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Jessica Swank: How Box Navigates the New World of Work

Post-pandemic leadership can be challenging. With the current market and increased expectations workers, leaders, and mid-level managers are squeezed, balancing the needs of the business with the demands of their people. This is why I’m excited to talk to a Chief People Officer of a global organization that is doing the work, navigating the journey, and experimenting with ways to better support their people.

Today, I talk with Jessica Swank about how her company’s leaders are navigating the challenges and still taking care of themselves and their people. We discuss the importance of clarity and support when setting high expectations, and how transparency, communication, and listening are vital with hybrid and remote work experimentation. We discuss specific ways Box integrates values into their decisions and develops and enables their managers to be more successful. Whatever your culture, Jessica offers her best advice on where you can start supporting your leaders.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

In your organization, you cannot be clear enough. Hold high expectations, but also give a clear understanding that you’ll be supporting your team and that you’re available for that support.
Actions speak louder than words and other people notice. You continue to show your empathetic culture every time you talk about caring for each other and empathy in service and follow it up with actions.
Setting boundaries is both self-care and empathetic. It gives you space to recharge and be more present in the difficult conversations that need to be had in business.
Work-life balance is not real. You need to understand priorities and boundaries to ensure you’re healthy with your life in the season you’re in.
It is a journey to understanding and managing the needs of your team. Be willing to take that journey and gather information from your employees on what is working and what is not.

“It’s not just up to the business to say, ‘Here’s what I need from you.’ It is incredibly valuable for every person to have that open dialogue with their managers, ask them when they need support, clarification, feedback, not just sitting back and waiting to be told, but also engaging in that dialogue.”

— Jessica Swank

“It’s all about juggling, and you’re going to drop some balls, just make sure that the balls are going to bounce versus shatter.” — Jessica Swank

About Jessica Swank, Chief People Officer, Box

Jessica has a proven track record of helping companies define and amplify their people and culture strategy (including diversity, talent development, employee experience, workforce planning, people analytics, and internal communications). She has been with Box since December 2018, and currently leads all People (HR), Belonging, Community (including Box.org), Places (workplace services and real estate), and Internal Communications. Prior to Box she led the People team at Blue Bottle Coffee, a high-growth global coffee company. Previously, Jessica led HR for Aruba, a fast-growing subsidiary of HPE, and spent ten years at HP/HPE in a variety of global HR roles. Her early career included executive search and recruiting for CEO’s, CFO’s and other key leadership positions.

Connect with Jessica Swank:

Box: box.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jessica-venner-swank

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Jessica Swank 03:24

that’s a great question. So I actually grew up philosophizing a lot with my mom around, like, what makes people and what makes leaders and really just curiosity around that human behavior. And I actually didn’t want to go into HR because I thought at the time, way back when I joined, it was a lot about just like Personnel right back in the day. But I just I love solving problems. And I love business. And I love people. And I love problem solving. And so it was never an intentional, like something I set out to do. It was always about curious and learning and raising my hand when opportunities came knocking, and then box. So I have had incredible opportunities. Again, I’ve just been so fortunate. And yet, to me culture, community leaders absolutely are what matters. And so that’s what brought me to box in that what keeps me up box pressure.

Maria Ross 04:13

I love it. I love it. And so tell us, you know, again, from your vantage point, as an H as an HR leader of a very large organization, how are your leaders doing post pandemic, we hear all the reports, we see all the studies about how leaders are kind of being squeezed from both ends. I know you and I have talked about that in the past. How are they doing in terms of navigating the new workplace and and all the the newfound demands of the business with the demands of their people? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 04:41

I think this is an incredibly challenging time for leaders, for managers, for employees, just because the rate of information right it’s just it’s just Mach speed to just try and keep up with technology, the pressures of the business to perform to deliver you know, Wall Street Being a global public company, something that we grapple with, you know, this sense of caring, compassion listening to our boys, right? I think we just are asked to do a lot. And we’re all human. I mean, I find my that, you know, you and I’ve talked about this a little bit Maria. But it’s hard. Some days are hard. And some days, we don’t want to show up as leaders or as managers. And yet, we do our best to just show up regardless, though, want to take

Maria Ross 05:24

completely. And that’s the thing is I always talk about empathy going both ways. And we have to remember that it’s not just from leaders to employees, it’s up and down the chain. It’s having empathy for the people that are in charge, who are have to have to make these tough decisions who have so much on their plate. And you know, and it’s funny, because I’m asking you that question as if you’re removed from it, but you are a leader who is raised in the middle to write as, and I think we forget that about HR sometimes is we forget that they’re dealing with the same issues and crises that the rest of the business is dealing with. But we always look to HR to sort of solve our problems for us.

Jessica Swank 06:00

Yes, yes, I remember a silly story. But I remember the fall, my husband had COVID, my daughter had been in, here’s a drop off, like it was just horrible experience. Bono, my dog had diarrhea all over an adult present. And I just remember being like, Okay, you put it on, right? You just you show up. And that sense of like, everybody has good days, everybody has bad days. But we’re at the end of the day, we’re all human. And I think again, just going back to that sense of, how do we connect? How do we just make sure that we’re starting first with where people first and yet then we all are in this together to you know, kind of come together within our business or organization.

Maria Ross 06:37

I love that. And so part of the reason why I’m so excited to have you on again, being in the trenches is, what are some ways that box is putting that into action. So as you’ve as you’ve sort of tried to get your own feet as an executive team on Okay, how are we feeling? But also okay, what do we need to do in the business to support our leaders? What are some initiatives that you’re doing to support leaders right now and help them better balance this, this juggling act they have?

Jessica Swank 07:05

Yeah, so we talk a lot about having really high expectations, but a high level of support at this end. So it’s both of those things, saying be very clear about this is what we expect, here’s our priorities, and yet saying, but we want to enable you, we want to help set you up for success. So from a leader standpoint, we have a lot of kind of group activities. So we have what we call our executive leadership team, our FLT all of our directors, and above, where we have a monthly call, with our CEO with our, you know, kind of all of our leaders just to make sure we’re all aligned business strategy, we have what we call a monthly manager power hour where it is, is, you know, essentially enabling managers on kind of topics. We have listening circles, or depending on the various topics, we have a weekly basis, what we call Friday lunch, and that is also our opportunity to come together as a business and know our Theo shares, Aaron Lavie, we also use the opportunity to bring in customers again, hearing that customer perspective, yeah, we give them boy and Doctor update. So we try and really focused on very high level transparency, a lot of communication, and again, a lot of alignment on what are the business goals, and then translating that down into Ingles, and then individual goals.

Maria Ross 08:28

Okay, I love this so much. Because, as you know, with my new book, coming out the empathy dilemma, it’s talking about five pillars that are essential to be both empathetic, but also high performing and accountable at the same time. And you’re basically hitting all of them. So this, but this idea of, like, what some might deem as excessive communication, and collaboration, it’s never too much like, this is why clarity and decisiveness are two of the five pillars in the book, because we can’t, we can’t be clear enough, like, and what I love about what you said was this idea of holding both high expectations, but also the expectation that you will be supported. Because I think that’s where especially clarity is so important is that we’re going to be crystal clear with you, whatever level you are at the expectations we have of you. And then we actually inkind you don’t get off the hook, you actually have to be accountable for being clear with us about what support you need. And we are going to make a commitment to you that if it’s if whatever is possible, we will do to support you, instead of just let me set the expectations and throw you in the water and hope you swim, which is I think, easier, quote unquote, for a lot of leaders to do, but it’s not sustainable, and it actually doesn’t lead to high performance.

Jessica Swank 09:49

Yeah. And a couple of things to build on what you said. And I completely agree, though we talk a lot as part of our performance cycle that we major both what are we getting those high expectations measured by quarterly OKRs. But we also talked about the how. So we have four leader mindsets we call business team, self, and community all anchored on our values. And it was, again, that expectation, as we say, we we have incredibly high standards. But just as important is what you do. It’s how you do it and exemplifying our values our culture, again, contributing to not only be the business, but to your team, and your community. And so I do think that sense of asked to be bold. And you also said something that I think is incredibly important. It’s not just up to then the business to stay, here’s what I need from you. It is incredibly important and valuable for every person, to have that open dialogue with their managers, ask them when they need support, ask them for, you know, clarification, ask them for that feedback. 360s. Right, making sure that it’s not just sitting back and waiting to be told, but also engaging in that dialogue.

Maria Ross 11:01

I love that so much. And, you know, you brought up another point in terms of not just what the what but the how, because, you know, going back to like my brand strategy work that I’ve done. It’s making value, and mission and purpose, useful and actionable. So it’s not just the pretty poster on the wall that we never revisit, ever again. But how do we tie that to the actions and the goals that we have in front of us right now. And it’s not just going to be enough to meet that goal, because this is where you get toxic rockstars, right, they might achieve the goal or make their number and they’ve like, scorched the earth behind them, right. And they’ve made it a horrible work environment for everyone else around them. And if a company still reward someone like that, what they’re saying with their actions is that that value doesn’t mean anything. And that’s what you know, we all say actions speak louder than words. Other people notice, like, yeah, the company saying that caring about each other, or empathy or service is important. But then that person’s getting ahead. Every quarter, they get promoted, they get acknowledged, they get recognized, just for meeting the goal, not for how they met the goal. And I think that’s such a key part of empathetic cultures, which is so good to hear that you you tie that together every time you talk about it

Jessica Swank 12:18

every time and I think two threads with that. One is the cultures have to be embedded into every single thing that we do, right? Your point, it can’t just be a poster, we have them on the back of our badges, right? Yes, that is important. But it is the tip of the iceberg. So you know, we have awards that we align on. So we have our you know, cloud Awards, where we exemplify boxers who are exemplified in our values are a value we have, you know, a lot of, again, it’s integrated into every single thing that we do. And yet, in those difficult decisions, right? It’s easy to do when it’s you know, everything’s going well is when really, you have that really, you know, we used didn’t label athletes not even very recently, anymore. About four years ago, we had to make a really difficult decision with one of those rock stars. And compared to every other company, this is the first one is still actually a pretty darn good person. It just wasn’t yet to our level of expectations. And so again, it’s making those very difficult decisions. Otherwise, it erodes the trust and the credibility and I think it’s easier, better, probably not going to say something, you’re not going to actually be willing to stand behind it.

Maria Ross 13:27

Right? Well, and sometimes leaders conflate not saying anything as empathy, they conflate avoiding the conflict and hurting someone’s feelings as Oh, I’m doing the empathetic thing. But they’re actually not being empathetic to everyone that person has to work with.

Jessica Swank 13:43

And and I would also say, not even empathetic to that one person, right? Because right, is that helping somebody learn and grow and move past something that’s hindering their success? Again, doing it in a thoughtful, compassionate way. Totally. That I think is where some real magic comes from the trust of you know, an organization and people because they can say, hey, I’m growing, I’m learning. I might not get feedback. That’s always easy to hear. But does it actually make me more effective and a better person or a better, you know, kind of employee? Absolutely important, and

Maria Ross 14:16

those are crunchy conversations. But that’s where, you know, you and I were talking, we were talking before we started recording that it takes courage. And this is why I laugh when people say I don’t want to be an empathetic leader, because then people will think I’m weak. And I’m like, empathy actually requires strength, because you have to make these difficult decisions and be able to make them with compassion and be able to support someone and sit with someone, but you’re not necessarily changing the decision. Correct?

Jessica Swank 14:43

Yeah. It’s making those difficult decisions with with as much kindness which is a thoughtfulness, right, right consideration or everybody involved. One of the things that our family we say every morning is clear eyes, full heart, but does that sense of you know, you have to Go into it, you have to look at it clearly and with, you know, but also at the same time, right, having a full heart to approach it makes such a difference.

Maria Ross 15:09

Well, and I know, you know, I want to recognize that even though I say empathy is innate to all of us as humans, it looks different for some of us based on neuro diversity or past experiences, or, you know, it’s not always as accessible, that muscle is not always as toned for some of us. And so how does the company support leaders and really anyone at any level, to build that emotional intelligence to build that ability to self regulate? To see another person’s perspective? What are some of the things that you do as a company that might be some ideas for leaders listening? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 15:44

it’s really important, right? And it needs to, and I think we also have to have that empathy to, you know, that shows up differently. Exactly, yeah. And it’s not always going to be one size fits all. So a couple of things we do is one, we do a lot around our values in our learning. So we have a make mom proud session where we talk about it, which is one of our values, I’m wearing my T shirt here, make mom proud. But that sense of what does that value look like in action in real life. And so it goes through we use Apple real life box examples from the past, does not just theory. So that’s one example, to we really emphasize, again, kind of listening circles and hearing both ways and role playing, you know, and so that manager enablement, kind of, it’s not just, you know, reading a manual, but it is like, it’s this because it is a muscle, and it takes this and ongoing, you know, you can get rusty, and then you have to kind of you know, kind of reengage with it, we also do executive coaching for some of our individuals, we really believe somebody has a lot of potential, or maybe they have, you know, a blind spot that’s getting in their way. We also, you know, provide some of that, we also look a lot to some of our benefits, modern health is one. So we provide, you know, kind of coaching where somebody can go and talk to somebody professional, because again, I think sometimes looking at yourself, and then learning how to do it for the team and individual. So yeah, we try and look at it across all bases. I love

Maria Ross 17:17

that. And that’s bringing in some of my other pillars, which is self awareness and self care. And start it. You know, sometimes it’s counterintuitive to people that are seeking to be an empathetic leader, they want to put everyone else first. That’s their instinct. And that’s not exactly empathy. That’s a little bit of submission, a little bit of people pleasing. But if we start with ourselves, and kind of I always like to use the phrase, get our own houses in order, and understand what are our blind spots, what are our emotional triggers, the more we can have that courage in the moment to be able to be with someone on our team, and take in their point of view and their perspective, without fear or defensiveness. Because we know ourselves so well, we know how we show up in conversations like that. And so it’s kind of counterintuitive, but the first step to empathy for others is working on yourself.

Jessica Swank 18:07

100% Yes, I totally agree. And I think that understanding, I always say that self care is also knowing and drawing your own boundaries. Yes. He says to me, I think it’s so easy to think like I to your point, I’m just going to take care of everybody else all the time, but then we’re depleted. And so knowing where and when it does, again, doesn’t look the same for everybody, but what are those supercharging moments where we get to fill our own tank, so that we can show up the best way possible for others, you know, so, you know, recent example. So I am a very passionate person. And I also, you know, I work really hard on staying super objective. And the other, you know, night, I was in a pretty intense call over something that was really difficult conversation. And I said, we, this is so important, can we talk about this tomorrow, and it was so hard for me to call the conversation. But then the next day, we picked it back up, and we had a really productive, healthy conversation. But I knew in that moment, I was like, okay, all my flags of like, I’m not gonna show up the way that I want to, or we’re not getting the best outcome out of this one,

Maria Ross 19:13

right. And that requires knowing, recognizing that those triggers are starting to happen for you. And there’s so many people that sort of go through life, like a bulldozer, just not not seeing what’s happening to other people, but also not being able to recognize what’s happening for themselves. And, you know, that’s also part of the clarity that we that I talked about is clarity and setting those boundaries. So you need to be self aware enough to know what those boundaries should be. Take care of yourself to respect those boundaries, but also clearly be able to communicate that as well. Yeah. So I love that that’s so great. And you’re reminding me of, you know, again, kind of back to that self care issue. One of the things I write about in the book is that, you know, self care is not Manny’s and Petty’s it’s not massages it can be but that’s more self maintenance, right? Self care that the way we’re really talking about Audit is how to understand what recharges you or where you need rest or what energizes you. And so it can be very active. It can be, you know, for some people self care is running a marathon, or, you know, when when I was working in corporate, I love doing independent theater. And I was in a very supportive workplace where it wasn’t like I had to miss work for it. But they knew like I had to leave at certain times when I was going to rehearsals because I had to go to rehearsal. And then my team came and supported me at the performance, right? So it was really fun. And there was another woman in our group who is a trained opera singer. And she really needed to sing, she wanted to do this summer opera program, this summer music program, and got the support from management to do it, and then stayed many, many more years with that company, because they were able to support her in herself care. Yeah, which is, you know, sometimes it’s hobbies, or passions or whatever. That’s part of our self care. I think we overlooked that sometimes when we talk about self care for leaders, because they think, Oh, it’s too selfish.

Jessica Swank 21:07

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think do I really believe that if you’re writing personally, it actually helps you thrive professionally. And that symbiotic, right? And if you’re really thriving and finding those areas that are really new up and adding to, you know, that rejuvenation, then you can show up even more effective. Now, I’m also a big believer, and it’s, you know, I think people asking me about work life balance, I actually don’t think there’s any such thing. It doesn’t exist.

Maria Ross 21:36

It’s a myth.

Jessica Swank 21:37

I call it you know, kind of like work, work integration. Yeah. Because to me, like, you know, I, it’s really important for me to spend some time with my daughter. But that also means that sometimes then I get back on later, you know, in a day, and so it doesn’t always mean like, Hey, here’s my, you know, I don’t answer a call after five o’clock. And that’s my boundary, and I’m gonna stick to it. But it’s knowing where and when and how to set those boundaries and really prioritize within your kind of the work life and the personal life. I

Maria Ross 22:05

always joke that if work life balance was real, we would be giving like 11.1% to everything in our lives, right? It would all be equal. But sometimes, different levers have to go higher and lower. Like, if you’ve got a family emergency, your family has to come first, right? If you’ve got a deadline with a client, you might have to work late. And I think that there’s something to be said, in workplaces to help new people in the workplace understand that because I think that many people have, I don’t want to say like, morphed the definition of work life integration, but they think it means one thing, like you said, like just being hard and fast with that boundary and never changing and never allowing for anything. But life is not like that. No one’s life is like that. And no one’s work is like that. So being able to understand that like, Okay, we’re gonna go hard. And I might have to work a weekend to solve this crisis at work. But then I’m going to make up for it in two weeks, I might take an extra afternoon off, like if that’s what we mean by work life balance and having boundaries, correct.

Jessica Swank 23:10

Seasons, we each have these seasons. Exactly.

Maria Ross 23:14

And I think that that’s important, too. I love that the new generations in the workplace are changing the conversation and changing the paradigm. I also think they need to be mentored a little bit about some of the hard and fast rules they have around things. And so you know, where they can where they can take that and say, like, No, my boundaries, I never work after 5pm ever, right? Life at work is not like that. It’s not that discrete. And so it’s like, okay, let’s figure out a way to make this work for everybody, and be able to integrate your work in life. So I think there’s something there, we need some sort of a little like, life coaching module for everyone in the workplace on what work life integration means.

Jessica Swank 24:00

having empathy for blue eyes, right? You just say like, this is what I need. And it’s all about just what I need. Right? What do I need was my team need? What is the business need? What is my customer need? Right? Again, sometimes dialing up and down depending on that, but and go both ways. Completely

Maria Ross 24:18

completely, because like, I love what I love the term you used about there are seasons. Right? So um, so let’s talk a little bit. I just want to switch gears, as we’re kind of wrapping up and talk about what are the challenges or the opportunities that you have all found at box around, experimenting with hybrid remote work in this new world of work that we’re in? Because what I love hearing is the journey of companies have like, you know, we haven’t gotten it all figured out. But these are the different things we’re trying and this is what we have found to be a good mix for us. Where are you guys are in that journey? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 24:55

well, a couple of words that you said that I think are spot on. If it isn’t a journey. It is The biggest experiment that I think we’re all going through my gosh, on the journey, and we’re doing some things well, and then we’re like, oh, that didn’t work so well is trying to different ways. So where we are on the journey is, we believe that we need and have it all. We do have workplaces that are absolutely instrumental to our culture, to our sense of community. And we want people to be able to come in and what we’ve found and the research that, you know, kind of what we’ve experienced, but also have heard is, you know, it’s not necessarily your direct gain connections that strengthen when you come together, it’s a lot of the loose connections, it’s the social capital of cross functional teams learning from you know, mentoring, observing, that is really important. And so again, I think that serendipitous piece of coming together, and yet, we also really want we are going to always have remote folks, it whether it’s because their role, so we have, you know, sales folks who are out in the field, their job is remote, or people who have chosen to be remote and are in roles that can be effective remote. And so what we’re trying to do is create these norms. And you know, what we’re trying to call it is like, this is just how we work. This is how we are as an organization, and then again, the looping not into all things, you know, how do we from a diversity standpoint, make sure that we’re thinking about that, you know, the experience of the remote Doctor versus the person who’s coming into office? How do we think about it as we scale and as we grow? So yes, we’re doing a lot of experimenting. But again, I love you know, a lot of times we it’s, I would say we’ve we’ve come a long way, yeah, being able to bring people together.

Maria Ross 26:39

Yeah, well, and I love from, you know, when I met you many, many months ago, what I loved was that box was willing to do that experimentation, and say, Okay, we’re doing something, and maybe this isn’t working, let’s try something else. That adaptability. And that resilience is what’s required. And I know, for a lot of companies that have leaders that just kind of want to go back to the way things were right, because it was easier, and they didn’t have to think about it. And I have empathy for that, right? It’s hard to constantly be adapting, it’s exhausting. But that willingness to do it, I think, is what’s going to be the marker of successful companies going forward, because we’re not going back, like people have seen a new way that they can innovate and create and get work done. And we’ve just got to find a happy medium, between, you know, like, with all the benefits that we get when we’re together. And, you know, all the benefits that some people get when they’re able to work out of their home and deal with whatever they’re dealing with at home or their own, you know, potentially different needs, that they have physical needs, mental needs, whatever it is. And so the willingness, I was just struck by the willingness of box to take that journey and say, we’re going to try it, we’re going to try different things. And you do so many wonderful things within your workspaces to make it a very collaborative and inviting and inclusive environment. And I know that that’s, that’s from listening to your employees, and not just trying to figure it out in a closed door session without any input from anyone. So I just wanted to like say, shout out to box for doing it that way. What do you think was, uh, you know, kind of as we as we do wrap up here, because I could talk to you for three hours. What do you think was part of that way of gathering that information from employees and finding out what was working for them? What wasn’t? Was that already part of your culture? Or is that something that, like, Can you give any advice to someone listening of like, how do you even start compiling, getting accessing that information so that you can be listening and all voices are heard in those conversations? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 28:45

so it’s a great question. One is I do think it was part of our DNA in many ways, but that we’ve built on and figure it out, right? What’s working again, and what’s not working. I’m a big believer in experimentation. So a couple of things. We did a lot of listening circles and listening circles from impacted, you know, all different spectrums. But we also have an annual blog called Dr. Experience survey. And so we included a question on that, you know, and what we found, actually, last year was, the flexibility was top of the list of what boxers appreciated about our approach so far. And so that’s something even as we continue to refine that sense of flexibility of being able to say, you know, whether it’s a which day you work from home and or which hours you work, and, you know, kind of going back to that integrating of lives, and little things, you know, some of it is we’ve gotten a lot of asks, and some of them were saying, Thank you. That’s a great suggestion. However, we’re not able to do that. But here’s the reasons why. And again, I think that going back to clarity of kindness, and that sense of like, we hear you, however, a b and c, right, and just being able to have that very open and transparent conversation, not just kind of pretending like you know, bla bla bla, I don’t want to hear it. Yeah,

Maria Ross 30:00

exactly putting your hands over your ears. Well, and I love that, because that’s also very good to celebrate, and to acknowledge people being feeling safe enough to give the feedback. So you don’t end up discouraging future feedback. Because what could easily happen is you go, No, that’s a terrible idea. We’re not doing it right, which how some companies are actually reacting to their employees, you have now you have now stifled any future contribution or idea that that person is willing to make. And so I love the approach you said, which is super empathetic, it’s like, that’s a great idea. Thank you so much for bringing to us, we’ve looked at it. But here’s why that’s not going to be feasible right now. Or you may find that someone gives an idea. And initially, that’s not workable, but there might be pieces of it that you can implement from into going forward. So I think just constantly encouraging people and thanking people for their feedback, because what I often hear from leaders is, yeah, but if I ask everyone for their feedback, that they’re going to assume that I’m just going to do what everybody wants. And like, you know, you don’t have to set that expectation, you can set the episode station that you’re going to consider all the input, and make sure that you encourage and thank for the input in a genuine way. Not not because you know, you’re never going to do it. But and then really get humble and say, Is there something in this that could be useful? Rather than I already know that my mind’s made up, but you guys have two weeks to tell me what you what you think about it, because that’s what happens is, again, in the expediency trying to like, let me just get this over with and tick a box that I asked everybody what they thought, it’s doing it in a very genuine way where that is factored into your decision making. But and I write about this in the new book, you have to be able to synthesize an act and decide quickly.

Jessica Swank 31:43

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, sometimes that’s the hardest part, right? It takes a lot more time, a lot more energy. But I’m a big believer that the outcome and the results pay off in spades if you do that. And that’s also right balancing what again, what a an individual employee might want, but also the realities of the business, right, we get asked a lot or No, I would love to give everybody everything that they would have on the wish list. We just the business realities of where we have to allocate resources. And so we’ve been very clear and trying to say like, Okay, this is not going to be the top of the priority. Here’s why. But yeah, if we can, you know, hit a revenue hit our business priorities, here are things that then are going to be next on the list, like, why does this travel? Right? Our employees have been begging, like, we want to see each other, not just the people that are, you know, in the same city, but we want to be able to see each other around the world. And so we’ve been building in, you know, kind of more travel budget, based on the realities of kind of where we are. Right, right. I think

Maria Ross 32:44

building a culture of why and knowing that for every decision being able to explain why tracks back to clarity. Yeah, yeah, sure. And that trust, and trust for sure. 100%. Last question, for real. Notice sort of the one piece of advice you would advise. So maybe there’s a really frazzled CHRO or head of HR listening to this right now. And they say, Oh, my gosh, all this stuff sounds great. But we don’t have any of that foundation in place. Where’s one place they could start? Or one piece of advice you would have for them on how to best support their leaders right now?

Jessica Swank 33:20

It’s a great question, I would say, find a couple of opportunities, both that would be low hanging fruit, something that would be relatively easy to implement. But then also find the one that is probably the more difficult, but that it’s going to be harder, but there’s gonna have the biggest impact, and maybe choosing one of each of those to then go and tackle. I’m a big believer in prioritization, I always say, you know, it’s all about juggling, and you’re gonna drop the balls, just make sure that the balls that they’re going to bounce prior to the shatter. So like, find some of those that if you can, like, you know, pick up or if you drop, okay, but then some of those where you say, yes, if I can go and execute and deliver on this with my business with our boys, it actually is going to make a big difference, right?

Maria Ross 34:07

And then you can always check on something else after that. We don’t have to do all the things all at once, right?

Jessica Swank 34:11

Absolutely. fail if you try.

Maria Ross 34:15

Once, in my humble opinion, I wrote down what you just said about like, we’re all going to be juggling the balls and the goal is to have the bounce rather than shatter. That is that’s a keeper thing. balls

Jessica Swank 34:24

that are gonna bounce back up. We’re gonna create the bigger mess.

Maria Ross 34:30

I love it. I love it. Well, thank you, Jessica, so much for your time and all your insights. Today, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes. But where’s one place that folks can get in touch with you and learn more about what you’re doing?

Jessica Swank 34:41

Yeah, so I’m actually not super into social media for my own personal well being. Um, however, LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Great.

Maria Ross 34:50

And for those listening, just look under Jessica Venner swing. And remember to be a good LinkedIn user and write her note about what You are connecting and where you heard her so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something.

Jessica Swank 35:04

I would love to hear from you. Yes, thank

Maria Ross 35:06

you so much and continued great success at box and all the work you’re doing thank you for sort of being a leader in the in the empathetic culture space right now. Well,

Jessica Swank 35:16

and thank you for what you’re doing and helping to write about it and just brand this incredibly important topic. And again, not having to be just, you know, soft and fluffy, but really the impact that it can have on our business on our customers, our employees, and I think about us, each of us personally, so for sure, I’m excited for your new

Maria Ross 35:34

book as well. 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 share with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Gautam Shah: Exercising with a Snow Leopard: Video Games to Engage Wildlife Conservation

Visiting snow leopards in their natural habitat or hanging with penguins in Antarctica is a life-changing way to engage with nature but it’s not within the grasp of most people. So how can we leverage technology to offer that exposure and foster empathy for wildlife conservation? My guest today, Gautam Shah, figured out a way to combine his passion with entrepreneurship to connect people with wildlife in fun, unique ways.

Today we talk about why public engagement with wildlife is so important, and how using games can be more effective than current conservation tactics. Gautam shares some very cool examples of work they’ve done with partners such as Adidas and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We talk about empathy vs. caring, how “behavior change” is not the primary goal of this work, and why many current conservation messages can derail efforts to engage everyday people by not having empathy for them. Toward the end, he candidly discusses the challenges entrepreneurs face to balance purpose with profit and the hard choices that one has to make to keep the organization alive and sustainable for the long haul.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

If everyone had the opportunity to sit with an endangered animal, how many people would it change in favor of the planet? Though that’s not possible, there are ways people can engage individually in the change.
Compassion is empathy in action. Empathetic people don’t suffer from a lack of caring, but often from not knowing how to take action.
Internet of Elephants is using modern, creative ways to engage people in the story of conservation and making the stories told by the data gathered on the animals personal. They are making the stories of these animals personal to the individual.

“It’s a holistic process of thinking about the person and understanding their life before you can have any opportunity to think that you can introduce empathy for animals that might be very, very far away.”

— Gautam Shah

Episode References:

FathomVerse: https://www.fathomverse.game/

About Gautam Shah, Founder, Internet of Elephants, National Geographic and TED fellow

Gautam is the founder of Internet of Elephants, a social enterprise that develops groundbreaking digital tools to engage people with wildlife. He believes that engaging the public with nature and its conservation is the most important thing we can do for the long-term health of the planet and that we need to find modern mediums to tell stories and foster that engagement. Video games are the defining media of our time, so Internet of Elephants tells nature and wildlife stories through thoughtful combinations of mobile games, augmented reality, and data visualizations that use GPS and other data gathered about animals and the planet. In doing so, they hope to catalyze whole new approaches to engaging the public with wildlife. Gautam is both a National Geographic and TED Fellow.

Connect with Gautam Shah:

Internet of Elephants: http://internetofelephants.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/internetofelephants/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ioelephants

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Gautam Shah 03:14

Thanks very much. It’s very nice to be here.

Maria Ross 03:16

And you know, I’d love to tell folks our story of how we know each other. We know each other from college at Indiana University. And it’s been decades since we’ve reconnected but you’ve gone on to do quite a few impressive things. So for just a quick couple minutes. Tell us your story and how you got to this work.

Gautam Shah 03:33

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I started my right out of college right out of Indiana University. The only job offer I got was from a big IT consulting company called Accenture. Well, at that time, it was called Anderson Consulting. Yep. So I took that I took that job. And for the better part of for the better part of 20 years, I was working as an IT consultant for for Accenture. What I’ve always loved though was was animal and wildlife. And that’s, you know, that’s something that I think we all have as kids, but for me, it was just maybe it was a little stronger. It was just something that I was able to keep in touch with a little bit more. And so I would spend all my holiday time and all my salary on wildlife vacation, and I would travel the world and I would be without them. And I’ve been you know, I’ve been with everything I’ve been with, you know, you name the animal I’d probably you know I probably had some experience with with that. And I remember that I remember the moment very, very specifically I was it was in Antarctica, and I was sitting alone at the edge and it was a penguin. And I could see the entire you know, the entire ocean. And this penguin I’m sitting on like this is so spectacular. And it’s so gluttonous. Like the only person that’s benefiting from this particular experiences is me. And it was really a moment that was like this is I can’t I can’t go I mean, it’s so amazing, but it can’t take along this way at some point in my life. I’m going to have to figure out maybe it’s in wildlife or maybe it’s, you know in something else, but I’m going to have to figure out how I can put myself to better use then, and then what I’m doing now, fast forward a few years I got sent to Kenya, as again, as part as as part of Accenture. And I started getting a lot more exposure to lots of other, you could call them nonprofit sectors in agriculture, education, health, you could not get US economic empowerment. And I had a role to play in all of those, even though I knew nothing about nothing about them. And that gave me the confidence that there’s a role for me to play in wildlife and conservation and applying this, you know, to something that I really care about. So the way I see it is I put my perfectly good job, and was like, Alright, let me get into wildlife conservation. And, you know, and started to try and figure it out from there. And also, given that I was already in Kenya, and from Chicago. It didn’t make sense to start, you know, to travel back to Chicago to start my wildlife conservation career. Exactly. Right. And so yeah, so I liked Kenya. And you know, that’s where a lot of you know, a lot of conservation work is going on a lot of the problems exist. Yeah. And so I stayed, and I’ve actually, you know, I’ve been in Kenya ever since. Wow. And

Maria Ross 06:08

so how did the idea for Internet of elephants come about specifically? Sure. Well,

Gautam Shah 06:15

if we kind of go back to that moment, that I was sitting with the penguin, and it was like this tacular, or the moment that I was sitting with grizzly bears over the Rocky Mountains, or you again, you name it, they’re really intense experiences. They’re very, they’re very emotional, at least for me, they’re very emotional. And so just getting back to like, What if everybody could have this experience? And of course, they can. Yeah, but what if everybody could have this experience? How would that change the state of the world, if everybody had that those moments, like, if you could pick up 8 billion people and let them spend an hour with Iran, your time, you know, in the middle of a Bornean, rainforest? With 10% of those people, then you know what, it just wouldn’t change them with the way they buy things with the way they vote with the way they donated with the way that they live? Would it change, you know, just reshape it in favor of the, you know, in favor of the planet? And that’s what kind of really got me thinking about, alright, well, again, that can’t happen. But what are the things that I that I could do that might be the next, you know, the next best thing, and that’s, you know, again, my brain, of course, being an IT consultant for that many years, just thinks about, you know, thinks about it, and a lot of what was what was happening at that time was there’s a lot of talk about the Internet of Things, and how everything is connected. And people are connected to other people around the world, people are connected to the refrigerators people are connected to their doorbells. And I just kept thinking, Yeah, but what if people were connected to Iran, batons? And what if people were connected to elephants? And what if people were connected to sniff? You know, whatever, whatever it happened to be again? How would that how would that change things? And that’s where it’s like, well, what if, instead of the Internet of Things, what if there was an Internet of elephants, you know, in a way, and every day, you would wake up and you’d check what’s going on with, you know, my story of the elephant in Kenya? And that’s really where I just started to think about like, Okay, well, that’s the, you know, the basis for the concept. I don’t know what the business is behind that. But that’s what we’re going to try, you know, that’s what we’re going to try and achieve, we’re gonna try and figure out what would it take for you to get up in the morning, first thing, leaned over, pick up your phone and find out what’s going on with an elephant, you know, halfway around the halfway around the. So I love

Maria Ross 08:30

that. And I know, we’re going to talk about a few examples of what the technology does for people and how how you’ve creatively found ways to create that connection. But, you know, the reason we’re here is obviously, because there’s a connection to empathy here. And we talk about empathy being made possible through storytelling, but also through proximity. And so what I’m hearing is that you are trying to find a solution to the proximity problem of being able to see and have the experience and be touched by these animals, for people that don’t have the opportunity to go to Safari or go to Antarctica and all these places. So it’s really interesting how you leverage your your already existing skill of technology, to that social problem. And for you, was it about you know, and the answer could be No, but was it about trying to create that connection and create that, that caring that empathy, so that people would make different choices?

Gautam Shah 09:30

I think 100 100% I think empathy is the, you know, happens to be the right word. Very convenient. But yeah, so it is, it is about empathy. I, I don’t think it’s about caring. And I think this is a really, this is a really important point. And it’s something that in fact, I think, if you want people to empathize, you have to come come at it from the point that they already do care because otherwise it’s condescending, right like that. Now, I’m not trying to create empathy. I’m, I’m saying, like, in this position, like I really care and I just gotta get you to care and if only you care Everything would be, you know, it would be better and and pay. That’s, you know, that’s very pompous and be it’s, it’s not true people do care. Yeah.

Maria Ross 10:09

A lot. Yeah, it doesn’t mean they connect and see a point of view, it just means they care. It’s like how we talked about Yeah.

Gautam Shah 10:14

But we’re gonna we’re gonna do it. I mean, there’s nobody that would rather Uranga tons die then longer tons, you know, then Rhonda, tons live right? Next, it’s not about that. So there is some aspect of proximity, there is some aspect of what can i What can I do about it? There is some aspect of how do you enjoy address the, you know, the, the anxiety that people that people have, or the ambivalence that you know, that people that people have about this. And so a lot of it is that you can’t create the empathy unless you can understand unless I have empathy for you. So what the only way to create the empathy between you and the animal is if I can have empathy in the first place for your life, you know, for your life and the things that these things, you know, the way that you may experience negative news about nature and negative news about climate and like, I live here in St. Louis, like what, you know, what am I going to do about it, but you know, in a longer time in, you know, in Borneo, and yeah, it’s a very holistic process of thinking about the person and understanding their lives before you can have any opportunity to think that you know, that you can introduce empathy for, for animals that might be very, very far away, but I’m never trying to get them to care. I always try and come from a position that you do care. I just wanted to help you express that. Yes,

Maria Ross 11:32

exactly. And, you know, I tend to use other words to help people make this real for people. But we talk a lot about how empathy is not the same thing as being nice. It’s not the same thing as caring. It’s a different lever. And you can have empathy. But if you don’t take action on that empathy, which is compassion, compassion is empathy, inaction. That’s where it can be paralyzing. And it can, it can deter people from even feeling the empathy in the first place, because oh, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’m just not going to be empathetic to the situation that’s going on. And so it sounds like you’re also trying to activate people, in whatever way it’s possible for them to take action. Is that correct? Yeah,

Gautam Shah 12:13

I think that that’s, that’s true. And we really, I guess, I want everything to come from you. Right? Like, I just want to enable it, enable it, I don’t want to tell you what you should do. I don’t want to try and change I like the term behavior change sometimes troubled me, I get it. Like, we all know what it means. But it’s also like, who am I to change your behavior, like, that’s not what you know, what we’re what we’re trying to do, I just want you to have exposure, and have access, and have a little joy in your life or a little sadness in your life or, you know, whatever that happens to be, you can make your own decisions about, you know, what you’re going to do with it. And that’s not going to happen overnight. I you know, I also don’t expect that like I never, we never try and make a game or a product, it’s like, okay, and then we’re going to measure this by how many people you know, change their behavior in two months. Like, that’s not how that’s not how these things work. That’s not how it works, or long, it’s a long term, you know, it’s a long term process, and it has to come from it has to come from you. I’m just trying to tease out these values that I think people have and just are always bombarded with most of the conservation messaging, I think that happens, actually has a negative effect. It has a positive effect for that small set of, you know, already converted. But if you’re trying to, you know, if you’re trying to broaden the tent, just constantly being poked with guilt, and constantly being poked with, like, awful images, or polar bears floating away on ice things are emaciated and ragged, that like that just, it’s just not going to, it’s not going to have it’s probably having a negative effect. Well,

Maria Ross 13:51

I love that, because that’s about having empathy for the people that are receiving the message and understanding that they are completely going to receive it from where they are. And, you know, I love how you’re balancing this, this, this purpose, with the entrepreneurial reality of you have to know your customer, you have to know what is going to resonate for them. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 14:13

and that’s what any business would do, right? Like every business would look at things from a customer’s you know, from the customer’s point of view, what is the customer data conservation sector serve, it doesn’t do that. It looks at things from their own point of view is like, Well, what do we need? We need these people to donate? What do we need? We know we need to it’s been one of the first things ever I wrote and published was it was about like, treating conservation, like a business, just from that point of view of like, how can we see things through the eyes of the customer of, you know, of conservation, and I’ve got to give a lot. I mean, I need to make sure that I give a lot of credit to a lady named Dr. Rene Eilertsen, who is the one that taught me a lot about, you know, the ambivalence that people feel the anxiety that that people you know, that they feel and I, when we message, and when we write the text in our games, and we talk with people, etc, that if we’re not taking that into account, we’re going to, you know, we’re just going to fall into the, you know, we’re going to fall into the same trap. So we’ve certainly learned a lot from from her. And all she does in terms of how she talks about climate anxiety and how, you know, we need to change the narrative, around climate around nature and so forth to be from the point of view of the of the person receiving it. Yeah,

Maria Ross 15:27

it’s absolutely I mean, I’ve done brand story work with nonprofits. And it’s, it’s getting them to have that shift of actually, the people or the group that you’re ultimately trying to help is important. But you are talking to the people that you’re trying to catalyze to help them and so they have different needs and different drivers than your actual, quote, unquote, end clients. And that is a huge epiphany for them to understand that, oh, we’ve been using guilt, we’ve been using the you know, in some cases, just the moral imperative. And like I said, about empathy, some, that’s not enough sometimes. And so it’s really about understanding where your people are, that you are talking to, and, and trying to give them that exposure and give them that story that could or could not compel them into some sort of action. But I love what you said about not wanting to be prescriptive about that behavior change, because that’s also off putting for people to from, from the social sector. right through it. Yeah, exactly.

Gautam Shah 16:31

Do this. Yeah, exactly. And especially like, if I think about like, Okay, we make games in many cases. And if it’s just very clear that this is a game that’s trying to get me to do something nobody wants, that’s not what people want, when they when they’re playing a game. That’s not what this is not what you you know, so my

Maria Ross 16:46

nine year old says that when we try to like, is this a learning game? Yeah,

Gautam Shah 16:50

yeah, exactly. Yeah. So.

Maria Ross 16:52

So let’s real quick dive into, you know, using these modern approaches, using gaming as a way to tell stories about nature and wildlife. So give us some examples about the things that the company does and the partnerships that they’ve built. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 17:09

sure. So funny. Also, to just say, modern approaches, it’s like,

Maria Ross 17:14

they’re actually not that mod is 2020,

Gautam Shah 17:16

these 2024, right, like, video games have been around since you know, whatever, the 50s. And they’ve been popular since the, you know, since the 80s. So so the idea that it’s even that is the people even still think that gaming is modern and avant garde, it’s such a sector, it’s crazy. There’s 3.2 billion people that play them. It’s a bigger industry than sports, movies, and television, you know, combined, but it’s still kind of in the in certain worlds. It’s still clubbed as you know, as well, I

Maria Ross 17:43

think what’s modern about it is the approach spirit to catalyze something. Where it to me, yeah, help people help improve help. Further purpose. I think that’s what’s sort of the modern approach is like, realizing there’s this hugely popular, hugely lucrative market have out there. But leveraging that for good.

Gautam Shah 18:05

In a way. Yeah. But yeah, it’s amazing that that is, you know, again, that that is considered something modern, something new. Yeah. What have we been doing? We’ve been doing, we just keep making films and documentaries and documentaries, and documenting how are we ignoring this channel, which is an amazing storytelling channel, which gets people deep into a story it gives them, it gives them agency, it gives them the chance to take, you know, to take actions, it’s measurable, it’s like every single thing, you know, that it’s it’s that, you know, that often is not but but yeah, sadly, it is still moderate. So let’s take Okay, so I’ll give you an example. You know, an example of something we didn’t build. But I think is, you know, perhaps that, you know, the best example of the of the way that we think about these things, I had always thought like, well, because I’m I geek out on the data. And there’s a lot of wildlife data that’s happening. And actually, as a company, we started by thinking, how can we tell stories from data, and there’s all this data that’s being collected by scientists and conservationists and find it’s being used for scientific purposes. But actually, it could be could potentially engaged, you know, an entire world. And so there’s a lot of GPS data on animals and how they in how they move. And remember what I was doing with me yesterday, just thinking about like, but wouldn’t it be really neat to like, I also have data from my watch that tells me how much I moved today. Like how many steps did I take today? Or how far did you know how far did I run? I wonder what that mountain you know what that snow leopard in you know, in Mongolia is you know, he’s doing on a daily basis as well. And I wonder like on a daily basis, like how many steps is he getting in? Yeah, just how many steps is he getting and how many stairs is he getting, you know, going, you know, going going up and down to a cigar. But that would be you know, that could be really interesting. And you could have animals at all sorts of different levels. And that’s how we should do that and there’s already fitness outside. out there, like, how am I gonna get people? This is where the business side of things comes in and you know, throws a big bucket of cold water on you. It’s like, yeah, that’s the coolest idea. But how are we ever going to get people to either add another fitness app to what they do or get them to move, that’s never gonna work. So I’m gonna go into the whole details of how it came about. But we partnered with Adidas, and they’re running app called Adidas, Adidas running and said, well, they already have a running app, they’ve already got 150 million people on it, why don’t we just incorporate the data into an existing, you know, into an existing app, and let their users you know, experience it through, you know, through something that already exists, of course, we’ll have to make some compromises on, you know, our ideals of how this should be done. But we’ll also have access to a lot of people that we would never otherwise have access to. So we partnered with conservation organizations on one side, to provide the data and the stories and the expertise when we partnered with adidas on the other side to provide that provide the platform, and we embedded these challenges into, you know, into the app that said, Okay, for the next 10 days, see, if you can run more than Google in this, you know, I’m going to use the Snow Leopard example, you’ll in the snow leopard from Mongolia, and you’re not going to know how much he runs each day. And we’ll use the actual data from, you know, what he did over a period of time. And every day, when you run, when you finish, you will then see, you know, at a particular time of day, in a in a way that you then, you know, submitted his own data, and a little photograph that he took while he was running. And then a little little storyline of like, you know, he just he wrote about his own thing. And I know, some people criticize it as being sort of, what’s the word anthem, more anthropomorphizing. And, of course, you know, of course it is, but at the same time, it’s a straight storyline about their lives, and what they go through and the conservation, you know, issues that they that they face. And you have millions of people that are every day getting a little bit of light into, you know, the life of a snow leopard, or an elephant or a pangolin, or, you know, a mountain lion or some of the other animals that we, you know, that we’ve done it with? And yeah, I mean, I think like I said, I think it’s one of the best examples of what we have what we do, because if we made that ourselves, it would have been way better. And a couple of 1000 people would have, you know, a couple 1000 People would have played it, because the list of getting people to use a different fitness app would have would have been on you know, unachieved. Right. Right. So I think yeah, it’s a good example of the right way to think about it from a business point of view from an impact point of view from a reach point of view from you know, from from from all those point of view, and I think like one of the, we get a lot of press on it. But the coolest press was Runner’s World. And, and that is because Runner’s World is writing about snow leopard. Right? Like their audience, our runners, their audience, our athletes, they want to read about the newest gear and they want to read about the newest running round Central, but Runner’s World is writing about is running about snow leopard. So in that small way, we’re creating this connection between an audience demographic that I guarantee that conservation you know, like nobody’s thinking about how do we reach runners, and we’re bringing, you know, the these animals in this wildlife, you know, to this to this demographic that again, they loved it. Right. Never think about snow leopards. But if you give them the opportunity to think about, you know, think about snow leopards and do it in a fun way that already reaches them, where they’re gonna go for a run anyhow, they will think about they will think Well, well, and it’s like what they do with it is a different story. But yeah, exactly. Least it’s there. Yeah,

Maria Ross 23:42

it’s like all the best principles of education is that is tying the thing the kid doesn’t want to learn about to something they are interested in, right? Like if all of my son’s math and essay writing assignments could be tied to anime shows, or, you know, Pokemon or whatever. Yeah, he’d be, he’d be way more interested in it. And it would it would open the aperture for him of what’s possible with those disciplines. And that’s what I see you doing there. It’s like, this is tied to something you already know and love. And now we are exposing this animal, their story, the conservation issues around it, but not in a heavy handed way. Exactly. Yeah. So what what’s one that you guys have developed that you’re pretty proud of that? Yeah. Is that a good example for us?

Gautam Shah 24:31

I think probably the one that I’m most proud of is a game called will diverse, which, sadly, again, is you cannot play it anymore. But when you could, it was an augmented reality mobile game. So it was, yeah, was straight mobile game, augmented reality. And it was focused on ape conservation. And we told this we picked again, we partnered with two conservation organizations, one in Congo, and one in Indonesia. Borneo, and we focused in on four animals, you know, in Iran Catan, a gibbon, lowland gorilla and the chimpanzee and they were real. You know, again, these were real animals that real researchers were really observing with real stories. And we use the game to bring those stories to people. But the game was, you know, sort of this futuristic situation where those researchers could beam the environment to where you are. And you could help them in the research that they were, you know, that they were doing. And at the end of the day, it’s a hidden object game where you’re up, but it’s a 3d hidden object game with augmented reality where wherever you are preferably outside, you’re going around this, this, this virtual forest, and you’re looking for clues. And ultimately, you’re trying to find the Iran Catan, you’re trying to find the gibbon and you’re getting the clues, and you’re having conversations with these researchers, all the while, kind of learning what it’s like to be a researcher, learning the conservation issues, learning the individual storylines of the animals that you’re trying to find, but also just kind of having fun, looking around your, you know, your background or your parking lot, you know, trying to find the poop trying to find, you know, the fruit, the fruit that’s been thrown on, and then hopefully, eventually, you know, finding the wrong button and the you know, as the Gibbons, you know, in the trees, I just, I feel like, it was really, really thoughtful, it could have been more fun. We could end and that’s okay, we could have done that, if we had had the funding, we would have, we would have made it you know, round two or version two would have, you know, would have made it would have made it more fun. And everything that we did there was, you know, is really just kind of the first time you know that it was done. But, again, and Renee had a lot of insight, she worked with us on that project in terms of how we message and how we treated people, like we were the guides, we weren’t teachers, we weren’t professors, we weren’t, we weren’t telling you what it was, we were that we were like, if you’re going to take a walk through the jungle with a guide, that’s what you know, that’s what the experience was. Like. And we touched on really difficult topics. We touched on zoos, we touched on you know, oil palm, you know, plantations, we touched on things that many people often have this very black and white reaction to like, never eat anything with palm oil, that’s a disaster you’re killing around your towns, right? Or zoos are bad because they’re, you know, they’re caged animals. But we brought a lot of nuance into these things. And again, we weren’t trying to tell you that we were just kind of introducing through the storyline information that could you know, help you understand, you know, how you felt about it, even asking you, you know, in the game, what do you think about zoos? And you know, and there are ways for you to kind of communicate your own, you know, your own feeling? You know, for example, we partnered with zoos on this, how

Maria Ross 27:49

was it distributed? Where was that?

Gautam Shah 27:52

It was distributed through the app stores. So you could get it on Google Play? Or you could get it on Apple? The marketing strategy was to partner with the zoos. So we partnered with Chester Zoo, and with Zoo Atlanta, both of which were zoos that have very strong ape, focus. We, and so what was going to happen was that anybody that went into those zoos, and you know, they get a couple million people, you know, each year, they were gonna see that the game was available and that you could download, right? That was actually a pretty, it was a pretty physical analog marketing strategy, which is what you would think of, and the release date was April 2020. For an outdoor game that’s meant to be played outdoors. Nobody was going outdoors and be the zoos reset for you know, for six months. And when the zoos were reopening it, like their top priority wasn’t, you know, marketing, you know, again, so we got really, you know, we got we got pretty unlucky with the timing. Yeah, how that Yeah, with the time that the time Yeah.

Maria Ross 28:55

How do you How do your projects come to you? Is it you guys coming up with developing a concept and then seeing is it you know, which is the right conservation group to approach which is the right marketing partner to go through? Is that how it happens? Or do you get zoos and aquariums and conservation organizations coming to you saying, Hey, how can we gamify for this concept? I don’t know. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 29:19

we get both the projects that? Well, okay, we did a project with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is, you know, which is out and available. That’s probably the only example where an organization came to a lot of organizations come to us, but we almost always talk them out of doing what they you know, of what they want to what they want to do. So most of the things that we put to life have been things that we’ve, we’ve come up with, and then we think about who’s the right Deck, just like you say, who’s the right conservation partner, and therefore the beneficiary and what’s the right marketing partner to make this happen? And then yeah, what’s the right you know, what’s the right funding partner to to make it happen?

Maria Ross 29:56

Tell us about the Monterey Bay Aquarium project.

Gautam Shah 29:58

Yeah, so Monterey. The aquarium project. So it’s a product called phantom verse. And it’s the only citizen science project that we’ve worked in students is straight citizen science project. And what they’ve essentially got these rovers that are traversing the sea at all, and all sorts of deaths, taking pictures and videos of every single thing that you know that it encounters. So, you know, mostly a lot of worms. Right? Like, it isn’t like pictures of sharks and dolphins, and they might show up, but you’re talking about like crustaceans and crabs and more. And they’ve got millions and millions of the, you know, these have hours of footage and photographs. And they of course, want to identify everything, rather, they want to be at the end of the goal is to identify every single thing under the sea and see what type of new species you can find. And of course, AI plays a massive role in that, but AI needs to be trained. And with millions of images, and like five people kind of going through each of them, you’re never going to you know, you’re never going to you it’s going to take you dozens and dozens of years to even get to a place where I can where I can do the job that it needs to do. So they came to us and said like, how can we gamify this experience ident identifying under you know, underwater images, sometimes spectacular sometimes boring, sometimes on you know decipherable. But what could we do that would make that a fun experience so that we can open this up to, you know, a pretty big audience, probably people that already are interested in the ocean. But, you know, that’s everybody that goes to aquariums. So, you know, that’s essentially what we what we worked on with them. It’s like, okay, it’s really kind of getting into what’s, you know, who’s the audience? How are we going to prioritize the scientific benefit, versus, you know, the gamification and that’s always that near, especially in citizen science things, it’s that tension between, well, if it’s not scientifically valuable, then that’s not, you know, as a science organization that doesn’t help them. But if it’s not super fun, you’re never gonna get enough people to get enough data for it to be scientifically valuable. So, you know, that was a big challenge on that part, it wasn’t as much storytelling, there’s not as it’s not a big narrative, you know, type of game, but it’s one of those things that I get, like, how do you get people to be interested in wanting to identify non charismatic animals? Like, you know, like worms under, you know, under the ocean? What is it that you can evoke, in somebody’s sense of adventure, somebody’s sense of like, finding, you know, a new, you know, a new creature exploring the ocean? How do you evoke these things in a way that would make somebody wants to be, and what we came up with was, was blissfully productive. So they know that you don’t want to fool them. You don’t want to insult anybody’s intelligence by making them think they’re doing one thing, but actually, you know, actually, something else is going on. So how is it very voluntarily, like, this is so enjoyable to do? And, you know, it’s, you know, it’s helping, you know, it’s helping us, you know, discover life under the light under the ocean. And so yeah, that’s, that’s something that anybody, you know, anybody can pick up and play on their, on their mobile phone right now,

Maria Ross 33:14

that’s great, we’ll put we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. So as we as we kind of wrap up, I just want to, you know, want to take a little bit of a left turn here, because you, you are the founder of a social enterprise. And there’s a big purpose, as you described behind what you’re doing. There’s also the reality of creating a sustainable business out of it. So how do you balance? You know, to, to reduce it down? But how do you balance purpose with profit? So that you can keep having the impact that you want? Yeah. And I

Gautam Shah 33:47

wonder if it’s even about balancing purpose and profit, you know, as a, as a startup, you’re not even thinking about profit, you’re just thinking about staying alive to the next day and getting getting this project out there you can do so that you can do the next one. And at least for us, it’s like, yeah, profit, like, at some point down, you know, at some point down the line, we’ll you know, we’ll get there. But, you know, it’s just like, how do we just how do we survive off? Yeah, how do we survive? Yeah, and it’s really just as a survival instinct. And so then it becomes a lot more like, as an entrepreneur and as somebody you know, is how do you imbalance the anxiety that you have about dedicating your life towards something and I think when you I’ve been thinking about this is like, if you and it might sound a little bit arrogant, but if you choose to have a purpose driven life, you know, however you want it to find that are you at risk of never being satisfied because that purpose is never going to be achieved? Right, because it like, it can’t imagine the purpose of you would ever just get to a point like yep, we did. We did it out. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like with a for profit business there, there’s this metric, you’d be like, Yeah, I made a ton of money, I sold the company, it went bankrupt, you know, whatever it happened to be, but there’s something a little bit more concrete about your ability to measure whether you you did it or not, are they getting enough, I’m gonna go switch to another company, or we’re starting, you know, starting another business. But when you’re thinking about, you know, again, with, with impact, and what you’re trying to solve for, like, the balance is knowing that you’re never going to solve it. Right, with still going forward and accepting the small wins, you know, small wins along the way. And how long can you you know, how long can you you know, how long can you keep that up? And that, I haven’t figured that out? Yeah, and I have to take breaks, I have to take breaks sometimes, like sometimes, like, if, for me, personally, if I had like three or four, failed partnership conversations or investment conversations that you know, that don’t go my way, I need to take, I need to take a break. Like, I’m not the type of guy that can just pick myself up and have the fifth one. Where is it really, there’s plenty of people that it just rolls off of them. And they you know, and they just do it, and I’m not I need to take these breaks and be like, alright, just consult, make some money, help help out where you can, and then you know, and then you know, and then pick it up,

Maria Ross 36:20

that’s super healthy. I mean, that’s like what I talk about in the new book that’s coming out in the fall, the empathy dilemma is how you balance people, personal boundaries, and performance. And that’s actually signed, it’s very healthy, because the first two pillars of the five pillars in that book are self awareness and self care. Because otherwise you will burn out. And it won’t be sustainable if you can’t do the rest and recharge cycle within the work that you’re trying to do. So that’s actually very healthy, that you know that about yourself. And you’re saying, Okay, if I want to do this work for the long haul, I am going to need to take a break at this point, and sort of like switch gears for a little bit and work on this. And that’s what’s going to help me continue to have impact and continue to keep things sustainable. What isn’t sustainable is burning yourself down to the ground, and then you’re of no use to anyone. Right. And I just want to I don’t know, think you meant you mentioned a really interesting thing about the purpose. Because in my brand work, when I’m working with clients, we talk about the difference between vision, mission and values. And vision, I, I challenge my clients to think of a vision, that is a world that would make their organization obsolete. That is the end goal, right? That’s kind of what you’re talking about. That’s never gonna happen. Yeah, the mission is the steps and the actions that I take every day in pursuit of that vision. Yeah, it’s the mission that actually keeps you going. Because you’re probably unfortunately, never gonna get to the vision. Right. So that’s kind of life kind of feel like mission and purpose are the same things. But vision is that larger, like, this is what we’re doing all this for. And we may never get there. But it’s about it’s about the impact that we are having, and the progress that we are making. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 38:09

I think yeah, I think that that’s, I think that that’s right, we were we talk a lot about North Stars, or I, you know, I think a lot about North I think about our North Star. And I think about a rocket ship and I think about a flight path. And I know that my I know that my Northstar has never changed. But I know that my rocket ship and my flight path, you know, we still haven’t, we still haven’t figured out what’s the we kind of know what the rocket ship is. But the flight path is kind of the hardest part, but even the rocket ship. Right?

Maria Ross 38:36

Well, that’s about agility and resilience. So that’s a good thing, right?

Gautam Shah 38:42

So I think I think you’re right, I just want to say like, I do feel like, okay, to self care, I happen to have the luxury to be able to do that. And in order to have that luxury, I had to make some very tough decisions, because I had a team of six people, and you can’t have a team of six people and then just be like, Hey, guys, you know what, I’m just going to take a break for a while. Yeah. And that sort of means no projects are going to come in. So you know, find something else. Like you can’t, you can’t do that. So I had to actually, at some point, make a really difficult decision and say, Are we actually going to we’re going to take the we’re going to bring the company down to just me until you know, I’m in a position to you know, to bring it up and yeah, I think in the self

Maria Ross 39:27

care is that drastic. I’m not saying that it’s more like self care is understanding what recharges you as well and being able to, but not all self care is that drastic of like, I’m going to take care of myself by shutting down the company and laying everybody off. In a

Gautam Shah 39:41

way I had to not necessarily take care of myself but even just take care of like this company just needs the opportunity to reinvent itself. Yes. And now because it’s just me for a little while. Yeah, I have some I have some luxuries about taking care of myself. Otherwise I’m not gonna I’m not going to be able to rebuild it. Very

Maria Ross 39:58

true. Well Thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing your work. It’s amazing, soft spot in my heart for social entrepreneurs that are pursuing building a company, but also trying to do good in the world at the same time. So I love what you’re doing. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes go down, but for folks that are on the go or exercising along with their snow leopard, where is a place that they can find out more about you or the work? Yeah,

Gautam Shah 40:26

I think the best place is to go to the website. So it’s web. It’s Internet of elephants.com. Perfect.

Maria Ross 40:32

All right, and thank you so much. It was great reconnecting with you.

Gautam Shah 40:35

Thanks so much, Marie. I

Maria Ross 40:36

appreciate it. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard you know what to do, rate, review and share with a colleague or a friend. And until next time, please remember that kashflow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

May Hot Take: Why is Self-Care Core to Empathetic Leadership?

Self-care is more than just manis, pedis, and massages. It is vital to helping leaders embrace empathy while also making tough business decisions, holding people accountable, and setting high-performance standards. It matters because depleted leaders are ineffective leaders.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Empathy requires fertile soil to take root. If you’re stuck in self-preservation and not feeding your own soil, you won’t be able to meet others with curiosity and empathy.
Use pillar one, Self-Awareness, to start taking better care of yourself so you have a greater capacity to look outward.
Check out more about the book at TheEmpathyDilemma.com.

“It can be tempting to shoulder additional burdens in the name of empathy, but, in the end, you are doing yourself and your team a disservice.”

— Maria Ross

Episode References:

Enjoy special pre-sale and launch bonuses: http://theempathydilemma.com/book-offers
Check out more about the book here: www.TheEmpathyDilemma.com
Sign up for the FREE Masterclass: The 4 Step Framework to Craft a Captivating Brand Story that Attracts Your Right-Fit Clients: https://bit.ly/4StepBrandStory
April Hot Take: Why Empathy Starts with Self-Awareness: https://red-slice.com/the-empathy-edge/april-hot-take-why-empathy-starts-with-self-awareness

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

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

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Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

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. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the May 2020 for hot take episode, your solo episode of the empathy edge podcast. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m very excited to be here today to talk to you about pillar number two to effective empathetic leadership. If you heard last month’s hot take, which I will put a link to in the show notes. I have started to introduce my five pillars that are coming out in my new book The Empathy dilemma, how successful leaders balanced performance people and personal boundaries. That book is coming out in September. And I’m giving you a sneak peek in these hot take episodes of each of the five pillars to shore up to be an effective and empathetic leader. This book is the guide to help leaders balance the needs of the business with the demands of their people without burning out or sacrificing performance. And I know that that sounds good to many of you who are loyal listeners of the podcast, I did quickly want to mention that we have a special presale going on if you go to bit.ly/te D that’s Ted special presale, all one word, you can get one to 99 copies from now until August 27 and get 30% off. So I will put that link in the show notes. But I want to get straight to pillar number two and giving you a preview of what that one is all about. Obviously in the book, we go into much more detail. I have interviews I have examples. I have actionable tactics and strategies. And I’m just going to give you the high level summary here in this podcast episode. Let’s talk a little bit about self care, because it’s very misunderstood. It is more than just Manny’s Petty’s and massages. It is vital to helping leaders embrace, embrace both empathy, while also making tough business decisions, holding people accountable and setting high performance standards. Both and self care is the second as I mentioned, of the five pillars in my new book, The Empathy dilemma. It’s coming September 10. So before I go into this particular pillar, I just want to explain to you what the five pillars are that made it into the new book. These are common traits and behaviors seen over and over again in the successful empathetic leaders that I interview on this show that I speak to in audiences and training sessions, and that I advise even those who are truly empathetic but don’t label themselves as such. These five pillars are a result of hundreds of interviews, research and data and are common threads across all those who are empathetic and high performing. They’re doing it they’re making it happen. So let’s dig into the second pillar, self care. What is it exactly? Taking care of yourself means enforcing strong boundaries, taking time to recharge, delegating, resting and stewarding one’s own mental health as a leader. It matters because depleted leaders are ineffective leaders. And it can be tempting to shoulder additional burdens in the name of empathy. But in the end, you’re doing yourself and your team a disservice. True Empathy means treating yourself as well as you should your employees. It means getting your own house in order so you have the capacity to meet other perspectives with curiosity, not defensiveness or fear. When you’re running with little in your tank, you know how you get short tempered, frustrated, impatient, maybe a little hangry. And none of that provides fertile soil for empathy to take root. You’re too stuck in self preservation mode to see anyone else’s point of view or actively listen and support them. everyone’s opinion is annoying. Everyone needs to just leave you alone and do their work. Not the best environment for making sound and collaborative decisions that move the business forward. Decades ago I had a manager who was constantly stressed to the point that she isolated herself in her office. Every time I tried to talk about work we needed to do or strategic decisions we had to make. She would sigh with a pained expression on her face like I was interrupting her. Even when I had to report progress or needed direction or had ideas to make our work better. were offered even today. take something off her plate. She didn’t seem to know how to collaborate or delegate. I know she was very skilled at the work but who knows what was going on in her personal life. I mean, it’s very likely also that I just rubbed her the wrong way. But she did this with everyone. She ended up burning out at that job and abruptly leaving with all of us holding the back. It was clear she put everything else before her own needs. But she also didn’t take a break, create connections, which is part of taking care of yourself, or set boundaries with our unreasonably demanding CEO, all of which are part of self care, and it showed up and making her whole team miserable. Based on the first pillar self awareness, you now know what you best need to operate at full capacity. use that information to start taking better care of yourself so you have the capacity to look outward, and be there for your team. So how do you get better at self care? There are a few high level strategies. Honor who you are, seek support and advice and recharge and renew. Now to better understand these deceptively simple strategies in detail, please check out the empathy dilemma. For stories from leaders and tactics to put these strategies into practice. These five pillars will transform how your team engages, or forms innovates and delivers for you and your customers. So don’t forget to enjoy the pre sale and launch bonuses. I will link to that in the show notes. And you can check out more about the book at the empathy dilemma.com I hope this was an enjoyable little sneak peek for you of pillar two. Stay tuned for pillar three next month, which is clarity. That’s a juicy one and so necessary to being an empathetic leader. Until next time, please remember that kashflow 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Diana Cutaia: How Psychological Safety Boosts Performance in Sports – and at Work

What do psychological safety, your team’s performance, and sports coaching have in common? Today, you’re going to find out how belonging helps you innovate and perform beyond even what you thought possible.

Today, Diana Cutaia defines what we mean by “peace” and that it is more than just the absence of violence. She also breaks down psychological safety and how both of these concepts are related. We talk about why psychological safety is such a buzzword, and why some organizations are merely ticking a box and do not truly understand how creating an environment of belonging unleashes potential. We discuss how a leader’s individual behavior is important, but how to go further and address the environment as a whole. Diana shares a few fascinating epiphanies some clients have had when finally understanding what belonging really means. How to create a culture of psychological safety, and how it impacts performance and risk-taking.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Creating a better environment doesn’t happen accidentally. You have to remove the bad and intentionally replace it with something good.
Move away from trying to make people “feel” like they belong. We just want people to belong. This is a shift in language we can begin to make today.
Command and control leadership is not effective in every situation. If your goal is to help people develop new skills, you’ve got to find a way to reach people and create an environment in which they can learn.

“Psychological safety is not just this idea of the absence of harm, but it is the repair of harm and then the repair of systems that perpetuated that harm.”

— Diana Cutaia

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge podcast on psychological safety:
Minette Norman: Psychological Safety
Susan Hunt Stevens: The ROI Of Psychological Safety
Red Slice blog: What does psychological abuse at work look like?

About Diana Cutaia, President & Founder, Coaching Peace

Diana Cutaia founded Coaching Peace in 2012, but the work started for her 20 years earlier. Today her clients range from school districts to national organizations to global companies. The focus of Coaching Peace is to create positive and safe cultures that empower its members to lead with empathy and understanding.

Connect with Diana:

Coaching Peace: https://coachingpeace.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianacutaia/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachingPeaceConsultingLlc/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/coachingpeacelive

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Diana Cutaia 02:17

Thank you, Maria. Appreciate it. I’m excited to be here as well.

Maria Ross 02:20

I mean, we’ve been talking before recording started about being Italians, being from New York, being from Queens, oh my gosh, so many things in common. And, of course, trying to help the world be a more empathetic and compassionate and human centered place. So very excited to

Diana Cutaia 02:35

present. Yeah.

Maria Ross 02:37

So before we kick off, let’s talk a little bit about your story. How did you even get into this work? Tell us a little bit about coaching piece? And what are your goals with the work that you’re doing?

Diana Cutaia 02:49

That’s like, you’re like did you do that one minute. Go in there around it. But, you know, I started coaching piece because I saw the fact that the ways in which we were coaching, in particular sport at the time, were not we were directed around peace. And when I first started coaching peace, I thought that peace was just the absence of violence, whether that violence was structural, cultural, direct, whatever it might be, I thought, oh, peace is the opposite of war, right? Peace is when there’s no violence, there’s peace. And what what I found in the work that we’ve done is that peace is actually yes, it’s the absolute absence of violence, but it is also the presence of empathy. It is also the presence of unconditional safety, the presence of of belonging, right, that there have to be things that are there that actually create that peace, and that there are ways in which we can coach that. And when I started this business, you know, 12 years ago, I thought because I came from an athletic background, I was an athletic director, I taught at a college, around sport based youth development. We were training coaches all around the country to look at sport differently. I thought, oh, that’s all I’m going to do. I’m going to stay directed in this very, you know, kind of little niche around sport niche around sport. And I realized that many of the work that we did could apply to any group, any group that when you’re thinking about it, it might be you know, the outcomes might be different or working toward is different, but really, people are people, and how do we create environments where people are truly feeling like they are in a place of peace, and what that looks like and peace not being the absence of conflict, because conflict isn’t necessary and important at times. But it’s how we create that, that state of peace.

Maria Ross 04:48

Well, there’s so many parallels between I’ve had several sports psychologists, I cite Steve Kerr in my forthcoming book, the empathy of dilemma, because there’s so many parallels because when Ever you’re trying to get a group of people motivated to accomplish a common mission? That could be sport. That could be work. That could be a nonprofit that could be your parent teacher group, at your school, whatever it is. It’s about like a group dynamic. And how do you interact with each other and communicate with each other in a way that’s productive, and in a way that people can show up and be who they are and bring their contributions. So there’s lots of parallels. Yeah, I

Diana Cutaia 05:26

love totally 100%. Okay, so

Maria Ross 05:28

I know that with your work, especially you talk a lot about psychological safety. And we’ve done a few episodes on that. I’ll link to that in the show notes. But why do you think that’s such a big buzzword right now? And And in your opinion, who is doing it well? And who is pretending? And how do we even tell?

Diana Cutaia 05:46

Oh, gosh, you’re telling secrets here today? Oh, we

Maria Ross 05:49

are we’re spilling the tea,

Diana Cutaia 05:50

it lets them as the Gen Z or say, or say we’re giving main character energy today. Um, so I think that, you know, when we talk about psychological safety, we talk about any safety around, you know, an environment, we often think about safety in the sense of like, am I going to be hurt or harmed in some way. And as much as we’d like to create spaces where people cannot be hurt or harmed in any way? Physically, right, that should be a priority. Even that happens, right? Where accidents, things happen, you know, around that, that state of psychological safety, right? Will I feel like we talk about like, will my dignity be valued, respect, honored? My very, that, you know, very nature of me who I am? Will I be in a space where I feel like I can voice my opinions where I can say things, we often think in absolutes. And what I mean by that is this very binary, you either create an environment of psychological safety or you don’t, right. And that we think that psychological safety, physical safety, whatever it means, being means that there is the absence of harm, there is no harm that can be created here. It is not that there is always harm that will happen because we’re human beings, we’re flawed, we’re figuring out the world, right? There’s, there’s no perfection in that. psychological safety is not just this idea of the absence of harm, but it is the repair of harm. And then the repair of systems that perpetuated that harm. And those are the things that I think we need to begin to think about more, you know, we might say that, Oh, I, we did something and that really hurt your feelings, or that created an environment, we felt like, oh, I don’t think I can speak up. And I go private Lee to you. And I apologize around that. And we’ve repaired that in some ways. But the reason why I did that might be because the environment that I’m in contributes to the ways in which I respond and react. And I’m not willing to actually address that system. And that’s the thing that we have to begin to address. And it’s hard. But that’s the thing that we have to we have to address. So who’s doing well, who’s not doing? Well, I think everybody, to some extent trying in, you know, that environment, I think, when we don’t do it well is when we’re on willing to actually kind of turn the mirror and say, Wait a second, not only how did I contribute to this, but as a leader? How am I contributing to the conditions in which this happened? How am I contributing to the system and perpetuating the system that allowed this to be present and to happen? That I think is, is the thing that we are struggling to do? You know, we struggled to do, which is goes back to sport like, yeah, that we struggle to do with coaches, right? Coaches, why are managers not doing it? Because coaches also don’t do it? Either. We don’t walk into a locker room and say, You know what, gosh, I didn’t call that timeout when I should have today. And, uh, you know what, I really messed up on calling that play. Yeah, I shouldn’t. And you know, I’m not bringing the energy today, I really should have brought some more energy. We don’t do that. Because we have this ethic, that now I have to be the absolute leader. And that leader is flawless and makes no mistakes. And it doesn’t matter if I make a mistake, because I’m not going to call myself out on that. Because I lose power. And that’s the difference. That’s the thing that we want to change and make, right? There’s so

Maria Ross 09:36

much to unpack in what you just said. So first of all, I just want to point out your definition of peace and your definition of psychological safety are very similar in the fact that it’s not just the absence of something. It’s what are you replacing that with? Right? So a lot of companies talk about like, we don’t do this. We don’t we’re not racist. We’re not inequitable. We’re not this we’re but what are you what You replacing those negative actions with intentionally? What kind of environment? Are you trying to create that, that you’re hoping just doesn’t happen by happy accident? And related? It’s this idea that the individual behavior and repair is fine. It’s good, we should do that. But also, what is that environment that’s contributed to make that something that was that occurred to make that something that seemed acceptable in the moment at the time? And I don’t think we address that enough. And again, like I see so many parallels to racism and racial inequity, this idea of like, well, if I’m just nice to someone, then that solves it. Right? And no, there’s there’s a whole system around that there’s a whole environment around that, that we we can’t look away from. And so this idea of creating a psychologically safe environment is not just about what you do as an individual leader, or what you think you do one on one with people, it’s what kind of an environment are you creating for everyone else that’s swimming in that pool, so to speak,

Diana Cutaia 11:04

like, well, and it’s also like, when you bring up even racism, the idea of I say, I’m not racist, then if someone says you just engage in racist behavior, right, then I immediately am going to get defensive and be like, but I’m not racist. And the fact is, is that it’s this finality right like this, this one thing that then puts up this barrier, as opposed to saying, I am actively working to be anti racist. And someone says, You’ve just engaged in racist behavior, or what you just said, is perpetuating racism. I can say, oh, I need to correct that. What education do I need to do for myself? What repair do I need to do in this space? What do I need to learn to understand what that is, there is a reciprocal engagement that happens, where I’m this series of kind of learning that to be honest, that the generation coming up right now wants that they’re the generation is pushing us to do that. Yep. And, you know, we have to, we have to do that in some ways. And we also have to do it because the right thing to do,

Maria Ross 12:12

it’s exactly, well, I mean,

Diana Cutaia 12:14

you make the business case for this, and I’m like, No, I’m not gonna make the business case of being a good human now,

Maria Ross 12:18

right? Well, to be fair, though, that’s exactly what I did with my book. And what I do with this podcast, and what I did with my TEDx talk, is I was trying to get to the skeptics, because I felt like the moral imperatives weren’t working. So it’s like, okay, if we’ve got to talk about what’s in it for you to get you to transformation, because then once you’re empathetic, and once you are creating that environment, you can’t unsee that. So if I can, if I can get people to get there, through whatever, you know, whatever means necessary. That’s kind of the work that we do. And so that’s why there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of data, there’s a lot of research, there’s a lot of case studies out there, showing the quote, unquote, ROI. I even have, you know, a keynote talk called the ROI of empathy, just to help people understand that, yes, this is, this is good for society, but it’s actually also good for your business. And if that’s how I need to get you in the room to have the conversation, I know you’re going to be transformed from the outside. And because I’ve seen it happen. Right. So I think that’s a lot of this work is, is getting people to understand that and I’d love to hear from you with your clients. You know, what are what are the the issues they’re coming to you with? And sort of what is the before that they’re dealing with? And then what is the after that they seek? Yeah,

Diana Cutaia 13:35

that’s a great question. I think the before is, sometimes folks come to check a box. We’re supposed to do this work. We’re supposed to care about people. So, you know, heard one, right?

Maria Ross 13:51

I’ve heard this is a new thing. Her Gen Z loves this. So yeah, we’re trying to hire more younger people. We

Diana Cutaia 13:56

don’t care. But yeah, exactly. And I think like that, so sometimes they for that, and they say like, Hey, we’re, you know, we’ve got to do this stuff to make people feel like they belong. I think our goal is,

Maria Ross 14:13

can I just stop you for a second? I love that phrase to make people feel like they belong, rather than to help them belong. I love I love that different just,

Diana Cutaia 14:22

that’s yeah, that’s been that’s my biggest thing. We, I constantly say that, like, we have to stop saying, make people feel like they belong. Because we just want people to be belong. Just yeah. Have people belong? Yeah. Right. And, and it’s not like it’s so easy. Like just, you know, like, yeah, we’re a diverse group of people on a planet who have different experiences, different values, different ways of being like, I’m not telling folks like, it’s so easy to blend humanity In a way, yeah, it’s also not so hard. Right? There are ways to do that. And if you say like, wow, I kind of felt like I belong there a little bit, I feel like I belong. Yeah, I guess, you know, in that space instead of I belong, yeah. Right. Like, oh, I really belong in this place, you know, and what makes me feel like I belong in this place. Yeah. Which is so important. So thank you for that, like the call out on it. Because it’s so absolutely important that we shift that language.

Maria Ross 15:31

And I love that that because that’s a shift you can make the minute they come to you of like, this is what we think we want our outcome to be. And it’s like, is it I don’t think that’s, you don’t want to make them feel like it like you’re like, you’ve put this spell over them that makes them feel like everything’s okay when it’s not, but you actually want to make them belong, and help them belong? You know,

Diana Cutaia 15:50

it’s it, I’ll give you a story that I think is really important. There’s a about almost 20 years ago, now, we use juggling, like actual juggling as a way of like teaching a whole host of variety of skills. And about 20 years ago, I was doing a workshop and someone walked into workshop with a limb difference. So they had only one accessible hand that they could use in the struggling. And I made adjustments during the workshop in order to make sure that they were there. But it was clear that I was making adjustments in order to do that. And it was at that moment that I felt like, I’m never going to do that again. I’m never going to not know who’s coming in the room. And I met my wife 10 years ago, and she had said something around like belonging is this place where people don’t feel welcome. They feel like you were waiting for them. And that’s the moment that like, I was like, that’s it. So I’ll never know exactly who’s going to walk into a room all the time. So I need to make sure that I’m always planning, and I’m creating an environment that no matter who walks in that room, they know they belong in that room. So sometimes in our workshops, we will ask, does anyone you know have any physical limitations, anything, even just some like auditory or sensory things? Like, we want to make sure that we are as prepared as possible for the folks that are walking into the room. But then I’m also just educating myself all the time to make sure like, how do I do this? You know, how do I create an environment where no matter who’s there, you know, you belong there. And I was waiting for you. I knew you were coming.

Maria Ross 17:39

I love this because I and if if I have to correct myself, I will in the intro, but I believe it’s manette Norman, who has been on the show, she wrote the book, The boldly inclusive leader, and she talks about treating it like you’re hosting a dinner party. If you had an event where you were hosting a dinner party, you would be thinking about what dietary restrictions do some people have write? Who should sit next to each other? And who shouldn’t? How can I make the room smell better? How can I make it more inviting? How can I arrange seating, you think of all these things before you have an event, or you throw a dinner party and she talks about inclusivity? In the same way it’s being proactive about understanding who’s in the room. So to your end, you just raised it so eloquently. So you feel like they were waiting for you. And it’s not a commendation. It’s not coddling, it’s just enabling people to feel safe and feel like they belong. So that yeah, so they can do their best work. So they can innovate so they can collaborate so they can perform in the way that you want your team to perform. And so I would love like, kind of related to that, with your clients and with your work. What have you seen people? What are the big epiphanies they have when they realize the link between psychological safety and performance? Can you give us any examples?

Diana Cutaia 18:57

I think the biggest links necessarily that folks see between like, creating an environment where people know they belong, is they see more innovation and risk taking, that folks are less afraid of failing, less afraid of making a mistake. They’re more willing to kind of say like, let’s try it. Let’s see what happens. And in that space, then folks are like, oh, like, we didn’t even know what our potential was. Until we actually started to step outside of the things like we have a lot of very high performing groups that have this kind of like, almost they hold themselves back in some ways, but because they’re high performing, in the sense that they’re bringing in a ton of revenue or making you know the impact that they want to make. They believe that like they’ve kept their potential. They’re like, we’re where we need to be the Okay. And then you give them you the open of the space where now people feel like I can take a little bit more risks, I could challenge you on things. And now you see that aperture widened so much and the potential, not just like, grow up, but grow horizontally because you’re allowing other folks and other voices to be heard. And acknowledged in that way. And they’re like, Oh, I didn’t even know. Right, you know, it’s tightening. I

Maria Ross 20:31

don’t even know that that was an outcome I could get, right, like

Diana Cutaia 20:34

a Friday after we get there. But you’re like, No, you can get there. Because we didn’t set where the finish line was. Right? You were moving it all the time and figure figuring it out. And that by you moving it, you’re like, you know what, we got 100 yards today, can we go to 1/3? In the same amount of time? Like, yeah, let’s see, I don’t know. And if we can’t, then we pull it back, we figure out what we can do differently. But that gives them the ability to truly be innovative.

Maria Ross 21:07

That’s just fun. I have so many more questions for you. But I know we’re gonna run out of time. So can you talk to me about maybe what’s one of your favorite projects you’ve worked on, or clients you’ve worked on where you saw, like, a marked impact and a marked difference from them coming to you, maybe they came to, you know, you know, we talked earlier about sometimes they come to you to tick a box, sometimes they are coming to you because they want to do the right thing, or they want to change your leadership paradigm, or they want to create that culture that everybody wants to work for. But what has been one of your favorites that you can recall, or even favorite moments, where you’ve seen again, that that that impact of understanding what psychological safety can do for your, for your organization, and for your team? Yeah,

Diana Cutaia 21:52

it was a great example of a we were training some football coaches one time and this was going back, it’s my most favorite story, because it’s the most impact. And we were actually using juggling as a way to kind of teach to teach folks how hard it is to learn, right, and the just the mental gymnastics and emotional things that we go through, when we’re learning something new. And a bunch of other things around motivation, stuff like that. I had this one football coach, who in my best Boston accent was said, I’ve been coaching for 45 years. And you know, in the middle of like, we only got to like two tennis balls, we’re juggling, she gets so upset, and he kind of throws both tennis balls down. And he’s like, I’m required to be here. So I’m gonna stay. But this is, you know, expletive, expletive. And I’m not doing this. Yeah. And I said, Okay. And I was very nice. I was like, Do you want a bottle of water, like, you can just sit here, like, do whatever you want, like I wasn’t, you know, I didn’t want to shame him. I didn’t want to call him out in any way. Like, that’s fine. Um, then he was like, at times, he was kind of picking on the other coaches, like, you know, Jimmy, you can’t do this, like, look at you, you know, whatever. And I was like, I totally appreciate the fact that you’re not, you don’t want to participate, I just ask that you don’t interrupt the experience of other people, you know, and in the back of my mind, I’m like, Oh, you’re just playing into exactly what I want you to play into. But that’s where I was, like, letting go through. And at the end, we’re debriefing the activity and one of the other coaches, and he’s sitting there cross armed, and he’s not paying attention, you know, around and one of the other coaches was like, you know, I was really surprised at how hard that was, you know, given the fact that I’m an athlete, and I really like, it was going through my mind, like, what, why am I having such a difficult time with this? And he’s like, I really wanted to be like, I don’t know what this is about. And I don’t know why I’m doing this. And you know, all that. And another coach, I had asked him, like, what do you do when you get when you got frustrated? You know, he’s like, honestly, I was saying nice things about you in my head. He’s like, I didn’t know what you know. And each coach started to talk about how challenging it was for them to learn and what they were doing. And the coach who had sat down and was, you know, really being disruptive. He raises his hand. And he’s like, well, crap, he’s like, I get it. He’s like, I, if you would have said to me, when we were doing this, Hey, I taught you how to do this. Do it, just get it done. He’s like, I would have responded even worse, he’s like, but I was in a place where I didn’t know the skills and I didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of, you know, I’m the one that has the most coaching experience here. He’s like, I didn’t want to be embarrassed. He’s like, so I act out the same way my kids act out. I was responding the exact same way. And I would have labeled that kid a problem. And I would have said you’re not coachable. And he’s like, and now I just realized that I just wasn’t creating, I don’t create all the time that conditions for them to learn. Because all I do is punish them when they don’t get it. He’s like a new are trying to work with me and trying to figure it out. He’s like, but you also just kind of let me like, take a moment and not be part of it. And that, to me is like the always the moment that gets me that always drives me to continue to do this work. Like he got it. We behave in ways sometimes that are even outside of what we want to because the conditions that we’re in, don’t make it safe for us to be anything else. Right? And it was a lesson for me to like, how do I create safety in a place where like your peers are watching you? And what do we do? And how do I create that? We make changes after that? around it. But that is the moment when you’re like, oh, somebody gets it, you know, we’ve had a lot of folks will do workshops around understanding the myth of the meritocracy. And how like, not everybody starts at the same place. Not everybody has the same access. And I’ve had several folks that come back and say, my mind is still blown about that I still I view the world completely differently now. And I’m telling all my other friends to view the world completely differently. So long answer to your question, but like, the often times, we don’t necessarily get to impact the system. We impact enough actors in the system, then it exponentially grows. And we feel like that’s that’s the movement that we’re trying to create. I

Maria Ross 26:53

love everything about that, because it’s this idea of, you know, what is a leaders role. And I, I’m talking, I talked about it in the empathy edge, I talked about it in my keynotes, I’m talking about it in the new book, that leadership has changed the old, simple command and control doesn’t work. For every situation, it’s it’s not going to be effective. And if your goal is to help people perform, if your goal is to help people develop new skills that will be useful to you and the team and the organization, you’ve got to find a way to reach people, you’ve got to find a way to help create the environment so that they can learn. So they want to learn so that they’re not scared to learn. And so that ultimately you get your goals met. And if we want to be really crass about it, it’s so you get your bonus at the end of the year, like I and you know, we talked about this too before about this idea of like, sometimes that moral imperative isn’t enough. But I’ve seen executives who do things for optics, and then they just love the response they get. They’re surprised by the response. They get there. They’re surprised by the lesson that they learn. And they want they want more of it. They’re like get me sorry that I love the way that felt. I love the way that what that resulted in. I love the way my team feels. I love the way that they’re engaged now. And so yeah, let me do more of this and see how it goes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love it so much. Okay, so we could talk for hours, but we’re short on time. So I’m going to put all your links in the show notes. Wonderful. But where’s the best place? If someone’s like exercising right now and listening to us? Where’s the best place they could find out more about you and your work?

Diana Cutaia 28:37

I mean, you know, definitely go to our website coaching piece.com Folks are always welcome to email me at Diana at coaching piece.com and get more information in any way they can.

Maria Ross 28:48

Awesome. Awesome. And can they connect with you on LinkedIn? 100% 100% Okay, I love LinkedIn. I always promote the etiquette. Make sure you send her a note that you heard her on this podcast. 100 personalize your invites. Diana, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure getting to know you and thank you for your friend to help us kind of deconstruct psychological safety a little bit.

Diana Cutaia 29:12

Absolutely. I’ve loved it. appreciate all the work you’re doing. Thanks.

Maria Ross 29:16

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 share it, rate it, review it, share it with a colleague and friend. And until next time, please remember that cashflow? Creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be calm. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes 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 soup. power use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Andrea Butcher: Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Vulnerability

The most popular question I get, by far, is how to balance empathy and accountability. often a false impression of empathy that makes us ask this question in the first place.

Today, I’m talking with Andrea Butcher, CEO of HRD, a Leadership Development Company. Andrea is a visionary—she knows how to lead organizations from big picture to execution. Today we talk about what emerging leaders are asking for in leadership development programs, which skills they want to strengthen, and what is vital to help all leaders in today’s landscape be successful. We discuss how the work of leadership is self-development, how empathy and accountability co-exist, and why clear communication is so vital because you can’t hold someone accountable to an expectation that was never set. She shares a lovely story about showing up as yourself, and another about how to respond to someone who has dropped the ball.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Every leader should have a coach. Everyone can benefit from having a safe place to struggle through challenges.
As humans, we connect through weakness and vulnerability. But it takes confidence to feel those emotions and show that vulnerability while still recognizing your worth.
Asking for feedback from trusted employees and advisors is a great path forward in becoming a better leader. It will do a lot to build trust and reinforce the relationship too.

“You can’t hold someone accountable for an expectation that has not been set. So much of the time it’s the lack of clarity that’s getting in the way.”

— Andrea Butcher

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge Podcast: Claude Silver: Leading With Heart At Vayner Media
The Empathy Edge Podcast: Anna Liotta: Understanding Generational Codes
Executive Coach Ed Batista article on empathy and accountability

About Andrea Butcher, CEO, HRD

Andrea is a visionary—she knows how to lead organizations from big picture to execution. She is a dynamic speaker, executive coach, and facilitator. As the CEO of HRD – A Leadership Development Company, she leads a national team of expert facilitators and coaches and drives the organization’s growth strategy. She also hosts a daily and weekly leadership podcast, Being [at Work] and is the author of The Power in the Pivot (Red Thread Publishing 2022) and HR Kit for Dummies (Wiley 2023). In 2020, she was recognized by the Indianapolis Women’s Journal as a Woman of Influence.

Andrea’s work spans organizations of all sizes and industries all over the world; she has experience in global HR positions, consulting, operations, and executive roles for private and public organizations.

Andrea is also the co-founder and President of Next Gen Talent, a program specifically designed to equip emerging HR leaders for success.

Connect with Andrea:

Website: https://hrdleadership.com/

Being [at Work] and Daily Dose: https://hrdleadership.com/podcasts/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leaderdevelopmentcoach/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.w.moore.3

Andrea’s speaking page: https://hrdleadership.com/andrea-butcher-speaker/

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

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 BELOW:

Andrea Butcher 02:42

Oh, my gosh, all of my very favorite things to talk about. This is going to be fun.

Maria Ross 02:48

This is awesome. And we should mention that you also have a podcast that we will want folks to check out. So tell us a little bit about that as being at work. Yeah.

Andrea Butcher 02:57

It’s the leadership podcast. So I’ve been in the leadership development executive coaching space for a long, long time and really wanted a forum to capture stories. So I asked every guest, tell me about a pivotal moment that taught you a lot about yourself and your leadership. And now six years later, what I have found is every single story becomes this really great leadership lesson. But that’s how we package it. So the show is being at work, as you said, yeah, check it out. I also do every single day, which is not for the faint of heart every single day, I do a daily dose of leadership. So there is a lot of content within that feed. I love

Maria Ross 03:34

it. And we’ll put a link in the show notes for that. But I’m gonna take a step back and find out your story as I do with every guest. How did you get to this work? And what are you so passionate about within this

Andrea Butcher 03:45

one it funny when you look back and see how all the dots connected and all those things that you wanted to work out not working out such blessings in disguise. And I have a daughter who’s a senior in college right now. And she’s so driven and so focused and conscientious and so she feels like she has to have her thing. And I just keep laughing? No.

Maria Ross 04:08

I never had something I constantly was like opportunity to opportunity. Like Thank God, I live in the era we live in that I didn’t have to pick a career and do it till I retired. I

Andrea Butcher 04:18

know exactly. Well, who knows what they’re doing ever. It’s like every day is a new adventure. So I feel so fortunate Maria to get to do the work that I do. That’s very much the attitude I have around it, it is a blessing. So as I look back on my career I in college I have with a psychology major, I’ve always been fascinated by why people do what they do. And so, psychology 101 blew my mind. Oh my gosh, I my parents were school teachers. So I don’t have a business background. And I didn’t know the business world or corporate or but you know, now that I see my I saw my parents leading in a school setting and actually grew up in a really small community. So I had an idea As a teacher, and wow, like, I can see from like my early years, I see those roots of people and development and potential and curiosity around what makes someone tick and what motivates someone. And so I was the psych major. And my plan was to get a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Well, it’s really competitive into those programs. So I had a professor that said, Andrea, you know, the other little nugget from this is listening to those voices, those like random voices that I had this random professor that said to me, you really liked your industrial organizational psychology class, have you thought about human resources? What’s that, like? That sounds awful. I was at I was in Indiana State at the time in Indiana State has a master’s in human resource development. He’s like, well just just go and talk to them and check it out. And so because I had no idea what I was going to do, I went and had a conversation. And the next thing I knew, there was a graduate assistantship program. And so I applied, I got it. So I was so fortunate to have my masters paid for and got a master’s in human resource development, which really taught me a lot about organizational leadership, organizational effectiveness, org development, and I fell in love with it, like, wow, this is about, like helping people be the best version of themselves in the workplace. And so that really set me on a course I when I entered the job force then like, right, the workforce right after my master’s, it was wide open, and I had lots of opportunities. The master’s degree in HR is very different than it was today. And I took a role with a company called premier for now in Chicago, because in the interview process, the hiring manager asked me, well, you know, we’re based in London, so would you be okay, with international travel? Like, are you kidding? 23 years old, I’m single, yeah, of course, that would be okay with international travel. And so I did. So for the first eight years of my career, I did globe, I did global HR for this electronics distribution company. And the company was growing and expanding. And we had really progressive leadership investing in leaders all over the world. And so I got exposed to and certified in so many programs disc and MBTI, and DTI and career ladders and change leadership. And I mean, you name it. I mean, that’s just off the top of my head, like for really foundational tools and assessments. And I had an incredible mentor who put me in opportunities that were my experience level I should never have had, but he saw the potential and the enthusiasm in me. And it’s really set me up then to be able to consult. So I went from that internal role then to leadership development consulting, and for the next than 10 years really did that at an executive level, got an executive coaching certification and just honed that craft. I went back into corporate in 2014, I had an opportunity to lead HR and talent for a large security business. And I was doing all this executive coaching as a consultant, but felt a lot of impostor thought because I had never led at that level. And it was, it was really interesting. It was a tough culture, it was very male dominated. I had a leader who espouse a set of values that he didn’t live. So I learned a lot of lessons going through a lot of adversity. But I’m grateful for that time. Yeah, because it then set me up to in 20 2017, I joined HRD, as the President of the business and have had just so much fun. Maria, over the last seven years growing that business, we, within our first two years, because of the focus on leadership development, we doubled revenue, and then from 2019 to 2023, we doubled revenue again. So clearly, there are some things that are working in our business and to be able now today, to lead an organization doing work that I’m so passionate about is such a gift.

Maria Ross 09:21

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And I love you know, you have to have those negative experiences to to see what not to do. You got to learn what what kind of leader you don’t want to be, or what kind of culture you don’t want to create. Yeah, because otherwise it’s always valuable. Yeah, it’s just as valuable Of course. So,

Andrea Butcher 09:37

so much of the time we we we turn like, oh, no, this is bad. This is no it’s contrast telling you reminding you of your values and what’s important to you. I

Maria Ross 09:47

love it. I love it. So what do you see as vital or missing in leadership development today? What what are the skills or the gaps that folks have? have to be the most effective leader they can be to ultimately drive the organization’s success forward.

Andrea Butcher 10:05

Yeah, from my perspective, it continues to be the human skills. We have come such a long way. I mean, the work that Brene Brown and Simon Sinek and Adam Grant are doing, are really pushing the envelope, but I am just my mind is boggled by the organizations that still don’t get it are still ego and greed driven. And, and so yeah, I mean, I, I have such an abundant mindset, there’s the you know, the work that I do, 20 years ago, leadership development didn’t get nearly the press, or there weren’t nearly as many experts doing that. Today, it’s a very different landscape. And I’m like, a big Hell yeah, for as many people doing the work as possible, because I think every leader needs a coach, just like every human needs a good therapist, I haven’t been leader could benefit from coaching and having a safe place to struggle through challenges. I mean, it’s because what’s interesting about if you think about the definition of leadership, you know, it’s to go to guide to travel, to taking a group of people, somewhere, mobilizing people to want to struggle for something that we share. That’s how I think about leadership. So it’s getting results through other people. But what happens so much is when you’ve got an ego driven leader that doesn’t really trust themselves, or even know themselves, they try to do everything on their own, right, they withhold, they don’t share openly, they aren’t vulnerable. And so it’s really hard then to connect or collaborate or, or engage others in that process. And so it’s, I am so passionate Maria, about giving leaders a place where they can let their guard down, because until they let their guard down and realize how good that actually feel, feels. And until they become more of who they really are, instead of trying to be something that they think someone else wants them to be, they’re not going to be what their team members need, or they’re not going to be that thing that creates connection.

Maria Ross 12:07

Well, and that’s such an interesting paradigm, because there is the desire and the need for leaders to show up as who they are. And to bring that to the table because they can’t be anyone else. And I spoke with Claude silver, who’s the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia. And she talked about the fact that a lot of her role is about helping people be who they are as a leader, and not try to emulate anyone else, not even try to emulate Gary Vaynerchuk. And she says she talks to them about we hired you because of you. But that balance needs to be tempered with self awareness have got it. There’s also gaps you might have, there are strengths, there are gaps, there are emotional triggers. And you also need to know that about you, you can’t just blindly show up as who you are, in all its raw glory, because that might not be the best way to move everyone forward. So it’s a balance of digging deep, and figuring out who you are and what you’re good at and what you need to work on. And then being able to show up authentically, in that I think I think the biggest thing is not to pretend and not to put your head in the sand of like, I’m gonna pretend I have all the answers. And I’ve got this and I’m a perfect leader, when there is no such thing. Right? So what it what is your thought about balancing that authenticity with that continued desire to improve and grow and learn and understand where we might need to work on something

Andrea Butcher 13:39

that that is the work of leadership development, it is self development. And in order to be who you are, you have to know who you are. And doesn’t that ebb and flow and evolve. And, I mean, it’s why values work is so prevalent in leadership development, but even like, peeling back the layers, like I love to take leaders through a values exercise, but then like, I don’t really care what your values are, I want to know why that’s value. Yeah. And I want to know, like, how that shows up on your calendar and in your life and the values and action, right? It’s like it’s going a little bit deeper and, and then to your point around the weaknesses. It’s it’s beyond owning the weakness. You know, it’s it’s, like, connecting through your weakness and being willing to say, like, Hey, I’m really struggling here. Like, this is not something I have experienced it or this I have no idea what I’m doing right now. It’s, I mean, that is so freakin refreshing. When you hear somebody say that. Yeah. I tell this story a lot. And it resonates because of because of that, like connecting through our weakness. Several years ago, I put my daughter into a theater class that was eight weeks long and she was given a she’ll so Silverstein poem. Uh huh. called our orchestra. Oh, you You are a customer, she was the orchestra. And the idea was okay, we’re going to rehearse this, you’re going to show up every Saturday in practice with the instructor. And then at the end of the program, you’re going to present it in front of an audience. And so I mean, she was so excited about this and was always practicing, like, beating her belly as if it were her drum and playing her nose as if it were, our fleet was really cute, really cute poem. And she brought it to life in such a cool way. So I mean, I, I thought, this is going to be fun. This is like Mason’s moment to shine. She’s such a gregarious outgoing person, and kid. And so on the day of the performance, we got there early, we’re getting set up, I got a place in the front row with my little video camera like ready to capture this moment in action. And when she walked up on stage, I could tell immediately, like, Oh, my God, she has, like a horrific case of stage fright. It was like the blood had been drained from her body, she was pale white with all these red splotches, and she was shaking, visibly had to hit head to toe. And so I thought, okay, she’s going to run off the stage, she’s going to dig her head into my hip, and she’s going to sob, but put my video camera down. And, and she didn’t do that she did the entire performance. And it was really, really shaky. I mean, she beat her belly and play her little, her little nose like it was her flute. But it was, it was not a good performance. But she didn’t miss a line. Because I knew the poem. She got every single word. It was just really, really shaking. And what do you think, what do you think the audience did at the end of that performance?

Maria Ross 16:33

Well, of course they clapped. They probably gave her a standing ovation when they probably saw the fear. It

Andrea Butcher 16:38

was the only standing ovation of the day. And what I love about this during the reason I tell it so much is nobody was clapping for her because it was a good performance. Right? We were clapping before her because as you said, she was terrified and she did it anyways, yes, connect, we connect to our weakness. So any, anytime we’re vulnerable enough to put ourselves out there. I mean, it’s the reason we cheer for the underdog. And we love a good comeback story. You know, we there’s something really refreshing about that. And, but it takes confidence, right in who you are in a feeling of worthiness I’ve Yeah, I’ve been reading about and listening so much to so much about worthiness that it’s because it’s even in those moments, when I have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m awkward, and I’m messy, I’m still worthy. I know who I am, I know that I have gifts, I know that I belong. And so it keeps me in that if you don’t have that feeling of worthiness, it’s going to be hard to show up, right?

Maria Ross 17:36

Well, and that’s how you that’s how bullies show up. Because they, I often talk about the ability to make space in your brain, for empathy for being able to take on another person’s point of view without defensiveness or fear, that requires you to have your foundation strong, and you to feel worthy you to feel confident you to feel like well, at least I can figure this out. And I’m open to other points of view, because it’s the leaders that are not feeling confident the leaders that are insecure, the leaders that are leading from a place of fear, that are the ones that don’t want to tarnish the diverse thoughts and experiences of everyone in the organization. Because they have some skewed view of the fact that if I’m a leader, I’m the one that has to come up with all the good ideas myself, right? Or I can’t show weakness, I can’t show that I don’t, I can’t go to my team and say, Hey, I’m having a really hard time figuring this out. Let’s figure it out together. And that paradigm, I mean, you’re living it, that paradigm is changing. And I actually have a lot of empathy for those leaders who came up in a time when those weren’t the rules. And now all of a sudden, they’re being told, Oh, no, you need to talk about personal things at work. I mean, you don’t have to but, you know, like, became successful through a certain set of rules that they were taught. And now they’re like, someone changed the rules of the game on me. And I actually don’t know how to lead other people or mentor other people because I didn’t grow up in the system the same way. Yeah. And so that’s those are the ones I hope are investing in leadership development and being able to learn the new paradigm and be comfortable with the new paradigm of we’re trying to bring our humanity to work because you can’t park your humanity at the Office Store.

Andrea Butcher 19:19

Right in your humanity showing whether Yeah, I could or not showing anyway. Yeah, it and it’s interesting that you say that about you know, feeling some compassion, or for those who like the game has changed. But it’s interesting because I think that I think empathy and compassion are natural. I think a lot of these they’re in nature, human beings policies, right. And then we put in place, like the way in which we traditionally have exited people. That’s not natural, that feels like shit, which is why every HR person freakin hates letting people go. But if you do that with like, hey, this just isn’t the right fit for either of us and we can are about you. And so here’s what we’re gonna do to like make this process like, just so she can show some compassion and heart that process.

Maria Ross 20:07

Yeah, I often talk about my most empathetic boss, I’ve told this story a million times. So my listeners are probably groaning. But my most empathetic boss was someone who had to lay off the entire marketing team in advance of a merger. And he’s still my mentor to this day, I’ve actually quoted him in the new book coming in the fall the empathy dilemma, but it’s, it’s this both and philosophy that I’m trying to preach, and it sounds like you are to where you can be empathetic and high performing. You can make really tough business decisions. And you can do that with compassion. We’ve been we’ve been sold this bill of goods that it has to be either or,

Andrea Butcher 20:42

and actually, I think they go hand in hand. Yes, totally. Because care, like a relationship is not one or the other. A relationship is both. Yeah. And it’s almost like, of course, I’m going to hold you accountable for the things we agreed to. Because I care about you and our relationship, because I empathize with you, because I know you and who you are. So with that interesting, I don’t often get the it’s It boggles my mind. When leaders say things, like, well, but I don’t want to hold them accountable, because I’m worried about the relationship and like, yeah, not holding them accountable is way more damaging to the relationship. Yeah. Because you’re not following through on what you committed to or what you want. And

Maria Ross 21:29

you’re leaving them spinning. I mean, it’s sort of like a parent not giving a child boundaries. I mean, they you need some boundary, you need some structure, you need some boundaries. And so it doesn’t mean you people, please because that’s, that’s often that’s why I’m writing the next book is because folks are burning themselves out in the name of being an empathetic leader, but what they’re practicing is actually not empathy. It’s people pleasing. It’s exactly caving in its submission. And so being able to learn that skill of I can be strong in my decision, if I know I’ve made my decision based on my values, and I can communicate tough decisions to my team that they may not like nobody wants to get laid off, for example, but I can do it in a way where I can think through what might this person need right now? How can I support them? How can I communicate in a different way than just perfunctorily giving them the news over, you know, a 10 minute zoom call? Like, how can I do this in a way that is more human and maybe what they need is space to vent. And I can give them that without? I’m not going to change the business decision, the business decision has been made. And just because someone’s upset, I can’t go okay, you’re right. Forget the layoffs, we’re not doing them. Right. So I love that. And I want to segue into what you alluded to here, because that is the big thing leaders struggle with is how to balance empathy with accountability. So tell us your thought on that. You teased it a little bit? Yeah,

Andrea Butcher 22:58

I for me, like, I don’t think it’s the balance. I think it’s an and I think as a leader, you are empathic and you hold your team members accountable. I mean, it’s so empathy, you know, seeking to understand like, where someone is, like meeting them where they are, that doesn’t mean letting someone off the hook. We’ve gotten that confused in our head like I am, because because, again, this goes back to our definition of leadership, my role is to get results through my team. So we have goals and things that we commit to. And I care so much about them as humans. And so as I’m paying attention to things they’re struggling with, and things perhaps that they’re not doing, I’m going to communicate and I’m going to connect with them on that. I’m Why would I let them off the hook? We’ve made an agreement on right thing, they care about a shared perspective. And a lot of times it’s like, oh, yeah, like, I totally missed that. You’re right, or, Hey, just, you know, like, I’ve got a lot going on, and then that leads to it a bigger conversation around, how can we help you and support you? And what what do you need? Because we are a team?

Maria Ross 24:11

Yes. Yes, I love that. There is a leadership coach, executive coach, Ed Batista, who wrote a an article that I’ve quoted in the new book where he has this quadrant of empathy and accountability. And one of one of the things that the quadrant communicates is that accountability without empathy as a bootcamp, but empathy without accountability is a daycare. Okay? Like it’s just this idea of like, everyone can’t just do what they want to do. That’s not the purpose of the organization. That’s not the purpose of the workplace. And several of the leaders that I interviewed for the new book, talked about the fact that they’re very clear that their first goal is to support they’re hired in that role to meet the goals of the organization. They can’t lose sight of that. They can do that while taking care of their people love that. But what they always keep sight of at the end of the day, if a person is not performing, if a person is struggling, it’s my job to then make sure that the work gets done, I still have to figure out a way to get the work done. I still have to hold people accountable. It doesn’t mean I don’t care

Andrea Butcher 25:23

about them. Yeah, I have a team member recently that that dropped the ball on a few things. And, you know, so she reports to a leader within my business. And so the leader and I were having a conversation about like, what’s happening, and there’s like this pattern of behavior. And we care so much about her. And we know that there’s some, like fit question with the role that we’ve talked a lot about as an organization and with her about. And so we had an opportunity, another colleague had a little event at our house. And so I just asked, this team member is like, what would you ride with me? Because I just, I hadn’t had that one on one time, I didn’t feel like I was in a good position to call her up and be like, Hey, what’s going on? Yeah, I hadn’t done my part of under seeking to understand. So we had a car ride together. And we sang Taylor Swift songs. And we laughed together. And we connected and not surprising, she opened up a little bit and shared about some of the things that have been going on. And so and we have had conversations about following through on the things that we commit to clients about and the impact that that has. And so again, it’s an end, I love the grid that you highlight, I think

Maria Ross 26:33

it’s awesome. I’ll put a link to that article in the show notes. But well, it just highlights

Andrea Butcher 26:37

the and the MA and accountability. They are leadership skills, like they are their leadership skills. Mm hmm. And that are really important and supportive of each other.

Maria Ross 26:47

So you are the founder of next gen talent, and co founder and president a program specifically designed to equip emerging HR leaders for success. So you’re working with younger people? Yeah. And so I’m wondering, what are they asking to learn? What are you hearing from them? And is it different from what you heard maybe a decade ago, or 20 years ago? From leaders?

Andrea Butcher 27:12

Well, yes, it is fascinating. I mean, I learn, I learned so much from them. I mean, so they’re all two to five years in to their HR. So they’re, you know, they’re mostly late, mid to late 20s. And, well, first of all, just the way they engage with technology blows my mind, how they’re fearless around it, they the depth at which, so if they if I if we were to engage some of them in this conversation, Maria, it would almost be like, and, of course, you know, the language that they use and their experiences. I mean, they, they have grown up in a world, particularly over the last several years, where they’re immersed in it through social media every single day, the human centric skills. So it is an expectation that they have of their leaders. Yeah, they they want, they want that connection. They want relationship with their leaders. They want to be seen, right? I mean, they’re the people that we have in next in town. It’s an application process. So it’s driven, you know, growth oriented individuals naturally, but they but is it but it is a subset, you know, over the last six years, we’ve had 15 leaders each year. So now what 50 or so leaders have participated in the experience. And a theme that I have seen across all of the groups is how they want they want to add value. They want to be seen by their organizations, they so badly want to contribute and are just our our crave craving, that that connection with their organizations with their leaders. I love

Maria Ross 29:02

this. And I’m going to link in the show notes to another episode we did with Ana Liana, who’s a generational expert, she wrote a fantastic book about the differences in generations in the workplace, and where the communication conflicts happen. It’s called unlocking generational codes. And we had a great interview, where she talks about it’s not just the stereotypes you hear about different generations, it’s how different generations view the power of information, how they view technology, how they view leadership. And when you when the clash happens, because the two groups are not whatever groups we’re talking about whether we’re talking about Gen X and Boomers or Boomers and Gen Z or whomever the clash happens because there’s a lack of empathy and understanding of what makes that generation or people of that generation tick. And we can solve a lot of our communication problems and thus our leadership issues. If We have a better understanding of where people are coming from. Because you know, otherwise you get the oh, those younger people are so entitled, they just they want to be like Vice President tomorrow. And maybe they do. But there’s a very good reason that they approach work that way. And so you can still fulfill their needs without promoting them to Vice Pres. If and when I,

Andrea Butcher 30:19

those, those comments always kind of bugged me, because it’s like, I think the I don’t think that no, I that’s not been my experience. I mean, I think they want to add value. Yeah, want to contribute at the max. And so I often think, like, our Gen X brains are filtering that as well, they want my role or they want, yeah, no, I just think they want to they like their bad acids. So they like France.

Maria Ross 30:46

Yeah, it’s understanding that mindset. And yes, it’s not promoting them to CEO tomorrow, even though that might be what they’re communicating. But it’s finding those ways to give them those opportunities to contribute and make a difference and have an impact. And so that was really both the needs can be met in that scenario, if we understand where people are coming from. And so there’s also this, this concept that Claude silver talked about when she was on, which is that when it’s why clarity is a pillar in my next book about how to be an effective empathetic leader. It’s being really clear with people about what the expectations are, and not just the job description. But this is what we expect. This is how we expect people to treat each other on this team. This is how we expect people to step up when there’s a crisis, or there’s an issue. And just being crystal clear about that. She talked about the fact that being crystal clear about career paths, and values and expectations, eradicated a lot of the perceived and teittleman Because people want information, they want to know what to expect. And I’m curious what you think about that?

Andrea Butcher 31:56

Yeah, I totally aligned with that. Brene Brown says clarity is

Maria Ross 32:00

mind. Yes, absolutely. So as we Oh,

Andrea Butcher 32:04

God sets us up for it sets us up for accountability. I mean, you can’t hold someone accountable for an expectation that has not been set. And so much of the time, yeah, it’s the lack of clarity that’s getting in the way, versus accountability being the issue.

Maria Ross 32:19

I love that I want to repeat that you cannot hold someone accountable for an expectation that they haven’t been. Yet

Andrea Butcher 32:24

you haven’t set that you have a sense that, love it. Love it. Okay, so

Maria Ross 32:28

as we wrap up, what sort of a golden gem you have for leaders that are struggling with maybe their own personality of being able to connect with their teams or with other people? Maybe they think they have a blind spot in terms of like, I’m just not good at the people stuff. Yeah. What do you say to those leaders when you’re working with them? Yeah, I would encourage

Andrea Butcher 32:50

those leaders to identify like a couple of trusted advisors, people that you’ve worked with, that, you know, will tell you the truth and ask them for some feedback. With a lot of heart and a lot of sincerity. You know, it could sound something like, you know, I want I want to grow as a leader, I want to be better as a leader, like, you know, me, well, I trust you. Like, what have you seen that’s getting in my way? What can I do differently? It’s so simple. Yeah, but if these are people in your life, like asking them for feedback is going to do a lot to build trust to reinforce that relationship. But also, you’re gonna get some good, good insight.

Maria Ross 33:25

And it’s scary, it’s vulnerable to ask, because, you know, you actually want an honest answer. Right. But it’s like,

Andrea Butcher 33:30

you got to choose the right people, right, trusted advisors that you know, will tell you the truth.

Maria Ross 33:35

Yeah, yeah. Get them when they’re in a good mood to lay out a full night’s sleep. Well, Andrea, this has been such a great conversation. I’ll probably talk for another two hours, I’m sure. But all your links will be in the show notes. But for folks that are on the go exercising right now taking a walk, where’s the best place they can find out more about your work?

Andrea Butcher 33:55

Yeah, for certain LinkedIn, I put a ton of content out on LinkedIn, I’m very active there. So Andrea butcher, feel free to connect with me and, and I also I mean, I am one of those people. If you send me a direct message on LinkedIn, I will respond. I am a connector at heart and I love getting to know people. So I would love to hear what resonated so please connect with me there.

Maria Ross 34:16

I love it. And LinkedIn etiquette, if you do that, make sure you to send her a message that you heard her on the empathy edge podcast. Exactly. And we will also link to your podcast being at work, which is amazing. So we will put that resource in the show notes as well.

Andrea Butcher 34:31

Thank you, Maria, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. I can’t wait to read your book and support you. And this is such important work that you’re doing. So I’m rooting for you. I’m lifting you up. And I’m so grateful for the impact that you’re having. Same.

Maria Ross 34:45

Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague. Until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually Lusa 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Robin Hills: Understanding the Intelligence of Emotions

When you think of emotional intelligence, there are still many leaders out there who falsely believe it has no place in business. Business is about logic, not emotions, right? Wrong. How can being aware of yourself and others not have a place in an environment where relationships are everything?

My guest today is Robin Hills. He defines emotional intelligence and its core components, the role motivation and empathy play, and why AI won’t take over anytime soon. He talks about resilience and shares strategies to manage stress and weather storms in the workplace. Finally, Robin shares a fascinating take on the Intelligence of Emotions and what useful information can be gathered when we learn to properly read emotions – both our own and those of others – so we can move forward and succeed.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Emotional intelligence is more than just the emotions themselves. But the emotions are what make us human. Leave the working without emotions to AI.
When humans communicate and empathize with each other, we change each other in the processes, modifying the neural pathways in the brain. That interaction cannot happen in the same way with a robot.
Emotional intelligence is always a work in progress. Whether you started studying it today or have been studying it for your entire life, there is always something more to learn.

“Emotions drive our thinking, emotions drive our decision making, emotions drive everything that we do. Without emotional intelligence, we really are going to be just like the robots.”

— Robin Hills

Episode References:

Free Newsletter: Ei-Matters.com
The Empathy Edge: Dr. Michelle Zhou: Empathic AI is Real and It’s Here – But We Need Everyone Involved!
The Empathy Edge: Miniter Dial: How to Embed More Heart Into AI

About Robin Hills, Director of Ei4Change, Business Psychologist, and Emotional Intelligence Trainer

Robin is the director of Ei4Change, a company specializing in educational training, coaching and personal development focused around emotional intelligence, positive psychology and neuroscience. He has taught over 400,000 people in 195+ countries how to build resilience,

and increase self-awareness and understanding of others.

Robin is the author of 2 books and has through his work developed the experiential coaching methodology Images of Resilience to support cathartic conversations around resilience. He has delivered keynote speeches at conferences across the world including at Harvard University and sits on the North West Committee of the Association of Business Psychology.

Connect with Robin Hills:

Ei4change: ei4change.com

X: twitter.com/Ei4Change

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robinhills

Facebook: facebook.com/EI4Change

Instagram: instagram.com/ei4change

Robin’s Courses: courses.ei4change.info/collections

Download this free guide: Developing your Emotional Intelligence

courses.ei4change.info/courses/free-book

Book: The Authority Guide to Behaviour in Business: How to Inspire Others and Build Successful Relationships

Robin’s course on empathy: Understanding Empathy

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

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 BELOW:

Robin Hills 02:48

it is a pleasure being here. And thank you for having me on the show.

Maria Ross 02:52

So let’s talk quickly, you’ve been doing this work for a long time your company has taught you have taught over 400,000 people across 195 plus countries, as we mentioned in your bio, and you’ve devoted your work to resilience and emotional intelligence, training and development. So just briefly, tell us a little bit about how you got into this work and what’s your passion for it?

Robin Hills 03:17

Well, my passion really is to see people develop, grow and reach their optimum performance. And when I started out my career back in the 80s, emotional intelligence was still being studied in the universities. Nobody had heard of it beyond the academic walls. And it wasn’t until the mid 90s, when Daniel Goleman published his books on emotional intelligence that he came into the public consciousness. And at the time, I thought, Well, this sounds really, really interesting. Then, to cut a really long story short, I went through a couple of redundancies and I set up vi for change, ei being emotional intelligence, the change 15 years ago, to concentrate on people development. And so everything then was underpinned by this construct that is emotional intelligence, whilst everybody else does training and various other aspects of CEO C suite development, leadership development, emotional intelligence underpins everything that we trade. So all I’m doing is she’s coming along and doing the training, the coaching and the facilitation, from a slightly different perspective. And hey, Maria, it works.

Maria Ross 04:39

Well tell us what’s that slightly different perspective?

Robin Hills 04:42

Well, the fact is that a lot of trainers will run an emotional intelligence module when they’re doing leadership training. I don’t because I just lead with emotional intelligence. So everything that we do on the leadership development, bro Abram is talking about emotional intelligence because it is so fundamental to us as human beings that you can’t kind of segregated separated out multi TARDIS. Oh, let’s have a look at emotions because emotions define us. emotions drive our thinking, emotions drive our decision making emotions drive everything that we do. And it underpins the the topic of your your podcast, which is empathy. So without emotional intelligence, we really are just going to be very much like the robots like the Daleks.

Maria Ross 05:41

Exactly. And that that is the thing of when you’re teaching people these new skills or bringing these new skills into their consciousness, there’s this desire to separate it out to border it to say that, Oh, this is this discrete thing that we’re going to study and learn. But it sounds like what you do is more integrated into leadership development, training through everything that you do, which is where I hope at some point, empathy comes to because I’m sure you’ve had these conversations to where it’s like, I mean, I, I do a really great empathy workshop. But one workshop is not going to transform your culture, it’s got to be embedded into the fabric of how people lead how people communicate, the policies that you have within the organization, how people treat each other, it’s got to be embedded in all of those things. And I’m often asked the question of what’s the difference between empathy and emotional intelligence? And I always talk about the fact that empathy is sort of just one rung of the ladder of emotional intelligence. Can you talk about that question and say, you know, in your mind and in your work, what is the definition of emotional intelligence? And what does it encompass?

Robin Hills 06:49

Well, let’s keep the definition of emotional intelligence, really simple. It’s the way in which you combine your thinking with your feelings, in order to make authentic decisions and build up quality relationships, to take action. So that is emotional intelligence. In a nutshell, it sounds so simple, but it is incredibly hard to do. Yes. How do you combine your thinking with your feelings in order to make quality decisions and build up sorry, authentic decisions, build up these quality relationships. So the components of emotional intelligence really, around awareness, awareness of SEL, and awareness of other people. So it is awareness itself, awareness, is having that understanding of what impact one has on the environment one’s working with and the impact that one has on other people. So it’s having this understanding around what emotions are coming up, but it’s also having this awareness of one’s strengths and limitations, what gets in the way, what works really well. And then the awareness of the outer world is an awareness of people. And that’s where empathy sits. So emotional intelligence has empathy as a core components, the next parts of emotional intelligence, or action and behavior. So it’s how you actually work with your emotions, the emotions that are going on, inside you inside your head, your mind, your physiology, your psychology, and how you work with them, to express an emotion. And if you do express it, how are you going to express it to have the impact that you need, it’s all about, therefore emotional regulation, and emotional manage. And then it’s a case of taking that action into the outer world. And as the pinned with the empathy we’ve been talking about, you use your social skill, your social skills to build up relationships with other people, which involves understanding the context. It involves understanding the politics with a small pea, it involves understanding the emotional climate and choosing one’s language and social capabilities to be able to develop those relationships on a one to one basis in small groups and in large teams. Now, of course, none of this is going to work unless you have motivation. And it’s a case of using the motivation that you’ve got to apply these skills internally. And using this both innovation to work and influence and persuade other people to do what is appropriate. I

Maria Ross 09:51

love it. I love it because that it really is emotional intelligence is this vast network, and it’s almost like saying it for me. It’s almost like saying, you know, you study science. But underneath science is chemistry, physics, biology, all of these other skills that you need if you’re really talking about this big world, this big bucket of the topic. And so it’s sort of like emotional intelligence can’t be just a box that’s checked. That’s Yes, I’ve got, I mean, I guess you could say, If you fulfill all of these things underneath it, you can proudly say I’m a very emotionally intelligent person. But it’s something that we constantly struggle with. And I’m wondering how you deal with in your trainings, the pushback that you might get, especially from business leaders that say, well, emotions have no place in business, they literally take emotional intelligence as just the emotions part, the feelings part. And they view that very negatively of like, well, that means I’m going to be crying, that means I’m going to be angry. That means I’m going to be sad. How do you square that for them?

Robin Hills 10:57

What’s wrong with that? I?

Maria Ross 11:00

But not all the time? Yeah. No,

Robin Hills 11:02

no, no, it’s a case of understanding the the emotions that are happening within the workplace. So any leader that then says to me, Look, we don’t do emotion? Emotions here. Yeah. Yeah, we leave that to Barry Manilow? No, I’m afraid that’s dinosaur thinking. That’s old world thinking and in the world that we are now which is 2023 going into 2024 Going into 2025. And the rest of the 20s. A AI Artificial Intelligence is the big component that is driving a lot of business thinking. Those people that are not recognizing emotions, are defining themselves as being incapable of working with people for the future. The robots will do things without emotions, and they’ll do it very well. So that these people are saying that we don’t do emotions, off you go, then goodbye. Enjoy your retirement exactly is that the world is going to change the world is going to change very dramatically. And people are talking about the skills based economy, well, what skills are going to be needed in a world that is dominated by AI? What is it that we can do as human beings that the robots can’t do? The hurray say, of Berea, the biggest component is empathy. Now, I do appreciate that you’ve recently had a guest on the show who has been talking about affective computing, Michelle, so she

Maria Ross 12:46

talks about cognitive, yeah, she talks about cognitive AI and empathic AI. And we’ll put a link to her episode in the show notes. Because I was actually just going to bring that up, that even in her view, running a company that builds this kind of AI solution, or her thinking is that we still need to be involved as humans, because how else are we going to teach these models, we still have to be developing our own empathy and our own emotional intelligence and working on that. Because otherwise, it won’t be embedded in in the models that we have, because it’s only going to be as good as what we can code into it, and what we can program into it. And so I love that, that, you know, techno optimist view of, we need those skills more than ever. And those are the skills that computers can’t just replicate immediately. But they’re

Robin Hills 13:39

never going to be able to replicate them. And I think we should, Dr. Sol is doing some fantastic phenomenal work in affective computing, trying to build empathy into the systems. Now, the thing is, the computers, the robots will never ever be able to do what it is that you and I Maria can do. That’s because they lack a fundamental component of building up empathy. And the component is probably the most complex device that is available in them that you know, in universe, a human Bray. Now, the very fact that you and I are talking together, miles and miles apart, but the fact that we are empathizing together and building up a relationship together, you’re changing my brain, I’m changing your brain. We’re developing new neural connections and new neural pathways through this interaction and we’ve only been talking 1520 minutes, but that is something that we do very naturally as human beings. We cannot survive without doing that. So when we start looking at the skills needed for the future, empathy becomes so fundamentally key And poor to the future, that we’ve got to look at how we can work with them. But the more appropriately because we as humans will never be led by robots, leaders, leaders have that capability, that capacity, that skill set, to know how to influence and persuade, to know how to stop somebody doing something that they shouldn’t be doing, to be able to drive the right ethics and the right morals through to be able to say to somebody, you’re working too hard, go home, to be able to say to somebody come on, but push yourself a bit further, you can do it. Now, those are the bits that AI will never be able to do. So leadership becomes a really core component for the future. Well,

Maria Ross 15:56

and I love this sentiment, and I’m going to link to his episode to mentor dial who is located in your neck of the woods in the UK, he talks about the fact that there’s also this element of we, as humans are still working on our emotional intelligence, we’re still working on empathy, we’re still building that skill. And we can’t just hope to outsource that to a computer to AI if we’re not even like, if we haven’t even perfected it ourselves. Because that is the other argument that many people say is Oh, I don’t need to learn that skill anymore. I’ll just teach it to AI, I’ll teach I’ll you know, I’ll use AI or I’ll teach it to a computer. And he talks about, you know, we haven’t mastered it as human beings, then you know, that’s not something that can be taught to a machine. So no. And expecting a machine to replicate something that we haven’t even perfected is just, you know, for lack of a better word bonkers like,

Robin Hills 16:57

Well, look, I’m sitting here talking to you as an emotional intelligence expert. I’ve been studying it all my life as indeed you have a family emotionally intelligent, interesting question, isn’t it? Because if I in progress is what I like, most definitely, it’s got me because if I say yes, there’s no room for improvement. And if I say no water, so by doing talking to people about emotional intelligence, it is as you define its work in progress. And I’m still learning, right. And there are some fascinating things that I will share with you that I’ve learned only fairly recently, which really blows my mind. And I think what we’ve got to think about this as we look at empathy, and we look at moving forward. But before I say that there are certain other things that well, before

Maria Ross 17:53

we move on, I want to just switch gears for a moment and talk a little bit about emotional resilience. Yeah, because that is, and maybe that was where you were going with this is you talk about strategies to manage stress and weather storms in the workplace. And I think that that’s a big part. You know, once we’re, once we’re able to be more aware of our triggers and our strengths and our blind spots, being able to build that resilience, especially in the face of so many changes and traumas that we faced in just within the past few years. What are some of those strategies that you talk about that folks need to can use to build that resilience? And maybe, before you even begin that, what is your definition of emotional resilience?

Robin Hills 18:38

Well, resilience is having the capacity to be very, very focused on what it is that you’re trying to do, to have been very, very goal orientated. It’s having the creativity and the adaptability to work as the environment changes. And it’s underpinned by a firm belief that life has some meaning. So all of those components together will give people emotional resilience. And if we go back to our discussion about ai, ai hasn’t bought the adaptability, the creativity, to work as an environment, or changes. The other thing that AI does not possess, it doesn’t possess consciousness. So it has no comprehension of meaning. And it has no comprehension of spirituality, itself, bliss within the universe, whatever you as an individual defines that to be. So all of those are wrapped up within this emotional resilience. So as we are now working in environments which are increasingly Buka, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and they’re going to get even more so this is where the human element come through. And this is where emotional resilience will resound quite nicely, because humans with good emotional resilience have got the creativity and the adaptability to do what is right, ethically and morally, and do it because, well, because, and because it is appropriate to do it, and it gives all of our lives that meaning. So

Maria Ross 20:26

what are some strategies to, to build that resilience and manage that stress, so we can measure those those ups and downs we can whether those ups and downs, again, I’m

Robin Hills 20:37

gonna go back to what we’ve been talking about all the way through this book, because it’s building up the social connections, the networks to have the people that we can fall back on when we need them. And to have the social competence to be able to communicate well with people to be able to say to people, life is getting too much for me at the moment, there’s too much going on in my life, I need a bit of a break, to help me I need some help here. I can’t do everything. So it’s knowing who to have that conversation with them to fall back on. It’s also learning to be a lot more adaptable, a lot more flexible. And to be a little bit more proactive. So saying to oneself, look, this is what I’m going to be working on over the next few days, the next few weeks, what do I need to do in order to make that happen? Now we know that life happens, that changes things, and the unexpected comes up. So it’s having the ability to work around that and be prepared for it and get back to what it is that you’re trying to do. When you you’ve got the ability to do that.

Maria Ross 21:55

So you mentioned earlier this idea of motivation, being really important being motivated to improve your emotional intelligence and to connect with people. How can leaders both inspire themselves and inspire others? To build those successful relationships? What are some ways that they can employ that? Well,

Robin Hills 22:17

the best way to motivate somebody is, again, these are all skills underpinning empathy is to ask them, and to listen. So the critical skill that a leader needs to develop is the ability to coach and the ability to ask the most appropriate questions in the right way to help the other person to explore what it is that they need to do in order to move forward. Now all sounds very, very simple and very straightforward. For being on the end, the receiving end of a good coaching session can be incredibly motivating. Somebody has listened to what I’m saying, somebody is pushing me in a different direction somebody understands. So what I would say to leaders is, stop being a manager and be and stop being a leader, and stop telling people what to do and start coaching people, because they are doing jobs that you will never do. And you will never do it because your job is a leader, not a worker. So what are you doing, telling people what they should be doing? Ask them? What’s the best way of doing this? What’s getting in the way? What can I do to help you to improve your performance more effectively and efficiently?

Maria Ross 23:46

I love that. I love that. As a last question, I want to talk to you about this concept of the intelligence of emotions. You talk about that? And can you share a little bit about what that means? Yes,

Robin Hills 23:57

if we go and have a look at the move, most people quite wrongly, in my view, define emotions as being positive and negative. Now emotions are not positive or negative emotions are physiological and psychological states that drive us forward to adapt around the environment that we find ourselves in. So they’re neither positive or negative. Yes, some emotions can feel quite unpleasant at times, and some emotions can feel quite pleasant. So it’s how we use these emotions in a constructive way. That is the defining part of the emotion. So if we look at emotions as being data, providing us with information, we may be feeling unpleasant, but that’s because we are in a set of circumstances that is driving us to feel that by now, before we came on air. You and I had a little bit of a hiccup in terms of getting the technology to work. And this often happens when I got podcasts so it doesn’t feel good. And it was your friend Maria and I was feeling for you because it didn’t feel particularly nice. I know that because he didn’t same sort of situation. But we needed that feeling of unpleasantness in order to get it to work. So we, we went about doing a few things to sort things out, and hey, we’re having a, a an issue free conversation, which is great. But we can’t feel pleasant all the time. We can’t feel deliriously happy all the time. And why why should we? Or why would we want to be because if we are feeling that way, then we’re going to take unwanted risks, we’re not going to be communicating particularly well with people, we’re not going to be engaging with them at a deep level. So what we’ve got to do is just to recognize, why am I feeling the way that I’m feeling? Isn’t? How can I utilize that emotional state and work with it, in order to be constructive around the way that I’m feeling? I

Maria Ross 26:08

love that I love that idea of of looking at our emotions, positive or negative emotions. As information, that’s often what I talk about in terms of being empathetic is just trying to gather information about somebody else and their context, so that you can move forward together. But that’s almost empathy for ourselves is understood looking at our emotions, as information, what what is this telling me? And what needs to be my next move?

Robin Hills 26:36

But unless we understand it within ourselves? How are we going to understand it with other people? And how are we going to empathize 100%,

Maria Ross 26:44

because if we don’t, if we don’t take the time to reflect on what that emotion means, to us, when we see it in another person, we might react in the same way that we might react if we have that emotion, right, people that are brought up not to cry, or not to show anger. When someone else cries or shows anger, they’re going to dismiss it in that person, because that’s what they were taught to do within themselves. And that does not lead to a productive relationship, or a productive way to move forward, especially if you’re leading someone in the workplace is to try to, you know, understand and motivate someone else. And if you don’t know how to read those emotions as information and what it’s telling you, when you get curious about what it’s telling you, then you can’t move forward together. So

Robin Hills 27:29

I love that. I think we’ve got to set people’s expectations here look, for more academic paper you read, but there anything between about three bells, and 27,000 Dubeau. So we can’t label all of and I think the easiest way for leaders to look at emotions is to define whether it’s a pleasant emotion or an unpleasant emotion. And if it’s unpleasant, how do I use this constructively? And if it’s pleasant, how do I use this constructively, and stop either of these emotions pleasant or unpleasant or either of these groups of emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, becoming destructive in the way in which we behave, because unpleasant emotions that are destructive, and that they are sustained, will lead to stress and burnout. And I think as leaders, we’ve got to work with that both in ourselves and in other people. And to say, enough is enough. I

Maria Ross 28:31

love it. Well, this has been such a great conversation and lots of little nuggets for us to take with us. I do want to mention to folks that they’re all your links will be in the show notes, especially to your book, the authority guide to behavior in business, how to inspire others and build successful relationships, and a link to all your courses, especially your course on empathy called understanding empathy. And I also see here that you have a little free book for our listeners, developing your emotional intelligence. So I will put that link in the show notes as well. Listeners, check that out. It’s a free resource from Robin to you. So for folks on the go, that don’t have a chance to look into the shownotes Where’s where’s the one or two best places they can connect with you?

Robin Hills 29:18

Well buy companies ie I changed so go straight to the company website, which is EI for change.com and you should be able to find all the information that you spoken about by clicking through there. And I’ve also got a digital magazine called E i matters ei hype and matters.com which is regularly being updated with fresh content. There are again resources quizzes, podcasts, this podcast will be featured on ei matters regularly so do check out ei matters and completely free just go through and and enjoy the articles.

Maria Ross 29:58

I love it. I Love it. Well, you know, there’s we can’t get enough resources to help us improve our emotional intelligence. And I just want to mention for folks that are listening audibly, it’s E I, the number for change.com is the website address. But again, all these links will be in the show notes. And I know there will be lots of listeners who reach out and connect with you, Robin, thank you so much for your time today. Maria,

Robin Hills 30:21

it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for ending my day on such a positive note.

Maria Ross 30:26

And thank you everyone for listening to another great episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate review and share it with a colleague or a friend. And until next time, 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

April Hot Take: Why Empathy Starts with Self-Awareness

The book is coming! September 10 is the day that The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries hits shelves to help leaders dedicated to people-centered practices to get the best performance possible and balance the demands of the business with the needs of their people.

I am so excited to share this with you! For the next 5 months, I’ll be devoting a Hot Take episode to one of the 5 core pillars of effective empathetic leaders, outlined in the book. See, I emphasize EFFECTIVE because it’s not just about being empathetic – you have to actually perform, deliver, and get results, too. You as a leader can and must balance empathy with accountability. And today we’re going to talk about the first pillar to accomplish that…Self-Awareness.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Humility and empathy go hand in hand. You have to let your ego go and embrace your curiosity to learn and grow.
Some ways you can become more self-aware include: requesting input from teammates and colleagues, leveraging self-assessment tools (such as the Enneagram, DISC, or Myers Briggs), and learning to listen deeply.
You can pre-order now through August 27, 2024, to get 30% off your copy of The Empathy Dilemma for stories from leaders, and recommendations for tactics to try to put these strategies into practice and benefit from the results.

“Self-reflection is not woo-woo; it’s a smart strategy. You need to cultivate a deep and ever-evolving understanding of your people, as well as of yourself.”

— Maria Ross

Episode References:

Check out The Empathy Dilemma pre-sale for 30% off until August 27, 2024: https://bit.ly/TEDSpecialPresale
Find out more about the book and (soon) download a free chapter sneak peek: http://www.TheEmpathyDilemma.com

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

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 BELOW:

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. Hi, everyone, and welcome to this month’s special hot take episode, where I’m going to start outlining some content from the book for you because the book is coming September 10, is the day that the empathy dilemma how successful leaders balanced performance, people and personal boundaries, hits shelves to help leaders like you dedicated to people centered practices, get the best performance possible, balance the demands of the business with the needs of your people. And I am so excited to share it with you. So for the next five months, I’ll be devoting a hot take episode to one of the five core pillars of effective empathetic leaders outlined in the book. See, I emphasize effective because it’s not just about being empathetic, you have to actually perform, deliver and get results to you as a leader can and must balance empathy with accountability. And today we’re going to talk about the first step or the first pillar to accomplish that. This is a hurdle that gets in many leaders way they think they have to choose between empathy, or high performance, compassion or ambition. They don’t, it’s both and not either, or, and they never realize sometimes that empathy is the catalyst when it’s actually being shown, that leads to engagement, innovation and results. And speaking of the new book, there’s a special presale offer that I will tell you about at the end where you can purchase copies at 30% off until August 27. So stay through to the end. And I’ll tell you how you can get those discounted copies for your team, you’ll get special launch swag, a special VIP launch event. And you can have me crash your next meeting for an empathy discussion. So stay tuned till the end. But I wanted to share with you today what I loved about writing the book, my favorite part was interviewing so many leaders who are actually doing it. They are being authentic, empathetic and tuned into their people, while never losing focus on why they’re there. And what they’re being tasked to do. As one of my interviewees shares in the book, their number one goal is to make the business successful. That’s their job. But that does not mean it has to be at the expense of not showing empathy and humanity for their team. In fact, because they do show those things, their teams are loyal to a fault and would go through fire for them. But how right how can leaders balance performance people and personal boundaries? It’s sometimes a delicate question. My new book offers guidance on the healthy and productive ways that leaders can deal with the unique challenges they’re facing in trying to balance it all. And that’s where the five pillars of effective empathetic leadership come in. These are common traits and behaviors I see over and over again, in the successful empathetic leaders I interview, speak to and advise even those who truly are empathetic, but don’t label themselves as such. The five pillars are a result of hundreds of podcast interviews, extensive research data, and I found them to be the common threads across all those who are empathetic and high performing at the same time. So let’s dig into the very first one pillar number one self awareness. Now what do I mean by self awareness? This is understanding your own strengths, your blind spots, your emotions, your leadership style, and your emotional triggers, and helping your team members understand theirs. Now, you might be saying to yourself, hang on Maria, isn’t it more important for me to understand my team members and not myself? Do I really have to do a bunch of woowoo self reflection? And my answer to this is that both are crucial. self reflection is not woowoo. It’s a smart strategy. You need to cultivate a deep and ever evolving understanding of your people, as well as of yourself. It’s not about navel gazing or ego trips, but having a very honest, clear picture of where you shine. And we’ll see where you fall short. Humility goes hand in hand with empathy. So you can recognize that someone else may have a different or better perspective. And that means being real. about how you show up, as well as how you can better connect with others. In fact, letting go of your ego and being curious enough to learn and grow is a sure sign that you’re truly tapping into your empathy. Self awareness is an important success skill for leaders because no one leads in a vacuum, your style preferences. Your pet peeves your needs, your strengths as a leader will influence every single interaction you have at work. And yet, many leaders don’t take the time to understand themselves fully and completely. Self awareness helps you to understand complaints and constructive feedback, know when you might need help navigating a situation and take accountability for your actions. So how do we become more self aware? Some strategies include requesting input from teammates and colleagues, leveraging self assessment tools such as the Enneagram disc or Myers Briggs, and learning to listen deeply? But what are those strategies actually mean? To better understand them to become more self aware, I hope you’ll check out the empathy dilemma for stories from leaders and recommendations for these tactics that go along with putting these strategies into practice and benefiting from the results. The results in how your team engages and performs, and how they innovate. And in the loyalty they will show to you and your customers. And speaking of the book, as I mentioned, there’s a special pre sale offer, you can purchase one to 99 copies of the book at porch light, buy amazing bulk distributor and get 30% off from now until August 27. You’ll get the book in September. Plus you’ll save some chatter. And if you’re interested in helping your favorite podcaster out which hopefully that’s me all pre sales go towards my first week’s sales numbers, which could help get the book on the bestseller list. Check out the deal at the link bit.ly/t E. D, that’s Ted special presale and I will definitely put that link in the show notes. And by the way, when you preorder, please save the receipt to email me because you’ll get some goodies you’re gonna get a VIP invite to an exclusive virtual author q&a and launch party, you’ll get some swag to be determined. And if you order 25 or more books in presale or at launch, you’ll get a free 30 minute virtual author q&a discussion for your team or organization for a limited time. Let me crash your event. Do you want to order more than 99 copies there are tiered volume discounts for that too. Just DM me on Instagram at Red slice Maria or go to my website contact page at the empathy edge.com You’ll be able to check out more about the book and very soon download a free chapter of it at WWW dot v empathy dilemma.com Thank you so much for listening to this week’s heartache. I can’t wait to share the empathy dilemma with you and help you through it. And if you liked this podcast, you know what to do you hear me say it every week. Please share it with a friend or colleague rate and review it and make sure to follow or subscribed. In the meantime, until our next time together. Please remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Logan Mallory: How a Culture of Gratitude Boosts Engagement and Mental Health

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called out an epidemic of loneliness and highlighted how workplaces are one way to help. How can people get their needs for connection and recognition met in appropriate ways at work? And how does this impact the overall performance of the organization?

I dug into these questions and more with Logan Mallory. Today, we talked about why he is so passionate about this work and how his empathy for his customers comes from being a customer himself at one time! We discussed why employers and employees are having so much conflict right now, what leaders can do to improve the employee experience, and simple ways to create an above-and-beyond culture. We talked about how your company can create a Gratitude Flywheel and got real about the short shelf life of “surface perks,” why a more consistent culture is required, especially in dispersed or hybrid environments, and why a workplace can help support community and connection to keep us mentally healthy.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Communication and transparency are two of the pillars to understanding one another’s perspectives. Without that clarity in understanding, there cannot be effective empathy.
People want to be recognized and they want to recognize their peers. According to a Motivosity survey, 75% of people said that their mental health would improve if they were recognized at work more often.
The higher you are in your organization, the less you know about what’s going with your teams and customers creating an iceberg of influence. This is the same for the good and the bad. Put systems in place to help bridge this gap.
Good culture is different for everyone. What leadership in a company needs to do, with input from their team, they need to decide what those values are going to be. When you state who you want to be, that is empathetic for your employees and new recruits.

“We have people that are burnt out, people that are disengaged, you have a mental health crisis in the US. And maybe one of the easiest things employers can do is empower their people to say Thank You more often.” — Logan Mallory

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge podcast episodes:
Rebecca Friese: How To Build A “Good” Culture
Shasta Nelson: Why Successful Leaders Encourage Work Friendships
Claude Silver: Leading with Heart at Vayner Media
Motivosity survey infographic, showing how gratitude leads to better mental health at work.
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

About Logan Mallory, VP Marketing, Motivosity

Logan Mallory is the Vice President of Marketing at the leading employee recognition software, Motivosity. Mallory is a public speaker, adjunct professor, and thought leader on culture and leadership in the workplace to achieve employee retention. Motivosity helps companies create winning cultures by focusing on gratitude and connection at work. Mallory’s wife, four kids and poodle are all his favorites.

Connect with Logan Mallory:

Motivosity: motivosity.com

X: twitter.com/LoganMMallory

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/loganmallory

Facebook: facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009422255617

Instagram: instagram.com/motivosity

Join the tribe, download your free guide! Discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy

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 BELOW:

Logan Mallory 02:36

Thanks for having me. I am excited to spend some time with your audience and to hang out with you Maria.

Maria Ross 02:40

Yeah, it’s always great because this podcast has really branched out into speaking to leaders across marketing, social entrepreneurship, HR Dei, but you know, back to my original wheelhouse of marketing and branding. I love welcoming folks that are doing really innovative things, with their marketing with their own marketing and branding for their customers, but also being part of building a company that is devoted to improving workplace culture. It’s sort of like the happy marriage of the two sides of my interests. So I’m excited to get into it.

Logan Mallory 03:13

It’s a really nice Venn diagram. And I feel the same way. So I’m here for it. I’m here for it.

Maria Ross 03:19

It’s that’s that whole thing. I’ve always said it, my entire marketing career is like, I’m interested in doing marketing for good, not for evil, and marketing and brand. And storytelling has that power to pull us together and help us ignite action and help us persuade and help us to make things better, just as there’s a dark side to it, you know, more of us are hopefully turning towards the light. I hope

Logan Mallory 03:44

so I think that there is so much good that we can do and that has really become a big like cornerstone of my time at motivasi. And in my role, well in marketing at it, it makes both work and life better. When not you’re up, bro.

Maria Ross 03:57

100% 100%. So let’s get into that a little bit. Tell us your story. And what brought you to this work? What was your interest in leading marketing at a company devoted to employee experience and customer experience?

Logan Mallory 04:10

Yeah, you know, I was actually a motive opportunity customer before I ever worked here. And so I worked for a tech company called work front and work Brian used motivasi. And so I spent part of my career there using this tool that focused on connection and community and recognition. And then I left and went to another job that didn’t have that. And I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself, Oh, I wish I had I wish I had motivasi I wish I had a way to say thank you to my peers. And I and I didn’t. When the opportunity that came up to work promoted paucity. I knew the founder of this organization because he also was the founder of Workfront, where I had worked previously, and Scott stories really fascinating. He started building Workfront Late 90s, like 1999, he was the CEO for a really long time. And they, they built a great company. Eventually, Scott left the CEO role and was on the board of directors and people were a little more comfortable with him. And so they would come up and say things like, you know, what this place has changed. It’s not exactly what it used to be. I feel like a cog in a machine. And, and I don’t know if he was frustrated or disappointed, but I know that Scott wasn’t happy, because he had tried to do all the things to make people happy at work, right, the snack room, the parties, the good health insurance, the PTO policy. And so Scott said, I’m gonna go solve this problem with technology. And that’s how motivasi was born. And I wanted to work for someone with that philosophy, like, I wanted to work for a leader that had that approach, and wanted to work towards something higher. And so here I am, and it’s been a really great three and a half years so far. Okay,

Maria Ross 05:55

there’s quite a few things to unpack in that story. Number one, what a great example of empathy that you were sort of a customer. Uh huh. And now you are working for the company. And you were so able to be empathetic to the needs of your own customers, because you were in their perspective, before you were I am trying to move away from the in their shoes, language these days, sure. But you do see things from their perspective. And you bring that to the work you do. And so often, when we go into roles, I know when I’ve gone into marketing roles, when you’re first there, you’re almost you’re most impactful when you’re first there, because you’re looking at things with a beginner mind and a fresh eyes, you get those fresh eyes, but then you get indoctrinated into the thing, and you sort of go into your ivory tower. And it’s, here’s what I think. And here’s what we think is best. And so we’ll talk a little bit later about what you do as a company to make sure that you still keep that customer perspective, always front and center, because that is one of the most important things about building an empathetic brand is never ever, ever lose it losing sight of the customer experience, and what they want and need and feel and what their goals are. So I love that. And I love this idea of moving beyond, I had a guest on a past episode, I’ll link to it in the show notes, Rebecca freeze, who wrote the book that goes the good culture, and how leaders can create workplaces that don’t suck. And she talks a lot about what many Silicon Valley companies did, or tech companies did in the beginning of of just throwing the veneer on it. Like let’s give them a foosball table, let’s give them free beer Fridays, and thinking that was going to solve culture problems. And I love that, even though those can be fun, and those are great, and even the perks that go along with them and the benefits. There’s a deeper need to connect and engage. And I love that your founder saw that and decided to say how can I look at this from a different angle? And how can we leverage technology to help us better connect and engage because that is something not to replace connection and engagement. We can’t outsource that to AI so to speak. This idea of leveraging technology to bring us closer, can you tell us a little bit more about that philosophy? And give us an example or two of what that looks like?

Logan Mallory 08:11

Yeah, for sure. And I want to take even one step back. I don’t always quote US Surgeon General. But our current US Surgeon General is evac Murthy. And I mean, this is the same administration that normally puts the the warning on cigarette boxes about about cancer, right. And he is now has six priorities. And one of them is the epidemic of loneliness. And the other is well being at work. And when he dives deeper into that He literally says community and connection is one of the ways that workplaces can help solve the health crisis that we’re experiencing in the US. And so I think that is really fascinating. I don’t I don’t know that companies should be the social place to meet all of the social needs for their team members. Right? I don’t think we can solve all of the problems. But organizations should be able to support their team members and be a place where they can get some of that community and connection. So let me give you an example. We’ve we’ve got a customer down the road. At this point, I think they had about 800 employees, and it was a tech company with employees across across the country. But they did have kind of a central group here in Utah. And they use motivasi. They use our tool, and we focus on interest groups. I like to call them micro communities, right, like micro micro cultures. And so these people loved road biking that that was their hobby, and they found each other through our product. So they started spending time together. They started biking in the mornings before work and so all of a sudden, you had people from finance and people from sales and people from support who have otherwise would have never interacted in this 800 person company, they were spending two or three mornings a week together, road biking. Now the company noticed that, and they could have just said, Hey, that’s great, go do your thing. They could have ignored it. But this company like doubled down on that they saw the micro culture and they said, that’s a win for us, we’re going to support that. So they gave them a little bit of money to go buy kits, right? Essentially, they’re Jered their their jerseys. They gave them a little bit of money to go sponsor a few races a year. And so they just, like supported this community. And when you have a community at work, you stay longer, you work harder, you solve problems more effectively, right? Like all of these roadblocks start to go away when you like and care for the people that you’re working with.

Maria Ross 10:50

100% and I am hearing echoes of another person that I interviewed on the show that you should meet actually, Shasta Nelson, she is a social relationship expert, she wrote a book called The business of friendship, citing many of the studies and the experts, one of whom you just mentioned the US Surgeon General, but about this idea of Korea, encouraging friendship in the workplace, not necessarily that we all have to be close to each other. But this idea of being friendly and being joyous and being connected at work, because there’s data around the fact that you know, you’ll you’ll retain employees more if they have a quote unquote, best friend at work as an example. Yeah. And it’s this idea of like, we this is the place where we spend the bulk of our time, it should be a place that we want to come to it doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It doesn’t mean that the work is always fun. But it’s this idea of like, do I feel this sense of belonging? Do I feel this sense of connection and camaraderie? So when I go there, I can contribute my best to the organization? You know,

Logan Mallory 11:56

it’s it’s interesting, and I have a little teeny bit of a different opinion about some of that, but not the overall concept. Gartner, Gartner in there, they have 12 questions that they asked about culture, and one of them is do you have a best friend at work? And I kind of laugh at that, because I actually don’t expect my work to replace John and Cory and Doug, who are my college roommates and my best men and like, I don’t expect work to replace them. But I expect work to help me have relationships with people that I like. And so I think about that, as you know, if I had to travel with this person, if I had to jump on a flight and go to London with this human being, would it be miserable? And what I dread it? Or would I have a good time on this work? Train, right. And so for me, there is this balance, like, I don’t want companies to feel like they have to provide the best friend, that’s really hard to do. Because it late best friends are created out of this deep life experience. I want them to provide me with people that I like that I would be happy going to lunch with, that I would not be opposed to hanging out with on a weekend or after work hours. And that might be a more might be a more like consumable goal for companies. Yeah, than a best friend.

Maria Ross 13:07

Well, and I think that’s the point. It’s not necessarily your best friend in life, but is that my best friend at work? Right in that situation. And as speaking as someone who met multiple lifelong best friends from my first job out of college and met my husband at work, we do form those relationships because, and then there’s some times where you, you are working in a company and you’re really, really close to someone, if you both leave, and you go your separate ways. That’s okay, too. It can be seasonal, temporary, but in those moments, when I was working with those people, I kind of felt like they were my quote unquote, best friends. And it gave me something to look forward to. To your point, when I have to do work, that’s a slog. When I have to travel for work, are these people that I know have my back? Do I feel comfortable with them? Do I feel like I can show up? Do I feel like I can offer out crazy ideas, or creative ideas, and not be afraid to take risks in front of these people? I think that’s when we really do our best work. If we’re sort of pretending to be somebody we not we’re not to protect ourselves when we go to work. That’s that’s a sign that we’re not really giving our most innovative selves to our work.

Logan Mallory 14:13

Yeah. And it absolutely means when we’re not giving our most innovative selves, that absolutely means that work isn’t getting our best result, right? We’re probably just doing whatever we’ve always done and checking the boxes the same way and not not coming up with new solutions to old problems or new solutions to new problems.

Maria Ross 14:32

I love it. I love it. So in your opinion, and I have a whole book coming out in the fall called the empathy dilemma about my own musings about this. But I’d love from your perspective in the trenches working with customers that are trying to improve their cultures. Why do you think employers and employees are having so much conflict right now?

Logan Mallory 14:52

Yeah, you know, I think about a relationship between employees and employers as a pendulum. And I think it kind of swings back and forth. And for basically most of human history, it was in favor of the employer, right. And then probably 100 110 years ago that like, started to shift, and we’ve seen it swing back and forth, right after COVID. It was, you know, for a minute, it was an employers market, and everybody was just holding, still trying to do whatever their employer needed. After COVID, it very much became the employee focused and people were leaving jobs and demanding more flexibility and making a lot of demands. And even in the last, I’d say, two quarters, we’ve seen that pendulum go back in favor of the of the employer, right, you have all these people that are all these layoffs, hundreds of 1000s of tech slash tech layoffs, and so employees are afraid again. And what I hope is that someday, as a society, we can, we can balance that out better, so that it is more so that the right things are being focused on, right for both groups. But you know, I’m a people manager, and I’ve got a team. And what I’ve realized is the more senior I get in my career, the more it is just about people problems. Yeah, like I spent so much of my day thinking about my team and who has what, that I can help solve that work. These two people aren’t getting along, how do I bridge that gap? This person has something happening at home? How do I support them as a human? And, and so like, I do think it’s hard because the conflict is real. The company needs to make money. Like we’re not, we’re not all here for social causes, right? You have to make money. And most of the wants or needs of the employees are in opposition to that they want more freedom, they want more money, they want more perks they like, and so I do think that we have to, and I won’t say be in each other’s shoes, since you’re avoiding that. I do think with each other’s perspective, we have to see each other’s perspectives. Yeah. And understand the realities of both sides. Yeah. And I’d say one of the solutions to that is really great communication and transparency, when we’re honest. And my talk about realities, that makes those conversations

Maria Ross 17:09

easier. 100% actually, in the new book coming out, one of the five pillars of being an effective and empathetic leader is clarity, because you can you can be as empathetic as you want. But if people are not on the same page, it doesn’t matter. You’re not even seeing you’re not even watching the same film. Right. Right. So I can’t even see the film through your perspective, because I’m in another theater. Right? Right, exactly. So it’s that idea of being able to be crystal clear. And also, one of the other pillars is decisiveness. Because I think what happens is a lot of very well intentioned leaders get caught up in people pleasing, which is actually not empathy, it’s submission, right? It’s, I’m just going to try to make everybody happy, which is an impossibility. So the clearer you can be in, the more decisive you can be, that’s when you can open up empathy, as you know, I’m sure you’ve experienced where you do have to make a tough decision. But I can use empathy as a leader to communicate that decision in a certain way. Or provide someone who’s particularly struggling with that decision, maybe some extra support. Yeah, but it’s those levers, right? Yeah,

Logan Mallory 18:15

exactly. It hasn’t been too long ago, but I was in a conversation with a team member. And this is a really great team member, like, they do really great work. They’ve been here for a few years, and, and are like wanting to grow. And I want them to grow. But the reality is, is that like within within the realm with which this person wants to grow, like, we don’t have the opportunities at the moment. And so it was a really interesting conversation to sit across the table from this person and say, You’re great talent. And if you want to be able to grow that way, like I will be your reference, I will help you learn, I will give you some projects to help you move that direction. But I don’t have that answer here. I like I can’t solve your problem in today’s work environment. Right. And that doesn’t make it an easy conversation to have. But it does kind of eliminate some question marks, right, because the decisions were made, the conversation was had, and so like that gives that per that helps that person know their real options.

Maria Ross 19:18

I love that story. And I mentioned a story about that in the new book, because it’s this idea of we can’t completely give all our agency to our employers to sort of like sit back and fold our arms and say, What do you got? Right? It’s got to go both ways. And part of that agency is understanding in a very kind, compassionate, respectful way, that maybe this isn’t the place for you anymore. Not for any bad reason. But but this is what the company needs to do. This is how the company needs to move forward. And if that doesn’t align with your values, I get it. So how can I support you in finding a place where you better meet your needs and your values because we just can’t do that for you here? err, yeah. And that doesn’t have to be a conversation. Right. It doesn’t have to be a contentious conversation. Yeah,

Logan Mallory 20:06

and I think that oftentimes, especially in, especially in today’s environment, and with, kind of, I’m gonna use the word entitled, like, we have some entitlement. And then that keeps us from seeing realities. i If I can share the story, it’s a few years old, but I was in a in a, in a role. And I got a call from appspot. Right a marketer’s dream, I got a call from a HubSpot recruiter. And it was one of those calls where I like almost texted my wife on the other line and was like, pack your bags, we’re moving to Boston. At the end of the call, at the end of the call, the recruiter said, Tell me about the budget that you’re managing. And I said, I’m managing a few $100,000. It’s mostly on licenses and tools. And I could hear this recruiter get bored with me. And they weren’t disrespectful. But they basically said, like, oh, that’s, that’s not going to cut it. And so I, I realized that my next role had better include a really large budget. And eventually that opportunity came knocking. And there was an opportunity to manage a multi million dollar budget. And the company that I worked for, said, What could we do to keep you here? And I said, unfortunately, you’d have to give me Mike’s job. Like, that’s the job. I have to have to keep me here. Yeah. And Mike was really good at his job. So it wasn’t I didn’t take it personal from the company that I couldn’t have that. I took it on myself. That was my career and my responsibility to get the experience I needed. Yeah, I just couldn’t do that there. So we shook hands and, and high fived and left with a really amicable departure. And I wish it could be like that more often. I wish. I wish we saw that more often. You had the

Maria Ross 21:45

clarity, though. And I think that’s what’s so important. I did it, I did an interview. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well with Claude silver, who’s the the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk, X marketing company. And she talked about the fact that when they started to get really clear about not just job requirements, but expectations and values and progression and opportunity, and how you’re expected to show up and lead, she said entitlement sort of vanished, because we were so clear that it wasn’t that people were constantly asking, right? It’s like, everyone was clear, everyone was being honest, everyone was being transparent. And they understood what was in front of them. There was no sort of guessing about like, Well, I’m just not getting this opportunity. Because whatever reason you make up in your head, right, right. And so this idea of kind of coming back to it again, about clarity, and communication is so important, because it can actually eradicate some entitlement perceived entitlement, where entitlement can just be someone’s, you know, ambition, it could be someone’s desire, it could be some something burning inside of someone that says, I’m running out of time, and I need to do this, whatever, whatever the emotional and logical reasons are for that those requests. It’s that clarity can have that conversation of like, okay, I’m not happy with this, but I understand where the company’s coming from. And I understand they’re doing everything they can. And now I have to make a decision back to agency of is this the best place for me right now? Because, you know, like you said earlier, like, you can’t just make more VP positions just because people want them. Right, exactly. So it’s that it’s that idea of really nurturing someone and going okay, I see you. And I see you’re ready for this next role. And unfortunately, we don’t have that role available for you here. So what can we do while you try to find that role?

Logan Mallory 23:40

Yeah, it’s, there’s so many dynamics to have to manage. Yeah. And again, being able to see each other’s perspectives can really help with that. Yeah.

Maria Ross 23:48

So I want to I want to talk a little bit about what you’re hearing from your customers, as they look to your product to help them increase communication and clarity and collaboration. What are the challenges that they tend to come to you with and and how does a solution like yours? How does technology help solve those problems? For leaders and cultures?

Logan Mallory 24:10

I think that when people think about motivasi, they they come to us through two separate doors typically. One is very as we’ve kind of talked about community and connection related, right, they have they have dispersed workforces, they have multiple offices, we work with a decent number of financial institutions where they’re, you know, across different branches. And and they want to take what is a good culture and do two things. The first thing is cement that good culture and make it a great culture. Right. So like, I don’t I don’t think motivasi solves your bad culture problem. Now I think when you have a have a good culture, we help you like, turn that into something more tangible and kind of the the like Town Square like the place where everyone comes in the company,

Maria Ross 24:58

almost like codify it. I’d like to systematize it in a way I did that sounds so cold. I don’t mean it to sound that way, but in a way that makes it repeatable and scalable and inclusive of everyone. Exactly,

Logan Mallory 25:10

exactly. So with the community and the connection piece like that really is, how do we create the happy spot that your employees want to go, so many tools are created for the administrator or for corporate in mind. And motivasi kind of becomes the social intranet. And and our adoption is so high, because people want to go there, it’s where they’re seeing the highlights, it’s where they’re getting the good news throughout the company. It’s where they’re like, where they’re getting their onboarding experience from a culture perspective. So from day one, motivasi helps you and I’m going to steal your word Maria codify your culture and your values. And and like this, that that community matters within your organization. The second door that people approach us through and this is, frankly, what motivasi was born from, like this is our entire legacy is through a recognition door. People want to recognize their team members. And so often well intentioned executives or HR people default to what you mentioned earlier, the foosball table, the pizza party. And it’s not that those things are bad, right, they default to swag. I’m wearing my motivasi hat today that love this hat. And we’re all the time. But it doesn’t get me out of bed on Monday mornings. And it doesn’t make me a better team member.

Maria Ross 26:29

I was mentioned when I’ve referenced Rebecca freeze earlier and her book, the good culture, she talks about that as bungee nearing. Like it’s a way to, it’s a way to hide a little bit of like, oh, solve our culture problem. That’s called fungineer thing. So yeah, that’s it. That’s, but that’s often what we default to when we don’t know that there’s a different way. It’s exactly well intentioned, as you said, it’s

Logan Mallory 26:51

super well intentioned, but the shelf life on it is almost non existent. It lasts for a day or two, and then it’s kind of just and then it is just this the expected standard. And so what motivasi does, is motivasi, recruits all of your team members to look for and recognize the good things happening in your culture. And so we do that we wish give every team member a few dollars every month, normally like three to five bucks. And they can only use those dollars to say thank you to someone else. And so you end up again, in the same place where your community and your connection and your micro cultures and your org chart are, you end up with this social feed of all the positive things happening throughout the company. And, and so like, I feel recognized people are seen, they feel like their day to day work is is being noticed. There’s this this theory that I talk about a lot. It’s called the iceberg of ignorance. And the concept is that the higher you are in an organization, the less that you know about what’s happening throughout the, you know, kind of the the bottom of the org, that’s

Maria Ross 28:01

a real, that’s actually been studied that Yeah, that happens that you act and actually What’s also been studied is that many founders lose their empathy as the organization gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and they get further and further from the people and the customer. Right?

Logan Mallory 28:15

Yeah, exactly that that distance grows, and you lose the empathy, you don’t really know what’s happening. And I would, I think lots of times the iceberg of ignorance is referenced with the problems, right? The drama in the company, the systems and the processes that don’t work. It’s also very true for the winds and the good things, the higher you are in the organization, you can’t see the day to day things that people are doing to contribute, let alone take the time to thank them. And so motivasi, it puts that kind of power to recognize in the hands of of the individuals. And it makes a massive difference on culture. One, one last stat on that Maria, we did a survey motivasi did of 2000 people. And 75% of people said that they thought their mental health would improve if they were recognized at work more often. And so we’ve we have people that are burnt out, you have people that are disengaged, you have mental a mental health crisis in the United States. And maybe one of the easiest things employers can do is to empower their people to say thank you more often.

Maria Ross 29:21

I love that. Is that a publicly available survey? The

Logan Mallory 29:25

survey data is somewhere we did that in combination with one poll, and I would be thrilled to to send a link Yes. So that you can share that

Maria Ross 29:34

a link. Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes to that because that is powerful. And I also just want to point out this idea of, you know, as I talked about in the book, the empathy edge, that you have to be walking your talk and part of the walking your talk is modeling, celebrating and recognizing that this value, whether it’s empathy, whether it’s service, whatever your company decides to call empathy, right? Or caring about each other. Whatever. It’s just a nice bullet on a poster on the wall, that the brand strategist raising my hand said should be important, right? But comes to life when you model it when you celebrate it when it’s recognized, and people see that it is celebrated. And they start to understand this is how I can find success here. So what I love about what you’re saying is this idea of peer recognition and executive recognition and making it so public creates a learning environment that this is who we are. And even if you were skeptical about it, when you joined our organization, you’re seeing it in action. And now you want to get on that bus. So now it’s who can I thank, who can I recognize? I want to I want to participate in this, that when we do so much of that recognition behind closed doors, or just like a bonus check every quarter that nobody else sees. We’re not really we’re not really creating a culture that celebrates and models recognition and empathy and understanding and like you said, being seen.

Logan Mallory 31:06

Yeah, we we talk about that a lot as like this virtuous cycle, right. And I know that concept is used in a lot of places are the idea of a flywheel, it’s, it’s kind of like the gratitude starts. And then it just takes on a life of its own. And so you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Because it just becomes a part of who your people are. Reading. I’m reading right now The Happiness Advantage by a Shawn I believe it’s a corps who has a infamous TED Talk. And he talks about the impact of happiness on cultures, right? And how people who work from a positive perspective, are faster, quicker or faster. They’re just better on all the metrics. And gratitude is a big part of being happy. Absolutely,

Maria Ross 31:52

absolutely. And we’ve even talked on the show about gratitude being a great gateway to empathy, because it gets you out of your own situation and sort of get you in a very external mindset of looking up from whatever you’re dealing with. And saying, what what am I grateful for? Who am I grateful for around me? And then to your point, then taking that that next step? So what kinds of transformations have you seen from clients, or customers that have implemented this? Or is there any sort of even if it’s anonymous, any sort of before or after you can share with us,

Logan Mallory 32:29

one of one of my very favorite conversations that I’ve ever had with a customer is actually from from an organization, it’s called Desert, first credit union, their credit union kind of in the western states here, and, and I’m happy to share this because that their their president and CEO, Shane London, shared it with us. And we’ve used it all the time. Shane has been with Deseret first credit union for a really long time. And like, basically been in every role the organization has, right. And when we were interviewing him about the impact of gratitude and connection, he said, you know, I’ll be honest, when when my team brought mode of audacity to me, my CFO attitude, my skeptic attitude came out. And I did not think that this was going to work. And his exact words were, Boy, was I wrong. And I think that the reason that Shane and their organization sees so much value and Moto biocity, is because they have all these branches that are disconnected. And it can be hard to create a consistent culture, when you’re not all in the same place. Like that adds an extra element, and motivasi it helps them focus on that, again, I want to be really clear, I think desert first credit union had a good culture before and motivasi helped codify that and make that a great culture across across the board. So I think they were doing a lot of things, right. You know, one of our, we were with a really big company in kind of the FinTech area. And they wanted, they wanted to create a more powerful Foundation for their culture. And so they would use the appreciations in their feed in each of their in each of their all hands meetings, and the executive would get up and reference those. They would, they would use motivasi to like, help onboard people and help them understand the values of the company. And like they weren’t just appreciations. They were recognitions around when values were being lived. And when one of their senior executives left that company. And her first phone call at her new organization was was to us and so like, we just hear people say that we hear people say that motor velocity helps our employees feel seen route work. Right. And, and that’s really hard to do. Like, you can’t do that in a one day pizza party. Right.

Maria Ross 34:48

Right. And you know, and we should add, I mean, of course, like, you’re on the show, You’re my guest and there’s probably other technology solutions out there that can help people. But I think what I’m hearing you say Hang as well, what I’m seeing as the common thread is that it wasn’t like, it’s probably not a good idea to start at throwing technology at something if you don’t know what your culture problems actually are. Am I hearing you right? Like, is there some work that needs to be done before technology can be a panacea and solve your problems? Like what would you say a company needs to really honestly look at? Before they can expect that technology will help them? Just deal? You know, quote, unquote, deal with all the people issues?

Logan Mallory 35:31

Yeah, I have I have two answers. They’re the super obvious answer is the values. What what do you care about? What do you want to convey? Like whether you know, you are you had mentioned, you had mentioned service or empathy, but like, it could be a million things, right. But pick some that you really care about. And then the other challenge that I would offer is, do you really care, like, if you are an executive, or a leader, or a person in HR, if you’re trying to check a box, then don’t invest the money, don’t invest technology, like just go check a box in whatever way you want to do it. If you sincerely want to create a great place to work, where you care about your people, and they can thrive both as their skill set, and as their human being, like, what they what they want to prioritize? If that’s truly valuable to you, then I think that that’s the question you need to answer and you should be sincere about it. Not every place has to be a great place to work, like some places can be all about the money. And some places can be a stepping stone, and some places can be the you know, like a law firm that it’s all it’s all about the hourly and the and the billable hours. And like, I guess what I appreciate is that, and maybe this is my patriotic side and rear coming out. I’m grateful to live in a in a country where there can be different options. And there can be different places, because not everybody speaks my love language.

Maria Ross 37:00

Well, I love that you said that. Because good culture is different for everyone. Yeah. And what accompany has to do with the leadership of a company has to do hopefully, with the input of their best people, you know, not, we’re not going to go in a boardroom and then decide between the six of us what our values are for a 200 person company, right? Yeah. And this is why when I do my brand strategy and brand messaging projects, I bring together a cross sectional group together that’s like, I don’t even know what marketing does, why am I here? Right? It’s because you have a different perspective on the company and on what we do and on our values. But you know, getting gathering that input, synthesizing that input, and then deciding this is who we want to be. Because when you clearly state that that’s actually empathetic for your employees to know, what have they gotten themselves into? And is this the right place for me or not? Right, but it’s also empathetic to your recruits. So you’re putting a band a very clear banner out there. This is who we are, this is what we stand for you if you did this, come work with us. And you know, there’s companies right now post pandemic, that are, you know, making some questionable leadership decisions. And I talk about a few of them in the new book. But also, one thing I have always said is at least you know, where they stand. Exactly, if that’s okay, for someone, they just need to be okay with taking the responsibility for the stance that they’re taking. Yes. Do you know what I’m saying? And so it’s this idea that, like, if you really do want to attract the best talent, and you know, that within Gen Z, and younger millennials, these things, you know, and all the data is there, these things are important to them. If you’re gonna say, No, that’s not important to us, you need to accept the responsibility for that decision as well, of the impact is going to have on your business.

Logan Mallory 38:45

Yeah, and I bet you, you also can’t please everyone, like Hypersoft, you can’t craft a group of values. That is the perfect banner for every US citizen. I was, excuse me for I guess quoting myself, maybe this is a little weird. I was in the LA Times not too long ago, when there was an article about about Elon Musk and Twitter and what culture he was creating. And again, I will defend for or against

Maria Ross 39:11

my his approval, confirm or deny. Yeah, right.

Logan Mallory 39:14

But you know, exactly what Elon Musk, you know, the banner he’s putting up and it is meritocracy and hard work, and dedication and toeing the line. Like, right, that’s, that’s the flag he put up. Right. And if you don’t like it, it’s claimed as different. Yeah, at least, you know, it’s time to move on. Well, and

Maria Ross 39:33

that’s the risk that that leadership team runs in terms of long standing sustainable business performance and innovation, right? So if they understand the risks, and they want to, you know, defy the data file that they can but I think it’s this idea, you know, and I’ve, I’ve long said this in my brand strategy work. You can’t be all things to all people or you end up being nothing to no one so you as a company Leadership along with your employees need to decide who we are. And that’s not just five bullets on a website. Yes, if we’re going to claim that these, it’s also not 14 values because I was in a, I was in a workshop one time with a company that said, when I asked them about their values, because we were going to revamp their their values for their brand messaging, they were like, Hold on, let me check the website, because I can’t remember them all. And I’m like, exactly, and throw them away, because

Logan Mallory 40:26

they’re not doing you any good, right? There’s, there’s your first problem, there’s your first

Maria Ross 40:30

problem, right? And you’re not actually living by them. But what are those values? And then take that next step of what are the behaviors that show us that those values are being lived out? So what are the examples that we give to our leaders to say, if we’re going to look at your performance review and judge you or assess you based on how you’ve lived these values? Do I, as a manager, or leader actually have the actions and behaviors that we have determined? Show each of those values? Because if I don’t, I’m just making it up. Right? Yeah. So linking to your point about recognition and whatever. If we don’t agree what each of those values look like in action? How can we acknowledge and reward it doesn’t matter how great our technology is? Great thought, I love it. I love that. Yeah. So um, so as we as we wrap up, what is what is your biggest piece of advice to a leader listening to this right now that’s like, Hey, we are we are struggling, as an example with hybrid work, or a dispersed workforce. And we think technology can solve our problem, but we’re not really sure. What would be your your first two steps they should take.

Logan Mallory 41:43

So I think that you nailed one of those, you need to look at the team members that exemplify what you want. And hopefully you have some of those in the organization. But who are the team members that that exemplify if you could clone that person? Who are they, and making sure that you have their input and their feedback, and that you’re very intentional about any kind of caught a theme here, Maria? Like I think intentionality is one of our is one of our themes today. You can’t you don’t need to say yes to all of the ideas that your team members give. Right. But if you’re going to say no, help them understand why if they say we think this should be a value, or our culture should be based on this, and you’re going to disagree with that. Why is it? Is it budget? Is that something in your background? Is it an experience you had with with a former employer, and I think kind of explaining that can go a long way? Well, one of the very best things that a leader can do when it comes to improving culture or changing culture. And I actually believe this happens just as well, at the individual level as the team level, is what I call a relationship reset. And that’s not my phrase, I’m certainly borrowing that. But I think that the concept is being able to say, Hey, this is our current reality. And we’re interacting, this, we’re interacting, and I don’t like how it’s going. And I’d really like to reset that. I’d like to, I’d like to start over. And here’s what I can do differently. What could this look like to you? Let me give you an example of that. My, my team, the vast majority of my team has been here for a few years, at motivasi. And I started notice a couple of months ago that things felt kind of stale. Like it, it just felt like we were doing the same thing over and over. And so for one of our team meetings, I said, Listen, like I can feel that we’re all a little tired. Like, even at a place with a really great culture. Yeah, I can tell that we’re that, that we’ve been doing the same thing. And just

Maria Ross 43:42

to interject in there, too. It’s the what do you guys think? Yeah. Like, are you feeling this? How do you is this all in my head? Like what? You know, and opening that door for them to give their perspective as well of like, actually, yeah, it’s been a little weird, you know? Yeah, I love that. Sorry, go on. I

Logan Mallory 43:58

know, I appreciate that. And I think I did that more in the individual conversations, and then brought that sentiment to the, to the meeting to the group. But I, I basically said, like, I think one of the things that we’re not doing is putting new inputs into our head, so that we have new outputs, right. And so like, we watched, we watched a TED talk. And I said, Hey, for the next for the next little bit, whenever we have our team meetings, I want you to come to the meeting. And we’re going to spend the first 15 minutes talking about the new things you learned whether it was a new conversation over over lunch, whether it was a podcast or a book, or a YouTube video, like I want you and sometimes it’s going to be worker related. Sometimes it’s going to be just related to you but like, I want you to be putting in new inputs. And and I think that’s been pretty successful. We’ve we’ve had some really great conversations, the team is looking at new ideas, and we’re trying things we haven’t done before. And I attribute all of that to just the concept of a relationship reset. And so for leaders Don’t be afraid to say this isn’t working, we need to push the reset button. How do we push that button together?

Maria Ross 45:06

I love that I let’s leave it there because that is such a great, a great piece of advice. That is low cost. Yep, low risk, and will actually help your people feel seen heard and valued by by getting them together and saying our relationship as a team. And my relationship with each of you is important to me. And so we want to make it as positive of an experience for everybody as we can, because that’s going to help us deliver results to the organization. You

Logan Mallory 45:37

nailed it.

Maria Ross 45:38

I love it. Logan, I could talk to you for a whole another hour or two. But we gotta go. So I will have all your links in the show notes as promised. But for folks on the go, where’s one of the best places they can connect with you or learn more about your work? motivasi.com

Logan Mallory 45:51

is a really easy place and I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. If you just look for Logan Mallory, you’ll see a guy wearing a hat with a goofy smile. And that’s me.

Maria Ross 46:01

That’s your signature. I love it. So it’s motivasi motivosity.com. You guys, thank you again for such a great conversation. I’m sure it won’t be the last that we have. And thanks for your insights today.

Logan Mallory 46:15

Thanks to you and your audience. I

Maria Ross 46:16

appreciate it. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast if you like what you heard you know what to do, rate review and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cashflow, 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Paul Rutter: Could you Live with Your Customers and Colleagues, 24/7?

Could YOU or YOUR company survive if you had to live and work with your customers and coworkers? Hearing every bit of praise, every complaint, and every…everything? That’s what life is like for the cruise industry, where crew and customers live together for weeks in the middle of the ocean. And it’s why my guest today, Paul Rutter, helps land-based companies apply the lessons he’s learned from the cruise ship industry to create exceptional customer experiences.

Today, we talk about what he learned about both customer experience and culture from working in the cruise industry, and how to ensure your employees are supported so they can show up with the right attitude and deliver great customer care. We discuss what to look for in hiring, how to empower employees to solve problems right away, why gossip is a culture killer, the importance of top execs getting in the trenches, and the link between empathy, innovation, and risk-taking. Paul even shares how to deal with extreme customer disappointments – like weddings canceled due to hurricanes – and how empathy helps turn those experiences into lifetime customer value, loyalty, and referrals.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Hire for attitude. Skills can be trained (and training is so, so important and should be done regularly), but without the right attitude having the right skills won’t matter.
Learn about and celebrate the differences of those onboard your team. You need to take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers. You want your employees to be your raving brand ambassadors.
If you’re in the C-Suite, take time to work how your lower-level employees work each day. It is important for the employees to see and for the executives to know what your employees are dealing with every day.

“We have one goal on board a ship. That’s it. And it should be the goal of all of your listeners as well: Create such an exceptional experience that exceeds expectations that they will come back because they’ve had such a great experience.” — Paul Rutter

About Paul Rutter, Chief Experience Officer:

After three decades as a global cruise director who lived with his team and clients, speaker, trainer, and author Paul Rutter knows that “perfect” is just a starting point. He knows that with today’s abundance of options for customers, every single experience they have is critical to running a successful business. Paul helps companies around the world set a standard for unmatched customer service.

Recognized by USA Today, ABC, NBC, MarketWatch, and FOX, Paul Rutter is a customer experience expert, speaker, bestselling author, and founder of the More Than Perfect service model. Paul is the author of the bestseller You Can’t Make This Ship Up, a hilarious look at the lessons he’s learned at sea and now applies to land-based businesses. He is also the creator of the strategic guide, Repeat Business Inc: The Business of Staying in Business.

Connect with Paul Rutter:

Smooth Sailing Communication, Inc: PaulRutterSpeaks.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/parutter

Instagram: Instagram.com/PaulRutterSpeaks

Book: You Can’t Make This Ship Up; Business Strategies, Life Lessons and True Stories From 40 Years at Sea

Join the tribe, download your free guide! Discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy

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 BELOW:

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. Could you or your company survive if you had to live and work with your customers and co workers, hearing every bit of praise every complaint, and everything. That’s what life is like for the cruise industry, where crew and customers live together for weeks at a time in the middle of the ocean. And it’s why my guest today helps land based companies apply the lessons he’s learned from the cruise ship industry to create exceptional customer experiences. After three decades as a global cruise director who lived with his team and clients, Speaker trainer and author Paul rudder knows that perfect is just a starting point. He knows that with today’s abundance of options for customers, every single experience they have is critical to running a successful business. Paul helps companies around the world set a standard for unmatched customer service. Recognized by USA Today, ABC, NBC, MarketWatch and Fox. Paul is a customer experience expert speaker best selling author, and founder of the more than perfect service model. Paul is the author of best seller, you can’t make this shit up a hilarious look at the lessons he’s learned at sea and now applies to land based businesses. He’s also the creator of the strategic guide, repeat business, Inc, the business of staying in business. Today we talk about what he learned about both customer experience and culture from working in the cruise industry, how to ensure your employees are supported so they can show up with the right attitude and deliver great customer care. We discussed what to look for in hiring how to empower employees to solve problems right away. Why gossip is a culture killer, the importance of top execs getting in the trenches, and the link between empathy and innovation and risk taking. Paul even shares how to deal with extreme customer disappointments, like weddings canceled due to hurricanes, and how Empathy helps turn those experiences into Lifetime Customer Value, loyalty and referrals. Take a listen. Welcome Paul Rutter to the empathy edge podcast, I am so excited to have this conversation with you about living with your customers 24/7 And what that’s like and what you’ve learned. So welcome to the empathy edge podcast.

Paul Rutter 03:03

Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you.

Maria Ross 03:05

So tell us a little bit we heard your bio, but tell us a little bit about your story, and your experiences at sea. And what got you into this work now of consulting with organizations and helping them better connect with their customers to create winning customer experiences.

Paul Rutter 03:22

So I come to you from the hospitality industry, the travel industry, but more specifically the cruise industry. And as you mentioned, I’ve been working on board cruise ships for I hate to say this close to 40 years now. And it’s one of the very few industries where you actually live with your customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So Maria, let me ask you have you cruise before? Have you taken a cruise?

Maria Ross 03:47

Oh, I have not. I am not necessarily a cruise fan. But I come from a family of big cruise addicts. So, yes.

Paul Rutter 03:56

So we’ll have to get you on there one of these days. Because there’s some magnificent ships all over the world, all different sizes, all different products that they have. But one of the things that we learn on board is that you know, you have no excuses. If there’s a problem with your customer, you have to take care of it right away. You can’t have any excuses. And so if somebody comes to our front desk and says, My toilets not working, we’re not going to say well, it’s the weekend we’ll send somebody on Monday. No, we send somebody within 30 minutes to solve any problems because if you have a stuck toilet, you know they’re not going to your customers are not going to be happy about it. Same thing with air conditioning or if they have a problem with their key or you know anything else on board. We have to take care of our situations, problems, complaints or whatever you want to call them. We have to take care of them very quickly because if we don’t, they’re going to be right there. We’re going to walk around the corner and we’re going to run into those people again. And so we have to have policies, procedures, and really put ensembles in place in order to deal with all sorts of problems, some of the largest ships in the world, there’s over 6000 guests on board, along with over 2000 crew that’s over 8000 people in a big metal boat in the middle of the ocean, what could possibly go wrong? Well, pretty much everything can go wrong. We’re sitting in the middle of the ocean there. And so we have to be prepared for all sorts of things that go wrong. And so we deal with that. And so that’s why when I talk with businesses on land, the first question I ask is, could you or your company survive if you had to live with your customers? And their eyes get very big? And they go, no, no, there is no way that I could live, there would be violence involved at some point. In that relationship, I could not live with my customers. And if you add to that, we also live with our coworkers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So the person that we just worked in the dining room or a state room attendant, or next to each other at the front desk, or crew, staff members, or singers and dancers on board, they could be roommates at the end of the day. And so we have to keep our employees engaged, we have to have a great culture on board, we have to have a lot of employee engagement, our employees come from close to 70 different countries, Americans on board are the minority. And so, you know, how do you keep your employees engaged so that when they wake up and walk out of their cabin, they’re gonna have a big smile on their face. And they’re going to want to give to tremendous service, so that people come back, because we have one goal on board a ship. And that’s it. And it should be the goal of all of your listeners as well. And that should be to create such an exceptional experience that exceeds expectations that your customers will come back. Because they’ve had such a great experience. So onboard our ships, our goal is to exceed expectations. So people will book their next cruise right then and there. It’s an impulse buy, people buy an emotion. And if we’re doing a great job, now, we they don’t want to risk going to our competitors, and maybe not having that same great experience. So our goal is to create such an exceptional experience that exceeds expectations, they will book their next vacation with us, and 98% of the time that they put down a small deposit, they don’t even have to tell us what ship or where they want to go. They’re just reserving a room a state room on one of our ships 98% of the time they take their next vacation with us. So if your listeners know that 98% of the time their customers are going to come back to them over and over again, wouldn’t they do what’s necessary to exceed those expectations. And so that’s what we do on board a ship has tried to exceed those expectations. So they come back right away,

Maria Ross 07:56

right. And so you’re helping land based businesses adopt these philosophies. And in your book, called, you can’t make the ship up, which I love the title, you offer this hilarious look at the lessons that you’ve learned at sea, but applying them to land based businesses. So I have so many questions. But I want to start with, before I get to the external customer experience, I want to talk first about the opposite side of that coin, which is the culture that you create. And we talk a lot about, I talk a lot about empathy starting from the inside out, or really any brand attribute starting from the inside out, it’s got to be genuine, it’s got to be authentic, and it’s got to be lived inside the organization. So externally, it can be shown by the employees. You talk about building a culture based around exceptional customer service. And I’m wondering, because of the extremes of the environment for the cruise ship industry, the challenges that you mentioned where you’re living with your customers 24/7 And you’re living with your work mates, your colleagues 24/7? Is there something specific you hire for? And how do you screen for it? If you need to find someone that can thrive in that type of very different culture?

Paul Rutter 09:15

We hire for one thing and one thing only and that is attitude, you have to have the right attitude in order to work on board. There’s an old saying I’m sure you’ve heard hire for attitude train for skill, and that we can do weather. Now if you’re gonna if you’re being hired as a waiter in the restaurant. Yes, we want you to have some restaurant experience. Yes, if you’re we’re hiring you as a stateroom attendant. We want you to have some sort of experience but we can train you how to do the job. But if you don’t have the right attitude to be away from home for four or six or eight months of the time, then you’re not going to fit in now. Training is so important. Now, I know that some land based businesses when they have new hires, they may do an hour of training and that they never, they never do training. Again, we do constant training. And that’s one of the big things, there’s the first of all, for us on board a ship safety and security is the most important thing for us. Because we have to deal with things in the middle of the ocean, you know, fires and groundings or, you know, all sorts of problems like that. And so we have to hire for attitude. But in order to keep your employees engaged, you have to bring a little bit of their home onto the ship with them. So, for instance, as Americans for breakfast mean, we may want fruit, or eggs or bacon. But if you’re from the Philippines, or from Indonesia, or from India, you don’t want that for breakfast, you want rice and you want beef, or you want fish. And so the ships do a very good job, the cruise lines of of trying to bring home a little bit of creature comforts in order to make our crew members feel at home. And we have a saying onboard. And I’m sure it’s the same saying that many land based businesses have is that happy crew equals happy guests. If you keep your crew happy, then they’re going to go out and deliver the product that you really want them to. And so we have some things in place. So for instance, we talk about empathy. Being away from home is so difficult, especially when you’re new. But what happens if you have a family member, your mother is gone into the hospital, and you’ve heard this, how’re you able to go see your parents or your brothers getting married and you want to go to the wedding, it’s in the middle of your contract. So we do things called compassionately where we allow our crew members to be able to fly home for two weeks up to two weeks at a time to take care of business at home. So that they know if there’s a problem, I’m going on a ship for eight months. But if there’s a problem, I’m able to come home and take care of it. And so that’s really important for our crew members to know. And it’s, you know, it’s putting ourselves in their shoes. I mean, that’s what empathy is all about is, you know, if the same situation happened to us, how would we want to be treated, and that’s how we want to be able to treat our crew members there. So we do have things like compassion leave, we’ll also do things you know, we celebrate birthdays on the board, we celebrate independence day. So if it’s Jamaican Independence Day, and we have a number of Jamaican crew members on board, we’ll have a big party for the Jamaican crew members. You know, if it’s Fourth of July for the Americans, we’ll have a fourth of July party. So we will celebrate the differences that we bring on board. And it’s it’s one of the best things about the job of working on board is learning and dealing with and working with these people from all these countries outside the work. It’s such a wonderful education. But at the same time, you have to make sure that you’re taking care of your employees, because they’ll be the ones and they’re going to go home and sing your praises. If they like the atmosphere on board, then they’ll tell their friends that were a great company to work for. So you want your employees to be your raving brand ambassadors. We call them in the book.

Maria Ross 13:11

Of course, of course you do. They are your biggest brand assets are your employees. I want to dig into that a little bit further. Because this idea of attitude, it sounds good. And I think folks think about it and sort of they know it when they see it. But what specific traits or behaviors are you looking for in the hiring process to show you that this person has the right attitude? Well,

Paul Rutter 13:40

I should say that meese specifically, I’m not involved in the hiring process, because we have 26 ships, we might probably have 50,000 crew members now. And so we have a whole human resources team for shipboard hiring, depending on if you’re going into housekeeping or if you’re an entertainer. We have specific people for hiring for skills like that. And so I wish I could tell you that I’m personally do all the hiring. I don’t that the crew members are my responsibility. Once they walk up the gangway, then it’s up to me to make sure that they feel like they fit in. So for instance, the first day on a cruise ship, for anybody is hectic and stressful. There’s people running all over the place down in the career areas because we’re getting ready for a new cruise. And invariably, every single time a new crew member will say to themselves, this was the biggest mistake I ever made. What am I doing here? This is crazy. And so I make sure as a division head as the cruise director on some of these large ships. I may have 200 people work just in my division. I make sure I bring in a new hire to my office on the either the first or second day and let them know we know how crazy it is. for them to go through, I will always say to the new hire. So have you asked yourself why you’re here, and this was the craziest decision you ever made. And every time they go, Yeah, I can’t believe this, this is crazy. And so we try to let them know that we know what they’re going through, because we’ve been through it as well. And we know how crazy it is. And we know that people get homesick. And so we go out of our way to make sure that people feel welcome. Onboarding is a new term. And it’s such an important aspect of a business to make sure that especially our crew members feel welcome, because we’re flying them there. And we’re making an expense to bring them to our ships all over the world. It’s very important the that they feel comfortable coming on board the ship. I

Maria Ross 15:49

love that because that is so important about empathy for your employees and understanding everything you talked about the benefits, the inclusivity are all of these touches that, you know, leaders are finally understanding that that has a direct impact on the employees performance, which has a direct impact on the customer’s experience. It’s not some fluffy feelgood thing I mean, it is but it also impacts the bottom line. And making that investment in in that connection. And that humanity for each person is so important to ensure that overall, the organization is achieving its goals. So I want to flip to that customer experience. Because, you know, again, your industry very unique, you are living with your customers 24/7. But the we talked a little bit about the bad when things go wrong, or the complaints, but also the good. And so how can organizations that can’t do that, be more in lockstep and attuned with their customers? What are some ways that you’ve worked with your clients to help them not quite mimic that experience, but gather be able to gather the information and the data that’s gleaned from that experience? And maybe a different way?

Paul Rutter 17:06

Alright. Well, I think I understand that question. Let me, let me go one, just back to the one point with the employees first, and that is how important it is to empower your employees to take care of problems right away. Because if I have a problem and go to somebody at the front desk, and then they tell me, oh, sorry, I have to go get permission from my manager or my supervisor, in order to give you you know, the $10 back. And then the manager supervisor comes out in the office explain the problem all over again, like on the phone when you’re trying to call up a business on land. And so empowering your employees to take care of problems right away, helps towards guests and customers knowing that these people care about me that they’re not going to nickel and dime me that yes, if I have a problem, they’re going to take care of it right away, because we’ve learned in the past, if somebody let’s say, has a problem with a shore excursion, and they come to the front desk and say, Well, I didn’t like that shore excursion. 20 years ago, we would hand them a business card and say, Okay, call this number when you get home. And so they’re upset for the rest of the cruise, they’re not having a good time because they haven’t, their problem hasn’t been resolved. And so they go home, and they call the number and then the people in the office call us on the ship. And they say, Okay, what was the story, and the time involved is crazy. If you just take care of the problem and empower your employees to say, no worries, we’re giving you a 50% refund right now. And we’re going to send you a bottle of wine for the inconvenience, then they leave happy, and they can enjoy the rest of their cruise. And they’re going to tell their friends and family when they get home. I had a problem. But this cruise line took care of it right away. So empowering employees. I just wanted to make sure that we got how important that is. Definitely. Before

Maria Ross 18:54

you get to the question I actually asked, I just want to jump on that because that is such an important point. I think there are so many businesses set up to put policies in place that only deal with the random outliers. And yet, there’s really just a cost of doing business. Will people take advantage of liberal customer service policies and refund policies? Maybe, but the majority of them won’t. I mean, we learned this from Nordstrom, we learned this from Amazon. It’s for those exceptions that might milk the system. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to a stellar customer experience where you resolve someone’s problem right away. And the majority of people are not trying to screw the company. The majority of people genuinely have a problem and that is always frustrated me about so many businesses that want to put all these hurdles in place, because of the few people that might take advantage of the system. Meanwhile, they are neglecting all of these potential loyal lifetime customers because They think they’re being savvy about it. And they’re not. So

Paul Rutter 20:02

they’re just wanted to go. They’re not looking at the long term they’re looking. They’re

Maria Ross 20:06

not. And it’s like, you know, what is it worth to be able to save that time and create that better experience? By empowering your employee to solve the problem. This is the thing I love about Amazon customer service is, you know, we are loyal Amazon customers, I know that that’s controversial. But whenever you have a problem with an item, you can just chat with customer service, and it’s no questions asked, they’ll refund, sometimes you don’t even have to ship it back. Right? What you know, you might a CEO might look at that and say, like, look at all the money, we’re letting go out the door, how do we know if that really happened or didn’t happen, we need an investigation, it’s, you know, sort of just chalk it up to a cost of doing business, and reap the rewards of when you solve the nine out of 10 customers whose complaints are legitimate. So now I want to kind of get back to this idea of living with your customers 24/7. Because my point being, you have that advantage in the cruise industry. So when you work with clients and land based businesses, what are some ways you help them recreate that information gathering experience, so that they can get the benefit of hearing from their customers right away and sort of being in the trenches with their customers, without actually creepily going home with them?

Paul Rutter 21:22

Exactly. So, at the end of every cruise, we do surveys, customer feedback is so important. So we get surveys every single week at the end of a cruise. Now, there is so much that you can learn from the surveys. Now a lot of it is just oh, there was a piece of dust in my room. So my cruise was ruined. Okay, you can take that with a grain of salt, right. But if you hear over and over again, let’s say Bob was rude at trivia or at bingo today or an activity. And if you get that once you can write it off. But if you see the same things happening week after week after week, and Bob is rude and keeps getting written up week after week, then we have a problem on our hands that we have to solve, we understand that you can something can happen for one cruise, and somebody takes it the wrong way or, and you can get written up for that. But if you have the same problems, week after week, after week, you need to. And so I would just try to look for trends and tell companies to look for trends that if somebody is getting, you know, as we mentioned a rudeness common every single week, then that is something that you need to look into. The other thing I would mention is, you know, pick up a phone, people are hesitant to pick up a phone. And if you haven’t seen a customer in a while and you want to know why call him up and say hey, you know, we haven’t seen the a year in a couple of months. We’re just making sure everything’s okay. And if there’s anything we can do, please don’t hesitate to contact us. And so picking up a phone, even I’m a big believer in sending thank you notes to people, handwritten, thank you notes are so personal. I have one friend who keeps sending postcards. I mean, when do you get postcards in the mail anymore? Just making sure that customers know that you’re there, and that you’re thinking about them does so much for the customer to then start thinking about your business. Again,

Maria Ross 23:18

I love this. And something that we spoke about pre recording was something I wrote about in the book about executives who sort of outsource the customer feedback. And we know we’ve got Customer Support Teams, we’ve got Customer Success teams, we’ve got account manager, that’s their role to stay in lockstep with the customer. But what about the executive team that can sometimes get into their ivory tower and forget what life is like for the real people on the ground? What suggestions do you have around executives being able to stay in touch with their customers and not lose sight of that beating heart of the company.

Paul Rutter 23:53

I am a very big believer in executives and owners and C suite officers to come on down where the real people work and live and do a job for a day or a week we’ve had people switch jobs we’ve had when a ship is coming out we’ve had captains and all the officers serving dinner to the crew members in the restaurant, I mean and to for them to see how the other half lives, you know talking about empathy, they see exactly what’s going on. And that is so important. First of all, it’s important for the employees to see the executives down where they are instead of in their ivory tower. And so I’m a very big believer in switching jobs or come on down and work the front desk of your hotel or work at the counter of your business and see exactly what your employees are dealing with on a daily basis. Plus, the customers will be very happy to see you there if they know who you are. And so I’m a big believer in switching roles for a day or a week or even an hour

Maria Ross 24:58

or two If you like, yeah, no, I put that in the book of wherever possible, you know, get the CEO on the customer support line for an hour, or, you know, wherever it is possible for them to get into the trenches. I’m a big proponent of airline CEOs, flying anonymously in coach and seeing what that experience is like, which I know they don’t do, I wish they would, or even to understand what it’s like online to purchase from your company or book an experience, to go through that process yourself as an executive every so often, and not be too arrogant about the fact that that’s beneath you. And you know, I shared a story in the book about a CEO who thought it was beneath his executive team to actually spend time talking to customers, and why that’s a recipe for failure because no customers no company, right? So

Paul Rutter 25:54

you’re just to build on that a little bit. I mean, I talked to land based businesses, they’ll park in the back parking lot and use the back door to go up to their offices, the last time they went in the front door where customers actually go in was a years ago. And so they don’t know they don’t see the dirt or the filth or the loose handle or something that’s a safety concern. Because they they go in the back way all the time. And they need to do and walk in the footsteps of their customers. Go online, call your office, call your one 800 Number and see how long it takes to answer. We do that on our ships, we have managers on duty, will specifically call you know, room service, or the front desk to see how long it takes for them to answer. And I highly recommend CEOs to call their 800 Number, or go on their website and see how long they are and see what they need to do to find a phone number to call for customer service. So I highly recommend that CEOs work and walk in the steps of their customers at every chance every chance they get.

Maria Ross 27:00

So in your book, you can’t make the ship up, which I love the title again, you talk about a few business implementation strategies. And I’d love to just get a high level insight on a few of these. One of them is how loose lips literally sink ships. Can you tell us what that one’s about?

Paul Rutter 27:19

Well, there’s a couple of things. There’s no privacy on a cruise ship, you learn that fairly quickly that everybody knows everybody’s business. And gossip can be very bad onboard a ship. Because I think there’s a saying, if they don’t have anything too bad to say about you, they’ll make something up. And so we have to be very careful. And even on land, I try to get the point across that gossip is just such a cancer. And it grows and it brings people down. And so when I say when we say loose lips sink ships, it’s that you just have to be careful what you’re saying, you know, you may hear a rumor, and then you spread it. But you know, gossip is such an especially on a ship because it’s such close quarters. I mean, we have, for instance, to give you an example, there’s a crew bar on board, every ship has a crew bar where crew members can go with at the end of the day and just have a nice drink and relax and listen to some music. Well, Lord have mercy. If a guy and a girl leave the crew bar at the same time. The rumors start to spread, right Oh, you see who left here and and all of a sudden, you know, they’re married together. But that’s not the way it works. And you just real careful about some of the things you say, because gossip is such a cancer in any business and, and there’s really no privacy on board a ship. So I would just recommend to try and nip it in the bud when there’s gossip going around that, you know isn’t true,

Maria Ross 28:51

right? I mean, that is definitely a culture killer for sure. And it’s anything but apathetic. We’re not really thinking about the impact that our words can have on our colleagues and our workmates. But also that that just detracts us from the work as well. It’s all well and good to have fun and, and joke and inject joy I I’m a huge proponent of that to create to create a good culture that then in turn offers great customer service. But yeah, I think we need to we all need to keep each other in check about the gossip issue. You have another one here throwing off the bow lines to take some risks. Talk to us about that. Well,

Paul Rutter 29:26

I just think first of all, working on a cruise ship is a risk because it’s not like it’s on anybody’s radar, they already going to college for all I’m going to college so I can work on a ship. So you do have to take risks in life and business owners need to take risks. If you’re doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. You’re not going to stand out in the crowd. And you need to stand out and even if it’s, you know, some people do it with, you know, crazy colors or a different logo or something like that. You have to take some risks. I mean, you know you mentioned Amazon look at the risk he took by creating Amazon On and things like that. So if you see that there’s a problem that isn’t being fixed, taking a risk to fix that problem is how you create businesses.

Maria Ross 30:10

Well, and I think related to empathy, what we, what the data show is that companies with empathetic leaders and empathetic cultures create more innovation. And it’s because people know, they, they know that they’re seen, heard and valued. So they’re more comfortable throwing out crazy ideas, or, you know, failing in in the pursuit of trying to try something different, you get people that are more willing to step outside their comfort zone, because they know there might not be retaliation, there might not be, you know, people not accepting them. And so that that idea of the empathetic Culture and Innovation do go hand in hand across multiple studies. One study showed that exponentially people in empathetic cultures felt they could be more innovative at work, I think it was four times as many verses in companies where they don’t have an empathetic culture. So that idea of being a disrupter, that idea of risk taking in business to create growth in the company in the business is so closely aligned to how employees feel about giving their perspectives and offering up their ideas, and also about how they know they can innovate, and create and they’re not worried about all the other stuff that happens when you’re in an environment where you’re, it’s fear based, you don’t feel psychologically safe. You don’t feel like you can bring your ideas to the forefront. You’re so worried about that stuff that think about all the innovation you’re losing as a company, because people are too afraid to speak up.

Paul Rutter 31:44

Exactly. Well, if I can give you an example of something that happened on a ship where empathy was involved, weddings, very big business on board a cruise ship, people are now planning their weddings. And there’s two types of weddings on board. There’s what’s called a shipboard wedding where you can let’s say this cruise starts in Miami, people calm, you have friends and family, they’ll come on board the ship, and you get married on board that day, and then your guests leave and then the ship sails and you go on your on your honeymoon together. So that’s a shipboard wedding. And things usually go well and we know how important weddings are. But the other type of wedding is called the destination wedding. And that’s where the couple says, well, we want to get married on the beach in Jamaica, or we want to get married on the beach in Grand Cayman in the Caribbean. And so they make the plans and they do the paperwork and omit they might do it through a travel agency. But everything is set. And so they’re gonna get married, and sometimes they have family, their parents are sailing with them. We had one wedding, we had 200 guests on board were there just for the wedding. There’s only one problem though, when people booked destination weddings. We’ve had a couple when they’ve booked them during hurricane season. So of course what happened, right, for 99% of the summer time, there’s never a hurricane. But of course, that one time when it’s your wedding, there’s a hurricane coming right towards Jamaica or right towards Grand Cayman. And it’s supposed to hit a day or two before or after the day that you’re supposed to get married. While on a cruise ship. We’re not going there. We’re afraid of hurricanes, there’s no reason to go because the islands are going to be in a bad state. So if there’s a hurricane in the Western Caribbean, a ship will usually go to the Eastern Caribbean because it’s not affected. And people want to go where there’s good weather. Yes, they’re upset that they’re not going to the ports they planned on. But they don’t want to go during a hurricane where the weather is terrible. They want to go where there’s nice weather. But the problem with the people who booked that wedding on that day, they’re not having their wedding day and we have some very upset guests. Now we as a cruiseline could say listen, not our problem. You know, we didn’t book this wedding during hurricane season you did. There’s a hurricane sorry, nothing we can do. Or you can take an empathetic approach and put yourselves in the shoes of these people who were so disappointed and all the family and friends who are with them. The paperwork for the wedding, let’s say they planted on Jamaica or Grand Cayman, the paperwork is only good for that island because the government’s are all different. So if you have a wedding license in Jamaica, you can’t use it if we go to one Eastern Caribbean country, because it’s different paperwork. So we could say sorry, nothing we could do. Or we can put ourselves in their shoes and at least make them feel as valued as possible. So we send them to a romantic dinner and one of our specialty restaurants. We book couples massages for them so that they can get a massage. One couple who had their wedding canceled? They had they this is the couple that had 200 people on board, they said what was really important to us was to have our first dance together. And so we arranged it on the last night of the cruise. In the middle of the shift, there’s always a big central area. The bride got dressed in her gown that to the gentleman was in his tuxedo, we announced to the ship that they were going to have their first dance, it was packed, it was crowded, and the band learned their song there one song because it was going to be played on the beach or recording, we had our band learn that song. And so we were able to let them have their first dance. The crowd went crazy. There was not a dry eye in the house, everybody, they understood that they miss their wedding and that they had planned for and they paid lots of money for this wedding as well. This is you know, It’s so upsetting to us that we couldn’t deliver the product that they were looking forward to. But we were empathetic, and this couple. And both couples that this happened to, at different times were so happy with what we provided for them, they’re taking their anniversary cruise with us, they’re going to bring their families the next time they cruise because they felt that they were valued, even though they never got to get married, that they were happy with the way that we responded to their situation. And that’s where the empathy has now gotten us lifelong customers, who are then going to bring their families and their kids in their grandkids. And you know, how much money has now been brought in in the future, because we were empathetic, and it didn’t cost us very much money to send them to a specialty restaurant or get a massage together. They were very happy about that. Right? And

Maria Ross 36:48

that’s about a mindset of being able to look for those opportunities and have people on board who who understood how can we make this better? What and also what I love about that is getting to the heart of what was most important to that couple, which was the first dance. How many times do we sort of try to apply a cookie cutter solution to customers that are unhappy or customers that are having a less than excellent experience? Where if we just take the time to get to know them and talk with them and understand what is really underneath the frustration or the anger or the sadness or the whatever about the experience? What is the most important aspect to you and how can we fulfill that need for you? So that is such a great story to land on. Paul, we’re going to have all your links in the show notes for folks, but for anyone on the go, can you let us know where’s the best place to get in touch with you?

Paul Rutter 37:42

Oh, absolutely. Thank you for inquiring. I appreciate that. My website is Paul Rutter. speaks.com. My last name is ru t t e r. So Paul Rutter speaks.com books are available there. I’m very big on LinkedIn. If people want to reach out on LinkedIn, I have a Facebook public page. Paul Rutter speaks Instagram, YouTube. So all of those all of those

Maria Ross 38:08

website is great. Yeah, we’ll have all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today and your insights. We really appreciate it. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please share it with a colleague or a friend and don’t forget to rate and review and subscribe and follow so you always get the latest episodes. Until next time, 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 shownotes 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Kat Kennan: How Trauma-Informed Marketing Offers a Radical Customer Experience

Marketing often relies on a lot of “tricks” to reach people in this noisy world. But we have an opportunity to be more intentional and responsible in our marketing – and when we do, that leads to increased customer engagement, loyalty, and yes, profit.

Today, I talk with Kat Kennan about trauma-informed marketing and how we can rethink the way we promote our offerings. We talk about what trauma-informed marketing means, why brands need to pay attention, how to avoid cancel culture, and how to rethink old marketing models and get away from fear-based messaging. We discuss how trauma can show up for your customers, where you can take a pause and adapt, and some great tips on easy ways to start infusing more empathy into your marketing to boost your customer’s perception of your brand.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Fear-based marketing techniques are going to continue to get diminishing returns. As businesses, we need to move beyond personas and really connect with our customers.
Over 70% of people have experienced at least one major traumatic event in their lives. In thinking about the pandemic, we are now looking at 100%.
Empathy is a bottom-line issue. 97% of customers say that empathy is important to their customer loyalty.
You need to have a pretty nimble and agile group of decision-makers that can adapt and adjust campaigns on the fly based on real-time events.

“It’s encouraging marketers to just take a pause before they send something out to think about how it might feel or how it might read.” — Kat Kennan

Episode References:

The Cancel Culture Checklist: Go to Kat’s website radicalcustomerexperience.com & use code MARIA30 to enjoy 30% off the 1st 3 months. Check the website for all details.
The Empathy Edge episodes:
Charna Cassel: Recognizing Trauma at Work – Yours and Others
Melina Palmer: Why Your Customers Can’t Tell You What They Want
Brigette Iarusso Disrupting Toxic Business Models in the Online Space
Lindsay LaShell: A Marketing Activist Blends Purpose & Profit
Uncommon Goods
Oreo’s responsive Super Bowl campaign

Brand Story Breakthrough course to help you craft a clear, compelling brand story – includes weekly office hours with Maria!

About Kat Kennan:

Kat Kennan is the Founder and CEO of Radical Customer Experience, a groundbreaking consulting firm that encourages brands to establish genuine connections with their customers by embracing strengths-based, trauma-informed, and inclusive marketing services. With a passion for empowering individuals and driving positive change, her mission is to help brands speak up, speak out, and foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in their customer interactions. As a certified trauma-informed professional, Kat brings a crucial perspective to her work, infusing every aspect of her business ventures with a deep understanding of the human experience.

Kat’s unwavering commitment to creating a more inclusive and empathic world have earned her recognition and respect within the marketing and trauma-informed community. She is leading the charge in revolutionizing the way businesses interact with their customers, leaving a profound impact on the industry and society as a whole.

Connect with Kat:

Radical Customer Experience: radicalcustomerexperience.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/katkennan

Facebook: facebook.com/rcxconsulting

Instagram: instagram.com/katkennan

Join the tribe, download your free guide! Discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy

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 BELOW:

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. Marketing often relies on a lot of tricks to reach people in this noisy world. But we have an opportunity to be more intentional and responsible in our marketing. And when we do that leads to increased customer engagement, loyalty, and yes, profit. Today, I talked with Kat cannon, about trauma informed marketing, and how we can rethink the way we promote our offerings. Kat is the founder and CEO of radical customer experience, a groundbreaking consulting firm that encourages brands to establish genuine connections with their customers by embracing strengths based trauma informed and inclusive marketing services. With a passion for empowering individuals and driving positive change. Her mission is to help brands speak up, speak out, and foster diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in their customer interactions. As a certified trauma informed professional Kats journey to success is rooted in years of marketing leadership for companies and organizations of all shapes, sizes and industry sectors. Moreover, her personal experiences with complex PTSD have made her a passionate advocate for all trauma survivors, leading her to establish the advocacy organization stand up to trauma. Through this organization, she enables others to heal and thrive beyond their traumatic experiences. Cat’s unwavering commitment to creating a more inclusive and empathic world have earned her recognition and respect with the marketing and trauma informed community. She is leading the charge and revolutionising the way businesses interact with their customers leaving a profound impact on the industry and society as a whole. Today, we talk about what trauma informed marketing means, why brands need to pay attention, how to avoid canceled culture, and how to rethink old marketing models. And get away from fear based messaging. We discuss how trauma can show up for your customers, where you can take a pause and adapt. And she offers great tips on easy ways to start infusing more empathy into your marketing to boost your customer’s perception of the brand. And she has a special offer for all you listeners. So stay tuned. Welcome Kat cannon to the empathy edge podcast, I am really looking forward to having this conversation with you about marrying two of my favorite things, which is empathy and marketing together to help businesses succeed. Because as you know, this podcast is all about leveraging the power of empathy not only to improve our lives, but to improve our businesses and our brands as well. So welcome to the show.

Kat Kennan 03:22

Oh, thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here.

Maria Ross 03:25

So let’s talk a little bit about your work. You know, as I read in the bio, you talk about radical customer experience your business, as a consulting firm that encourages brands to establish genuine connections with their customers by embracing strengths based trauma informed and inclusive marketing services. Can you explain what that is for people or what those things are for the leaders listening to that podcast right now?

Kat Kennan 03:51

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, let me take it a step back and just talk about our mission for a second. So we really are looking to empower companies to embrace empathy, in their marketing practices, really redo things from the way that they’ve been done forever. So I do talk about strengths based marketing, which is probably an easier entry point than trauma informed, but, you know, as marketers, we were all taught fear based techniques, right? And we have to create urgency, it’s a limited time, it’s limited quantity. You know, I’m sure any of the listeners can go to their inbox right now and find a dozen emails that say Oh, until midnight, but, you know, that’s sort of the opposite of empathy and particularly now, you know, after the pandemic, like we are in a mental health crisis, and you know, kids are on social younger and younger as well. And the peer pressure and all of that like negative, you know, focus is really dangerous and the you know, obvious believe there is a business result in all this too, which is sales. So like, don’t stay with me. But I think brands have a responsibility just like they do, you know, with sustainability or overall diversity inclusion initiatives. Like to me it fits under that larger umbrella. But yeah, definitely encouraging companies and my clients to embrace empathy.

Maria Ross 05:27

And I love that because we’ve had a variety of past episodes, I’m going to be putting in the show notes of this episode that have dealt with various aspects of this. And one of the reasons why some of those techniques are used is because scientifically, they have been shown to work and behavioral economics and I had expert Melina Palmer on the podcast twice, actually, but one time talking about what your customers want, but can’t tell you. And she made it very clear. It’s not about manipulation, it’s just about understanding the way people make decisions, and leveraging that in a positive way in a responsible way. So that you can provide a product or service for the people who need it. And so I think that’s where a lot of that comes from is there’s the sort of tips or ways to promote, or ways to phrase things or ways to price that our thinking brain says will never work on us. But our subconscious brain it does. And I think we just need to be more savvy as both marketers and consumers about what a powerful tool that is to wield, and why we need to wield it responsibly. So that’s why I really love the work you’re doing and showing brands that again, what I love the both and thinking, you can be responsible, and be trauma informed and be inclusive, and you can still make a profit, like everybody wins in this scenario.

Kat Kennan 06:49

Absolutely. And you know, those fear based techniques, you know, particularly aware our society is and where we’re going, you know, we’re gonna get diminishing returns. And so it’s time to, you know, rethink things I’m sure to if you went to LinkedIn now and any of those, like marketing articles, right, you’d see those same tips and tricks that we’ve been following for years. And it’s like, no, come on, we need to get beyond personas and really connect with our customers. Right.

Maria Ross 07:20

So tell us a little bit about this is usually the first question I asked. I asked, but I wanted to dive right into the What is this that we’re talking about today, but let’s take a step back and talk about your story. And how your personal journey and experiences have influenced this approach to marketing, and why this approach of being trauma informed as a marketer? First of all, I know you’re going to define what that means for us. Yeah. But also, what’s the personal part of your story that informs this work? Yeah,

Kat Kennan 07:49

absolutely. So I talked about it all the time. But I have complex PTSD, which, you know, a lot of us are familiar with PTSD, as you know, with vets, or, you know, perhaps like medical crises, ad complex, it just means there have been multiple things. But in, let’s see, 2018 19 and 20, I had three back to back, pretty, like terrible things happen. And then with my mom passing away, and expectedly. And I realized during that time that I was perceiving marketing messages differently. So you know, you can, I guess you can’t take the marketer out of me no matter what. So my analytical brain was on. But I think that’s where I started understanding, you know, both Annika healing journey and doing a lot of research and reading that there is this concept of being trauma informed. And, you know, it’s really come from the medical or therapy community, in terms of like, how you talk to survivors or patients. And then during the pandemic, I actually went and got a certification and being a trauma informed professional, to really learn, both for me and my own journey, but just, you know, also in general of what’s happening in the body. And you know, what current reach research is saying, and I was able to marry all these things together. You know, I always say that I will forever be healing and never healed, which is awesome. It’s all right. My PTSD is my superpower, and allows me to see the world in a very unique way. But yeah, we can marry all of these things together, and really create customer experiences that are indeed

Maria Ross 09:40

radical. And what do we mean by trauma informed marketing? Yeah, absolutely.

Kat Kennan 09:44

So let me give a couple of tangible examples. For everyone who’s listening. We can think about it from a campaign or creative perspective. You know, sometimes we’re not all sitting around in a boardroom trying to figure out how to ruin someone’s day, you know, as goodness, at least I hope not. But, you know, sometimes there’s images or words that can be really triggering. You know, we’ve seen non trauma informed campaigns such as like, you know, Walmart releasing Juneteenth ice cream, or, you know, yeah, it

Maria Ross 10:22

is. I mean, I

Kat Kennan 10:23

feel Yeah. Like, no. But, you know, I’ve seen really great examples, the first marketing campaign I saw around this hit me as a consumer. So there’s a brand called uncommon goods, which I’ve been such a fan of, for so long. And my very first mother say, without my mom, obviously, you know, particularly in any holiday, right, there’s always so many messages coming at you. And before Mother’s Day, it’s every email, it’s every social post, it’s every commercial, right? And so, you know, I just lost my mom. And I was like, Man, this is so hard. And then I got a text from uncommongoods and said, Hey, we know this time a year is tough for many of you click here to opt out of our Mother’s Day messaging. Oh, wow. Yeah. And, you know, as a, as a consumer, as a customer, a longtime customer of the brand, I was like, they really see me, right. And the loyalty that that created and went well, beyond the years of like me giving them business, it’s like, this deep spot, right, that hits. And, you know, as a marketer, I’m like, Wow, they’re so smart. They’re just segmenting. Right? And like, that’s not a hard thing to do. That’s a really easy campaign to put out. And, you know, so there’s no reason that brands can’t do that, like all along the year, you know, holidays are really important for companies in terms of profits. Right, but can we handle it with more sensitivity? Yes. And, you know, there are other areas of marketing, let’s, let’s take probably the least sexy area of data hygiene, right? No one wants to talk about it. But if you’re not cleaning your database regularly, then what if you are sending an email or even a direct mail piece? Or even it could just be business mail, right? Where maybe you’re sending it to a partner that’s passed away? Or there’s been a divorce? Or, or right. And, you know, then with that one envelope, you really have ruined someone’s day. And, you know, I mean, I also know this personally, you know, my, my neighbor’s husband passed away last year, it was like, you know, one of the nicest people, and, you know, every single day, there is mail for him. And, you know, how triggering must that be? So, you know, it really applies to all sites of marketing, I would say, more than anything else, it’s encouraging marketers to just take a pause, before they send something out, to think about how it might fit. I

Maria Ross 13:16

love that, what are some of the examples of the ways you’ve worked with clients, to, you know, what are some before and afters you might be able to cite for us to give people more, more examples of things that could spark their thinking of how they can look at their own marketing, and maybe reassess what they’ve been doing?

Kat Kennan 13:34

Yeah, so I mean, I’ve done some training, like within marketing departments, almost on the employee side, because I think it’s really helpful for marketers or anyone else, really executive wise in the workplace to really understand how pervasive trauma is, and what trauma reaction was, can look like. So, I mean, statistically speaking, it’s north of 70% of people have experienced at least one major traumatic event in their lives. And if we think about the pandemic, I mean, we are really looking at 100%. And, you know, it’s not just things like you’ve lost a friend or family member, or perhaps there was something in your childhood, it could be moving homes, or changing jobs, like these can still be extremely triggering. And so I like to lead, you know, departments through that exercise of what that can look like. And, you know, I’ve also I’m sure we’ve all been in those meetings where maybe someone just has a meltdown. And you’re like, Wait, what just happened? I’m so confused. Yeah. You know, and the reality is that, you know, that person probably had a trauma reaction. And no, it had nothing to do with what was happening in the room. Right. And it probably wasn’t even as simple as hey, they had a fight with their partner that morning. Hang, or you know, something’s gone out there kids, it’s always hits much deeper, I always find myself kind of pointing here. Because, you know, that’s where trauma really lives. It’s underneath everything. And even if you see someone that’s angry, for example, that’s a secondary emotion, there’s always something underneath. So I find that, you know, by leading my clients sort of through that internal exercise, it’s much easier for them to then look at the external side, right, of how messages might be received. And so I try to start with early things like are easy things, you know, holidays are absolutely any, you know, easy thing. We’ve already talked about how, say even in q4, right, the holiday season, like we are looking at way north of 25% of profits. So how can we handle it since actively, when, you know, the holiday is aren’t an easy time for a good majority of consumers? Right? And, you know, so what kind of messages can we put out? Like, maybe like, things with a lot of happy families? Maybe we should rethink it? Maybe not? Maybe it is appropriate. But just to take that pause? And, you know, and you know, then we see, we see sales increase? We’ve done some, we’ve done some really fascinating research with it isn’t even fully public yet. But at least at this time, but we’re seeing that 83% I just feel like I need to say it again, 83% of consumers feel that brands do little to nothing to handle complaints or difficult situations that they are having, in terms of customer experience, customer service, 83%.

Maria Ross 16:48

I mean, that’s nuts, I’m just going to slap you with another hit you with another statistic is that a 97% of customers say that empathy is important to their customer loyalty for a brand that if they have an empathetic experience, or if they don’t, yeah, 97% say that is very important to them in terms of will they buy from this brand, or won’t they? So, you know, this is a bottom line issue. This is not just sort of a like, oh, we just need to be touchy feely like, this is impacting, you know, things that the CFOs care about. And I’m gonna, you know, as I mentioned, when I was thinking through our talk today, there’s so many past episodes that I want to link folks to one is to Charna caselle, where we did an episode about recognizing trauma in the workplace. And also, Bridgette, I Rousseau, who spoke about disrupting toxic marketing models and business models, especially in the online space. And how many of those are rooted in patriarchy, oppression. So many of those methods are rooted in forcing people to do something that they might not choose to do. And so and then finally, Lindsay law shell, who spoke about being a marketing activist and leveraging marketing, to do good in the world, rather than cause more harm. And I’m hearing echoes of all these themes as you talk. And the biggest word that’s popping up for me as you talk is intention is to stop running, and stop, you know, stop and pause, think about, is this something we should do? Or are we doing it because we’ve always done it? Or everyone is doing it? Or it’s the next shiny new thing? And, you know, I think what is probably the question coming to most listeners minds is, well, can you just drive yourself? Nuts in circles? Because you have to consider every possible reaction? At what point do you start suffering from analysis paralysis? And you don’t put a campaign out there? Do you have any perspective or guidance on that? Because I think and myself as a marketer, that’s kind of my number one question is, at what point are we spent? Do we spend too much time on intention? And then we just have to go?

Kat Kennan 19:05

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is definitely an early pushback that I got a lot. And it sort of really forced me to think about it, right. And what I realized is that intention piece is key because it is just about taking a pause. It doesn’t mean that, you know, as a brand marketer, you need to sit there and think about every single person’s experience. Me now maybe it’s been a health issue, or maybe you know, whatever it is, but by taking that pause, I think you’re getting over halfway there. Just just to take a moment and think about how it might read. And, you know, a think for a lot of brands to they’re terrified of being canceled. Right? You know, it’s such a big topic right now. Now the last number I saw was like over 40%, probably higher now of executives are absolutely terrified of being cancelled, which, you know, leads them to not say anything, right. But, you know, speaking of the statistic you just cited Maria, consumers also expect brands to speak up, and to stand for things to write. Yeah,

Maria Ross 20:27

I’ve said that for a long time that it be cannot brands cannot be Switzerland anymore, they have to put out there, what their values are and what they believe. And it becomes a lot easier to avoid the landmines, so to speak, if you are very clear on your mission and your values, because and I’ve spoken to C level executives for my new book that’s coming out in the fall, the empathy dilemma, that that helps you narrow the options. If you can think about what is true for our mission and our values, then you can decide which things to take a stand on, you don’t have to comment on everything. But you can take a very clear stand on things that are immediately relevant to your mission and your values. And it’s sort of a sort of a litmus test of, okay, there’s lots of things going on in the world that we could comment on. But what, what is true for us as a company as a brand, where are we going to, you know, claim our stake, and be very clear with not only the type of customer that will want to work with us, but also the types of employees that want to work with us. Because we always have to remember that both internal and external culture and brand are two sides of the same coin. And so it’s about taking that stand and, and where do you stand on something? And but again, you don’t have to comment on everything. But where it matters, and where people, your customers and your employees are expecting you to speak up?

Kat Kennan 21:58

What will you say? Absolutely, absolutely. And I

Maria Ross 22:03

want to talk real quickly about your, your vision for, you know, if you if you had a perfect world of this vision for the future of trauma informed marketing strategies within the marketing industry, what would that look like? Yeah,

Kat Kennan 22:16

I mean, I think about our overall vision is, you know, we are trying to drive, you know, compassion and understanding who went positive change, like, I’ve talked about how, you know, our mental health crisis is getting worse and worse. And, you know, for me, I want to make such an impact, it’s so important to me, and it’s been a part of my journey, for sure, to positively impact lives. And because I’m a marketer, right? I think about how can I do this via companies, right. And if I can get, you know, of course, I want it to be hundreds and 1000s of companies. But you know, even if it’s a, you know, a few dozen companies that think differently about marketing, you know, that’s 10s of 1000s of consumers that are going to have a different experience. And that’s everything.

Maria Ross 23:12

Mm hmm. I love that. So let’s give some folks some tangible ways to embrace this approach we talked about a few of them already is thinking about thinking about timing, thinking about, for example, the holidays, and what might some of your customers be thinking and feeling. And what I heard wrapped into that was also just this extra step of consent. So this very easy step of we’re going to be sending you a boatload of communications about Mother’s Day, or about the holidays. Because the truth is, they’re going to opt out anyway, without telling you, if it hits a nerve. So you might as well ask permission, and still have them in your community, and let’s say on your email list, or you know, in the family, but this way, you’re offering them the opportunity to give consent of yeah, I’d rather not hear about you from you right now, if these are the messages you’re going to be sending, because I’m having a really hard time. So for me, I hear this idea of consent and timing. What are some other ways that they can take some approaches to marketing in this fashion? Yeah,

Kat Kennan 24:18

I also think we, you know, can’t forget sort of real time events, right? We’re always trying to get ahead of things and scheduled things and, you know, be more proactive instead of reactive, right. But, you know, what, if we had a sale that was about to start, I thought about this recently, when we had the wildfires in Hawaii, like, what if you’re like, this sale is fire, right? And yeah, no, it would have been it would have been so clever and you know, probably worth a chuckle. And then what had it come out that same day, it wouldn’t have been right In wouldn’t lunch? Yeah, it would have been very insensitive. And you know, honestly, that example probably came true for many brands right would not

Maria Ross 25:09

doubt it. And I think that’s the challenge with automating so much, which I’m not anti automation, but someone has to be the keeper of knowing what’s going out when and being able to make a call that something might need to be pulled, or rescheduled, based on something that’s going on, and not to make that like this laborious decision that requires 12 Different people to sign off on it, you need to have a pretty nimble and agile group of decision makers that can adapt and adjust campaigns on the fly based on real time events.

Kat Kennan 25:44

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we’ve seen examples of this for years in terms of like, real time marketing that happens, you know, I don’t know what what pops in my head, like that Oreo example, if I was just gonna say that from the Superbowl. Right. Yeah. Right. And it’s like that, that exact same process, and very probably likely very narrow group of decision makers, were able to come up with that on the fly and send it out. So in that exact same structure that allows you to take that pause or like, you know, turn something off, reschedule it, when needed. And you know, it’s absolutely the structure that you need for the department.

Maria Ross 26:28

It’s like that process in reverse. And so I think it’s, I think it’s a worthwhile thing to try within your marketing planning meetings, whether you have them weekly or monthly, as sort of like what’s going on in the world right now that might impact campaigns we have going on? I don’t, I feel like so many marketing departments, and I’ve been in them, where once you get the campaign out the door, you’re thinking about the next. But no one’s thinking about like, okay, let’s, let’s pause, what’s actually going live this week, and what’s happening in our world where we may want to rethink what’s going on, give us one more way that they can embrace this approach. What’s another tip? Yeah,

Kat Kennan 27:09

so I think about it, you know, all the way to like the roots of your company DNA. So what my company is won based around is my three R’s method, which is not rocket science at all. But obviously, we we should know by now that I love the word radical. So it’s radical vulnerability, radical empathy, and radical authentic investment. And a think if your marketing department, and obviously that ties into your overall leadership and DNA of the company, is able to embrace these three tenets, right, that not only will you be implementing more trauma informed, strength based practices, but it is like, affecting your bottom line in a very positive way.

Maria Ross 28:03

Walk us through them real quickly, before we wrap. Yeah, what are the three?

Kat Kennan 28:08

Yeah, so on the empathy side, you know, we we really want to make your customers feel seen, right? So it’s just like, again, that really is that pause that we’ve been talking about in terms of vulnerability, that means that as a brand, you’re willing to recognize when you have had a misstep, you’ve made a mistake? Maybe you were that brand that accidentally sent out like the sales buyer. Right? And, and, you know, that’s okay, we all right, but just own it. And really, and I use this word very carefully, authentically, apologize, right. And, you know, in terms of like, you know, authentic investment, you know, there are a lot of brands, and this gets so tight into the marketing department to in terms of cause marketing, or we’re doing a campaign where a percentage of profits or whatever it is, right. But so many of those don’t get tied into the DNA of the brand. It’s, you know, it’s October, so we’re raising money for breast cancer, or or, you know, whatever, you know, month of the year, or it is right. And a think really thinking about where is your community, whether that’s consumers, whether that’s your employees, is really like authentically investing in your neighborhood, essentially, right? Where your headquarters like, you know, who are people in your community? Are you training the next generation of workers doing that versus like, you know, setting up a park bench or cleaning like, you know, cleaning a few blocks, you know, on a on a volunteer day. So I think so much of the This gets tied into marketing, even if it doesn’t seem like marketing at first glance, because let’s be honest, marketing is everything. And everything is marketing.

Maria Ross 30:10

So on that, before we wrap, I do want to share that you have a special offer for listeners. It’s called the canceled culture checkup. Tell us about that. And what do people listening need to do to get a hold of that?

Kat Kennan 30:22

Little special? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we have this software product. Now. It’s a tiered subscription, like many SaaS products. But it really measures brand sensitivity. So the end result is a brand sensitivity score. Yeah, so it really is measuring brand sensitivity against these three tenets that we were just speaking about. And just in terms of overall Kancil culture, right, we talked earlier about, you know, businesses, and executives are terrified of getting caught, you know, and whatever it is me, you know, maybe they made a campaign decision, and then they reverse the decision, and probably getting more hot water. But this really, you know, by serving their customers, this is like all based on psychology, and I could really, really dive into it, if I have the chance. But it really shows you by looking at these tenants, like, how can you overcome that? How can you be proactive? What do you need to be looking for? Maybe there’s a company that’s doing like, really well above average on vulnerability, they will admit mistakes, but maybe they could do better on authentic investment. And people, you know, their customers are like, Yeah, you know, maybe you can invest in a different way in terms of supporting a nonprofit or what have you.

Maria Ross 31:52

So again, where can folks find this?

Kat Kennan 31:56

Yes, so head on over to my website, radical customer, experience.com. And you will see all of the tiered options there. There’s a quick little video that walks you through the platform. And for listeners, I do have a discount code that gives 30% off for the first three months, and it’s Maria 30. Yay,

Maria Ross 32:20

Maria 30 is your discount code for that. So go to radical customer experience.com. And check that out. Cat, it was a pleasure to talk to you. I’m always excited about new ways to be more responsible as marketers, and still have a profound impact on profitability and success. So thank you for coming on the show today. We’ll have all your links in the show notes, including the link to the website so folks can take advantage of the canceled culture checkup discount offer that you have. But for folks on the go right now, where’s the best place they can reach you contact you find out more about your work? Yeah,

Kat Kennan 32:53

absolutely. Since you all have a website already, head on over to LinkedIn. And I’m Cat Kevin, and most of my stuff is is all there. Awesome. Awesome.

Maria Ross 33:05

Thank you cat again for sharing your insights. today. I’m sure you have given marketers and marketing leaders listening some food for thought. So thank you. Thrilled to be here. 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 and share it with a colleague or a friend. And remember until next time that cashflow, 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 shownotes 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.

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