, that’s not just a leadership skill, that’s just a human skill, and being able to do that, yeah,
Molly McGrath 21:16
but I have two points I really want to grab on quickly of what you said, in regards to self awareness, with your two pillars, I always tell train my clients as well. In regards them, it’s okay if we have a moment where we have to just be very, you know, brass and all that, as long as we preface it with say that and we’re just like, Okay, I’m coming in hot right now. I know this isn’t an ideal, but I just need a lifeline right now, people, yeah, absolutely, I’ll do it, and the goal is to pay attention, right? Whether you’re the deliverer or the receiver of that, right? It’s an exception and not the norm. If it’s a norm, then we have a bigger problem in regard, right? That, I would say, Yeah, and
Maria Ross 21:58
that, you know, a lot of the leaders I interviewed for the new book, when they talked about what enabled them to be empathetic and effective was this idea of making the norm trust and collaboration and just respect and just a personal interest. And they said, and it’s not fake. They’re not doing it, you know, with some devious motive. They’re saying, I just get to know my team and get to know them as people and respect who they are, so that when I make the big ask, they trust me and they have empathy for me when I make those big asks. And so it’s building that foundation with your employees. You talk about respect, cultivating respect, and it’s that foundation needs to be there. So when you do have those moments where you lose it, you know people can give you a little bit more grace.
Molly McGrath 22:47
Yes, to your point, when you’re doing that on the daily and when you’re operating like that, yes, it’s how you build trust number one. But when you have to make the heavy decisions, lay off, or if it’s we’re restructuring our comp plan, or we’re no longer having unlimited PTO, where people think things are being taken away from them, or they’re very dictatorial, or big corporate, or what have you, when you deliver the message, in regards to, you know, we made the decision from who we were When we initially started off as small company, or what have you, and now we’re really treating this like a business. And when you have those conversations, there’s no sting, there’s no emotions around it, and then like and you speak into their listening in a way that makes a difference for them. As leaders and owners, I always say, I don’t think we’re ever delivering bad news or hard news or tough decisions if we live the way that you and your books communicate on the daily Yes, it’s a lot of work. It feels like a lot of work in the beginning. I don’t have time to have a weekly meeting with my team or daily huddle or a break bread lunch or what have you, but it goes a long way, because we can go on a whole tangent around retention statistics.
Maria Ross 24:07
Yeah, absolutely. And I know I’m kind of throwing you a curveball here, but can you give us an example of a leader you’ve worked with with which who may be really memorable to you in terms of the turnaround they did with their team?
Molly McGrath 24:20
Yes, I have one that is a very live example. As I told you, it’s a big company. They’re in 28 location, 17 states, and they have 28 office or 17 countries. 28 offices are opening, 10 more right now. And so huge organization, and I’m working with one of their firms in California, one of the offices in California, they brought me in, and they hired new leader, new manager, HR and business development call me, and so I kick off a program for them. What have you. There was so much resistance from this man. Manager leaders, I don’t have enough time. I am, you know, opening off two more, opening up two new offices, and within the next 30 days, blah, blah, blah, and just resistance. Did not want to meet with her team at all. Did not have time. We said, just, let’s play with this. I’m all about gamification. Let’s have fun with this, and let’s just try it on. We can always take it off if it doesn’t fit, but you have your team is full of drama. There is. They’re constantly killing HR with complaints. It is like referee Central, and there’s always the meeting after the meeting and what have you we’re like, can you just give them 30 minutes a week? That’s it. We created the agenda, which is going to talk about company news announcements upcoming, and then also team building, collaboration and getting to know people. What have you? Massive resistance. Made a commitment to that. Prior to that, she was constantly canceling meetings. Was supposed to be doing quarterly reviews. None of them had ever had them just thinking, well, if they’re not saying anything, so they must have forgot about it. Employees forget about nothing. They know they want that they want. Personal and professional growth. Made the commitment to 30 minutes super grouchy about having to do it. And again, you’re responsible for the energy you bring in the room and you leave in the room. They could sniff it out like a dog. And so they knew this was just a box checking. Had to do it. And then eventually started really getting into getting the agenda in the intentions meeting, in her bones and blood, and has not missed one meeting in five months, has had the weekly meeting. Has also implemented a 15 minute it’s your nickel. Open Door meeting. Every employee on her team gets that they come in, no agenda, no anything. And the ability to do that and has now started implementing to bring them into their UK office for their development programs that she never even knew about, that were free, that carried a lot of the burden in the load for her, yeah, I mean, she’s still sticky and stiff with it. Yeah, she’s still struggling, but it’s made the team are like, it’s consistent, it’s persistent. She’s keeping your word, she’s showing up and she’s actually present. Now, I mean, she would show up late, she would, you know, you could tell she was on her phone. She was, yeah, not there. And now it’s just really grounded and still
Maria Ross 27:35
well, and is that, I assume that’s impacting performance for her team as well, and maybe lessening some of the drama,
Molly McGrath 27:41
lessening the drama. They were always a high performance team, which is so fascinating, because you go to the senior leadership and partner this team, they pump out work. They are profitable by all measure and their work production. But it was the headache and heartache that it was making for the HR team, for the senior leadership team. And you know a saying is that it’s like a five year old, so if you don’t give them attention, they will get the black Sharpie and scribble all over the wall until they get your attention.
Maria Ross 28:15
Totally. Yeah. So I love it. What a great example of just this is the thing I always keep going back to spending the time. Is the job like, if you’re doing so much work that you can’t spend the time, then something’s wrong with the work, right? Because the work of leading is spending the time with your people. So I love it so much. So as we wrap up, can you share a few tips for how employers can initiate that healthy communication and create that positive work environment. You talked about a few through the course of the interview here, but what are one or two nuggets you want to leave people with if they’re dealing with an environment where there’s a lot of distrust and discord between the employees and the leaders? Well, I
Molly McGrath 28:59
say first and foremost, give them, like you said, the time and space and grace of your greatest resource that you bring, which is your time. So hard wire it, treat it like you would for an internal they’re your internal clients, just like you would for your external clients. You would never ditch a meeting with the client that’s paying you or what have you. So put a hard wire time, even if it’s one hour a week where you treat it, I like to call it a weekly stakeholders meeting, not shareholders, stakeholders. We are all stakeholders in our department and collaboration. So start there number one, and make it consistent. Do show up. Present. Show up prepared. Do not ditch the meeting. Do not have your cell phones in there and what have you. And really have an agenda and give it out to the team and ask them for their feedback. The way people that step up and lead and take ownership and pride in their position and really trust their leader is when their voice matters. And their conference allowed on it, so allow them to make revisions or additions that they would like to see in our meeting. It’s our meeting together. And so really, when you have that, they will be fully, wholly invested in them.
Maria Ross 30:17
Have you ever advised that when they when you start to establish that as a regular kind of team meeting, stakeholder meeting, that the leader sometimes let someone else lead it. That
Molly McGrath 30:27
was my second point. Okay, good, exactly. It’s so once they have that established, and trust me, it takes no more than three to four weeks of consistency with that, and then what they do is it depending on personalities. One thing you mentioned earlier that I think is really important, you need to understand how each year, people are hardwired. So I have a lot of assessments that I recommend to understand how they give and receive information. Like you said, do you get the news? And they need to go back to a high Fact Finder, and they need to process and then they need to come back a week later and have the second meeting as a high, Quick Start where they have 400 questions right then and there. And so knowing how people like to give them receive information is important, because when it comes time to this meeting, you might have a ton of technicians. If you’re an engineering firm or a law firm, or what have you. You might have introverts, extroverts lead, natural leaders, what have you. So know your team, if you have a healthy balance, I have people that do it one two ways. Anyone want to step up and start facilitating this meeting for a week, and then we’ll pass the baton. A lot of my clients. Well actually, for one, have one person each week on the team to still manage, lead and facilitate the conversation, even if they’re shaking in their boots, even if they’re nervous. It’s a growth opportunity. It’s a growth opportunity. So many people like, I don’t want to do that. I’m afraid I’m going to cry, I’m nervous, and that’s way. That’s why Toastmasters is such a beautiful program, if you’re old enough to remember that, yeah. Well,
Maria Ross 32:04
this has been so wonderful. And I know there’s tons more value in the book fix my boss, the simple plan to cultivate respect, risk, courageous conversations and increase the bottom time, the bottom line, and Molly, this has been so great. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for folks on the go, where’s one of the best places they can find out more information about you and your work,
Molly McGrath 32:27
I would say the best way, easiest way, because we know time is of the essence. Go to hiring and empowering.com. Just opt in to our value. Add information that we furnish every Tuesday, we drop podcasts every Thursday, blog, and then I do a pocket coaching every Saturday. So a way for you to really just get some really rich whether you’re the employee, employer, leader, entrepreneur, HR, what have you. I really try to get in the perspective of each C and speak into each one.
Maria Ross 33:00
I love it. Well. Thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been wonderful, and it’s been so great connecting with you. Thank
Molly McGrath 33:06
you for having me and for your amazing work that keep it up. I can’t wait for your next book.
Maria Ross 33:11
Thanks 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, follow, subscribe or share with a friend, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
