Welcome to August Hot Takes! To celebrate the podcast’s 2nd anniversary, we’re shaking things up with some solo episodes from yours truly. I’m answering common questions attendees ask during my keynotes and trainings.
First up: What is empathy? And what is it NOT?
Let’s get on the same page about what empathy in the workplace means, and bust some myths and misconceptions leaders have about it that prevent them from embracing it.
Thanks for being here and enjoying the podcast. Would love to know what you think of this Hot Takes format.
Key Takeaways:
When the heart and the head come together and take action, that is where empathy flourishes..
You can understand someone’s point of view and where they are coming from without being a doormat and letting them walk all over you.
The way you approach a difference of opinion is what makes it an empathetic exchange or not.
“Just because you agree with someone doesn’t mean you’re empathetic. And just because you’re empathetic, doesn’t mean you agree with someone. It just means you’re going to find a way forward and you’re going to keep seeking that common ground.” — Maria Ross
Would you ever throw a dinner party and not even think about guest allergies, or how to make your guests feel most comfortable? Of course not! You would prepare. If only we approached language the way we approach hosting a party! Often on autopilot, we don’t stop and think about the words we use and if they are inclusive or if they’re damaging them in some unseen way. Words matter and we unintentionally could be hurting others or making them feel unseen by the language we use. This not only harms our relationships, it can lead to low-performing teams, high turnover, or lack of collaboration and innovation.
Today, I have a great conversation with Dr. Suzanne Wertheim, a national expert on language and bias. Suzanne shares the fascinating story of how she got into linguistic anthropology and how it led to her current work. She attempts to define inclusive language, and why it’s more than just being politically correct: it’s vital to collaborative success and belonging. We talk about the perspective shifts required and why The Golden Rule doesn’t go far enough. And we discuss good outcomes of inclusive language and bad outcomes when you choose to ignore it. Suzanne also shares some quick tips to get you started and unpacks the principles of inclusive language.
Key Takeaways:
Language changes based on social context, particularly among minority groups.
Inclusive language is more than just a list of words you can or cannot say. The impact of the words changes as society changes and it is not a stagnant list.
Perspective taking is a cognitive skill – the first part is a role shift, the second is taking into account the different perspective that’s brought to the situation, because of the other person’s different lived experience.
The word “professionalism” is often used in a very non-inclusive way to gatekeep people who are just showing up, are very competent, and are delivering high quality things on time.
“We know that we have to practice foreign languages to become fluent. So too with inclusive language: you can’t expect to just get it right away. You have to practice and make mistakes.” — Dr. Suzanne Wertheim
About Dr. Suzanne Wertheim, Language and Bias Expert:
Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is a national expert on language and bias. After getting her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Berkeley, she held faculty positions at Northwestern, University of Maryland, and UCLA. In 2011, she left the university system in order to apply her expertise to real-world problems. As head of Worthwhile Research & Consulting, Dr. Wertheim specializes in analyzing and mitigating bias at work. Using the tools of linguistic anthropology, she guides clients to more inclusive language, content, and workplaces.
If you’re part of a larger organization and interested in the Executive Institute on Inclusion program Suzanne and I mentioned to create a customized DEI program based on data and your unique needs, check it out as just one offering through Susan Freeman’s amazing Conscious Inclusion Company: https://consciousinclusioncompany.com/
The pandemic has changed all the rules of work – they were actually evolving for a while, but COVID accelerated those changes, which left many leaders scrambling. How do we make hybrid work, digital work, remote work WORK for your organization? So many leaders are being thrown into uncharted waters. You may be confused, fearful, angry, stubborn, or unsure about how to make hybrid work, or if your team can perform in such an environment.
Today, my guest, Neil Miller, and I chat about what hybrid work actually is and where it’s going. We discuss the real meaning of culture and how you replicate it when your team is distributed or remote – Neil shares some powerful strategies on how you can co-create the rules with your team so your work experiences are equitable and inclusive. We discuss the role of empathy in the hybrid workplace – not just for employees but for leaders who are unsure how to navigate this new reality. We joked about how so many companies misunderstand what “culture” really means – and why the old way of thinking about it won’t serve them in this new environment. And Neil invites you to think through when in-person is worth it so you maximize those opportunities and get other work done remotely.
Key Takeaways:
While many studies are showing that people are more productive when working from home, it is not the right fit for every person.
Culture is how we treat each other and how we get work done. It is more than just people being in the same place at the same time.
In order to solve the complex problems of our day, collaboration is essential.
Meetings are great. They do a lot, but they don’t have to do everything for you. You don’t have to rely on them for every type of collaboration you do.
“Culture is how we work, how we do meetings, how we do everything. In a digital world, you’re forced to deal with that in a much more explicit way than when you’re in the office.” — Neil Miller
About Neil Miller: Director, The Digital Workplace
Neil Miller is the Director of The Digital Workplace. He has talked with over 200 of the best thinkers and leaders in the world about how to rebuild work for the digital age by redefining productivity, collaboration, leadership, technology, and culture. He’s a prolific thought stealer and curator of the most amazing list of check in questions in the world.
The Holy Grail of brand success is to really understand and engage with your ideal customer. But how do some brands seem to do this so effortlessly, while others throw marketing campaign after marketing campaign out there and get nowhere? Today, my guest is Sandeep Dayal. Sandeep advises senior executives at Fortune 500 companies in industries spanning pharmaceuticals, financial services, and consumer products. He shares how he got into cognitive science-based branding and shares examples of it in action. We talk about how brands can enhance experiences based on cognitive science, why marketers need to spend more time understanding behavioral motivation and how our brains work so they can influence choice – and most importantly, how to ethically influence subconscious choice. You’ll learn a great three question test that every marketer should ask to police themselves! We talk about the difference between brands with empathy and brands with values, and how branding has changed and what modem marketers need to know to be more successful.
Key Takeaways:
If you don’t understand what your client or customer is going through, you will not be able to help them effectively.
Brands with values need to have authentic values. It can’t just be a list of things that are on a pretty poster on a wall, but rather they are the values that the company is living and supporting.
Good marketing is about elevating the truth of your story so the people who need you or your product can find you.
It is your responsibility, as a marketer, to understand how you’re going to tap into the way the brain naturally works.
“Subconscious choice is a part of what we do every day. There’s no getting away from it, but you have to do these things in an ethical way.” — Sandeep Dayal
About Sandeep Dayal: Managing Director, Cerenti and Author, Branding Between the Ears
Sandeep Dayal is the managing director of the consulting firm Cerenti. He advises senior executives at Fortune 500 companies in industries spanning pharmaceuticals, financial services, and consumer products. His latest book Branding Between the Ears has been described by some as the definitive advance in the understanding of what makes some brands truly iconic. It draws on his years of experience in working with some of the most successful consumer brands and his company’s proprietary knowledge capital.
Is it even possible to center humanity in our work and our systems? We have become numb to the fact that so many of our government policies, social programs, and even corporate cultures exist to serve every other purpose but our shared humanity. They fail to acknowledge that humans are complex and that we can’t compartmentalize inputs in order to get successful outputs. The solution is to become more developmentally informed to build systems and cultures that center humanity – while still being widely successful and profitable.
My guest today talking about these big concepts as well as how they are relevant to the future of work is Michael O’Bryan. Mike shares what it means to be developmentally informed, what shared humanity means, and the real cost of dehumanization. He shares the difference between narrative and story and the influencers of human behavior. We discuss narrative intelligence and how the lack of it can lead to violence and racism like we saw in Buffalo, NY weeks ago. And how all of these concepts relate to the future of work and economic policies and systems. We go deep in this one, but I think you will love the conversation!
Key Takeaways:
You cannot have the wrong activities and produce the right outcomes.
Diversity is a fact. Equity is a choice. Inclusion is an activity. Belongingness is an outcome.
You tend to imagine more with pictures with the things that are close to you than the things that are distant from you.
It is to shape your children with narratives; it can take a minute to teach love or hate with an answer to a question.
The narratives that you hear shape you. We have to be more critical about what we are hearing, understanding the bias of where those narratives are coming from, and what it is costing us.
“You have got to be cognizant of the fact that you will meet narratives and stories about groups of people before you ever meaningfully engage in a relationship with them.” Mike O’Bryan
About Michael O’Bryan + Founder/CEO:
Michael O’Bryan is a practitioner and researcher in the fields of community development, organizational culture, and human well-being. He is a Distinguished Resident Fellow at The Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University where he is building a research lab focused on the future of work, economic policies, and systems through the lens of developmental science and social equity. Michael is also the founder of Humanature, a design strategy firm working with a mission of supporting organizations and leaders in centering humanity in the context of their work. Past and current clients include NeighborWorks America, The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, New Jersey Community Capital, Strada Education Network, The Opportunity Finance Network, and The United Negro College Fund. Michael has spoken about his work at such venues as Cornell University’s Institute on Employment and Disability, SOCAP, and the Apollo Theater in New York. He is on faculty in Career Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, a lecturer in city planning at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and most recently served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Arts. Michael also serves on the boards of two philanthropic institutions in Philadelphia: the Samuel S. Fels Fund and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
One of the most common myths about leadership is that arrogant, over-confident people are better leaders. Humbitious shatters that myth. Research has shown that humility, when combined with ambition, can significantly improve your performance and the performance of your teams and organization. Humility is not weakness, lack of self-esteem, or low assertiveness; in fact, it is the exact opposite, since it requires strength, courage, and fierce determination.
Today, Amer Kaissi defines humility and explains how to balance it with ambition for maximum success. He shares some examples of how he has helped low humility/high ambition leaders improve their success and team dynamics, and as well as high humility/low ambitious leaders gain more confident control. We discuss why humility starts with self-awareness, and then how it works in relationship to others. And Amer gives great examples of hunbitious leaders you can learn from.
Key Takeaways:
There is a connection between humility, resilience, and adaptability. If you are humble, you are able to overcome a challenge and come back stronger.
Listen to understand, don’t just listen to reply.
Prepare yourself and practice having difficult conversations. Don’t avoid, don’t delay, and don’t dread these conversations because they will need to happen.
It requires confidence to be humble and have empathy. It takes confidence and courage to have space for others.
“We need to bring both high humility and high ambition. That’s the only way we can have high performance in the long run.” — Amer Kaissi
About Amer Kaissi , Professor and Author of Humbitious:
Amer Kaissi (“Ah-mer Ky-See”) is an-award winning Professor of Healthcare Administration at Trinity University in San Antonio. He teaches Leadership and Public Speaking.
He is also an executive coach and author. His most recent book is Humbitious: The Power of Low-Ego, High-Drive Leadership. He reads at least 65 books every year. He is an avid soccer fan, he loves to run, cook and listen to 90’s hip hop music very loud in his car. He enjoys a good cappuccino, but his biggest weakness is McDonald’s French fries. He lives with his wife and two teenagers. He was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon.
You think your organization’s challenges are tough? Try healthcare, where lives are on the line! Not only has this industry been stretched to its limit during the pandemic, we have issues of healthcare literacy, inequities across certain populations, and burnout among our most talented practitioners. My guest today offers us energy and profound hope on the future of healthcare and how we can apply design thinking to this industry – and to your own organization – for better outcomes.
Rhonda Manns is a Nurse innovator who will share her fascinating story about pivoting from an ER nurse to product management. Rhonda explains the difference between human-centered design and design thinking and explains how to use those concepts in any business for better, holistic solutions. We discuss the impact and role that nurses play in solving business problems through empathy. She shares some interesting healthcare Hackathon stories, and even explains how you can be empathetic and still protect yourself from burnout. If anyone knows about this skill, it’s a nurse!
Key Takeaways:
Design thinking in healthcare allows you to remove the constraints of assumptions and biases and helps you to increase your creativity.
If you have empathy and real world experience, it doesn’t matter what your background and education is. You can unleash human creativity and innovation within a group of people with just a little bit of guidance, by leveraging their empathy and lived experience.
Empathy is showing up with curiosity, an open heart, and the right questions to solve your problems.
Innovation is bred out of chaos.
“Being a part of that hands-on, real life care every day helps nurses to enhance the business. Health care has its own culture, its own language and you need clinicians in those business decisions.” — Rhonda Manns
About Rhonda Manns, Nurse Innovator:
Recognized as one of LinkedIn’s Leaders in Nursing, Rhonda Manns is a registered nurse, certified case manager, and Nurse innovator who uses design-thinking to help software teams reach the nation’s most vulnerable populations. She is a mentor, a contributing author, and a clinical nurse advisor for a nurse-led healthcare startup in Boston who will be launching her own nurse-led project to solve for nurse exodus this Summer.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that leadership has changed. Not just because of our recent pandemic, but because of what research is telling us works, and what employees are demanding from their workplace cultures. But when we say we have to “redefine leadership”, what does that actually mean? It means killing the notion of the command and control “Alpha Leader” and understanding that today’s complex business challenges demand a more collaborative approach driven by empathy. My guest today is leadership expert Danielle Harlan. She shares what this new vision of leadership means to you, how you can increase your empathy and effectiveness, and also what your organization can do to foster a more empathetic and inclusive environment that translates into success.
Key Takeaways:
Technology has been a key piece in making things more transparent. It also gives us the ability to ask more interesting questions and better understand what people are wanting from the businesses they buy from.
Apologize when you hurt someone or a group. Acknowledge it and move forward, but apologize, even when it wasn’t the intent to cause harm.
You can increase your empathy by engaging in media – read fiction, watch shows, listen to music – and try to understand those perspectives that differ from your own.
“Our concept of leadership is really expanding. It’s more relational, more collective, and there’s a strong ethical and justice-oriented component.” – Danielle Harlan
About Danielle Harlan, Founder & CEO, Center for Advancing Leadership and Human Potential:
As the Founder and CEO of the Center for Advancing Leadership and Human Potential, Danielle Harlan, Ph.D., is on a mission to transform leadership for the modern world. Through a combination of consulting, teaching, coaching, and keynote offerings, she empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to develop the competencies necessary for succeeding, thriving, and generating a lasting positive impact in their local and global communities.
As an experienced speaker and facilitator (both in-person and virtual first), Danielle delivers compelling, energetic, and evidence-based presentations and programs—with measurable results. She has been the featured speaker for conferences, summits, and corporate events—and has facilitated workshops, programs, and retreats for commercial, nonprofit, government, health care, and educational organizations around the world.
As a former special education teacher, Danielle’s work is rooted in equity, emotional intelligence, and the science of human motivation—and her bestselling book, The New Alpha: Join the Rising Movement of Influencers and Changemakers Who Are Redefining Leadership, offers a new paradigm for leadership that’s focused on facilitating collective ownership of a shared mission and enabling the structures and systems necessary to bring it to life in an ethical, sustainable, and just way.
Named one of Silicon Valley’s “40 Under 40,” Danielle has been a speaker for TEDx and worked as an instructor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and U.C. Berkeley Extension’s Corporate and Professional Development Program. In addition, she has been featured in leading publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Women’s Health.
Danielle earned her doctorate in political science and M.A. in education from Stanford University, where she was a Javits National Fellow and was awarded the Centennial Teaching Prize for excellence in instruction. Prior to launching the Center for Advancing Leadership and Human Potential, she was the Chief of Operations for the Carnegie Foundation, where she worked to harness the power of networks and quality improvement strategies to solve important educational problems. She is a member of the International Leadership Association and the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.
Connect with Danielle Harlan:
Our Coach – Organizational Wellness and Human Thriving Assessment Tool: https://ourcoach.io/
So…your leaders and colleagues could all improve their emotional intelligence, or EQ, to better collaborate – and you want to change your company culture for the better – but where the heck do you start? Today, I talk with Rich Hua, Global Head of EPIC Leadership at Amazon. Rich’s personal journey from self-professed non-emotionally intelligent person to where he is today will inspire even those of you who falsely believe you’ll never be good at this stuff! He shares how he intentionally built those muscles through self-reflection, coaching, and learning. We discuss the state of EQ and empathy in the corporate world and what talent is now demanding from leaders. He shares how we created his current role and started this movement at Amazon – still a work in process but already having a profound impact – and he will inspire you as he did me, with tips to do the same in your organization. Where is EQ headed in our workplace world? Let’s find out!
Key Takeaways:
It takes work, self-reflection, and self-awareness to grow and hone your EQ. As humans we don’t like to be uncomfortable, but it is in that discomfort that we grow.
We all have a sphere of influence. It doesn’t matter if it is our families, our neighbors, our church, or an audience of thousands. We can work on expanding our sphere as we embrace and teach empathy.
Everyone is looking for hope and inspiration. That is human nature. Be the light in whatever sphere you are in.
“I think of it as inputs and outputs: Diversity, equity, or inclusive behavior are actually outputs. You don’t necessarily teach people that. It’s the result when you teach them empathy.” — Rich Hua
About Rich Hua, Global Head of EPIC Leadership, Amazon:
Rich Hua is a technology strategist and innovation evangelist, and he currently serves as the Global Head of EPIC Leadership at Amazon. His mission is to train Amazon’s leaders in emotional intelligence and interpersonal dynamics, enabling them to lead with greater Empathy, Purpose, Inspiration, and Connection (EPIC). Rich has spent decades training and mentoring people in leadership and interpersonal skills—from CEOs to aspiring managers to early career professionals. He launched the Emotional Intelligence and Success initiative at Amazon, and his team has trained over 150,000 Amazonians in emotional and social intelligence. His training is now an integral part of onboarding, sales, and leadership development programs across numerous parts of Amazon globally.
You know the meeting: rambling conversations, tangents, and vague instructions. Not only is this frustrating, but it’s downright unempathetic to people! What is this lack of clarity costing you in terms of productivity, engagement – and bottom line budget? Today my guest, The Queen of Clarity, Ann Latham, shares why we aren’t clear and what it’s costing us.
Today, Anne talks about how clarity unleashes next steps. We talk about where clarity is and where it is not in your organization, three requirements for creating clarity, and what you can do today to increase clarity in your organization and boost productivity and engagement. I’ll give you a spoiler: Eliminate “treadmill” verbs. Find out what we mean by that and take a listen!
Key Takeaways:
Clarity comes not from the answer, but from asking the right questions.
Understanding the decisions involved is the first step to clarity in any meeting with anybody. That is what unleashes real progress.
The first step is seeing how unclear we are. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Creating your agenda with treadmill verbs is a waste of time and will not help your meeting to progress forward.
“When you’re clear, everyone can be on the same page, everyone can contribute their maximum and do their best, and everyone knows where things stand.” — Ann Latham
About Ann Latham, President, Uncommon Clarity
ANN LATHAM, known widely as the Queen of Clarity, is the author of the new release, THE POWER OF CLARITY, in addition to THE CLARITY PAPERS and UNCOMMON MEETINGS. She is also the founder of US-based consulting firm Uncommon Clarity. Her clients represent over 40 industries and range from organizations such as Boeing, Hitachi, and Medtronic to non-profits such as the Public Broadcasting Service, the United Way, and colleges and universities.
Ann’s advice has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Management Today. She is also an expert blogger for Forbes.com.
She speaks frequently to a wide range of audiences and is a guest lecturer for the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management.
Ann is also the sole recipient of a corporate award that she cherishes to this day: Most Likely To Dispute Recognized Authorities.
Connect with Ann Latham:
Book: The Power of Clarity: Unleash the True Potential of Workplace Productivity, Confidence, and Empowerment – https://power-of-clarity.com/
