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Many leaders come to empathy in their style and communication based on their own challenges. Today’s guest shares how vulnerably sharing her story led her down the path of teaching and training on empathy, and how you can boldly leverage vulnerability as an asset in your communication, leading to stronger connections and better results.

Sharon Steed is a keynote speaker, author, and empathy expert specializing in communication and collaboration. As the founder of Communilogue, she helps organizations build more inclusive, connected teams through the power of vulnerability and empathy. A stutterer since childhood, Sharon uses her personal experience to illustrate how embracing discomfort fosters growth. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, tech leaders, and global organizations, delivering impactful talks and workshops. Sharon is also a LinkedIn Learning Instructor with multiple courses on empathy. She hosts a weekly live podcast on LinkedIn and YouTube on empathy in the age of AI called Empathy In Automation. Her work empowers professionals to lead with authenticity and compassion. 

Sharon shares her powerful story and discusses how to be vulnerable and communicate with empathy in productive ways—ways that influence and ignite your team, customers, and other stakeholders. We also had an interesting discussion about the intersection of empathy and AI and how to keep humanity in a tech-driven world.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

• Why curiosity is an empathetic power.
• What it means to communicate with empathy and how to overcome communication barriers.
• The power of setting your conversational intentions out loud.
• The importance of empathy in the age of AI. 

“Everybody swears that they are terrible at communicating. And (I say), well, no, every single time you enter a room, you are communicating.” —  Sharon Steed

Episode References: 

• The Empathy Edge podcast episodes:
  • Dr. Michelle Zhou: Empathic AI is Real and It’s Here – But We Need Everyone Involved!
  • Chris L. Johnson: When Leaders Pause, They Win

About Sharon Steed, Speaker and Founder, Communilogue:

Sharon Steed is a keynote speaker, author, and empathy expert specializing in communication and collaboration. As the founder of Communilogue, she helps organizations build more inclusive, connected teams through the power of vulnerability and empathy. A stutterer since childhood, Sharon uses her personal experience to illustrate how embracing discomfort fosters growth. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, tech leaders, and global organizations, delivering impactful talks and workshops. Sharon is also a LinkedIn Learning instructor, with courses on Communicating with Empathy and Driving Inclusion with Empathy; she hosts a weekly live podcast on LinkedIn and YouTube on empathy in the age of AI called Empathy In Automation. Her work empowers professionals to lead with authenticity and compassion. 

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Connect with Sharon:

Communilogue: communilogue.co

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sharon-steed

LinkedIn Learning Course: Communicating With Empathy

YouTube: Empathy in Automation

LinkedIn Newsletter: linkedin.com/newsletters/7107818443042656256/

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Many leaders come to empathy in their style and communication based on their own challenges. Today’s guest shares how her vulnerably sharing her story led her down the path of teaching and training on empathy and how you can boldly leverage vulnerability as an asset in your communication, leading to stronger connections and better results. I’ve been wanting to get today’s guest on the podcast for a while. Sharon steed is a keynote speaker, author and empathy expert, specializing in communication and collaboration. As the founder of communi log, she helps organizations build more inclusive, connected teams through the power of vulnerability and empathy. A stutterer since childhood, Sharon uses her personal experience to illustrate how embracing discomfort fosters growth. She’s worked with Fortune 500 companies, tech leaders and global organizations delivering impactful talks and workshops. Sharon’s also a LinkedIn learning instructor like me, with courses on communicating with empathy and driving inclusion with empathy. She hosts a weekly live podcast on LinkedIn and YouTube on empathy in the age of AI called empathy in automation. And her work empowers professionals to lead with authenticity and compassion. Today, Sharon shares her powerful story and talks about how to be vulnerable and communicate with empathy in productive ways, ways that influence and ignite your team, customers and other stakeholders. We also have an interesting discussion about the intersection of empathy and AI and how to keep humanity in a tech driven world, a great conversation. I am so excited to present to you today. Take a listen. Welcome Sharon steed to the empathy edge podcast. This has been such a long time in the planning to have a conversation with you about your wonderful work, empathy and communication, empathy in the age of AI, all of this great stuff. So welcome to the show.

Sharon Steed  02:52

Yeah, I am so happy to be here and have this conversation today. I

Maria Ross  02:56

know. I know, and I don’t even know how we originally got connected. I think it was through a conference or something that we were both on years ago, maybe a virtual conference? Yeah? Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That makes sense. I know it’s like that sounds right. How we’re connecting with people, and meeting with people is so different than it was like a decade ago. So so tell us a little bit about your story before we kick off into this topic of vulnerability and empathy and communication and empathy in the age of AI, before we go there, what got you into the empathy world?

Sharon Steed  03:28

So I have a little bit of an unusual background. I’m a person who stutters, and I had sort of come to this point in my life when I was so afraid of just like talking to people like that, I was beginning to, like avoid conversations entirely, right? And so I had gone through like, all of my youth and all of schooling and college, and I was able to sort of just skate by on, like avoiding some conversations and like only, like including myself in things where I felt more comfortable and confident speaking. But then, you know, you graduate from college, and then you get out into the workforce, and all of a sudden, you know, I have to be able to, you know, confidently speak about all of the things that I’m capable of and the things that I want to do and to accomplish. Well, I was so intimidated, like, by this whole idea of just like, having to talk to people, that I was sort of avoiding a lot of situations where I was going to have to talk to people, right? And so I remember, like, attempting to go to like events, to, you know, connect with people, to network. And I would just be so terrified that, like, I would be, like, in the corner and like, I’m not going to. Able to say my name and like stuff, and so, yeah, I was talking to a speech therapist like that I was seeing at the time, and she suggested that I try public speaking. So I said, Yeah, okay, cool.

Maria Ross  05:16

Well, I was like, did you really say yeah, okay, cool.

Sharon Steed  05:20

But yeah, I was like, we’re, you are completely bananas. There’s no way I can do this. I’ve avoided having to do this my entire life. And you want me to get in front of a room full of people and talk like you’re what? No, absolutely not. But then, you know, it sort of like came around to this whole like, idea of like, okay, like, if I am afraid of something, I think the only way that I’m going to be able to really, like, conquer this fear is if I just pace it in the most, you know, over the top way possible, right? So I thought, like, I’m just going to give one or two talks, and I’ll be cured, and I’ll never be afraid that, obviously, is not what happened, right? However, what did happen was a lot of people began to really come up to me and say, hey, you know, I really appreciate you talking about vulnerability and empathy. And I thought that was really interesting, because, like, I don’t even think I said the word empathy in my talks, but I think it just came through. And so after hearing that several times, I decided to just explore this concept and really research this topic, and sort of create content around insecurity and vulnerability, and like how those things can help us be better connectors, and how they can help us to be a little bit more understanding, a little Bit more empathetic at work specifically,

Maria Ross  07:01

wow. And I’m curious if, like specifically diving into empathy. And the answer can be No, I’m just curious, is it because you felt sometimes that people weren’t being empathetic with you, or even just seeing people not be empathetic with anyone who’s different, or anyone who might have an issue? Like, was that part of it of diving deeper into empathy, or was it did that just come through from the responses that you were getting to what you were talking about? So I

Sharon Steed  07:29

think it was twofold, right? Yes, like it came from what a lot of people were like coming up to me and saying, but also I am an incredibly sensitive person. Like, I feel things very deeply, and I feel like I’ve always sort of viewed situations and like viewed other people and like how they are going to feel in a specific situation, and I’ve always related it back to like, how it would make me feel. And I think a part of that is like being a person who stutters, I, you know, always like, wanted to talk to people like, but I didn’t want to be like, the center of the conversation, and so I was always asking follow up questions as a way to, like, sort of continue to like be in the conversation, like, but to avoid talking. And so I spent a really long time just being, like, really curious about other people and just like constantly, like trying to find questions that I could like pose to them. And I think that as a result of just like always asking questions, I was able to better see, you know, how like people think, how they like come to the feelings like that they have. And that combined with just being like a very sensitive person, yeah, just really, you know, just lament itself, yeah, you me eventually talking about being empathetic, yeah, yeah.

Maria Ross  09:15

And we both know Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. And so just, and I love that, because you know that concept of, like, when I do this too, where if I don’t want to talk, or I’m feeling like my tank is low, I’ll tend to ask more questions, or if I’m uncomfortable in the situation, because then it gets the other person talking, and the focus is off me, and then they’re like, that was the best conversation I’ve ever had, because they’re talking about themselves the whole time. That’s the trick, right? Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about communicating with empathy. So that is what you train on. That’s what you speak on, is helping people understand how to communicate and get their point across. And you know, like with my work, as you know, with leaders, is helping them still hold people. Accountable. Still have performance expectations, but communicate with empathy so that they can actually accomplish more, and they can actually optimize their people for peak performance. So I would love to hear what your definition of communicating with empathy is, and what do you see as the reasons why some people are unable to communicate with empathy.

Sharon Steed  10:22

Well, so like, off the bat, I feel like every time we are opening our mouths to, like, have a conversation with someone, we are actually, you know, engaging in an act of incredible empathy, and we probably don’t even know, right? Like, if we are in a conversation and there’s, you know, like us and another person, like, just the act of listening to them is supposed to be an incredibly empathetic act, right? And so, you know, when we are listening to people, our goal there is to really just understand where they are coming from and to just hit another perspective, right, like that’s the entire point of listening and like those two things are really foundational communication and empathy principles. And so, you know, I describe communicating with empathy as putting understanding and perspective at the center of every single conversation. And you know, we spend a lot of our lives communicating, right, having conversations, like talking to people, and as a person who spent, you know, her entire life being so concerned about, you know, how I’m communicating, you know, I was really able to sort of focus on, you know, how do we continue to really impress upon teams and companies that when we speak, we should always be coming from a place of, you know, yes, I Want to get my point across however, you know, I want to really understand where you are coming from as well, because it’s going to help us, you know, one, create better products, and two, just be a lot better at collaborating as well.

Maria Ross  12:38

And so, what do you when you’re working with teams or people? What are some of the biggest barriers they have to communicating with empathy?

Sharon Steed  12:44

I think that the biggest thing that I’ve seen, and I constantly hear this, is that people are just very intimidated, like, by this concept of communication. I don’t know if you have seen this as well, like, where everybody swears that they are terrible at communicating. And I’m like, Well, no, every single time you, like, enter a room, you are communicating, right? Yeah,

Maria Ross  13:12

whether you’ve opened your mouth or not, yeah, exactly.

Sharon Steed  13:15

And so I think that, like, I think that a part of the reason, like my talks are so effective is because, like people you know, see that, like I do, have a physical, you know, challenge with communicating. However, I am still articulate, and people can, you know, really connect with, you know, like my content and like the things that I’m trying to get across and so, you know, like I am attempting to show people like that, even if you think you are terrible at communication, you know, you’re not. Because if you are able to, like, go into a conversation, you know, you speak, the other person speaks, and you can come to some sort of positive conclusion where you can both and Co Op, and you know, like, do the things that you have to do as a result of that conversation, then you are a good communicator. And so the biggest you know thing that I have to sort of convince people of is that you are not bad at communicating, right? And then the other challenge is just explaining what empathy you know should be in terms of behaviors, right? Like empathy? Is this really cool concept? However, a lot of people don’t really like completely understand, how can we go into a conversation and focus on being empathetic? And so those are the two things that I really sort of um. And hone in on when I’m giving a talk, right?

Maria Ross  15:05

Yeah. And so when you’re working with it’s funny, because you’re talking about these leaders who don’t think they’re good communicators, and yet, there’s lots of leaders who think they’re great communicators, and they’re not empathetic at all, right? And it’s almost that I always talk about, ego kills empathy because it your self awareness is not there, and you’re not aware of what you’re bringing to the table. You’re not aware of what you’re bringing into the interaction and how it might be impacting somebody else. And it’s only when you’re willing to see how something impacts someone else that you start to change your communication right? For some people, whether it’s modulating your speed or your tone, whether it’s these people need a little bit more direction and guidance and these people need a little bit more. Just give me the bottom line. Tell me what to do, right? That’s actually communicating with empathy. When you adjust and adapt to the person that you’re talking to, it’s not, I always say, it’s not just crying on the floor with your employees. Empathy shows up in these ways that we actually do without thinking sometimes, if we’re interested in effective communication, I should say, right? Oh, yeah for sure. But what about the people who are trying, who are communicating and saying, Well, I and there’s research that bears this out, there’s a lot of executives who go, well, empathy has no place in the workplace, which boggles my mind, because empathy has a place whenever humans are interacting with other humans. But how do you work with clients like that, who are saying, you know, this isn’t the time or place for empathy.

Sharon Steed  16:29

You know what I I always have to begin, like with, how is this going to make you money, right? Like the ROI of empathy? Yes, exactly, right. And so, you know, a thing that, like, I explained to people is that, like, if you are beginning a company, or if you are creating a product, right, you are doing that because, like, there is some sort of cap in the current consumer marketplace like that requires your product to be created, your product or your service. And so you know, when you are creating this product or you are creating this service, you are thinking about, okay, like, what does my ideal customer. Why would they use this product? How are they going to use this product? How can I get this product in front of them? Like, so it can improve your life, right? So you are going to do like, a lot of testing, right? You are going to talk to your customers. You are going to like listen to their stories, and you are going to have conversations around the reasons why you know they are going to use this product, how it’s going to benefit their life and these situations, you know, where specifically they are going to, like, insert that product into their like, day to day experience, all of those things I have described are 100% empathy, right? And so imagine would sort of transpire if you, like, had that same approach on your teams in internally, right, like, if you have a co worker, or if you have a direct report having a hard time, right, like they feel uncomfortable sharing their ideas or or their opinions, or they’re just struggling to really keep up with their teammates. Well, what is their experience on this team, you know, like, in a day to day basis, you know, how are they approaching their work? Like, what steps are they taking? And, you know, why are those steps, you know, like, not effective in, like, either productivity or communication or, like, good collaboration. So, you know, anytime a company comes to me and says, Hey, like, I don’t see why this is important. Well, you know, you, you know, used empathy to create this company in the first place, and you are going to have to have empathy in order to keep your employees in, you know, your company, and to continue to, you know, create, like, good, effective products. And so, yeah. Mean, it really is a, you know, you have to hold up a mirror and say, hey, yeah, why are you here? Okay, all those reasons why you are here are the same reasons why you need to focus on your internal operations as well as your external operations,

Maria Ross  20:21

right, right? Yeah. I mean, I talk a lot with my clients about the business case of empathy and giving them the data and giving them the research that shows how it boosts innovation and engagement and performance and collaboration and then the external benefits of being an edge in the market. You know, the bar is so low when it comes to customer service that when you treat people with empathy, and you’re only able to treat your customers with empathy if your employees are being treated with empathy, otherwise, they’re operating in fear and anxiety and stress, and that’s never going to be a good experience that they’re going to share with your external customers. So I love that it’s about the business case. Yeah. So can you give us a little taste of some of the tips and some of the strategies that you share with your clients around how to communicate with empathy, especially if they’re struggling to tap into their own empathy, if they struggle with connection, if they struggle with you know? And it could be a struggle based on neurodiversity, right? It could be a struggle based on just their own upbringing or where they come from. How do you what are some tips that you give them on how to better communicate with empathy?

Sharon Steed  21:27

Yeah, for sure. You know, I always begin with sort of the foundational things, right and like, the foundation of everything that you know we are going to be doing as people. It begins sort of internally, right?

Maria Ross  21:45

Starts at home. Gotta get your house in order, right?

Sharon Steed  21:48

Absolutely, in order to do that, you you know first are going to have to be incredibly patient, right? And I think that we sort of view conversations especially as like, Okay, I’m coming into this conversation, I’m going to talk and then I’m going to wait for my turn to talk again, and then I’m going to talk again, right, right? And that is the that’s not helping anybody, right? Like, the entire point of communication and having a conversation is to, you know, get perspective on, you know, another person’s experiences or just another person’s opinion, right? And so, like, I like to say, you know, you can make your world larger by making another person’s world better, right? And so you create, you know, a good experience for another person, like by just listening to you know their stories and their vulnerabilities and the the things that you know, like they have experienced. And it’s impossible to do that if we don’t first focus on again, being patient. And so, how do we be patient, right? And so, you know, I have to break these things down in a way, like, where it’s you know, how do we turn these, like, really great concepts into like, yeah, into like, things that you can, you know, physically do right. And so like being patient just kind of comes down to stopping right. Like we live in a world where we are constantly being sort of bombarded with a ton of content all the time, right? There is social media, there are text messages, there’s a 24 hour news cycle. There are tons of things that we are like constantly consuming. And so it can be very difficult to just, like, stop and to give this person in front of you your entire attention, right? And so, yeah, I mean, like, we just focus on, like, okay, like, you know you are going to have to pause, and I know that it’s really hard, but pause and just focus on this person in front of you, and then another thing that I like to talk about in patients is the physical act of listening. You know, we are in these conversations a lot. Of times, if we are listening to another person, you know, we are sort of trying to, you know, hear what they like have to say, so we can sort of pass a little bit of judgment on it, and it isn’t on purpose, right? Just you know when we, you know, are talking to people and like, their words go into our brains. It sort of like, goes through a filter of, like, our own opinion. And so when we are listening people we should be focused on, you know, how do I keep my assumptions and my biases and my opinions as low as possible. And so like that could mean like, Hey, could you repeat what you said? So, like, I can get clarity. Or it could mean like, hey, so I heard you say, you know, like a, b and c, yeah.

Maria Ross  26:20

Yeah. Can I get that right? Reflective, listening is so key, and I love what you’re saying. Like, just to jump in here, I love what you’re saying because it’s this idea. I’m going to put a link in the show notes to another episode that I did with Dr Chris Johnson, where she talked about the power of the pause. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her work, but her work is great, and she talks about both, like physically and mentally, the things you can do to kind of make yourself take the pause like it’s deep breathing. It’s like clarifying what you you know, taking a second to reflect back what you heard before you launch into whatever you think you’re going to launch into. And it’s just that concept of listening to understand and build your own knowledge versus listening to talk to what you’re what you were describing earlier. And I know I, I struggle with it too, right? And I’m, I’m interviewing people all the time, and I’m talking all the time, but it’s amazing when you just get rid of the stuff in your own head and you’re able to say, like, right now, I am going to be present with this person, and I want, and my intention is to hear what they have to say so I can learn something from it, just even, like, out loud, setting that intention for yourself, maybe before you go into a meeting, or before you go into even a contentious conversation. Like, let me take some time to figure out what that other person’s perspective and context is before I go in guns blazing with you know, here’s why I’m right and you’re wrong, and we can just tell ourselves that I know someone who always tells me there’s power in saying it out loud, like it’s almost as a mantra. If you say it out loud and you hear yourself saying, like, I’m going to go into this conversation to understand, not just to talk about my opinion. Just saying that out loud is really powerful, because your ears hear it, and then you’re able to, sort of like, use that as a grounding for yourself. Of this is, you know, or I need to stay present in this conversation, and it’s okay to say it out loud. So, yeah. So, yeah, you know what?

Sharon Steed  28:25

I think that, like, you know, it’s so easy to just, like, go into conversations with this whole like, you know, one I want to get my point across. And, like, I want to make sure that this other person, like, really gets everything that I’m trying to say right and how, but I mean, like, that’s sort of how we view effective communication, is how we speak, how we present, and I think that a part of The reason why a lot of people resonate with this sort of talks that I give is because I sort of, like, turn that on its head, right? Like, I talk about how, like, I spent a lot of time, you know, being so concerned about how I sound and how I feel and how uncomfortable I was, but I really didn’t get to, like, properly and sincerely connect with a lot of people that I was having conversations with. And so, yeah, you know, it is so important to sort of go into these conversations from a, you know, you and me perspective, and not a perspective.

Maria Ross  29:47

I love that. Okay, let’s switch gears a little bit, because I know this has been a hot topic. I’ve been out talking about, you’ve been out talking about, and that is empathy and AI, and I know you have a LinkedIn course. I. Not only do you have a LinkedIn course about, you know, communicating with empathy, but one about empathy in the age of AI, and I’ve waxed poetic on that, but I would love to hear your perspective on the role of empathy in the age of AI. And do we need it? Do we not is it more important? Is it less important? Talk to us about your perspectives on that?

Sharon Steed  30:21

Well, one, it is more important. So like, let’s get back that was

Maria Ross  30:25

a leading question. Yeah,

Sharon Steed  30:28

empathy in this very highly, highly technical age, and I have had a ton of conversations about this with people from a lot of different industries and the over what overwhelming sort of feeling is that, like you know, these technologies, these programs, these softwares, are only going to get better, right? And so you know, a lot of the things that you know we, you know, have had to do in in the past, you know, we aren’t going to have to do those things anymore. And yes, you know, AI is going to take a lot of things away. However, it’s also going to give us a lot more space and a lot more capacity to really connect with other people, you know. And so when I’m having these conversations, I’m always sort of blown away by how, you know, almost every single person is like, no, no. We need to focus on, you know, being human centered in this, you know, tech obsessed world, and, you know, AI is going to give us an incredible opportunity to just focus on, how can we, you know, build stronger, re relationships. How can we get more perspective? How can you know, hear more stories? You know, I think that you know, there is, for sure, a place of poor empathy. Age of AI has everything that you know we are doing, you know, is going to continue to be, you know, done and used and created and scaled by people. So as long as we as people are involved in all of these processes, we’re going to have to really focus on being empathetic. Yeah, I always know what you think about this.

Maria Ross  32:43

Well, yeah. I mean, I love this, because my feeling is, when AI takes over the tasks that many leaders have relied on to keep themselves relevant and busy, all we’re left with is leaders that are really good at their human connection skills. That’s where they’re going to add the most value. And those leaders that have hidden behind the doing and not the leading, and not the people, part of the leading will have nowhere to hide, yeah, because we’re taking away the thing that keeps them, you know, behind their desk and not interacting with their people. And so I, in my view, and maybe, you know, I know it’s a little biased because of the work I do, but that emotional intelligence and that empathy as a skill for a leader is going to be even more important, because that’s the thing it can’t replicate. And if you’ve been hiding behind the doing as a leader and not the being as a leader and the connecting as a leader, you’re going to need to upskill like now.

Sharon Steed  33:40

Oh, yeah, for sure. And then I think that also, you know, this is going to force companies to really, you know, like, put their people first. I was talking to one of my tech friends who is a software developer, and he was saying, like, you know, I don’t want AI to, like, have me be 10x productive. I want AI to give me, like, a four day work week. I want AI to, like, do a lot of the works so, like, I can, like, go home at 5pm right? And take my kids to soccer, right? And so, you know, as we get, like, just, like, incredibly, you know, like, tech obsessed, and, yeah, automating things away. You know, I think that a lot of companies are going to have to figure out, like, okay, like, what is the balance of I want you to be as productive as possible. However you are a person, and like, all of the top talent is like, Look, I know what AI can do, so you’re going to have to give me a little bit more here. Yeah, I can just go to another company, like, that’s going to respect like that. Yeah, you know, I. I know exactly what AI is capable of. I know what I’m capable of, and kind of have to give us a little bit more, right,

Maria Ross  35:07

right? Well, and they, you know, they’re finding that the sweet spot blend of really maximizing AI is AI combined with human intervention. And you’re still going to need domain experts. You’re still going to need people to populate the learning models you’re still going to need. And even when we’re talking, you know, I speak to a lot of founders on the show of empathic AI, or people that are in the field of empathic AI, and you can’t outsource something, you can’t program something that you yourself don’t understand, yeah, and you yourself haven’t mastered. So, you know, it’s about, and I’ll put a link to Michelle zhao’s interview. She’s the founder of Juji, which is a empathic AI solution. And she said, You know, it’s about having those people that can actually populate the technology and populate the learning models, and then there’s always still going to be a need for a human element. It can’t effectively. We’re not going to get all the efficiencies and all the benefits of it by just sort of outsourcing everything we’re not good at to it because it won’t know what to do with that. It’s sort of like outsourcing a process that you haven’t optimized yourself and now you’ve just put something that you’re not good at on somebody else. Yeah, it’s the same thing. So, so we need that ability to build our own capacity for empathy and our own capacity for connection in order to continue to refine and tailor AI to be the partner, the thought partner, the process partner, that we need. But it doesn’t give us an excuse to sort of check out 100% Yeah.

Sharon Steed  36:43

As long as people are at the center of, like, creating these products, which we probably are going to be for a while, at least, I would hope you know, we’re always going to have to, you know, have some capacity for that understanding and that perspective taking in order to continue to create these products, because consumers are people, and they are using your products as well. Absolutely, absolutely.

Maria Ross  37:09

So this has been such a great conversation. Sharon, thank you so much for your insights and for being with us today. I want to remind people that you’ve got your two LinkedIn courses communicating with empathy and the the one about empathy in the age of AI. So people can go check that out. We’ll put links to those in the show notes. We’ll have all your links in the show notes. But for people that are on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about your work, you can definitely

Sharon Steed  37:35

just go head over to my LinkedIn. It’s just my name, I feel like I’m probably the first one that’s going to come to come in the search, yeah, yeah. And so yeah, I have a newsletter on there that I update one to two times a month, depending on how things are going. Yeah. On vulnerability in the workplace, and then I also do a LinkedIn live on empathy in automation, where we Wow talk about empathy in this very like tech Hocus worlds, and I usually do that three times a month. So yeah, all of that information is on there. Wonderful. Yeah, I would love to connect with all of the people and meet you. I

Maria Ross  38:33

love it. And as I always do with my PSAs is, if you connect with Sharon on LinkedIn, make sure you put a note that says you heard her on the podcast so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Sharon, thank you so much for your time and for the work that you’re doing in the world. We so appreciate you.

Sharon Steed  38:49

Oh, thank you. I had an incredible time, and I loved our conversation.

Maria Ross  38:56

And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

In today’s Hot Take, Maria talks about gratitude as a practice and catalyst for empathy, collaboration, and well-being.

Listen in as Maria discusses gratitude as a leadership superpower, mental health booster, and cultural glue. She dives into what true gratitude means, why we should be expanding our circles of thanks, and gives us the science behind the strategy of gratitude with practical tips for your own life. Throughout, Maria acknowledges the complex history of Thanksgiving, emphasizing the importance of holding space for both its positive and negative aspects to deepen both our gratitude and our empathy.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

• Gratitude is the cultural glue to keep your team happy and thriving.
• Recognizing the Thanksgiving paradox and inviting both sides of the conversation.
• The science behind gratitude and how you can start practicing gratitude today to improve performance and well-being.

“Gratitude doesn’t mean ignoring problems — it means facing them with perspective. It’s emotional range training, and emotional range is leadership power.” —  Maria Ross

Episode References: 

The Empathy Edge Podcast Episodes:

• Logan Mallory: How a Culture of Gratitude Boosts Engagement and Mental Health
• November Hot Take: How Gratitude Leads to Empathy

Studies and Data:

• NIH National Library of Medicine:
  • The Effects of Gratitude Interventions
  • Gratitude in Organizations: A Contribution for Healthy Organizational Contexts
• Harvard Health, Giving Thanks Can Make You Happier
• Dr. Michelle Rozen: Gratitude in Leadership: A Strategic Advantage
• Learned Optimism: Is Martin Seligman’s Glass Half Full?

Keynote Speakers and Conference Trainers: Get your free Talkadot trial and enjoy this game-changer for your speaking business! www.share.talkadot.com/mariaross 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross  00:00

Maria. Hello friends. It’s Maria here for another hot take, episode of the empathy edge, and I am inviting you today to pull up a chair, pour a cup of something warm, or you can grab a fork, because, let’s be honest, this time of year, pie counts as breakfast, and let’s talk about gratitude, the kind that lands somewhere between the rustic, weird cornucopia of thanksgiving and the deeper, tougher truth beneath the tablecloth, if you’re in the US Happy Thanksgiving in advance, and if you’re elsewhere or not into the holiday hype, think of this as a gratitude season moment, because the practice transcends any one day on the calendar and on today’s episode, I wanted to dig into gratitude as a practice, as a leadership superpower, as a mental health booster, and also a Cultural glue that keeps our teams connected and thriving, because empathy Without gratitude, that’s like gravy without mashed potatoes. It might look fine, but something vital is missing. So before we dig in, let’s honor both sides of this complicated holiday. The truth is, the roots of Thanksgiving reveal deep harm and a lack of empathy toward indigenous peoples and the holidays. Mythology glosses over centuries of displacement and pain now remembering that doesn’t diminish gratitude. It deepens. It. Empathy means being able to hold the whole story the light and the shadow, so we can do better. Moving forward, remember both and and by the way, I’ll put a link to my episode from last year that talked a little bit more about this. So let’s talk first about the Thanksgiving paradox. Thanksgiving, on the one hand, it’s about pause, connection, reflection, and on the other it’s layered with that complicated history, and that’s okay, because, as I said, as empathetic leaders, we can hold that tension. We can say I’m thankful, while also saying I understand the harm this day represents true gratitude. Isn’t performative. It’s conscious. It’s informed. It invites awareness of privilege, of history, of community. So this season when you give thanks, maybe expand the circle. Be grateful for what you have, and mindful of who might have been left out of the story that’s both and Leadership in Action, honoring tradition while seeking truth. Now, you know, I love my data. Gratitude isn’t just a fluffy sentiment, it’s science backed strategy. Here’s a bit of that. Number one, it leads to happiness and well being. Research from Harvard shows gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. It helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences and build strong relationships. Two, it impacts for the good our mental and physical health. Studies show gratitude improves sleep quality, mood and immune function. Third, it has workplace impact. A culture of gratitude boosts trust, learning and collaboration, teams become more innovative and adaptive. And finally, gratitude helps with retention and performance, according to leadership expert, Dr Michelle Rosen, leaders who practice gratitude see higher team performance and retention, because people don’t just stay for paychecks. They stay where they feel appreciated, right? By the way, I’m going to have all these links in the show notes so you can dig into this data. And also, if you want more on this, you can check out my past episode with motivosity, we talked about how recognition and gratitude move company culture from check the box to truly human. That conversation is a great deep dive on how gratitude fuels motivation and connection at work. I’ll link that in the show notes as well, because it’s worth a listen this week. So okay, you get it right. Gratitude works. You’re on board. But how do we actually practice it beyond just saying thank you, right? It’s kind of like the book, Good night. Moon, you know? Thank you stars. Thank you sun, thank you car. That’s running right. Today. I used to read that book to my kid all the time when he was growing up. Anyway, how do we actually practice it, especially when our inboxes are imploding and maybe the cranberry sauce isn’t setting right? Who knows right? How do we practice gratitude? I know I need more of this, by the way, because I am a short fuse at times, and I really need to take a breath and. Practice gratitude. So here are some tips I found, and I need to practice what I preach. So I’m sharing them with you, and I invite you to practice them with me. Number one is to start small and daily, write down one thing you’re grateful for each morning, practicing gratitude, according to positive psychology, founder Martin Seligman rewires your brain for optimism and balance, and who doesn’t need more of that, especially this time of year. Second, be specific and authentic instead of thanks team for the great work. Try. I noticed how you stayed late to help with that client issue, and that mattered, that specificity, that clarity tells people they’re seen. Number three, build it into your systems and rituals. Kick off meetings with a quick gratitude round. Create a shout out Slack channel. Make it normal, not novel. Fourth model, it publicly. Some studies find that gratitude expressed by leaders, foster psychological safety and innovation. When you go first, others will follow and finally, use gratitude as emotional regulation. So when stress spikes or imposter syndrome whispers, ask yourself, what’s going well right now? That question grounds you in abundance instead of scarcity. I want to be really clear here, gratitude is not Pollyanna. It doesn’t mean ignoring problems. It means facing them with perspective. It’s emotional range. Training and emotional range is leadership power. Now here’s the connection. Gratitude expands empathy. This is what I talked about in my episode last year that I’m going to link for you. It softens judgment, it widens perspective, and it deepens connection. When you say I’m grateful for you, you’re not just being polite. You’re acknowledging humanity, which, of course, is the essence of empathy. Teams that feel appreciated become more generous with each other, more willing to collaborate, more invested in outcomes, because people feel seen. In my framework of five pillars that I presented in the empathy dilemma book, gratitude strengthens multiple pillars, self awareness, self care and joy, especially, it’s how we refill our tanks and extend empathy sustainably. Let’s be real. The world isn’t exactly thriving right now. There’s exhaustion, fear, polarization, disconnection. I feel it, you feel it. It’s everywhere. If we want a better world, we have to be better humans in our own spheres of influence. Gratitude helps us start there, with humility, with compassion and with the daily choice to notice what’s good and nurture it. So as I close out

Maria Ross  08:03

this season, and it’s because I won’t be doing a December hot take, I will be still offering you some amazing episodes coming up. I just want to leave you with two things, an invitation and a wish. First, here’s the invitation. I want you to do a gratitude sprint this week, here’s how I want you to pick one teammate or client or friend, and yes, I want you to do this at work and send them a specific note or email of appreciation. Try to be as clear as possible. Number two, you can keep a three things gratitude journal for seven days, one professional, maybe one personal, and maybe one, you know, tiny joy. I want you to be grateful for three things and start your day there and see how it changes the cadence and the tone of your day. And then finally, if you want accountability and a little fun, share your reflections on LinkedIn or Instagram with the hashtag empathy edge, and then tag me red slice Maria or red slice or Maria Ross. I’d love to celebrate your gratitude stories with you. So here’s the second thing, here’s the wish. I’m deeply grateful for you, and I’m also deeply grateful to you when I can flub my words and you meet me with grace and forgiveness. I’m grateful to you for showing up, for leading differently, for believing that empathy is not a weakness, it’s a winning strategy. You’re proving that success built on humanity lasts longer. And a little bit of a shameless plug, I’d also be so very grateful if you could leave your honest review of the empathy dilemma online at Amazon or Goodreads. Those reviews really matter. So thank you for taking some time in advance, and yes, may your turnkey be juicy your pie. Plentiful, and your family drama minimal, or at least entertaining enough for a good story later. And of course, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving, Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa or just the joy of a quiet Friday night, may your season be full of warmth, connection and presence, because that’s what we’re all craving. So take a nap, take a breath and take a moment to say thank you, because that’s where empathy starts and gratitude. Remember, keep listening. I’m not going away. We have more great guests coming up at you for the rest of this year. One of my favorite episodes, as I mentioned, is coming up in December. Now, I know calling it a favorite episode is like picking your favorite child, but this really was such a good one, and it’s a case study in how you can be profitable and successful by leading with empathy. So again, as for me and my solo hot takes, I’ll see you in the new year, friends, but you can, of course, always get on my email list for monthly musings. Just go to red, Dash slice.com/newsletter, and sign up. Keep choosing empathy, keep leading with heart, and keep building a world that works better because we feel better. Happy Thanksgiving and don’t forget to pass the pie. Take care and until next time, remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.

What does it take to leave a high-powered career and change the world, one child at a time? And how can empathy fuel ripple effects of change, no matter your role in a company or society?

Dr. Abraham George is a social entrepreneur with a unique background. He shares his powerful journey and the life-changing moment when he almost died. Dr. George shares the blueprint for how any leader or entrepreneur can create real change and move beyond existing for-profit models, and the compounding power of helping or inspiring just 100 people who, in turn, help 100 more. We discuss lessons on how to build your leadership legacy, no matter where you sit.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

• The role education plays in lifting up economic equity and social justice
• Understanding the impact you want to have on other people’s lives.
• Different ways you can do good in the world and how you can have a bigger impact than you know now.
• Creating the leadership legacy you want to leave behind.
• The benefits of leading a corporation with a heart.

“The way to deal with social injustice is through economic opportunity for those people, and the way to get economic opportunity is through excellent education.” —  Dr. Abraham George

Episode References: 

• Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought
• Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy
• The Empathy Edge: Woodson Martin: Balancing Corporate Success with Humanitarian Work

About Dr. Abraham George

Abraham George is a social entrepreneur committed to providing opportunities and resources to the most underserved populations in India. Growing up in India, Dr. Abraham was painfully aware of the social injustices surrounding him. After working 22 years as a finance executive and Army veteran, Dr. Abraham returned to India to fulfill his promise of creating social change. He founded The George Foundation through which he runs several projects. 

One such project is Shanti Bhavan, a school educating children from India’s poorest communities. Over the past 27 years, they have transformed the lives of over 15,000 people. By empowering marginalized children, they create opportunities to break the cycle of poverty. 

The 2017 Netflix documentary Daughters of Destiny centers on Shanti Bhavan’s efforts to educate and empower girls.

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Connect with Dr. Abraham George:

Dr. Abraham George Foundation: drabrahamgeorge.com

Shanti Bhavan: shantibhavanchildren.org 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/abraham-george-519315274 

Facebook: facebook.com/dr.abrahamgeorge?mibextid=LQQJ4d 

Instagram: instagram.com/dr_abraham_george?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross  00:04

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. What does it take to leave a high powered career and change the world one child at a time? And how can empathy fuel ripple effects of change, no matter your role in a company or society today, I’m joined by Dr Abraham George a social entrepreneur with a unique background growing up in India, Dr George was painfully aware of the social injustices surrounding him. After working 22 years as a finance executive and Army veteran, he eventually returned to India to fulfill his promise of creating social change. He founded the George Foundation and the remarkable Shanti Bhavan school, which empowers children from India’s poorest communities to break the cycle of poverty through education, featured in the Netflix documentary Daughters of destiny, Dr George shares how empathy fueled a mission that has transformed more than 15,000 lives, and how you too, can make a bigger impact than you think. And he also has a book coming out by the end of 2025 called mountains to cross today. Dr George shares his powerful journey and the life changing moment when he almost died. He shares the blueprint for how any leader or entrepreneur can create real change and move beyond just existing for profit and the compounding power of helping or inspiring just 100 people who help 100 more lessons on how to build your leadership legacy, no matter where you sit, such an inspiring story to help you do Good while still doing well. Take a listen. I’m delighted to welcome Dr Abraham George to the empathy edge podcast. Dr George, welcome. I am so excited for you to share your story and your important work and helping our listeners understand that they can create a ripple effect of impact and change no matter where they sit within their organizations. So welcome

Dr. Abraham George  02:42

to the show. Thank you, Maria. I look forward to our conversation, and

Maria Ross  02:47

so let’s just kick off. First, you have such an interesting story. So tell us your story. You know, your journey from Army officer to finance executive to now a social entrepreneur. Tell us a little bit about that story and what got you to the work that you’re doing now, where what’s the driving mission and passion behind

Dr. Abraham George  03:07

it? All right? I was born in Southern India by this ocean, actually, but at the age of 14, I went on to get trained as an officer in the Indian military, and after four years of training, I was sent to the Himalayan border with China. That was my first posting at an altitude, altitude of 14,000 feet. That was the highest battleground in the world at that time, wow, the Chinese had invaded India through that mountain pass called sailor. Well there, my job was to set up the defensive position dig bunkers and gun position. I was an artillery officer, and the 11th month of my stay there i i met with an accident. I was blown up in a dynamite blast. Oh, my I was almost killed. If I was late by a fraction of a second, the blast would have killed me. I had turned around and I asked myself the question, Why was I spared? That was the trigger. But then there were a couple of other things that happened during that time, I was sitting alone, you know, leading my men to do the job, and I would climb small hills up there and sit on top and the clouds below me. And it’s very exciting to be on the top of the roof of the world. And I had long time to contemplate on what was life all about for me, and I began to question whether I want to spend the rest of my life in a profession, noble as it is, we all somebody has to do that job, but you know, still I’m being trained to kill someone else, and I was not sure that was my. Calling. But anyway, I read two books. And you know, your listeners might be interested in those books, one by Albert Schweitzer, actually his autobiography, then biographies by others. Albert Schweitzer, he won the Nobel Prize. He German who traveled to equatorial Africa and establish a hospital live with the animals and the tribals. I found it fascinating at the age of 18, absolutely a wonderful way to live. And the other one was by the great philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Is called a modern philosopher, but he died some 50 years ago. He in his book called History of Western philosophy, he wrote a line which caught me, and that was, there is nothing right about war. It is about who is left. Oh, that was something, and I took that to heart and decided at some point I’ll leave the military and get educated properly and start on something that would let me make some money so that I can do something good. So within a couple of years, I was able to leave for the United States. I did a couple of masters and a PhD from NYU Stern School of Business, and then I worked another two years for JP Morgan and I left to start my own company for the next 20 years, plus I had my own business started from the basement of my apartment, went on to become the market leader in the US and in Europe too, in my narrow field, which was corporate international finance, the corporate treasury area. And my whole goal during that time was, of course, around create a great company and do well and be a leader. But beyond that, I wanted to make enough money to do my passion, which was service, yeah, and I had, by then, decided that I leave my career and go somewhere like Albert Schweitzer did. That’s why I’m in this remote place, and start from the beginning, right?

Maria Ross  07:42

And what caused you to choose, you know, let first, let’s tell people a little bit about the main initiative that you work on, the school Shanti. Tell us a little bit about that and what the mission of that is,

Dr. Abraham George  07:55

right, growing up, I had observed in the villages of India, very severe poverty. Don’t forget, this is like 50 years ago, India had just become independent and famine, and you know, was rampant. In fact, America was helping India feed India Indian population with wheat and milk powder and things like that anyway, wanted to find a solution to at least reducing the poverty on a small scale. And during my doctoral work in NYU, I was focusing on various ways of doing it. You know, those days, the emphasis was on foreign aid, whether it is bilateral or IMF and so on, and handouts, essentially to countries that are struggling to come up and the other, other thing that bothered me tremendously was discrimination based on social status. In India, you probably heard of the caste discrimination some people, not a few, 300 million people today, they fall into a category called Dalits. They’re formerly called The Untouchables. And another five, 600 million people are called lower caste, and they are. They don’t have the financial means to get proper education. They don’t have they are not treated well in their villages and so on. So their children don’t get educated well. They go back to the same hearts with the kind of incomes they earn. And this has been going going on for 1500 years, and I wanted to find a way to again contribute to reducing social injustice. And I came to the conclusion this. Is actually, I give a lot of credit to NYU for making me understand that the way to dealing with social injustice is through economic opportunity for those people, and the way to get economic opportunity was through excellent education. So for me, handouts and foreign aid were not the solutions. It’s excellent education for the poorest of the poor that they can go on to have good jobs and bring up their families, and then they will go on to better living conditions, and the social injustice will disappear,

Maria Ross  10:39

of course. So that’s the work now. Is the school.

Dr. Abraham George  10:43

That is the work I’m doing. I take children from the poorest of the

Maria Ross  10:46

poor, right? That helps break the cycle of poverty. Your story is just fascinating, I mean, and I really connect with this desire to make money in order to do good. That is very much my driver in why I try to make my work and my business successful, not just so I can have more, but so that I can give more to organizations and people and groups that are on the front lines, doing the work and making things happen. And I have, you know, I have friends of mine who are very socially conscious, and we talk a lot about the fact that not everyone is built to be on the front line, but all of us can play a role in helping those and empowering those to do those people to do the work that they need to do. I want to talk about your ability. You’ve been in finance, you’ve been in sort of the white collar world, and you’re taking a lot of what, not only what you earned, but what you learned in those spaces to social entrepreneurship. And I just want to mention for listeners here, I’m going to put a link to a past episode with Woodson Martin, where he talked about being able to be a philanthropist while you are still, you know, earning a good, comfortable living. So I’m going to put a link to that in the show notes for folks, because that was another interesting story of someone, you know, doing really well financially and career wise, but using that to give back and then bringing others along. So I want to talk about, you know, a blueprint. You know, you’ve sort of developed a blueprint for leaders to create change. How can entrepreneurs or leaders or anybody really take action to create that positive impact in their communities? What are some of what are some of the guide posts that you have in the blueprint that you’ve developed that you can share with our listeners today? Right?

Dr. Abraham George  12:38

You know those who are working for companies or who own companies, they have some power to help the communities they serve. If you are in a town or somewhere in United States, the communities around there, your employees, where they come from. And you can certainly do something good, whether it’s improving at the schools, they have any number of things. And if you have overseas subsidiaries in various countries, especially poor countries, those subsidiaries are making money there, they should extend themselves to doing the same thing. So that sense for larger companies, multinational companies, it’s a global contribution. And nowadays they call it the CSR, or corporate social responsibility CSR programs. And in a country like India, the government requires that every company sets aside 2% of its profits to non governmental organizations like mine, they have to distribute that money to 1000s of them, so we get a small part of the pie, but at least there is something going to NGOs who are dying to try to do social work, because companies are not equipped to enter into the social arena directly. They have to use someone agent like us to do the work, but they can monetarily contribute, right? So that is one way, if you are an employee or an owner, you can do that. The other is, of course, your own money. We all, you know, be start businesses, so we make money. And one has to ask at that point, how much money is enough for a good living? Your purpose in life cannot be making more money all the time. That’s not a purpose. You have to find something meaningful to do to impact other people’s lives. And that’s what I discovered in my early childhood, that I should devote my life to improving the people who are suffering. People don’t have the opportunity, and people. Would you know, make there will find my help valuable. So, so I would urge anyone who is doing financially well to consider making a contribution to social

Maria Ross  15:18

good. Yeah, absolutely. Amen. I’m curious. Would you describe yourself as naturally empathetic? Do you think you’ve always been that way, or do you think that’s something you develop as you got more education and got more exposure? I’m just curious.

Dr. Abraham George  15:33

Yeah, I would. When I look back, I was fairly, fairly empathetic by my mother, especially my father, too, but my mother also always cultivated that in us. I remember somebody came and said he can’t read well, he can’t read anything because he doesn’t have glasses. And I had hardly anything. I was hardly 14. I somehow gathered up the pennies I had and gave him that money. So it went back very early. But you know the thing about empathy, and you know, doing good, see, the first level of emotion I find is sympathy for someone. You feel bad about somebody’s situation, then you have empathy in which you want to do something. Then you have compassion that you really get into that person’s shoes, and you really plan out something. But all those things are fine, but until you act on it, right? Compassion and action, you haven’t done anything

Maria Ross  16:42

for the other Exactly. Yeah, yeah. From my work, what

Dr. Abraham George  16:45

I would urge individuals to think about how they can help others by their actions, not by words.

Maria Ross  16:55

For 100% in my work and research, actually, sympathy and empathy are two different things. Empathy is really just about understanding someone’s context and understanding their perspective. But to your point, you can practice that, but until that information gives you a next right step to take an action, to take that action that you take is compassion. Compassion is empathy and action. So I love what you’re saying about it’s not just enough. You know, that’s we talk about this on the show all the time. It’s not just enough to cultivate it and practice it, although that is very important. But then, what are you going to do with that information that you’re getting about someone’s context and about their point of view? And it doesn’t have to be, you know, an action where you’re doing whatever they want, it’s just about your now, your next step is informed by what that person might be thinking or going through. So I love that, and I love that you’re able to recognize that that hit you at a young age. But the you know, the good news is we can strengthen that muscle as adults as well, right?

Dr. Abraham George  18:00

You know, I just want to say one more thing about this. You know, some people don’t have the opportunity, or are not willing to leave their corporate jobs and get involved, and the best they can do is to associate themselves with people like us who are doing some work, provide guidance, provide monetary help, and participate in, you know, some events to encourage us, to motivate us. All those things matter. It is not essentially that they have to quit jobs like I did, yeah, do crazy things, you know. So that’s important for people to know. There are so many different ways they can do good to the world, exactly.

Maria Ross  18:50

So let’s talk about that is this idea of why you can have a bigger impact than you think. I talk a lot about the ripple effect, and your ability to impact your sphere of influence, wherever you are within the organization, you talk about the compounding effect of helping 100 people who help 100 other people. Can you talk to us about your work and your from your vantage point of how you get that ripple effect started? Right?

Dr. Abraham George  19:17

I call it the multiplier effect, the same word as ripple. What we are doing is taking children from the poorest to the poor and giving them world class education and very good upbringing. I just want to add on something the effect of what we are done in the last 30 years, since we found it the kids are studying in places like Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Dartmouth, University of Chicago, Stanford, in America, in addition to great institutions in India. So the first point I want to make is you can bring up children from the poorest of the poor, and they have the. Inner potential to succeed. Now, one of the things we teach them while they’re growing up said, Listen, you came to me or came into my hands at the age of four. You have been with me around the year. You know, they go for vacation for two months and one month during the media. Okay, so they’re going to school full time, full year. Nine months I have them captive. 24 hours, you know. So there’s so many. Just before this meeting, I was with a bunch of 12th graders talking about, you know, various things they should cultivate. But anyway, one of the things I emphasize to them, you are beneficiaries of someone else’s generosity. You received the help that I was able to seek from donors in the United States or India anywhere, and they made it possible, apart from the money that I had originally given today, I had to reach out to others to help me, and you are beneficiaries of that, and you have a moral and ethical obligation you do the same for others. And so I given them this 100 rule that you mentioned, that is, in your lifetime, you should help 100 others. That’s not a very large number. You know, someone lot of wealth can help a million people for that matter, yeah. And they, in turn, you know, do the same thing for the next 100 and before, you know, one kid has impacted 1000s of people, and for a company or someone working in the corporation, if you can create that ripple effect, as you call it, and change society, that’s a tremendous contribution by the organization, the company itself, and the individual who is making it happen. Yeah. So I would urge everyone to look at ways where you can achieve that in my area, which is education, I feel education is the key to many things. You can feed somebody a meal or, you know, things like that, but they will disappear if you buy clothes for them, sure they will wear good clothes for a few days, but that will disappear. But education, you can’t take it away. And so the quality education and also proper upbringing, they have to learn to fit into the society at large. And so those are the two ingredients upbringing, and that’s what we do in every family. We bring up our kids well and educate them. You have to do the same thing for others. So that’s what I do.

Maria Ross  22:50

Yeah, and I love this on so many levels, because I talk a lot about the exponential impact that leaders have. So even if you’re a leader within a team and you’ve only got five people on your team. Think about those five people and their families and their communities, and then the people they’re going to lead in the future. That’s the example. That’s the leadership legacy that you leave behind. And so you know, if you want to be an awful leader, just because you think that’s the way to get things done. Not only the mental toll you’re taking on people, but the model you’re creating for them has a negative ripple effect on their own. You know, when they leave work and they take that home with them, or they take that back to their communities, or someday, when they’re in charge and they are leading a team of five people or 10 people or 20 people, your ability to leave a legacy as a leader of what is my best, most, highest purpose in how I can lead this team, and how I can lead it with care and compassion, but also still deliver results. Drive results. I can do both and create that model for them, so that they see what’s possible. And I love the work you do in education, the ripple effect it has. Let’s just talk about that for a second, because I want people to understand, you know, I spoke with you that I do a lot about making the business case for empathy. There is a business case to be made for investing in education, right? So talk to us a little bit about downstream what. How does that impact all of us when we you know, even if we’re not in that socio economic space, when we take the time and invest the resources in quality education, what does that do for society at large? What does that do for the economy, for the culture, right?

Dr. Abraham George  24:44

You know, there are companies who help us in India, big names the Morgan Stanley, JP, Morgan Ernst and Young Exxon Mobil. And what they are looking for is to help. An organization like us that’s educating and turning out good, well qualified young people they can hire, right? And so they’re very interested in hiring our kids. So right away, they benefit from the money they put in. They get good employees. Then I think they also want their staff to see the importance of doing something humane. You know, we can’t be all about money and productivity and new innovation products and so on. There has to be a heart in some of these things. And it is nice to see that employees themselves, they are involved in the welfare of someone else’s kids. How well they do. So I think a cooperation with the heart is better than it’s a corporation that is stone like you know, I think there is something they benefit by having a culture of being helpful to others, right? And I would urge company managers, you know, to consider that as a proposition of the idea of helping others, helping your own employees character. And then, of course, you are impacting society if you have producing more productive rather than just, you know, struggling in the village and so on. And now these young kids go to MIT or Harvard and come back, they are very productive citizens, right? And they can transform, in my opinion, I have started second Chandi bhava, you know, not too far from here. I had originally thought I will start 100 Chandi bonds, and I was very foolish to think that was possible. But others would join and create 100 Chandi one the country would be very different, right? You could have the ripple effect that you talked about, and now you will see millions of people, well educated, highly productive, turning out I’m working for these great companies, right, and being impacting society. So this is all just not pipe dreams. These are things that can be achieved. Yeah, we all put our heart together. Well.

Maria Ross  27:26

When we raise the standard of living, we raise the GDP, we raise all of these things. When we have an educator, citizen, they’re consumers, but they’re also creators, and that actually raises the level of the standard of living and the economy for everybody, everybody gets lifted up. So I really feel that empathy is the fuel and the catalyst for that kind of work. When we open our eyes and realize we’re not the only people in the room, we’re not the only people in the world, and how can we empower and not provide because that’s not what we’re talking about here, but empower and ignite other people so that you know, what is it they say the rising tide lifts all boats.

Dr. Abraham George  28:08

Right, right, right. I love that.

Maria Ross  28:12

Well. Dr George, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your work and your philosophy and really giving us a call to action to bring more care and compassion and heart, as you said, into even our most corporate environments, even into the work that we do, no matter what field we’re in, no matter what industry we’re in, that we have that ability to impact change. So I will have all your links in the show notes, and folks can find out more about your foundation and all about Shanti Bhavan as well and the school. But for anyone who’s on the go right now, where’s the best place they can learn more about you and your work,

Dr. Abraham George  28:51

the easiest way is to in Google, type my name, Abraham, George Abraham, you know again, remember Abraham Lincoln and George Washington? Right? That’s great. And you run into several links. Run into Shanti Vaughn, so I don’t need to give any websites or

Maria Ross  29:11

anything perfect, yes, and the website is dr, dr Abraham, George com, so you can get all the places from there. Dr, George. Thank you so much for your time and your insight.

Dr. Abraham George  29:22

Thank you. I just want to say that what you’re doing is amazingly great, because what you are doing is pointing out something beyond productivity and creative innovation and so on, and AI and other things you are talking about humanity and human conduct, and I admire you for what you do. Thank you so much.

Maria Ross  29:46

Thank you, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review or share with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow. Creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

We’ve got work to do! Yes, we do. And it will likely not stop. So, WHY should you make time for joy, even in the toughest work environments? Why should you even do it when we have spreadsheets, deadlines, and goals to hit?

The better question is: How can you NOT find the time? It’s the 5th pillar of being both an empathetic AND effective leader. And it’s not a luxury. It’s a vital way to build team culture, engagement, and reduce stress and anxiety when you can.

But HOW do you do it?

Today, I get the joy of talking about joy with Lisa Even. Lisa shares her transformative leadership story and how she infused joy into her own life and at work to build a winning culture, and how she helps leaders do the same. Lisa shares many examples and stories, and we discuss informal power, trying on others’ glasses, and how to check in with your team and start infusing joy in small ways that make a big difference.  Lisa shares the 3 ingredients necessary to create a joyful culture: desire, belief, and permission. We talk about how to encourage accountability and impact while creating joy, and Lisa shares a fantastic way to avoid “forced fun” with your most skeptical, cranky employees! 

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

• How to sneak joy in before, during, and after everything you do.
• Small steps to inject joy into your life and work.
• The power of taking accountability for crappy to happy. 
• Why you should be finding connection through other people’s joy.

“Make a list of the most unglamorous things, the things that just drive you bonkers. It’s your job to find a little happy after the crappy.” — Lisa Even

Keynote Speakers and Conference Trainers: Get your free Talkadot trial and enjoy this game-changer for your speaking business! www.share.talkadot.com/mariaross 

About Lisa Event, Keynote Speaker

Lisa Even believes that you happen to the world, not the other way around. Life isn’t about checking boxes—it’s about showing up, creating connections, making an impact (Have Good Ripple Effect), and making joy your job. From serving farmers and truckers at a small café in high school to leading multi-million-dollar budgets—and juggling life—she’s passionate about helping people think beyond their backyards and build meaningful careers and lives.

Now, Lisa brings that same energy to organizations nationwide. The author of Joy Is My Job, host of the Have Good Ripple Effect podcast, and in-demand keynote speaker, she has spoken to hundreds of teams across a wide range of industries.

Stay tuned for her newest book, What’s Your Ripple Effect? And Why It Matters More Than Ever: A Leader’s Guide to Creating Lasting Impact and Influence.

Connect with Lisa:

Lisa Even International: lisaeven.com 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-even-have-good-ripple-effect-0778b112 

Facebook: facebook.com/lisaeven11 

Instagram: instagram.com/lisaeven_ 

Books: lisaeven.com/books 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross  00:00

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. We’ve got work to do. Yes, we do, and it likely won’t stop. So why should you make time for joy, even in the toughest work environments? Why should you do it when we have spreadsheets and deadlines and goals to hit? The better question is, how can you not find the time? It is, after all, the fifth pillar of being both an empathetic and effective leader, according to my book The Empathy dilemma, and it’s not a luxury. It’s a vital way to build team culture engagement and reduce stress and anxiety when you can. But how do you do it? Today I get the joy of talking about joy with Lisa. Even Lisa is a keynote speaker and author who believes that you happen to the world, not the other way around. Life isn’t about checking boxes, it’s about showing up, creating connections, making an impact, what she calls having good ripple effect and making Joy your job, from serving farmers and truckers at a small cafe in high school to leading multi million dollar budgets and juggling life, she’s passionate about helping people think beyond their backyards and build meaningful careers and lives. Now, Lisa brings that same energy to organizations nationwide. She wrote joy is my job hosts the have good ripple effect podcast, and has spoken to hundreds of teams across a wide range of industries. Her newest book is coming out soon. What’s your ripple effect and why it matters more than ever, a leader’s guide to creating lasting impact and influence. Today, Lisa shares her Transformative Leadership story and how she infused joy into her own life and at work to build a winning culture, and now how she helps leaders do the same. Lisa shares many examples and stories that you will love, and we discuss informal power trying on others’ glasses, and how to check in with your team and start infusing joy in small ways that make a big difference. Lisa shares the three ingredients necessary to create a joyful culture, desire, belief and permission. We talk about how to encourage accountability and impact while creating joy. And Lisa shares a fantastic way to avoid forced fun with your most skeptical, Cranky employees, so many great insights today. Take a listen. Welcome Lisa, even to the empathy edge podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about joy today and why it’s relevant to a high performing culture. So welcome to the show. Thank you, and you are a podcaster as well. You have a podcast called What’s your ripple effect? Yes, yeah. Have good ripple effect. I know, and I love that, because I talk a lot about how we influence our spheres of influence without being a leader with a title. So before we dive into all the goodness on creating joy and a positive team culture and all the results that gives you as a leader, can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you even got into this work of your book, joy is my job? Like, how did you get

Lisa Even  04:02

here? Yeah, I It’s a fun I laugh. Isn’t it fun? Just to I just want to sit and have coffee with you all day and be like, here’s all the things. But the down and dirty of it is, I entered the workforce and was a project manager, so I love deadlines and milestones, and I had a senior leader tap me on the shoulder and say, you really get people to get things done like you are highly productive. And I didn’t have direct reports at that time. You know, I when we talk about informal power, I was kind of this 20 something being like to the C suite exec, like, hi, I need you to do this thing. And when that leader, that senior leader, said, I think you’re a people leader, and she said, I’d love to move you from project management to operations. I was like, Yeah, let’s do it. So I led large teams in healthcare, and it was the most rewarding thing, like, I just want to try on everyone’s glasses and see from their perspective. Of like, you know, my cranky employees, of like, I’m not doing it. I’m like, Okay, can I. Trying your glasses like before I get mad. I just want to see what you see. And so fast forward to today. I do a lot of keynote speaking around creating impact through your ripple effect. And then I always say as a side note, I was a little burnt out along that journey, and my husband and I decided to track our joy like a bank account, so we hung a whiteboard in our bedroom. I love this so much. Yeah, because I thought, well, if we wait for joy to find us, we’re going to wait forever. And if it’s not a metric in our life, right? So that was, that’s it. So that’s the down and dirty version.

Maria Ross  05:34

And how are you doing? How long have you been doing that tracking? And how’s it going?

Lisa Even  05:38

It’s going so well, we’ve done it for about eight years. For a while it was just us, and then we had some friends who we were, you know, we were just telling about the whiteboard, and they’re like, what the whiteboard in your bedroom? And I’m like, Yeah, we wanted to dream about joy before we fall asleep, because sometimes that’s the only time we see each other, and we wanted to dream about joy when we wake up. And so it moved from whiteboard to calendar to now tracking, and I also speak to audiences, additionally, the culture we talk about, how are you sneaking some joy in, before, during and after? Everything that you already do

Maria Ross  06:11

completely okay. So many questions about that. I’m going to take a minor detour. Do you both have a shared definition of joy?

Lisa Even  06:17

Though? Yes, and this is where I say, like, disclaimer, Lisa is not a scientist, and right, our definition of joy is things that light us up, things that make us feel more alive. And so we have, we both have a joy calendar. Our kids have them, and they look very different there. I actually have a joy challenge where I say, get in someone else’s joy. So once a month, I sit down and I watch a football game with my husband and I, because that’s his joy, because that’s his joy, and he tells me all about how many rushing yards for whatever, and it is the most fun thing to know that my only responsibility during that moment is to enjoy him, enjoying his joy, so I don’t feel any pressure, right? Yeah? Like, I don’t like this. I don’t I really, I still don’t like this, yeah? And it’s kind of like my brain saying, Yeah, you don’t have to, yeah, good, yeah. Oh my gosh. I love this

Maria Ross  07:06

so much. And I I’m laughing inside, because I’m like, if I go to my husband right now and be like, we need a joy calendar, he’d be like, Oh my God. Who have you been talking to? But, yeah, I mean, and we’re very different people. That’s why I was asking about that. And I love that idea. I mean, that’s empathy, right? Is you are coming into his space and his world and trying to understand what is important to him, and he’s doing the same for you and your kids. I just I love it so much. So what? So what actually inspired you then to focus on leadership and culture in your work, how did you translate that story and that journey into realizing, Hey, this is actually a catalyst for organizations.

Lisa Even  07:48

It you know, it’s funny that my I always say, like my have good ripple effect and my joy journey were happening almost simultaneously. So much like a lot of us, we inherit whatever we’re given, right, like the team or the teams or the locations, and they all have different history and dynamics and all of those parts and pieces. And I was looking kind of across the landscape, and realized that first off, we needed kind of that vision internally, like we had the organization vision, but we needed kind of that leader vision. And so the tagline really came about because I said to my team guys, it’s our job to have good ripple effect. Like, if we do not keep our waters clean, if we don’t like what, what is it going to look like? And everything you say and do is a ripple happier, crappier choice. And so I really started off in that direction, just probably more out of, like, needing to, because I had some pretty, like, toxic cultures that I inherited, and I was like, We need a phrase that allows us to self hold each other accountable. And so that’s really the first time I walked down the hallway and I heard someone say to someone else, is that really good ripple effect? Like, I was a proud like, oh my gosh, yeah. Just like, yes, they get it. They’re starting to identify what’s good and what’s not, and if it’s in there, we need to get it out. Like cultural dysfunction is a huge part of, you know, productive and empathetic and joyful team.

Maria Ross  09:10

Yeah, okay, I love this because, you know, as I mentioned, I talk a lot to teams that say, Well, what do we do about empathy in our culture? Because our CEO doesn’t buy into it, and you don’t have to wait. You can actually create a micro culture within your team that becomes that bright light within the organization to your point. It has the ripple effect of impacting other people in the organization. And they start wondering, like, and it’s funny, because I use this phrasing, what’s in the water over there? Yeah. Why is that team outperforming? Why is it they their retention rates are higher? Why is it people are actually smiling over there, like, what is it that they’re doing that we can replicate and scale and learn from in other teams? So you don’t have to wait for the corporate mandate to be you know, this is how you should operate. If you don’t like the culture, the larger culture you’re swimming in, you can create a micro culture as a leader. And I’ve worked for organizations where the organizational culture wasn’t great, but our team was this fantastic unit, and it was so fun to work with them. So I want to get into joy, because just to share a little story with you, and I’ve shared this with my listeners before, when I was working on the empathy dilemma, and I was kind of deconstructing the recipe of what makes an empathetic leader, both empathetic and high performing at the same time, like, what was the what was the secret sauce? Yeah, and I spoke to hundreds of leaders, I did lots of research, and I found these pillars that are true of all of these leaders that seem to be doing this effortlessly. And at first there were only four, and I was wondering why, what was missing? I was like, something’s missing in here. And I went back, and I realized it was joy. I realized it was this element of and not that you had to be the funniest leader in the room, but that there was an element of camaraderie and of levity even when the work is hard, right? And I saw this in very stressful environments, right? Healthcare, police, like it didn’t matter what environment the work was, it was how the team had each other’s back and had that camaraderie together, and it was joy, and it was making time for moments of joy. To your point, so tell me a little bit about and maybe give us some examples of what how do you start people on that journey? If they’re like, something’s missing, we’re not feeling really good about what we’re doing, what are some small steps that a leader or team can take to inject joy into their work.

Lisa Even  11:44

Yeah, and I will actually even go a little bit personal and professional, because I think they tie together. The first thing that I always scan when I’m looking at my teams is number one, do they have desire, permission and belief? And what I mean by that is, like I do some joy sessions with organizations. I had a woman raise her hand and say, I have enough joy. Thanks. It was, like the perfect moment. I literally would like let it hang in the air, and I’m like, You’re right. Like, if you have enough, you’re right. If you don’t have enough, you’re right. There really has to be a desire for it. And if you notice that your team isn’t there yet, that’s something to start working on of, how do we think about if we don’t have the desire, what’s getting in the way? And I talk about it in the book, where we’re looking at kind of and I’ll use the word this loosely, but just so listeners understand it’s like the excuses. Well, at least I can’t have joy. I have 1000 emails. Yes, I can’t have joy because I have a report due on Friday, and we really had to start, like, peeling the onion back to say, what if you could be two things at once? Yeah, like, does that? You have to want it a little and then you have to believe that we can have it right, and you have to have a little permission. And so we talked a lot about our team culture of, what if we can be busy and friendly, what if we can be busy and joyful, right, like that would be good ripple effect. And so it’s really a lot of those like I always, I do a lot of culture work around, like attitudes, behaviors and beliefs. So it’s a lot like that. What it’s our attitude, how we feeling? What behaviors do we see going on? The what are we keeping? What are we getting rid of? And do we believe it to be true? If you know, if a new team member says to or an older team member says to a newer one, oh, it never changes around here. You know, it’s like, Ah, that’s a belief, like, I take notice. And I think that ties together of joy, of really saying, like, what’s our attitude, what are the behaviors that we can infuse? And then, do we believe it? Do we really, truly believe it? And some teams are faster and slower at grasping the concept, and that’s okay, like, sometimes it’s just a little like, roll up the sleeves, little bit more work, totally.

Maria Ross  13:49

Well, you’re trying to shatter old belief systems and old paradigms of what work should be, right? And, you know, I’m always talking about both and leadership and in the context of empathy, you can be empathetic and high performing. You can be compassionate and competitive at the same time. And it’s only when we we think it’s an either or equation that we swing so far. The pendulum swings so far, right? You swing between being a dictator and being a pushover. But there’s a happy medium in there, so and I love what you’re saying here about deciding to infuse joy. Now, one of the things I know I’ve worked with, what? So two things here. One is, to your point about the excuses, it’s we don’t have time, right? We’re going we don’t have time for what seems to be a waste of time. So what do you say to leaders? I mean, they’re obviously not hiring you, but what do you say to those leaders who are like, we don’t have time to fool around. Yeah, that’s kind of how they say it. Yeah, they do, don’t they?

Lisa Even  14:47

Yeah. And I will say, if they say that, I’ll say, let me ask you this, how burnt out are you? Well, I’m so burnt out, you know, they go into their like, Mantra, and I let them, I listen and I like, have a little bit of poker face. Sudden, like, Yeah, I’m like, how stressed Are you? They were like, I am so stressed I did not sleep last night. And you’re like, Yeah, right. And you have them tell the story of so it sounds like you’re in not a really great spot. And then I say to them, like, how is that going? Yeah. And I let it hang a little bit in a really thoughtful and curious and, like, empathetic way of like, is that good? Yeah? Like, Well, no. And then I kind of, like, lead them softly into this conversation about,

Lisa Even  15:30

what if you could enjoy it.

Lisa Even  15:34

Like, yeah, Joy word. And then they’re like, Lisa, you know.

Lisa Even  15:38

And I’m not talking about the big, grandiose things, I just say, like, what if we could think about our day differently? And so one of the tactics that I would often use, again, I’m not a scientist, but I would say crappy to happy. So there are unglamorous things that we do in our day, Excel, spreadsheets, reports, phone calls you, although

Maria Ross  15:57

those, I always say, those do bring some people joy. They do. I don’t understand those people, but yeah,

Lisa Even  16:04

let’s I always say, like, make a list of the most unglamorous things, the things that just drive you bonkers. In the construction industry, it’s carrying drywall. In the hospitality industry, it’s like, cleaning up. Like, what are those things, right? Depending on the industry, and they can usually, like, rattle them up. And then I’m like, okay, so if we’ve got things that are really unglamorous, and we know that that we have to do that, like we don’t get to not do them, I say it’s your job to find a little happy after the crappy we’re going to take crappy guys and we’re going to make it happy. And so I will say to them, like, before, during or after, what can we do? And in my world, we I worked in a very large hospital, and I had people at my front desk, and I would walk up to them and I’d say, Hey, how’s it going today? Crappy to happy. What do we got? And they would say to me, before, nowadays, things are automated, right? You get patient phone calls, but back in the day, they were not. We would make hundreds of phone calls per day and leave voicemails of like, Hi so and so, see you on Thursday. And so I would say to them, crappy, the happy. And they would say to me, all right, we got three on a phone call. And I’m like, All right, that’s the crappy. What’s the happy? And it was a lot of them starting to think about, it’s my job, right, to add in a little something happy after. And so they’re like, I think after 300 we’re getting Starbucks. And I’m like, Yeah, or they’re like, we’re taking a lap around the building, but it was their it was their job to take it from I have to do these unglamorous things, but I also can infuse a bit of levity and fun, yes, day. And I would literally High Five them and say absolutely. And you can do that in your personal life too. Like I had a woman after a session, she goes, my mom is aging and is in the nursing home. I said, Yeah, and she goes, and it is awful to visit her, like I just, we just sit there and look at each other and don’t really know what to say. And she goes, crappy to happy. I said, All right, what is it? And she goes, I think I’m going to bring a game next time. Yeah, it just gets your brain thinking about how you take accountability for it and also give yourself permission to do it well.

Maria Ross  18:05

And you made a great point here. It’s also about the language we use and how we talk to ourselves. And I you know this, this has always been for me, I don’t have to work out. I get to work out right, right? And so you can apply it to so many other things, like, I don’t like to vacuum, but it’s really great that I have this awesome house I get to keep clean, right? That’s a little bit of a stretch, but you know what I’m saying? Yeah, absolutely. It’s using the language of just, we were just talking my husband and I were just talking to our son about this the other day in the car, and about how I was talking to him, about saying I flipped how I was talking and I said, I don’t have to do this thing. I get to do this thing. And how it it really just changes your outlook. And it sounds, it sounds really almost juvenile, but like trying to trick yourself. But it’s true, it’s how we talk to ourselves and how we approach the work. And so, you know, no matter what it is, you can try to find joy in it. And if that’s not enough, what’s a way that you can set the environment so that it’s more pleasing, right? Yes, can you Okay, you’ve got to start doing your taxes. Can you make, like, your favorite latte, right? And light a candle and put some great music on and, like, make it a more joyful experience for yourself. But we’re so primed to just be like, get it done. Get it done. Get it done. And that’s the grind, right? It is.

Lisa Even  19:34

And I always say, like, when you go to start thinking about joy and we’re going to put it on your calendar somewhere, I always say, start small, like I have a good friend. And this is a personal example, but I think it relates in the professional world as well. She will call me and she’ll say, What are you doing? And I’ll say, I’m, you know, doing all the life things, right, laundry and dishes and Kid things. And she’ll say, do you have 15 and I say, Yeah, I do. And literally, I she drive. Over to my house, I meet her in the driveway with a sparkling water, sometimes a drink, right? And we stand there for 15 minutes. She like, gets out of her car. We’re standing there in the driveway. 15 minutes, we chit chat, and then we’re like, All right, back to it. Bye, yeah. And it’s actually some of my most fun, the like, moments of the week, because we tell each other a story or something that happens, or it’s just a little bit of a boost. And I think about even in your workspace, when you’re working on a project, or you’ve got, you know, q2 you know, is almost over, I would say, like, save 15 minutes or something other than work, yeah. And though, you know, it’s hard at first, and it feels awkward, but I always say, like, keep going, because before you know it, you’re going to start to look forward to it, yeah? And then it becomes a part of your routine. And there’s so much research on habit development, yeah, that you then are like, Oh, I just do this.

Maria Ross  20:54

Well, I think also that’s what you know. There’s a whole nother conversation about return to work and hybrid work and remote work. And I have lots of opinions about both sides of that, but I think that is the thing for people that are proponents of going back in the office, sometimes they miss those moments. They miss those moments of like, this is too much. I’m going to get up and I’m going to go to the break room, or I’m going to go to the coffee bar or whatever. Do you want to come with me? Yeah, and we’re just going to step away from our desks for a little bit. You know, that’s the whole the whole water essence of the water cooler. I know exactly. It’s those serendipitous moments where you, you take a second to just forget the work and be human for a second casually, like, yeah, you’re casually in existence, for sure. And so let’s talk about what are some common challenges that leaders face in maintaining a healthy culture, and where can some of the things that you talk about and teach help alleviate

Lisa Even  21:49

that? Yeah, and I think about culture in almost like the ripple itself. So the center circle is really you. And we talk a lot about, like, how you doing, how you showing up. And we think about it from the angle of, you know, if I see someone walk down the hall, I

Lisa Even  22:07

prepare for them. I think, oh, not today.

Lisa Even  22:12

People prepare for you. And so as we think about our presence being the present, the gift that we give our team, I often will give teams an opportunity to think about, how are you showing up? I once had an employee turn to me and she, you know, just casually said, Oh, you show up busy. And I was like, horrified, yeah. I’m like, I am so fun and so energetic, right in my mind. I’m like, Yeah, I kind of did, like an awkward haha. And I walked back to my office, but I was like, I do not show up busy. But she was right. I did because I thought that showing up in a way that was like, we got all these things I got this done, was a gift, and what it was actually doing was the gift of busy. And so being able to really think about it from your angle first, and then I always say I do some values exercises, of like, what’s important to you and what’s important to your team, yeah. And then we start to look at like, how are you culturally? I actually have a like, three columns where I’m like, How are we feeling, attitude wise, what are some of the behaviors like, what is it normal to see? One of my favorite examples, I had a new employee start, and I said to her, I go, you’re new here. You have fresh eyes. Like, what’s something interesting or odd that you’ve seen around here, and I was alluding to, like, our culture and the behaviors that we do on a daily basis. She looked me up and down, kind of almost as if to say, like, do I trust you? Yeah. I waited her out. I held and then she goes, Do we take a lunch? I knew what she was talking about. Yeah. There was this really funny behavior in a pocket of our team, where they sat at their desk and they worked through lunch. And I said, Well, HR, would like me to tell you to take a lunch. Legally, yes. And I said, but what do you mean? And I again, I knew what she meant, but she goes, Well, I went to go take a lunch, and one of the other nurses in our office turned to me and says, Where are you going? And I told her, I’m going to take a lunch and I’m going to walk around the building. And she goes, and she goes, we work until the work is done. Oh, I said, what’d you do? She goes, Well, I sat back down and I worked at my desk, and she goes, but I think if they took a lunch, they’d be nicer humans. And I laughed at her, and I said, You are right. You bumped up into what I will call a like ecosystem norm. This is very normal for them. Yeah, don’t even notice it. It’s a behavior they’ve done forever. I said it’s really not official, like it’s not in our handbook. I said my advice to you is to the next time you want to take a lunch and walk around the building. I said it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be so hard, but I want you to say to her, I’m going to work until the work is done right after lunch, I’m gonna take a quick walk, and I’m gonna be even better, and I’m gonna work harder. And then a few weeks later, I saw her in the hall. I’m like, Are you taking a lunch? And she goes sometimes, and I smiled, well, even funnier, like a few months later, the nurse that had mentioned that had an injury where she was supposed to her physical therapist told her to walk. Oh. So she goes, she looked at her. She goes, I’m walking with you at lunch. Nice. And it was just a very like I always say, as a leader, have your finger on what norms are occurring, what behaviors, and start to have those conversations and teach people how to shift them, because it really does take a lot of forethought to be able to think. We’ve always done it that way, but do we like it, right? And you can believe attitudes turn into behaviors, which turn into beliefs, and then before you know it, it’s so ingrained that you’re like, yeah, it’s gonna be harder to change once, once it gets to a belief,

Maria Ross  25:32

right? So, so good. How do you balance that? This is always the perennial question I’m asking, is balancing empathy and all of these things with high performance and ambition. So how do you help leaders encourage accountability and impact while still making time for joy and not letting things go off the rails?

Lisa Even  25:54

Yeah, absolutely. So I always say, like, fair, firm and kind.

Lisa Even  25:58

And so when we think about I always, you know, tee up conversations of, you know, if maybe we’re trying to get something done, or, you know, a project, I’m often saying, like, we can be both things at one, yeah, and I want to make sure both things are on track. Like, your joy is on track, but the project is on track. And so I set it up really, kind of, like expectations of, like, talk to me about the project. Where are we at talk to me, and I’m firm, fair and kind of like, and I ask a lot of questions back, any risks that we need to think about? Are we, you know, like, really, kind of teeing that up? And then I’ll say, Okay, let’s talk about our joy. How are we doing from a scale of our attitudes, and how are we feeling? And if we need to take a small break, or we need to infuse some joy, let’s do it. And so I kind of like, bop back and forth, and my team gets used to this. Like, Lisa’s fairly like, she’s gonna drive us to get our metrics, but she’s also gonna drive us to make sure we’re okay along the way. And then if it’s like, tips into like, somebody not performing. Well, obviously that’s a performance conversation, but most of the time, if you are firm, fair and kind, and you have some really good language around well, what does that look like? Does that get us the desired result? Whether it’s on a technical or reaching a result, or on the joy front? I put it back on them to help paint that picture, and then I’m like, so it looks like we’re not right, right? You know, like, what does that look like? Where do we go from here? And if they can’t figure that out, then I’ll say, Can I make a recommendation? And then I want you to, you know, give me your thoughts back. And I always say, like, well, arm wrestle a little bit along the way,

Maria Ross  27:35

yeah, well, and I think it’s so important, you know, my the third pillar is clarity, because clarity is not just kind, it’s empathetic. And when you’re able to be clear and show that those performance metrics matter to you, you can then, then it’s easier to open up, it’s easier to build the camaraderie, because everybody has the same expectation. And the reason why, you know, for my work, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this is the reason why Joy is that fifth pillar of being an empathetic leader. Is because when you create that joy, people get to know each other on a personal level, and so then they care about being empathetic with each other. They care about having each other’s backs. They care about checking in with each other, versus if they’re all in their own silos and they’re just coming in and doing their work and leaving robot? Yep, there’s no interaction that fosters the flow of empathy. What do you think about that theory?

Lisa Even  28:33

Yes, I think you’re 1,000% right. And I have a worksheet that I give out to my new employees, and it has a list of values, and I have, I say, like, pick your top three. And I had a team member, a really quick story between Shane and Andrew. So Shane’s kind of my jokester. Andrew is kind of my straight laced guy. And I hand out this worksheet. I do it with. Like, when I first joined, I had, you know, all of our team in a morning huddle. I said, you know, hey, could you circle those three? And then I said, Hey, would somebody be willing to share their top value? No. Shane raises his hand really fast, mostly to be funny. And I said, Shane, like, hi, you were first like, what was your top value? And he says to me, and he’s never serious. He says, Lisa, when you have a crappy childhood, you make joke and you keep making jokes because it lightens people’s day. And I said, Yeah. Now Andrew, who Shane and Andrew kind of bumped heads. They were like, both in my periphery, so I could kind of see him at the same time, and I could see Andrew, like, giving him the side eye, as almost as if to say, like, so you’re not trying to be an idiot every time we turn around, because Andrew really liked to get work done. Yeah. And was a really, like, mover and shaker in that front after the meeting, I went over and I said, Shane, hey, thanks for sharing that. I said, I want to honor that value. Will you tell us a joke at our morning meeting? Like, will you start our meeting off with a joke every day? And he looked at me and he goes, do they have to be work appropriate? And it was like, Yes, sir, they do, yeah. And for months, he brought jokes to our. Morning meeting. Well, then they switched to dad jokes, and I’m like, Are you gonna be a dad? Like, yeah. On the day that his wife went into labor, I sent an email to the team. I said, Hey, at our morning meeting, we need to figure out coverage for Shane. You know, wife’s out. See you in a few minutes. I get to huddle. Andrew raises his hand, and I’m like, Hi, Andrew. He never raises his hand. I was like, what’s up? And he goes, Well, Shane’s gone. And I was like, Yeah, you know, like Shane has gone. And he pulls out a little piece of paper, and he goes, Well, I looked up a joke. Oh, when you think about empathy and your ability to build culture, part of that is being able to recognize what’s important to people and how they got the way that they are. And if you can start to shine a light on you know, what people value like, I always say that people carry their values when they’re mad, like she doesn’t trust me and they’re not very loyal. They give it to you on a platter. They literally, when you are mad, you mentioned the value that that has been like, violated, yeah. Or they do it when they’re talking about their kids at the water cooler or their faith or hobbies. And so as you think about building a team culture and those connections, I often say, like, look for their values, because what they care about is going to drive connection, which is also going to drive joy. And if you realize that your joy doesn’t have to match theirs, like we had some pretty funny engagement events, because somebody really liked a certain thing, right? And I said to everyone else, I was like, How many of you make it up? How many of you like this and they’re like, not me? And I said, All right, so our job over here is to make like their joy our joy, yeah. And it just gave people permission to not feel like they were being told what to do, but they were told, like, be a part of it, like in your own way,

Maria Ross  31:41

yeah, yeah, 100% I mean, so much of that happened during the pandemic and lockdown. I know my husband’s a chief marketing officer for a company, and they were doing all these fun team building exercises over zoom, like they did a wine tasting one time. They did a create a succulent garden. They did some other stuff, but they also did some activities, and I heard this from other leaders too, where it was like, each team member would talk about their hobby or their, you know, here’s how I’m making sourdough bread right now, or here’s what’s going on in my town. And they gave everyone space within a set meeting, whether it was five or 10 minutes. And it was like, you know, Hey, Lisa, it’s your turn talk to us about your favorite hobby. And that was a way for them to not only get to know each other, but I hadn’t thought about it this way before, and I love the language you’re using. It was the ability to bring someone else into your joy, and when that is appreciated and acknowledged, you feel closer to those people, and you’re more willing to perform and deliver for them. Absolutely.

Lisa Even  32:45

And I often will say to, like, keep an eye on people’s Joy levels. Because if someone says, you know that it’s a question that’s on my one on one form, I have a I’ll give it to you for the show notes, but I have a PB and J worksheet where it’s like, I my the way that I structure my one on ones is people better ways and joy. Because I want to know like, how are you doing? I want to know, do you have any ideas to make things better around here? And then I want to know like, How are you, how is your joy? And if I get to that, what part in my one on one where the person’s like, Lisa, I’m not having any, yeah, that’s that for me. That’s like, a really great gift. I’m like, yeah, oh, we thank you. Like, I need to know that, as a leader, to know that personally or professionally, you are not in a good spot with probably joy, and then maybe even other things in your life. And so it’s a written there’s some prompter questions of, like, how do you ask different ways so that it’s not like the same thing every you know, one on one. Let me read off the sheet like it gives you some like ways to do that, but I think that joy is a big indicator of hobbies, and how are they doing?

Maria Ross  33:48

Yeah, absolutely. So what do you tell a leader who is trying to infuse more joy but they’re having trouble accessing their own joy, like they’re feeling a lot of pressure about that. What’s the way that the team and the culture can sort of contribute to it, versus putting it all on the leader, you know, show us what you got. How are you gonna make our team joyful?

Lisa Even  34:12

Right? Yep, well, and even, like, I had five locations, so I was so spread thin to think that I could create joy for all of them. And so I really looked to my informal leaders, like, kind of looked around and looked and said, like, who can I link arms, like, with Shane story. Yes, Shane likes to have joy. Like, where are your Shanes? And then we started, we called it like a social club. And you could call it so I live in Iowa, but was in Wisconsin for a number of years, and it was almost like our supper club, you know, like, give it a cute name. And then they that group of people, there were, like, two or three that raised their hand and said, like, I had help with some joy around here. And they started to create, similar to what you described for your husband, small, bite sized activities. And I the rule was 510, 15 minute things. So we had, you know. Holiday bingo via email. We had putting little plastic eggs around the holiday times. We had non denominational things for the folks that didn’t celebrate holidays. And it really became I didn’t have to have that burden as a leader, right team could help create it and it my kids have a joy list and a joy calendar, and they are way better at joy than me. Like, sometimes I’m like, Guys, mom’s a little tired. What should we do for some joy? My daughter’s like, we should do paint by number. And I’m like, Yes, we should. And yeah, before I know what I’m printing off things off the internet, it’s the same at work. Like, find those like people that can really help it along. Yeah. So this leads me to another question, which I get a lot too, is, how do you how do you do that in a way that it doesn’t feel like forced fun? Yeah, to people. So I actually say there’s a couple of different versions depending on your personality, because what can come out of my mouth might not work for like, what you could say you’re like, I could never say that, right? And so I lay the case for joy. And I say, guys, is it not stressful around here, like we are working hard? Are we not? And I kind of doubt it’s again, going back to, like, getting them to validate the like, it’s hard, it’s wild out here, right in a good, like, productive way. I’m like, it is busy and we are working fast. We deserve joy, do we not? You know? And I kind of like, lay the groundwork for like, we can be busy, we can be joyful. And then I will say, like, I would love to start creating many moments of that around here. And then I leave it for a little bit right? Like, I put that out there in a staff, yeah, or a huddle, and I just start dripping on them, like coffee, like, and then a few weeks later, I’m like, hey, you know what I mentioned the other day that I wanted to bring more joy, and I read an article about, you know, this organization that was doing some joy, and then, you know, a few weeks go by, and then I’m like, hey, if anybody wants to take part in this thing related to some joy, like, let me know. And I start to kind of get a sense of, like, Who’s up for some joy and who’s like, who’s not? Yeah, because then those people who are not, I tell a funny story about a guy on my team who hated our potlucks. His name was Paul.

Maria Ross  37:08

He would, like, my husband’s name is Paul, and he always hates this kind of stuff, usually. So it’s kind of funny,

Lisa Even  37:13

yeah. And I laugh, because, like, every morning I would walk in and I’d say, Good morning Paul, how are you? And he’d say, Good morning Lisa. I am two years and sunny, right? Like, two years in sunny I’m like, What is this? Well, fast forward, I went on vacation, and we took an overnight ferry, like a big boat. I had never been on a cruise, and I laughed, because the woman at the top of the ship, she kind of solved all of my Paul problems, because I had been telling this other leader right before I left. I was like, I got this guy. We do this two years in sunny thing every morning, and he hates engagement. And the guy goes, I don’t know about the engagement stuff, but I think when he says two years in sunny he’s talking about his retirement forecast. And I was like, Oh, you’re so right. Well, you know, I don’t have a chance to talk to Paul because I’m leaving for vacation, right? We get to the top of this ship, and my girlfriend and I, we were there was two couples, my girlfriend and I and our husbands, and the woman at the top of the ship, she welcomes us aboard, and she says, Hey, we got live entertainment casinos. She’s pointing out all these things. And my girlfriend and I look at each other, and we’re like live entertainment, and our husbands are like casinos. We’re like fake bickering. At this point, she pauses, and she goes, Hi, time out. Can I tell you something? And we were kind of like laughing, like, Yeah, sure. And she goes, not everything is for everyone. Not everything is for everyone. We’ve got something for everybody on this ship. So you too live entertainment. Great. You too casinos, great. Welcome aboard. Get on my ship. And I remember looking at her being like, thank you. I went back to Paul Monday morning when I got back and I said, Good morning, Paul, how are you? And he goes, good morning, I’m two years on sunny. And I was like, Hi, are you gonna retire in two year? And he goes, he kind of looked at me. It’s like, maybe. I said, Yeah. I said, Paul, we got to talk about these potluck and he went on and on, like, I hate the potlucks, you know? And I said, I waited. I waited out. I waited him out. And I said, Paul, you are two years in sunny I got people over here, 40 years in cloudy, Paul, 40 years they got left to work. I’m like, these potlucks are not for you. So the next time at potluck, can you not hate, hate the potlucks at the potluck? And he kind of did this like, and I was like, Okay, bye. And a few weeks later, someone comes to my office, and they’re like, You will never believe who brought a dish to potluck. I looked at her. I was like, was it? Paul? Goes, yeah, it was. How’d you know? I said, I don’t know. I just had a hunch. I went up to my potluck, and I said, Paul, you bring a dick? And he looked at me. He goes, Oh, it’s for the kids.

Lisa Even  39:34

If you can start

Lisa Even  39:37

to like, yeah, where you’re gonna have people who are gonna love it and people who are going to hate it. You’re going to have a call or two on your team, right? But as soon as they know it’s not being forced on them, yes, but you’re inviting them to participate. Yeah, sometimes you’re inviting them to participate. He didn’t need the potluck, but he all of a sudden realized that you know Joey, who has 40 more years. Yeah, dude, that that guy better buckle up. He’s got more potlucks than he knows. What’s coming, yeah. So it’s really this kind of, like, how do you start to shift but also drip and also invite, and when you do have a few prankies, like, that’s okay, like, nod and smile and be like, not today.

Maria Ross  40:13

Yeah. I love it. Oh, my God, such a great story. I love it so much. And I find it hilarious that that person’s name was Paul, your husband. So yeah, this has been such a great conversation. Lisa, thank you. We definitely want folks to check out your work and to check out your books. I want to just remind everyone, it’s joy is my job, and then you have a new book coming out soon. What’s your ripple effect and why it matters more than ever, a leader’s guide to creating lasting impact and influence on your team, I guess right influence on everybody within the organization, on everybody. You can kind of use it on everybody. Okay, great. So we’re going to have all your links in the show notes. Thank you so much for all your insights today. For anyone that’s on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work?

Lisa Even  40:59

Yeah, so Lisa, even.com would be the best place to go, and I’ve got worksheets. You can see my podcast. It kind of is almost like the funnel to all of the resources and connecting with me and then connect on social. I’d love to

Maria Ross  41:11

hear. I love it. Thank you so much for your time today, absolutely. 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 with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

October is Maria’s birthday month—and her wish this year? More empathy and compassion in leadership. In this special solo episode, Maria shares why we must stop accepting toxic leadership as “normal,” and how you can turn the tide toward human-centered, high-performing workplaces.

Plus, she’s got a special birthday and holiday gift for you (and maybe one for her, too!): Buy The Empathy Dilemma in bulk for your clients or teams and get a free 30-minute virtual Author Fireside Chat if you order 50+ copies by Dec 31, 2025.

She also shares three powerful, practical actions any leader can take to be a more empathetic leader and increase engagement, performance, and accountability —and reminds you where to go for more inspiration, including her upcoming virtual leadership events and her Forbes column.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Highlights:

• Maria’s 53rd birthday reflections: why empathy matters more than ever.
• The myth of “tough” leadership and what to replace it with.
• Her birthday/holiday book, discounted bulk order promotion, and how it benefits your team.
• Three actions leaders can take right now to model empathy.
• Details on Maria’s virtual Leadership Events.
• Where to find her latest Forbes articles.

“There’s clearly no more data I can show you. Now, it’s a question of you deciding what kind of leader – and person – do YOU want to be?” —  Maria Ross

Episode References: 

• Buy The Empathy Dilemma in bulk at a discount: https://www.TheEmpathyDilemma.com Buy 50 or more copies and contact me to get your free virtual Author Fireside Chat to guide discussion and enable action.

• Join an upcoming Leadership Event: https://red-slice.com/leadership-workshop

• Read Maria’s Forbes column: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariaross

• Article on the 996 trend: https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-china-996-work-schedule/

Sponsor Message: Keynote Speakers and Conference Trainers: Get your free Talkadot trial and enjoy this game changer for your speaking business! www.share.talkadot.com/mariaross 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

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Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hey everyone, it’s Maria here with an October Hot Take episode for you.

Now—quick fun fact—October happens to be my birthday month! And this year, I’m turning 53. I know, I know—how did that happen so fast? (My skincare routine deserves its own episode!)

But seriously, birthdays are a time for reflection—and for me, this year’s reflection has been crystal clear:

I want more empathy and compassion in the world.

And honestly, that starts with leadership.

We do not have to accept horrible behavior from leaders. We shouldn’t shrug and say, “Well, that’s just how business is.” Because guess what? That kind of leadership doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t inspire. It doesn’t retain great people. It doesn’t build loyal customers or innovative teams.

So today, as I blow out my metaphorical candles, I want to share my birthday wish—and it involves you.

But first… a little gift talk and some announcements.

You’ve probably heard me talk about my latest book, The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries. It’s already won two international book awards and is getting love from readers who say it’s changing how they lead, live, and communicate.

And since it’s my birthday month—and the holidays are coming up—I have a little offer that doubles as my birthday gift.

If you buy 50 or more copies of The Empathy Dilemma by December 31, 2025, for your team, your clients, or even your favorite association or network, I’ll gift you back a free 30-minute virtual Author Fireside Chat with me. You can ask me anything, or I can facilitate a rich group discussion about how to put empathy into practice at work.

Think of it as a win-win: you give your people a book that’s not just inspiring but strategic—one that helps them perform better, communicate better, and lead better. And you get to make me very happy on my birthday. (See what I did there?)

All the details and bulk purchase options are at TheEmpathyDilemma.com.

Okay—now that we’ve covered gifts, let’s talk about how you, as a leader, can help make my birthday wish come true.

YOu’re hearing a lot these days from certain people trying to tell you to stop being kind, stop being inclusive, and just focus on profit and productivity.

And they could not be more wrong. Just because someone says something very often and very loudly to gain clicks and views, doesn’t make them right. Time to get our critical thinking going now more than ever and understand how this thinking serves THEM, not you.

So here’s the truth: empathy isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom.
 It’s not “soft.” It’s smart.
 And the best leaders—those who create real impact—understand that.

We’ve seen it over and over: Empathetic leaders build trust faster, retain top performers longer, and deliver better results. But lately, I’ve noticed a worrying trend—leaders feeling the pressure to harden up, to disconnect, to “focus on performance at all costs.”

No. No. No. That’s the old playbook.
And if we want to evolve the workplace—and the world—we have to stop glorifying that.

So let’s turn the tide. Let’s start a movement of enlightened, human-centered leadership. Because empathy doesn’t mean excusing bad behavior. It means understanding the why so you can lead more effectively.

And you—yes, you listening—can be part of that change.

Here are three actions you can take right now to make a difference in your sphere of influence:

1. Model it daily.
 Don’t just talk about empathy—show it. Ask better questions. Listen to understand, not to respond. Share your decision-making process openly so people see that you value their input. When leaders model empathy, teams follow suit.

2. Build it into your systems.
 Embed empathy into how your organization operates. Review your policies and incentives—do they encourage collaboration or competition? Do performance reviews include how people treat others? If not, start there. You can’t scale empathy without structure.

3. Protect your own boundaries.
 This might surprise you, but empathy without limits leads to burnout. As I say in the book, your compassion is only sustainable if you protect your own well-being. Make space to recharge. Say no when you need to. That’s not selfish—it’s strategic.

If every leader did just these three things, the ripple effects would be enormous. We’d see more innovative teams, healthier cultures, and better business outcomes.

Now, I often get those naysayers in the room of my keynotes or leadership development workshops. “What about (insert company or leader name here)?”They focus on productivity at all costs, making people work 7 days a week, and it’s how they seem to gain a competitive edge. They are kicking butt and taking names! They are leading our country in innovation and output!

Yes. You’re right. You will always find an example of someone or some organization or even some country that promotes draconian methods to turn a profit or lead their industry. They exist! It’s the way business is done in some places, regardless of not only the human toll, but the loss of creativity, innovation and collaborative thinking that could potentially lift them even higher.

Here’s the thing: I can’t show these people any more data. There is so much data, so much research showing that empathetic and human-centered leadership leads to more innovation, engagement, sustainability, customer loyalty and long -term success. It’s there. I wrote a whole book about it!

So the data is no longer the issue. Showing the contrarians data is not enough. I admit, I’m kind of done.

Done – meaning there’s clearly no more data I can show you. Now, it’s a question of you deciding what kind of leader and person do YOU want to be? Do you want to follow those destructive models? Is that the person you want to be when you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning? Do you want to know that you are intentionally crushing people’s souls, instilling fear, working people to the bone so that their mental health and family relationships crumble? Is that worth it to you, if you KNOW that operating with more empathy as a leader will still yield you great results -and enable you to sleep well at night with the person you are in the world?

I recently learned about the 9-9-6 work schedule from China now en vogue with Silicon Valley companies. 72 hour work weeks. 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. To get ahead. This is horrifying, people.

We need to be better. We need to appreciate the one life we get to live and understand that we will get the best out of our people to accelerate growth and drive results if we take a more human approach. It’s not just good business sense. It’s ethical. It’s kind. It’s humane.

No one. NO ONE will wish they spent more time at work when they die just to move a stock price a quarter of a percentage point on a given Tuesday in July. Seriously folks. I myself almost died once, from a ruptured brain aneurysm. I tell you now that the client meeting about what to schedule in a partner communication email that I missed was not on my radar. And guess what, the sky didn’t fall and that company is one of the biggest tech leaders in the world and has been doing just fine, thank you very much.

So yes—my birthday wish is that you’ll be part of this movement. That you’ll choose to lead with empathy, courage, and wisdom. Because the more leaders who do, the faster we create workplaces that actually work for people.

And, you know, if you also want to grab some copies of The Empathy Dilemma for your team and make my birthday extra special, I won’t stop you.

Oh—and before I let you go, if you’re ready to really put this into practice, don’t miss my upcoming Virtual Leadership Events. These are interactive, high-impact experiences where we help you and your executive team build trust, alignment, and high performance without burning people out.

You’ll walk away with tangible frameworks, not fluff—and a renewed sense of what empathetic leadership looks like in action.

You can learn more and reserve your spot at Red-Slice.com/leadership-workshop.

And of course, for weekly insights on empathy, culture, and leadership strategy, well, not really weekly but a few times a month really, follow my Forbes column at Forbes.com/sites/MariaRoss.

So as I celebrate another trip around the sun, I’m filled with gratitude—for this community, for your leadership, and for the possibility that we can make workplaces more human, one act of empathy at a time.

That’s my birthday wish. And I hope you’ll help me make it come true.

Now go out there, lead with heart and edge—and I’ll see you next time on The Empathy Edge. Until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind!

How well do you listen? Like, really listen? We waste so much time, energy, resources, and money due to a lack of effective listening. It causes misunderstandings, rework, mistakes, and in some cases, dangerous outcomes. 

My guest today is a Listening Whisperer! Oscar Trimboli starts out sharing his epiphany moment in a meeting that led to his current work. With over 35,000 people in his research database, Oscar shares the 4 common listening villains that cause barriers at work – and perhaps you can select which one you might be! I share my common villain with all of you, too. We talk about what the best listeners have in common, how listening changes when it’s face-to-face versus online, and practical ways to improve your listening at work and in meetings to ensure engagement and positive outcomes. Oscar shares what he’s learned about how deaf and blind people listen, and he even reveals some ways to listen better when you are utterly bored by a presenter or in a meeting.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

• The four most common listening barriers at work. 
• When interrupting can be an empathetic action.
• Characteristics of the best listeners. 
• Ways we can engage when we don’t feel engaged.

“If you focus on the speaker, you’re starting from the wrong place. Listening starts with you. You need to shut down the browser tabs in your own mind so you can create enough space in your working memory.” —  Oscar Trimboli

Episode References: 

• Take the Listening Quiz! www.listeningquiz.com
• Apple’s award-winning podcast Deep Listening 
• Oscar’s Books
• The Empathy Edge podcast:
  • August Hot Take: Why is Active Listening So Hard?
  • Pam Fox Rollin: How to Grow Your Group Into a Team

About Oscar Trimboli: Speaker, Podcaster, and Author, Deep Listening

Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening, and a sought-after keynote speaker.

Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, he is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace.

Through his work with chairs, boards of directors, and executive teams, Oscar has experienced first-hand the transformational impact leaders can have when they listen beyond words.

He is the author of How To Listen – Discover The Hidden Key To Better Communication, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace. He’s also the author of Deep Listening – Impact Beyond Words And Breakthroughs: How To Confront Assumptions.

Oscar loves his afternoon walks with his wife, Jennie, and their dog Kilimanjaro. 

On the weekends, you will find him playing with Lego with one or all four grandchildren.

Connect with Oscar:  

Oscar Trimboli: oscartrimboli.com 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/oscartrimboli 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. How well do you listen like really listen? We waste so much time, energy resources and money due to a lack of effective listening. It causes misunderstandings, rework, mistakes and in some cases dangerous outcomes. My guest today is a listening whisperer. That’s my name for him anyway. Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the apple award winning podcast, deep listening, and a sought after keynote speaker. I admit I found myself kind of nervous speaking with him, knowing that he may be assessing my listening skills. He is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace through his work with chairs, boards of directors and executive teams, Oscar has experienced firsthand the transformational impact leaders can have when they listen beyond words. He’s the author of How to listen, discover the hidden key to better communication and deep listening impact beyond words and breakthroughs, how to confront assumptions. Oskar starts out sharing his epiphany moment in a meeting that led to his current work with more than 35,000 people in his research database, Oscar shares the four common listening villains that cause barriers at work, and perhaps you can select which one you might be. I share my common villain with all of you too. We talk about what the best listeners have in common, how listening changes when it’s face to face, versus online. And practical ways to improve your listening at work and in meetings to ensure engagement and positive outcomes. Oscar shares what he’s learned about how deaf and blind people listen, and he even reveals some ways to listen better when you are utterly bored by a presenter or in a meeting. So many gems. Take a listen. Hi Oscar. Welcome to the empathy edge podcast. I am delighted to have you here today to have a deep conversation about deep listening. Welcome to the show.

Oscar Trimboli  02:53

G’day, Maria, really looking forward to listening to your questions.

Maria Ross  02:56

So before we kick off and share all your insights and wisdom with our audience. Let’s just hear a little bit about your story and how you came to this work of sort of being a, I was going to say a listening whisperer, but that would be counterintuitive. So tell us how you got to this work around deep listening.

Oscar Trimboli  03:14

You have to zoom in to April, 2008 I’m in a boardroom. We’re doing a video conference between Sydney, Seattle and Singapore. It’s the annual budget setting meeting. I’m the director of marketing for Microsoft in Australia. And 20 minutes into this meeting, my vice president, who’s sitting directly across the table, looks me straight in the eye, and says, Oscar, we need to talk immediately after this meeting. Now Maria, when somebody says, Honey, we need to talk. I did not pay attention to anything. I didn’t listen to anything for the rest of that meeting, all I did was take out my notepad and I figured out how many weeks of salary have I got left, and who are the five people I need to call after I get to start networking. Yeah. Yeah. So meeting finishes a little early, and everybody kind of makes their way out the door, and I try to escape. And Tracy says to me, Oscar, please make sure you close the door, because what I have to say to you is really important. I close the door. I start the 10 steps back to the boardroom table. And she says to me, halfway, you don’t know what you did at the 20 minute mark, do you? And I thought, Great, I’m getting fired, and I don’t even know why. And I sat down getting ready for my execution, and Tracy says, Oscar, if you could code how you listen, you could change the world. What I heard was,

Maria Ross  04:32

Oh, I haven’t I’m not fired. Yeah.

Oscar Trimboli  04:36

And the only thing I could blurt out to Tracy was, do you mean code or code? Code? And she goes, Oscar, we work at Microsoft art, I mean code, software. And since then, I’ve been on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace. And we’ve coded into three books and over hundreds of podcasts where we interview the best listeners in the world. We’ve created jigsaw puzzle games. Teams and online assessments, and we’ve researched over 35,000 workplace listeners. So the difference between hearing and listening is taking action, and I hope every day I’m monitoring Tracy’s request to code how to listen, not how I listen.

Maria Ross  05:15

I love it. What a great story that we all wanted to listen to because of the way that you told it. But I’m curious, do you still work with Microsoft, or are you on your own now?

Oscar Trimboli  05:26

Yeah, no, I’ve been doing this work for 15 years now, on my own. Probably was another five years after that before I left Microsoft. So yeah, it’s like next week I’ll be going to Denmark working with labor unions and how they listen during negotiations. Oh my goodness, an international assignment with construction companies and how they listen around safety and their clients and legal groups and pharmaceutical companies. So the wonderful thing about technology, even though I’m on the walls, worst time zone,

Oscar Trimboli  06:01

I’m able to work with people all around the world,

Maria Ross  06:03

yeah, well, lord knows the world needs more listening these days to bring us together rather than tear us apart. So let’s talk about this. Then, with these 35,000 people in your database, what are the most common listening barriers at work,

Oscar Trimboli  06:21

the kind of four of them and the research that we did, we asked people, what do you struggle with when it comes to listening at work? And we analyzed all that information in a world before AI, so I literally went through two and a half 1000 responses with it, with the market research company, and we coded them into four. I’ll describe the four, and then I’ll describe the characteristics of each four. So it’s dramatic interrupting lost and shrewd. And these are the labels that people gave themselves, and also the speakers. We also interviewed people from their perspective about speaking. So we didn’t just look at them from a listening perspective. We asked them, What do you get frustrated about when someone’s not listening to you? So dramatic characteristics is, they love to form connection, but their blind spot, their barrier is somebody says, I’m really struggling with my manager. Oh, you think you got a bad manager? Let me tell you about my so they move the spotlight off them, and the speaker says it’s all about them. Unconsciously, they’re trying to just form a connection through a story. They’re not allowing the other person to fully explain what matters to them, interrupting, Oh, I hear a question.

Maria Ross  07:42

Well, I was just going to make a comment on that really quickly without interrupting, hopefully. But, you know, that’s what I term empathy hijacking in the book, where it’s done with the best of intentions, to try to help someone feel less alone, or to jump into problem solving mode, or to just, you know, make them feel better. And you know, we’re doing it from a very pure place, but it completely decenters the narrative away from the person who actually needs to be heard and needs to have time to process whatever they’re processing. So I love that, because one of my past guests shared a technique around that when you’re working with an employee of stop for a minute when someone’s coming into your office, hot right, with a complaint or an issue, and ask them what they need? Do they need you to see it? Do they need you to solve it, or do they need you to just support you? So I love that you’ve identified this listening type that. And I like that. You called it dramatic.

Oscar Trimboli  08:44

Well, you see, I didn’t call it dramatic. That’s the theme that came out of like, the actual labels that, you know, they’re such a drama queen, was the way they described it. Look a little commercial break from neuroscience and why it’s critical that you either don’t interrupt or you don’t share the story. Although we speak in a range of 125 to 150 words per minute, we think on average at 900 the range is 600 to 1600 so if you’re working complex, collaborative, competitive workplaces, you’re closer to 1600 than 900 what does it mean? It means the first thing you say is 14% of what you think and mean Said another way, 86% of what you think and mean you don’t say the first time. So this is the reason why, if you are an empathetic hijacker, you’re actually missing out on what they mean. You’re just hearing the very first output that they’ve got. And most of the time when somebody says, you know, Maria, what I actually meant to say was, or now that I thought about it a little longer, or, as you did, you took a little deep breath in where I said, Oh, I noticed a question. It means you haven’t finished your thought. So for many of us, we need to connect with white, and that’s W, A, I T, why am I talking? And this is because silent and listen share exactly the same letters. So if you want to become a little bit better, and we’ll get to the three other barriers to listening in a second, quite often, knowing the numbers around their speaking speed and their thinking speed is enough for people to go, Oh, I’ve actually got a reason now to pause, to breathe, to ask myself that question, why am I talking? And you’ll be surprised what you learn from that.

Maria Ross  10:42

Let’s finish off with you. I love it. I love it. Yes, please. The other three.

Oscar Trimboli  10:46

Next one’s interrupting. It’s what we thought would be disproportionately represented in our database, but it’s roughly a quarter as well, and they’re the quiz show contestant that presses the buzzer before the hostess asked the question on Jeopardy, and that got a really fast answer to the wrong question, or they may have a really fast answer to the correct question, yet the speaker feels belittle. They feel less than they feel like they don’t matter, and the interrupting listening. Villain is very conscious of time, and their orientation is productivity. So they basically go, been there, done that. I can figure out what they’re going to say next, and I can give you the answer so we can move on. Well, you know what if all they say the very first time is 14% of what they think in one in five cases, you will solve the most correct question. In four out of five, you’re going to get it wrong 80% of the time. And that’s why workplaces are full of chaos, confusion and conflict. So again, if you’re the interrupting listening villain, just ask yourself that question, why am I talking? The next one lost. They’re very polite people. They’re invited to meetings, and they’re not sure why, or they’re part of a group discussion, and they drift away. They’re kind of not in the meeting. They don’t understand why they’re there. They come across as vague and disinterested, and these people simply need to ask the meeting host, what role do you want me to play in the meeting? Or I’m not clear on my purpose in this conversation, if you’re part of a one on one, if the host doesn’t describe that, then as the Lost listening villain, you want to make sure that you ask that question as close to the beginning of the conversation as possible. In workplace meetings, you may ask the question, look, I’m not clear about why I’ve been invited to the meeting, but if you’d like me to put the customer hat on during this conversation, or the competitor’s hat on during this conversation, or a different department’s hat, a regulator’s hat, then you can play a really, really powerful role. If you don’t feel safe enough to ask that question, then just adopt the position of somebody who’s not in this meeting, who’s impacted by this and you will bring a powerful external perspective to the conversation. And then finally, the shrewd, listening villain.

Maria Ross  13:19

That’s an intriguing title. Well, they’re the kissing

Oscar Trimboli  13:22

cousin of the interrupting listening villain, but they’re a little cleverer. It looks like this, if you’re listening on the podcast, I’m kind of giving great head nods. I’m stroking my chin. I’m going uh huh, and I’m not interrupting you, but if I had closed captioning on what’s going on in my head, it would sound kind of like this. Oh, my God, this is the world’s most basic problem. How slow are they describing this? Yeah, once they get there, they’ve realized that they got three more problems ahead of this. But don’t worry, I’ll save them from the speaker’s perspective. What they say is, I know they’re trying to fix me. And again, it corals. Is friction in the relationship, because that’s how they’re trying to fix the problem. They’re trying to fix me. And when it comes to the shrewd listening villain, just be cautious. Stop listening to what they say and start to listen to how they say it. Are they talking about the past, the present or the future? Are they talking about themselves or external factors as well? So those four again, dramatic interrupting, lost and shrewd. Think of the worst listener, you know, Maria. Which villain are they?

Maria Ross  14:39

That’s a hard one.

Maria Ross  14:41

I’m not asking you to name the person. No, I’m not. I’m not

Maria Ross  14:44

going to name the person. It’s interesting because I think I don’t know if this is just based on recent experience I’m having right now. It’s it might be the a tie between dramatic and lost,

Oscar Trimboli  14:56

and we listen differently at work than we. Do at home, yeah, and we have a primary and secondary listening villain. So I’m shrewd at work. You know, you can imagine the kinds of people who approach me who would like some work to help you, and like, I’ve got a database with 35,000 people. I’ve got correlations out to Wazoo Yeah, I’ve been there and done that and got the cigar yet at home, I’m lost. When my two brother in laws bang on about religion, I’m completely checked out. They’re bang on about the religion of canon versus Nikon. They’re into photography. That’s their religion, like my phone is my camera, right? So occasionally they throw me a bone and say, What do you think Oscar? And I go, sorry, what’s the question?

Maria Ross  15:41

Oh, wait, I didn’t know I was going to need to interject. And I will say, and I wrote about this in the empathy dilemma that, and maybe even some of my other books too. I am an interrupter because I get so excited about what people are saying. And also I have this thing where I think I’m going to forget, and I want to make sure I throw it out there. And usually what I do out of I try to, out of empathy and kindness, say, You know what? Here’s the thing I wanted to say, but let’s put a pin in that so I don’t forget it. But keep going with your

Oscar Trimboli  16:12

story. Yeah. And if you get a chance, go back and listening. Listen to Maria’s episode about why active listening is so hard. Interrupting is not wrong or incorrect when it comes to listening done well, skillfully and professionally, interrupting can be a great sign that you’re listening. The difference is people are not conscious when they interrupt mid sentence, mid breath or mid thought, if you can allow them to complete their breath, complete their thought, complete their sentence, the interruption doesn’t carry the same weight. In the episode that Maria recorded, she talked about cultural variation in interrupting. So for example, in Eastern Europe or South America, interruption or talking over the other person is a sign of a very strong relationship. So there are cultural variations in interrupting as well. But please don’t think that interrupting is bad. If you’re hosting a meeting and someone’s going on and on and on and well away from the agenda, this is your permission fully interrupt them and bring them back to purpose.

Maria Ross  17:21

Yeah, I mean, because that’s also un empathetic, is to not is to sort of lose control of a meeting where someone is taking up so much space that other people can’t jump in. So that is so useful. And I just want to say, I just want to ask, I guess, a follow on to that is, you know, we were talking about, these are the most common listening barriers at work. And what would you say is the most detrimental outcome of any of those? What does it look like when those barriers exist? What is the outcome for the people on the other side?

Oscar Trimboli  17:55

For the people on the other side is reduce trust meetings that take way too long, or meetings that re you get revisited when you apply these techniques, and the measure we use is your meetings are shorter and you have fewer meetings. The opposite is true too, when the group is not listening effectively and communicating in a way that’s about the purpose. Meetings tend to take longer, or even if you have short meetings, you come back because somebody comes back to the next meeting and says, Oh, great, Maria, here it is. I’ve delivered what you want. And Maria says, Oh, actually, that’s not what I meant. What I meant was this. And then there’s a whole rework. And depending on how senior you are in the organization, that rework can have some major implications for other people, and there’s a cascade impact of that ultimately less profitable great customers that you want. They go to the competition because your competition listens better than you do, and then employees leave because they feel like they haven’t been heard.

Maria Ross  19:03

Okay, so let’s switch gears, and let’s talk about the right way to do things. So what are the best listeners have in common? What are some of their tricks and rituals?

Oscar Trimboli  19:11

Yeah, well, their characteristics are, they’re open, they’re flexible, and they’re curious. That was the consistent themes that came across. And the first thing that they do differently is they don’t focus on the listener as sorry. They don’t focus on the speaker as the start of their listening. If you focus on the speaker, you’re starting from the wrong place. Listening starts with you. You need to shut down the browser tabs in your own mind so you can create enough space in your working memory. Listening is a relatively modern process in the human brain. We learnt to see much earlier in our evolution than we learned to hear and learn to speak. So you know, you mentioned, why is active listening so hard? It’s hard because we have so many components. Heating priorities in our mind. So when it comes to listening, great listeners are very open to start off with, because they manage their state. They have very simple rituals to start. First one is they don’t start the meeting at the top of the hour or the bottom of the half hour. They schedule space in their invitation for the other person. So practical tip number one, if you’re still doing meetings at the top of the hour, you’re going to have people rushing in five minutes after the end of the meeting. Go, sorry, I’m late. I just had a back to back meeting, but I’m here. I’m ready. I’m here now. Well, they’re not. They’ve arrived at five past the hour, but their mind arrives at about 10 past the hour. So create that space, not just for you, but for the others you interact with as well. Pre meeting, have a ritual where you drink a glass of water before the meeting commences. Why? It sends a signal to the parasympathetic nervous system, that’s the nervous system around your heart and lungs, that’s the survival instinct, and it says, relax, everything’s okay, and it will help to shut down those browser tabs in your own mind. And then just notice your breath and take one deeper, longer breath than normal, sends exactly the same signal to parasympathetic nervous system. If you don’t have a glass of water, hold it and then exhale. Typically, we’re holding it for between three and five seconds longer than normal, and it will shut down another browser tab. So they manage their state and they get ready to listen. The next thing they do is they’re clear on purpose. So a meeting. May have an agenda. That’s what we’re discussing, but they’re very good at the purpose of the discussion. How are we going to have the conversation? How are we allocating time? How do we know if we’re on track? And they typically ask a version of a very simple question, what would make this a great conversation? Not what would make this a great conversation for you? If the conversation is between two people, there are three entities present in that dialog. You them and the conversation. We are tracking the conversation, not the speaker, not the listener. The reason we ask that question is it gives us a permission slip to check in regularly, every 10 minutes and say Maria at the beginning of the conversation, you said this would make it a good conversation. How are we tracking? By the way, it’s a great permission slip to interrupt somebody who’s carrying on as well. Finally, they’re very conscious of how people say things and creating the space to let them get the first 125 and the next 125 words out. Please be careful listening in the workplace is not therapy. It’s not your job to be their psychiatrist, their psychologist, or anything you’ve seen on Netflix on a

Maria Ross  22:59

couch. I just wrote an article for Forbes that’s called why you don’t need to be your employee, psychologist or therapist. Yeah, so I hear you. I’m with you. It doesn’t mean they’re on your couch. And what was one of the quotes from my book, one of the leaders I spoke to said, I’m very clear that I’m not here to help you discuss boundary issues with your mother in law. That’s not why I have this job.

Maria Ross  23:20

And I thought that was such a great way of putting it,

Oscar Trimboli  23:22

yeah, yeah. And even though they manifest regularly in the workplace, and I was working with a leader just yesterday who’s incredibly and beyond frustrated about the way employees interacting with them, and I simply asked, you know, they had used the word frustration. And I said, What’s that frustration about? And they were like, as if they had up fire hose and they were squirting it all over the employee, and they’d finished. And I said, and what is it about for you? And you could see this big shift in their state. They took this big breath out, and I went, Yeah, I guess I got some work to do. I said, Well, the good news is you won’t be doing that with me. It’s like there are other approaches to doing that. So better listeners manage themselves. Notice that there’s a process we need to put in place. And what will make this a good conversation? What would make this a good meeting? What would make this a good whatever or productive? Your choice of words, and they’re skillful to understand the silent and listening have the same letters, and we were in a team workshop with a tech company, and they’ve been growing at 30% per annum. And although that sounded great, the market they were operating in was growing at 200% per annum, so they weren’t growing as fast as they could. And they were frustrated. We had a leadership team, and I simply had them before the lunch break. And I said, describe this organization as an animal. And we went all. Around the room, and it was a cheater or an Osprey or an eagle, and it was basically something that was fast and kills things. 12 people in the room. We came to the very last member of the group who hadn’t spoken the whole meeting, card carrying member of the introvert community, and a CFO. And I simply extended my arm out to her, and I didn’t say, speak up or anything like that. And she said, I thought it was obvious. And she stopped, and everybody kind of like, hurry up and finish. Hurry up and finish. And she said, I thought it was obvious. I thought we were a snake. So Maria, I’m curious, what were you associating with a snake? What adjectives are you using to describe a snake?

Maria Ross  25:43

Well, I feel like at that point I’d go tell me more about that. Because is she meaning a snake from a like, attack and sly and sneaky angle, or was she meaning a snake of like, sort of wrapping herself around in circles.

Oscar Trimboli  25:59

When you think of a snake comes to mind for you.

Maria Ross  26:02

I imagine something very ominous and something very dangerous and sneaky, and you never know what it’s going to do next. Yeah.

Oscar Trimboli  26:12

So I didn’t say tell me more, because if I was from a different culture to the dominant culture in the room, and I just extended my hand just a couple inches further out, and she said, she repeated, I thought it was obvious. I thought we’re a snake. We’ve forgotten to shed our skin every season. We have systems and processes and mindsets that are holding our organization back. And if we learn to shed our skin, we can grow as fast as the market now, the meeting went from a bunch of group think, which is listening for the similar, because we have orientation to listen for similar and because I speculate, rarely is she invited into the conversation, and you don’t have to verbalize it to invite it in. Just a simple gesture can work. The meeting trajectory completely changed. Everybody started to talk about their process that had been fossilized, or, you know, the skin hadn’t been shed, and the meeting was supposed to have lunch. Just before she spoke, they went on for another 35 minutes, and the level of engagement was very, very different. Now, what happened was they took the metaphor and they started using snake varieties as code names for their product development. They had internal awards based around different kinds of snakes in the West, snakes have very negative connotation because for many people, the origin story the first story they learn. What you don’t know about the CFO, the culture she was from, is Chinese where a snake means something very, very different. The connotations about agility and skill, not a negative connotation about sneaky and ominous and all would you use there Maria to describe that so listening, sometimes we think exclusively as kind of one on one, kind of conversations. The good meeting hosts get everybody to listen to the active speaker. Great meeting hosts get everybody to listen to each other, and that takes a lot of pressure off your listening as a host as well. So I wonder what you’re taking from the snake story. Maria, Well,

Maria Ross  28:28

it’s interesting because, you know, I was not in the room, so I was not aware of the ethnic difference there. I think that would have factored in. But I love how you unlocked and got them excited about what was happening after that, because they genuinely stopped and listened instead of continuing to engage in groupthink. That’s kind of what I’m taking away with it. And it it’s, you know, reminding me of, you know, some of the best workshops you facilitate or talks you facilitate is when you bring in the person that doesn’t usually express their opinion, or the people that have been discounted, you know, oh, they’re a squeaky wheel, they’re a curmudgeon. They’re, you know, whatever the story is that they tell. And I have found in client workshops over and over again, the person that people are not sure why they should be in the room, and maybe that person isn’t even sure why they’re in the room, they come up with the best epiphanies in the room because they actually get space to be heard. Because I have no skin in the game, so I am like, No, keep talking. Tell me why you have a problem with this. Tell me why this is so negative. Instead of trying to silence that person, it’s letting them feel heard, and often, not always, but often they come up with that gem that kind of stops everybody in their tracks, like the story you just told. And so that’s that power of having the diversity in the room, but not just having it in the room to the work that you do, being able to listen to. Actively to what they’re saying and take it in and not just humoring

Oscar Trimboli  30:04

them. Yeah, and the really important question you want to be asking yourself, if you’re moving up the levels of listening, is what’s not being said. And as Pam mentioned in her interview with you, what perspectives from outside the room are not being represented inside the room, right? One of the things is that these card carrying members of the introvert community amazing synthesizers so they can play back to the group what they have heard in a way that the group can’t articulate. Equally, they also say what’s absent. Unfortunately, they say it much too late. So imagine a one hour meeting at the 40 minute mark. They’ll say, Well, we haven’t even talked about the competition, or we haven’t even talked about the customer, and it feels like a hand grenade to the group. Progress for the introverts out there who have some superpowers when it comes to listening around synthesis and noticing the abstinence speak earlier in the meeting, and you will create much more momentum in the conversation and bring more people along, rather than slowing down progress with an Outstanding and insightful observation at the wrong time.

Maria Ross  31:24

Okay, I have so many more questions for you. I love this so much.

Oscar Trimboli  31:27

Oh, we can come back again. We can come back another episode. I do

Maria Ross  31:31

want to ask you, first of all, more of a meta question of

Oscar Trimboli  31:36

how not on Facebook? Haha. I It’s

Maria Ross  31:41

more about, how can you learn to be a good listener? What can what mental game? What mental gymnastics Can you play? What practices can you do internally when you’re genuinely bored by what’s taking place in the meeting or what’s taking place in the presentation? What are some ways that we can engage when we don’t feel engaged, if at all? I guess that’s also the question too. Is it possible?

Oscar Trimboli  32:11

Yeah, so there’s three perspectives on that. Quickly. Number one, we need to unlearn what we’ve learned about listening to become better listeners. We learned to listen at 32 weeks inside our mother’s womb. We could distinguish our mother’s voice from any other voice in the outside world, so we knew how to listen before we were born. Unfortunately, as we move into our homes and our cultures and our parents and our aunties, we learn how they role model listening, and we become a facsimile, a copy of them as well. So sometimes it’s not what’s the hack I need to

Maria Ross  32:49

learn? I know I hate using that word, but yeah, it’s just what do

Oscar Trimboli  32:53

we need to unlearn to get there? The second part for the specific question you ask is it is common to be bored and drifted off. And here’s the reason why. Back to the neuroscience. Remember, we talked about the speaker 125 words per minute, and they can think of 900 here’s what’s going on for you as a listener. They’re talking too slow, in fact, to prove the point, at least half this audience is playing back this recording at a speed faster than one time speed. Yeah, yep, truth. So you can listen and comprehend at up to 350 400 words per minute. So I’m speaking four times slower than you can process and you’re bored and drifting away, and that’s okay. The hack is simply this, what do I want to get out of this conversation and start to zone into that? That’s why a great meeting host will make sure they go around the meeting and understand what everybody is listening for or wanting to get out of the meeting. If you’re bored, just simply look at the eyes of the active speaker for five seconds. Use that as a mental reset. Now, it’s much easier to do on video conference, because it doesn’t come across as staring right or intimidating, right being face to face meetings, just notice the eyes of the speaker and see if you can figure out what color their eyes are. When I interviewed Christina BERGSTEN, who’s the world champion military sniper, and she uses techniques where she focuses on leaves because she has extended periods of boredom, but she needs her full attention in a in the work she does. So find something you can focus on for short periods of time that has variation based on this. So eyes What color are mine? Mine actually is slightly different left to right eye, slightly different color. As an example, you’ll be surprised how many people have variation in eye color. If you use that simple hack number two, write down, why am I here? Yeah, because you the best thing you might do with your listening is leave the meeting. You don’t need to be there if it’s not effective for you, or you’re not there to represent others. So sometimes the final tip is, Why stay? The most effective thing you might do is leave the meeting.

Maria Ross  35:37

Such good stuff. You brought it up. So I want to just follow that thread a little bit. What? How does listening change for us in face to face versus video meetings, because we are dealing with a lot of environments that are still remote or hybrid. So how does listening show up differently in a face to face environment versus an online environment?

Oscar Trimboli  35:59

Yeah, extraordinary variation. We’ve written 110 page guide to how to host an online meeting from a listening perspective, and some of the things that people show up something we don’t know about listening. We either listen with our eyes first and our ears second, or our ears first and our eyes second. Now the easiest way to figure out which one you are, close your eyes while you’re listening to this, unless you’re driving and please keep your eyes open. And Maria, if you want to play the game, you can close your eyes a little bit. And what happens is, if your primary visual first and auditory second, if your eyes are closed right now, you’ll find this conversation really frustrating you as desperate to see what body language signals are coming across. So if you’ve played the game, you can open your eyes right now. So I’ll just ask Maria, was that something that was comfortable or uncomfortable for you?

Maria Ross  36:56

It’s a little uncomfortable. And I think you’ve just landed on why I try to like audio books, but I can’t. Oh, even though I’m reading, I’m not watching somebody speak. But for me, it’s also a it’s a cognitive thing, I think too, of like, I can retain information really well, both visually and orally, auditory, auditory so I find myself like, when I closed my eyes and I was listening to you, I found myself kicking myself, of like, make sure you’re listening, make sure you’re listening, make sure you’re getting it, make sure you’re getting it. And I do that much more naturally when I can both see and hear. But what I love about this is this brings about a point of empathy in regards to people that are disabled and the different senses that they need to rely on in order to listen, even if they’re hearing impaired, right? How do they process and take in information, and what are the different ways that we can honor that for people and not just assume there’s one modality for communication that will serve the needs of every person in our group or organization or team.

Oscar Trimboli  38:13

Yeah, and I’ve interviewed deaf people and I’ve interviewed blind people about how they listen, so a very simple tell us about that of empathy is when I interviewed Dame Evelyn Glennie from the United Kingdom, who was the first deaf percussionist in the royal Symphony Orchestra. For example, She She applied and they rejected her the first time. But one of the things I did, I spoke to a deaf interpreter before the interview, and you will notice I’m wearing a black shirt. By the way, for most of you who are listening, I’ve got a black shirt on. This is designed to create maximum contrast for anybody who needs to lip read with me as well. Now, when I interviewed Dame Evelyn Glennie at the end of the interview, she said, this was by far the most different interview I’ve ever had. And a point she made is, you didn’t treat me as a deaf person. You just had a conversation with me now deaf since the age of 12, and she learned to lip read, so it was crucial that I had contrast in my body so that it will maximize what’s around my lips. But Dame Evelyn Glennie would teach all of us is, do you listen with your whole body, not just your ears and your eyes? You listen with your complete being? And when she plays percussion to listen to the other instruments she plays barefooted as an example. But I also have interviewed blind people, and Daniel Kirsch is an amazing example of that. When I interviewed he had a selfie stick on a camera, on his sorry cell phone, and to welcome me into the discussion I had with him. He showed me all around his house. He showed me his cats. He took me outside. He showed me his orange trees, and the whole conversation was had walking now, Maria would appreciate this. As anybody recording any interviews, you’re freaking out, it’s like background noise and all of this, Daniel maintained complete eye contact with me during the whole interview. There was minimal background noise, and he was quite possibly, like, I don’t have favorite children or grandchildren, and I don’t have favorite people that I interviewed, but he would be in the top group if I did have favorites. His ability to listen full meaning, not just for what we were discussing, was extraordinary. And again, he said to me at the end of the interview, Oscar, it was great. You never mentioned my blindness once. Treat me like a normal person. And I think when it comes to us thinking about people who don’t necessarily have the same way we listen or the same way we see, we think that maybe they’re less and they’re not. So one of the big things, I would say, is back to your original question. If you really struggled with that exercise, you tend to struggle more with listening in video conferencing than face to face. So visual people prefer the face to face because they’re getting more non verbal cues from the room that they’re present in if you’re auditory, you don’t mind. You can work with that too. That equally, you find it a little frustrating where people don’t get to the point as quickly as possible, too. So there you go, primary auditory, primary visual.

Maria Ross  41:37

I love it. I mean, I know we could talk for another hour, but we’re going to wrap up and we’re going to guide people to your wonderful books. You’ve got the book that just came out in 2023 which is that’s not deep listening impact beyond words and breakthroughs. That’s that book came out prior to that yes,

Oscar Trimboli  41:59

yes, yeah. Okay, yeah, that’s how to listen, the most comprehensive book about listening in the workplace.

Maria Ross  42:04

That’s it. That’s right, that’s just came out, and I think that that’s we probably just got a taste of what’s included in that book in this discussion today. So we will have the link to that book and other resources in the show notes. Do you want to take a second to tell folks about the listening quiz?

Oscar Trimboli  42:21

A lot of people say, hey, Oscar, where can I learn more about my listening? So I invite you to explore what are your primary and secondary listening barriers? If you take the seven minute quiz, you’ll get asked 20 Questions. You’ll get a resource which is five pages long tells you your primary and secondary listening villain, and we give you three tailored tips based on your responses, what industry and profession you’re in that are very practical and you can use immediately in your next meeting. So go to listening quiz.com to learn all about

Maria Ross  42:50

that great. And we will have that link in the show notes. But just because I butchered it earlier, I want to give the name of the book again that folks should check out how to listen discover the hidden key to better communication. Oscar, it’s been a pleasure talking to you today, and I hope we continue the conversation and the listening as we go forward and we’re connected now. For folks that are on the go and can’t access the links in the show notes right now and they’re just listening, where’s the best place they can contact you or find out more?

Oscar Trimboli  43:21

Oh, to find out more about the listening quiz, that’s it calm, nice and simple. And if you want to get into contact with me, all the coordinates for contacting me at listening quiz.com also

Maria Ross  43:35

wonderful listening quiz.com thank you again for your time and for your insights today. Thanks for listening, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review or share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. You announcer For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge calm. There. You can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

How much better does taking an empathetic approach impact not just your leadership, but your ability to bring the right products and services to market nd truly connect with your ideal customers? Turns out, it can help you avoid costly advertising campaign failures!

Today I talk with Lane Byrum, EQ coach and Director of Corporate Accounts for Five Capitals. Lane shares one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever heard about blending business with human connection, how empathy got real for him in that moment, and how it changed the team and consumer. He also gives a great example of how one company wasted millions of dollars on a brand-damaging ad campaign that missed the mark when it failed to dive deeper into empathy for your target audience – and how they put ego aside, took responsibility, and re-did the research to launch a breakthrough campaign instead! We discuss how empathy helps you break away from putting people into labels and boxes to form better connections. He shares three ways to get curious without sounding like you are interrogating someone. And Lane shares how to use empathy as a tool in a healthy, compassionate way with four steps to engage in a deeper connection at work – or at home!

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen for…

• The research project that made empathy real for Lane.
• Why empathy is first and foremost about acknowledging, not fixing or solving. 
• Key steps to engage in a deeper connection with others. 
• How to use empathy and storytelling as a tool. 

“You have to be courageous in these times, because there are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t (be) that sound right, – until you use courage and empathy, you won’t understand how wrong those reasons are.” —  Lane Byrum

Episode References: 

• Always Like a Girl Campaign and Super Bowl ad from Leo Burnett

About Lane Byrum: EQ Coach and Director of Corporate Accounts, Five Capitals

Lane brings 18 years of experience in qualitative research with Fortune 500 companies, and now devotes his work to developing emotionally intelligent leaders and teams. As an Enneagram Type 2, Lane’s approach blends deep self-awareness and empathy to create lasting growth—one conversation at a time. Whether through individual coaching or team training, he helps leaders tune into their inner wisdom and the people they lead to build truly human-centered organizations.

Connect with Lane:  

Five Capitals: fivecapitals.net 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lanebyrum 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. How much better does taking an empathetic approach impact not just your leadership, but your ability to bring the right products and services to market and to truly connect with your ideal customers? It turns out it can help you avoid costly advertising campaign failures. Today, I talk with Lane Byram EQ, coach and director of corporate accounts for Five Capitals. He brings 18 years of experience in qualitative research with Fortune 500 companies, and now devotes his work to developing emotionally intelligent leaders and teams as an Enneagram type two. Lane’s approach blends deep self awareness and empathy to create lasting growth, one conversation at a time, whether through individual coaching or team training. He helps leaders tune into their inner wisdom and the people they lead to build truly human, centered organizations. Lane shares one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever heard about blending business with human connection, how empathy got real for him in that moment, and how it changed the team and consumer. He also gives a great example of how one company wasted millions of dollars on a brand damaging ad campaign that missed the mark when it failed to dive deeper into empathy for your target audience and how they put ego aside, took responsibility and redid the research to launch a breakthrough campaign. Instead, we discuss how Empathy helps you break away from putting people into labels and boxes to form better connections, and he shares three ways to get curious without sounding like you’re interrogating someone. Lane finally shares how to use empathy as a tool in a healthy, compassionate way, with four steps to engage in a deeper connection at work or at home. So many great stories today. Take a listen Lane Byram, welcome to the empathy edge podcast to talk to us about, of course, all things empathy and helping people practically embrace empathy without being performative. So welcome to the show.

Lane Byrum  02:56

Thank you, Maria. Excited to be here. Have been following you for a while, so it’s always fun to get to talk to someone you’ve been reading their books and things like that. This is good.

Maria Ross  03:05

I love it. I love it. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So before we dive into all the goodness, I want to hear your story. Tell us a little bit about how you got to this work, what your passion is around it. We heard your bio earlier, but tell us, like, what lights you up about it?

Lane Byrum  03:23

Oh, my goodness, yeah. So empathy. I joined a qualitative research firm back in the early 2000s and we kind of did things the regular way. We went and recruited consumers, talked to them about the thing we were trying to sell or get them interested in. And it was rewarding, because it’s always good to kind of give someone something that they need once you understand that. But we found that our insights felt very surface, like maybe we could take our insight and use it over here or with that company, and your competitors could use it, and we wanted to go deeper. And so our as a company, we dove in on empathy and explored what it could mean that we used it as a tool in research at the time. Now, since then, I use it in my coaching. I use it I do the trainings and things like that. So I love, love empathy. But that’s where it started, was that that wonderful company I got to work at, named seek, was the name of the company

Maria Ross  04:15

I love that. I mean, you know, you and I both sort of, we have marketing background in different areas, and that’s always the key is really effective marketing is about empathizing and understanding who your ideal client is, your ideal customer. And that’s why I’ve loved partnering with research firms. I geek out about, you know, the insights you can get from people about how they really feel about a company and what problems are they actually trying to solve not just what the company wants to tell them, but what they need to hear?

Lane Byrum  04:45

Yeah, and it’s and if you’re just going to run with a verbatim that someone says, it’s probably going to fall a little flat, you need to get underneath that with the verbatim feels like the what, right? And we want to get the why behind the what kind of get to get up. Underneath that and find that. So, yeah, empathy is a great tool for that.

Maria Ross  05:03

Okay, so I want to hear your story about a particular research project and how empathy got real for you. Yeah, what was your big aha moment?

Lane Byrum  05:14

Oh, my goodness. It was a nice to have. For me, it was like, okay, empathy, cool. It’s a great way to connect. Yay, Oh, yay. Then I was on a research project in Mexico City. We were researching toilet paper, of all things, which is just a lot of fun, but if you’ve ever been into that culture, it is such a warm and welcoming culture. Every home we went to, we were doing immersions. Every home we go into, they’d welcome us. They’d wanna fix us dinner, or give us drinks, or try this new tequila we had. It was just all, all just a wonderful thing. We go to our last one, our team is like, on a riding a high because everything had gone really, really good, and knock on the last door, and the door opens, and this lady’s just sad. Her face is sad. She’s like, almost looks like she wishes we weren’t there. And we’re like, we’re here for the thing. She said, Yeah, come on in. Obviously, this is through an interpreter, right? And who were in a local moderator who we were using, right? But you built a vibe, oh, and walked in the door, and it’s like, something heavy is here, and I don’t know what it is yet. So we go and we sit down, and we’re like, hey, you know how research goes. We’re gonna ask you a lot of questions, and you’re always gonna have the right answer, because, you know, it’s your opinion. And she goes, Well, let me stop you there. You are not gonna ask me any questions that are personal. You are not gonna ask me about my family, and you are not gonna ask me about anything that goes inside. And we’re like, well, there goes the first hour of

Maria Ross  06:38

Right? That’s kind of why we’re here. Yeah

Lane Byrum  06:41

That’s the stuff we do. I looked over at the local moderator, and she’s like, are you ready to go? Would you just like to go? And I’m like, no, no, no, let’s I don’t know what’s going on either, but let’s go. She wants to start talking about toilet paper. Let’s do that. Yeah. So we’re like, hey, take us. Yes, we’re going to talk about toilet paper. Let’s run to the restroom and we’ll see where you store it, and things like that. On our way there, we passed this room and it’s just wall to wall books. It was like, like a little library in their home. And I stopped, I said, Hey, what are these books? Are these? Are these belong to the family? She goes, Oh, those are all medical journals. I’m a doctor, and so that’s and that’s not even half of them I have. My more current ones are actually at my office where I practice. I’m like, that’s incredible. It was like, a little bit more, not, yeah, who she is. And along the top of all these books were all of these trophies. And I’m like, Oh, those yours too. I see there’s golf and there’s other stuff. And she goes, No, those are my husbands and my son. I’ve never gotten a trophy for anything I’ve done in my life. And it’s just this, this heaviness came back out. Yeah, on the end, there was a trophy that I didn’t recognize. It didn’t have a sports figure on top or anything. I’m like, what’s that one? Because she seemed to be engaging. So what’s that one on the end? And she goes, Oh yeah, that’s my, that’s my and broke down, ran back into the room where the couch was and just sat down sobbing, oh my gosh. And again, my local moderator is like, Should we just go? I don’t know what’s going on, but this is really uncomfortable, right? I said, No, no, no, no, no, let’s go back in. Yeah. So this time I went back in, and I kind of broke a little bit of protocol. I sat down on the couch next to her. Usually, that’s where the local moderator sits the talk. And you kind of I sat down next to her and she’s sobbing, and the local moderators like, let’s just go. And I’m like, Just give it a second. Yeah? And I’m an empath, and I’m also an Enneagram too, so I’m very much dialed in to emotions of others and wanting to help. Yes, you’re very much. So I couldn’t sit there and just let her cry, yeah? And I reached over and grabbed her hand, and she looked over at me, I’m bawling. I don’t even know what I’m crying about in the right? I just know you’re crying. And I don’t I this is uncomfortable, and I know this is something heavy,

Maria Ross  08:52

Right? You’re just sitting with it in her, with her in it, yeah?

Lane Byrum  08:55

Being in the moment, just there. I didn’t have to say anything. She turned, her eyes just pouring in ice. And she turned and she goes, that was an urn, and that was my son, who I lost just two months ago. Well now we’re all crying. Everyone in the room is crying, and I’ve got both her hands, and we’re shaking. We’re crying so hard, and we’re an ugly crying, ugly crying going on. And she goes, but through that experience, I learned how to truly love, and so now I’m crying even more, and I’m like, I want to ask questions. And she said it was the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had. I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t do anything to help him. They were crying even more, and then she kind of stopped for a moment. She gathered herself, and she looked at me, and she smiled, and she goes. But I learned one thing, that I’m a damn good mom, and we and so we’re crying. I’m holding her hands, and I’m talking, I’m like, You are a good mom. I’m sure your son felt that from you. I’m sure you got all that we sat there for maybe two. Three more minutes and everything about her change. All she needed in that moment was for another human to be a human with her. Yeah, that’s all she needed, just another human. She bubbled. She became bubbly. Her husband came in. She was making fun of him. Are you out there playing tennis again? You’ll never be as good as Federer. But yeah, go back to the like, just all this banter back and forth. She wanted to make us a meal. She wanted, and we couldn’t. We had to leave to go run to another

Maria Ross  10:30

You’re also like, we have to ask you about toilet paper

Lane Byrum  10:33

Yes, yeah. We looped it back the toilet paper. Segue, yeah. We got some learnings there. But when we left, after having this deep, empathic moment, we went and sat in the van, about to leave, and just something hit me. And I said, we have to do something for her. We can’t just leave like that’s and then it hit me. We contacted the person that was our contact in Mexico City. We’re like, strange request. Do you know anyone that is a trophy maker or a sculptor of any kind? And they’re like, yeah, we’ve got someone. I described what we wanted and what we needed, and overnight, a local artisan created a trophy that was a mother holding a child, and on the plaque, it had her name, which I won’t use, but it had her full name on there, and all it said was world’s greatest mom. Oh my god, there was, there was no debate about putting the name of our company or the company that was sponsoring the research night. No one wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about that. It was about we had a reaction to what was going on, and we felt compelled to act on her behalf, and that meant showing her that we recognized something in her. You’re a great mom. You’re a really good mom. And so that, for me, was when empathy all it took was just sitting with someone in the moment, not trying to change them, not trying to talk them out of it, but sitting there and just experiencing it with them, yeah? And it was life giving for her, well.

Maria Ross  12:05

And I think that’s the lesson, is that empathy is not about the fixing and the solving, it’s about just being there and acknowledging and giving someone space. And I often talk about the concept of empathy, especially in the workplace, as you know, as a method of information gathering, right let me understand what you’re going through, what your context is, and then I can take a next right step. But that next right step isn’t I solve your problem, or I change my decision, or I do whatever you want me to do. That next right step you intuitively figured out it was sitting next to her. It was listening to her. It was acknowledging her pain. And then, you know, you went further afterwards of like, basically, I heard everything she said. And now let me go do this nice thing for her, right? But we so often jump into the oh, how do I solve this for you? Or how do I fix this for you so you don’t feel what you feel anymore, and I don’t feel uncomfortable.

Lane Byrum  13:04

Yeah, exactly right. That’s exactly right. I do believe that empathy has an action step to it, yes, because otherwise you can right. It’s the compassionate empathy, and I think without that, it borders on a little bit of sympathy, and kind of feels a little wonky. And Brene Brown has that absolutely beautiful video distinguishing between the two, yep. But if it has an action step, it almost becomes even more real. So, so what was beautiful? We had that trophy made. None of us wanted to deliver it. We didn’t want it to be about us in any way, right? We had someone courier. Well, they were supposed to take it at like three and then report back to us. How was she did she accept it? How did it go? 330 came, four o’clock came. Five o’clock came. 530 came. He finally reached out and goes, I’ve been trying to get away. She made me dinner. We drank her new favorite tequila. She showed me a video of her son that had just passed like of him playing golf with her, like he got trapped in that moment, but in the good way. And I’m right, we’re so sorry. He goes, Are you kidding me? That was the best meal I’ve had forever. She was amazing, right? So, right, there’s this, there’s an action step of it, and this, that’s true,

Maria Ross  14:13

and I’m going to challenge you a little bit on that though too, because the action is the listening, the action is the sitting. The action isn’t always the gesture, which was a wonderful gesture because you heard her and you acted on what you heard. But you know, just to help folks listening to understand that it’s not always about the solution or the grand gesture or the whatever the action, in and of itself, can be, the sitting and the listening and the acknowledging and the sharing and giving someone space, right? The other action, quote, unquote, that you took was you gave her emotions space. You didn’t jump right back into the reason that you were there, because it was, you know, well, this is why we’re here. And. Maybe if I just keep plowing through this, she’ll feel better, right? Yeah, so I just want to acknowledge that that that, in and of itself, was such a beautiful action of an act of compassion that you gave to let her just be and let her just feel right. And that’s the thing that’s so hard for so many of us, and especially in the workplace, it’s no my job as a leader is you’re coming to me because I need to solve your problem, right? Absolutely. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, after that epiphany, and after that, not even epiphany, but where that really came home for you, with your work with leaders and teams and helping them. What makes empathy so important? What are the things that you tell them? I know we talk about that on the show, but what are the things that have resonated for your clients that really bring it home for them without having an experience like

Lane Byrum  15:54

that in the culture that we currently live in, it is so important to recognize the human that is in front of you, and so often that that person in the other side of you has a label. You’ve labeled them by class, by race, by how they act. You’ve got all of these. You’ve put them in a box. Empathy, I believe, is a way to break out of that box and see the other person as a human, as someone worth connecting to someone that has a story. We walk around as the stars of our own movies, right where we are the leading role, and we have to recognize other people have their own movies going on. And if we can somehow step inside that and learn a little bit about who they are, and it gives us insight into what makes them tick, it gives us insight into how to deal with issues that might come up in a relationship, possible issues that come up at work, even if it’s performance, there’s always a story behind it’s not it’s really just, I don’t care anymore. It’s usually, there’s a story underneath it that gets to what’s going on, what’s actually happening, right? But we don’t get to those deep places very often. Right? Business, we really like to keep it very surface level, and because we have this vision that it’s messy or it’s ugly and it’s not, it’s beautiful, and yes, it may get a little messy for a minute, because that’s what emotions are, man, emotions can get messy. They really can’t, but they’re just a signal that something else is going on. And emotion is just a signal like, hey, there’s something else here. You should be paying attention to this. Yeah, well,

Maria Ross  17:29

and that’s why the curiosity aspect of like, oh boy, even the fact of what you in that story you were describing, you were curious. Your eyes were open, you were wanting to find out more. And I think some of the work that I do with leaders and teams is for those that are not necessarily touchy feely, emotional people, and they feel awkward, they feel like they’re interrogating someone when they ask questions. So have you landed on something with your work and your clients? That’s a more comfortable way for them to start getting curious and asking those questions, and to show that curiosity without making it feel like they’re just drilling someone with question with inappropriate questions, right?

Lane Byrum  18:10

Absolutely. And it’s probably just like three simple, simple things to remember. One, you got to remember that empathy requires courage, because it does. It is maybe one of the more courageous things you’ll do is to be a human with another human, opening yourself up to their experience. It’s a some writers call it deselfing, but deself a little bit allow that other person to share their experience, then a little bit of a heightened awareness of yourself. It’s not just what they’re going through, but what is what they’re telling you doing inside of you, because if you can recognize that, like that story, when she started sharing that her she had lost her son, you know what I connected inside of me was when I lost my mom, because I was trying to think, what would I be feeling in the moment of losing something like this? And I hadn’t lost a child, but I lost a mom, and I immediately that’s what stirred me even more, was recognizing what’s happening inside of me is because I’m connecting to that place because of her story. And then that last piece is just recognizing the remembrance of the common human bond we share more. What is it? 99.9% we’re exactly the same? It’s that 1% we spend so much time on trying to be different or an individual, we have way more in common than ever. So I was to your point. I was working with a team recently, and the leader of the team said, I like it. Empathy. Sounds cool. I don’t have time for it. I just, I moved to, oh yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got things to do yes and have time for that. And it took a while we walked through that, these three things. And he kind of got underneath a little bit and started recognizing so if I slow down, I can speed up on the other side. And for that has been a learning over time. Empathy is very much a slow down, right? And then you get to. Speed up, because after you’ve connected with the other human, you understand their story. You can on the back end, you’re functioning more as a team, more together, because you understand each other on a deeper level. So it’s actually a way to speed up your processes. Then slow down. Sure, you’ll slow down for a minute to connect and understand but the back side is where the payoff

Maria Ross  20:19

is. I always use two analogies to bring this point home. One is, you would never just launch into tactics without a strategy. That’s right. I mean, you shouldn’t, some companies and leaders do, but this idea of, yes, putting together a strategy takes time, but once you have the strategy in place, you can go, you can execute, and everything is aligned and everything is more effective. Secondly, car maintenance, right? If you don’t take the time to if you have a gas car, get your oil changed, get your mileage checkups, if you have an EV getting the battery tested, you know, whatever it is, if you don’t take that time before something goes wrong, then when something goes wrong, it’s harder to recover from. I love that. And you would never, you would never wait until you know you just ran your car into the ground. Because, man, that’ll take a lot more time to recover from, if you don’t make those stops along the way and take that time to go get the car maintained, preventative, right? Just like medicine, it’s preventative, and it just enables everything to flow much more easily. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I hear a lot from leaders, is just the heaviness and the tightness and the overwhelm of leadership right now. And I really feel like empathy is something that sort of loosens that a little bit that if everyone is, if everyone is understanding each other and honoring where everyone else is, it makes those tough situations flow more easily. It’s sort of like loosening the knot.

Lane Byrum  21:54

Yeah, I love that analogy. That’s a beautiful thing. And I think that leader that I was referencing came back to me later, and he actually corrected himself. He’s like, how do I not have time to stop and empathically connect with someone so good? And that’s where he got to. But it took the practice, right? It took the Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do the thing. And once he did it, he’s like, that changes everything.

Maria Ross  22:18

Yeah, once they see the results, right? Absolutely. So that’s, yeah, I was gonna say, how do you help? You know, I was referencing this earlier, and I’m just curious of your approach when you are working with those leaders that are sort of the, you know, arms crossed in front of their bodies. I don’t think this has a place in the workplace. I don’t think I need to get to know my team. They just need to deliver and perform. What kinds of responses do you have to that? Or what do you do to sort of open their eyes a little

Lane Byrum  22:47

bit? Yeah, I think my easiest way through stories, it’s always been stories. The more you can story is a great way to humanize the situation. It’s a great way to share the depth of humanity with someone. So we usually tell stories, and one in if we have time, I’ve got one story, not as long as the last one, but another story. We were working with a client team. It was actually the brand always that was we were working with and they had done this huge global research project.

Maria Ross  23:13

Well, we should level set for anyone that doesn’t know what that they’re familiar with that

Lane Byrum  23:18

yes, yes, always feminine hygiene brand that is one of many we were working with their client team, and they had just done actually weren’t working with them yet. Something happened before we were they did this global project, went into seven, eight different countries, compiled all their learnings, did ideation, handed off their learnings, the insights to Leo Burnett. Another, the advertising agency, yeah, absolutely wonderful agency to work with. They took what they gave them, and this is my thing. It’s like, the better content and the better insights, the depth of insight you can give to an agency like that, the better the product that you’re going to get. On the other end, the better the storytelling is going to be, right? But when you give them surface level insights to function on. They come back. In fact, the campaign they came back with was called, have a happy period.

Maria Ross  24:09

I remember this. I remember this because I’m a woman, and it’s like, that’s BS

Lane Byrum  24:15

And what man wrote it, right? What man wrote this campaign that’s absolutely well, as you can imagine, it bombed horrifically, so much so that they went through a few years of scrubbing it from the internet. It was that much of an embarrassment, yeah. But the good news is someone that was at that company had been through our empathy training, like, Hey, we should call this company. They use empathy, and maybe we can get a little bit deeper. So we redid. This is also a rare thing that happens. They redid. The research worked with us, and we trained the team on empathy, and we went back into those same countries, came back together and wrote a very, very different set of insights that came out of it, which. Led to we, by the way, went right back to Leo Burnett, yeah. We took insights, these new, empathic insights, went back to Leo Burnett, and they created the, like a girl campaign, yeah. And if you have not seen it, listeners, just go to YouTube

Maria Ross  25:15

to it in the show notes,

Lane Byrum  25:16

one of the most beautiful. I like, I still cry, and I’ve seen it literally, I think I account for at least one of the millions that have of how many times it’s been viewed on YouTube, because I use it and everything. It’s just a beautiful of this is what empathy net you. So when you ask, how, what do I do with leadership? I’m like this, yeah, look at this example. This is what it gets you, you know, a Super Bowl commercial that now has, you know, 10s of millions of views over the course of a few years. So if you can show them a little bit of the proof in the pudding, I think there’s something to that for sure that’s gone over, that’s been the most help. I think sharing stories similar to that

Maria Ross  25:51

one, for sure, what a great story. And I will link to that in the show notes, because I do remember that one as well. So and that resonated with me. So love it. Okay, as we kind of wrap up our final discussion point, what are some things that listeners can remember to use empathy as a tool? And let’s also talk about just even that language of using empathy as a tool, because we definitely are not advocating that folks manipulate with empathy, but empathy as a way, you know, as I always talk about, as a strategic advantage, as a competitive advantage. So what are some specific ways that listeners can leverage it and use

Lane Byrum  26:34

it? It is. There’s some simple steps to remember, and in the end, it may feel a bit mechanical as you first but every process is right. The more you use it, the more it becomes second nature. Then you’re not thinking

Maria Ross  26:46

about it. It’s just how you are. It’s muscle memory, yeah, 100%

Lane Byrum  26:50

so some of the simple things that we say is, is, and these may sound rudimentary, but they’re super they’ve been super impactful so far. There’s like four steps. It’s acknowledge, acknowledge that the person you’re sitting across from is different from you. It’s it’s they’ve got their I’ve mentioned that before. They’ve got their own story. They’re moving at their own pace. They’ve got their own set of challenges and difficulties in their life. Acknowledge that they’re different from you, right? So, good or bad, it’s different. Yeah, it’s just different. They’re gonna have their own way of seeing the world. They’re gonna have different reactions to things that you do, and that’s not right or wrong, it just is, and that should, we should start embracing that difference, instead of trying to all be the same. I think there’s beauty in that difference. So if you acknowledge and there’s a certain the next step is you’ve got to decide to connect. You have to decide to connect. And that is maybe the hardest piece in all of this, because once you acknowledge they’re different, that means if I’m going to decide to connect, I’m opening up myself a little bit like I’m going to lay myself bare a little, and that’s very uncomfortable and very different for a work setting. It just is. It’s not. We’re not used to going to that level of depth with people, so that whole deciding to connect after you’ve acknowledged the difference and then recognize what is going on inside of you. I kind of walked this out a little bit through my story, because you have to recognize what is coming up in you as you listen to what’s happening to them, because you don’t want to get your stuff on their story. You have to keep those things different. You can be I felt like that also, but in the end, it’s not the exact same story, so you’re going to have a little bit of difference. So recognize what’s going on inside of you, so that you can keep those two things separate. And then the last thing is, check back in. Go back to that sounds so simple, but it has worked over and over and over again, is check back in. Hey, I’m picking this up from you, and you said, this is that, am I right? Is that emotion that I’ve just called out? Is that even the thing, because what you’re going to get from there is you are listening. Is one, you listen to what I said. Two, you know what that is, the emotion that I was sharing, and here’s why that’s important, or that was close, but it’s really more this, right. Either way, you’ve got this beautiful, open conversation happening, yeah, and then it kind of can be cyclical. You go right back up to the after they say, No, it was this. You can acknowledge you’re right, acknowledge we are different, and so you are experiencing this different, and you kind of just roll through the process, and you may do that five, six times over the course of a conversation, where you just keep working that process over and over again, yeah. And in the end, there is a lot of writing and things about how empathy can be used in a negative way, in a manipulative way, yeah. And I would say, you’ve got to check your heart. That’s that whole Why are you doing it? What is what is the rationale? Is it? Are you trying to move them somewhere that you want them to be, right? Or are you trying to understand them, but you’re trying to understand them, then that’s it. That is a righteous reason right? Using empathy, it really is,

Maria Ross  29:58

for sure. And I. Love that, you know that idea, I’ve talked about this in other episodes, that reflective listening is just taking that step, taking that beat, and just making sure we’re having the same conversation, and also that like you said, like, I heard you right, right, like, and because if I’m if we’re going to move forward in the conversation, if I have an assumption about what you just said and it’s wrong, we’re never gonna get to a place of common ground, that’s right. And so I love that, because, like you said, the two outcomes are, yes, wow, you were listening. I feel heard, or no, let me correct you. Yeah, actually what I was saying is this, and it’s like, oh, okay, now I have a deeper understanding of what you meant. I was actually overlaying what I thought I heard on you, but really, you know, let me know what is actually being said here and what you actually mean by that. So I love this. This is so great what is sort of like a final piece of advice you can share with our listeners about embracing empathy as a leader, and maybe getting back to this idea of empathy taking courage.

Lane Byrum  30:59

Yeah, I thanks for calling that out again, because I think it does, especially in our current climate, and especially with just what has been traditional work settings. Yeah, using empathy feels foreign, because, like we’re not supposed to talk about those things at work, and in fact, it’s why check your humanity at the door when you come

Maria Ross  31:20

to work. That’s what I say all the time. We don’t. The reality is, we don’t. We can’t, right,

Lane Byrum  31:24

right, bring your whole self to work, bring all of it to work, and having tools of how to manage that and how to understand one another once you get to work is where the secret sauce is. But yeah, it’s you have to be courageous in these times, because there’s a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t that sound right? And until you use it, you won’t understand how wrong those reasons are right and how much you should be using empathy.

Maria Ross  31:48

I’m kind of feeling like lately, empathy is an act of rebellion.

Lane Byrum  31:52

100% 100% I love

Maria Ross  31:55

joy lately. But yeah, I really think that the harder we can push back against a lot of the rhetoric out there that empathy has no place in business, or empathy is weak. We know from the data and the research that that’s not true. So you know, the voices like yours, the voices like mine, like we need to keep we need to keep beating the drum on that so I appreciate you coming on the show and helping to beat that drum. Absolutely. We’re gonna have all your links in the show notes lane. But for those who are on the go or exercising, what’s one best place they can find out more about you and your

Lane Byrum  32:33

work, the easiest way is to come to our website. It’s fivecapitals.net that’s the easiest way.

Maria Ross  32:41

Awesome. And again, we’ll have that in the show notes. But thank you so much for this conversation today. Thanks for having insights. Really appreciate you, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a friend or colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slicemaria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

What if the real solution to conflict is not about persuading the other side, but in transforming yourself first? That’s the provocative question we explore in today’s episode with my guest, Ursula Taylor.

We discuss why self-awareness and authenticity must precede empathy, versus what some other thought leaders you may be following are saying. We examine where traditional conflict resolution processes fall short, and why it truly only takes one person to change the energy of a dispute, answering the most common question I get about how to deal with someone who is not showing YOU any empathy! And finally, we consider why peacebuilding and sustainable resolution start from the inside out, requiring us to release our energy and the need for control to cultivate neutrality within ourselves before clarity and solutions can emerge.

If you’ve ever found yourself entrenched in conflict, whether at work, at home, or with others in these very divisive times, this conversation will invite you to reimagine what resolution really looks like.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for:

• Keys to approaching negotiation and conflict with self-awareness. 
• The right energy to bring for healthy conflict, and how you can release your own emotional charge when someone is not showing you empathy back.
• The impact you have on others when you set the tone in your interaction with them. 
• Why the win/loss dichotomy is not important in conflict and negotiation

“When you’re in an interaction with someone who’s not capable of empathy, it manifests as self-absorption or even narcissism. You’re with someone who’s not there to hear you. They’re there to talk. You want to make sure you are sourcing your energy from you and not from that person.” —  Ursula Taylor

Episode References: 

• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• The Empathy Edge podcasts with guest Robin Dreeke:
  • Spycraft and the Leadership Code of Trust
  • Spy Lessons for Leaders: Forging Unbreakable Alliances Through Empathy

About Ursula Taylor, Founding and Managing Member, Conflict Reimagined:

Ursula specializes in guiding individuals and teams through conflict resolution using holistic and strategic methods that go beyond traditional dispute resolution. With seventeen years of experience as a nationally recognized managed care attorney in commercial litigation, Ursula now focuses on helping clients avoid or limit costly legal processes. When litigation or arbitration is unavoidable, she supports clients in finding efficient resolutions.

Ursula combines intuition, deep discernment, practical experience, and analytical skills to help clients understand the broader scope of each issue or dispute, including underlying drivers, emotions, and limiting beliefs. She partners with individuals and leaders who prioritize business results, cooperation, and productivity, and who are open to innovative approaches for addressing and preventing expensive and uncertain conflicts.

Connect with Ursula:  

Conflict Reimagined: https://www.conflictreimagined.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursula-taylor-b0ba4729/

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. What if the real solution to conflict is not about persuading the other side, but in transforming yourself first? That’s the provocative question we explore in today’s episode with my guest, Ursula Taylor, founder of conflict, reimagined after 17 years as a nationally recognized managed care litigation attorney, Ursula shifted her focus away from prosecuting and defending legal claims to helping individuals and organizations approach conflict from a more holistic perspective. She combines deep intuition and discernment with practical, legal and analytical experience to guide leaders who want to preserve relationships, avoid costly disputes and discover more evolved mechanisms for resolution. In our conversation, we’ll discuss why self awareness and authenticity must precede empathy versus what some other thought leaders you may be following are saying, because people can always detect when empathy is being used as a tactic rather than authentically felt. We’ll examine where traditional conflict resolution processes fall short and why it truly only takes one person to change the energy of a dispute answering the most common question I get about how to deal with someone who is not showing you any empathy. And finally, we’ll consider why peace building and sustainable resolution start from the inside out, requiring us to release our energy and the need for control to cultivate neutrality within ourselves before clarity and solutions can emerge. If you’ve ever found yourself entrenched in conflict, whether at work or at home or with others in these very divisive times, this golden conversation will invite you to reimagine what resolution really looks like. So many insights. Take a listen. Welcome Ursula to the empathy edge podcast to talk to us about all things conflict resolution. I’m so excited to talk to you today. Thank you, Maria. It’s great to be here. So before we dive in to all the juicy nuggets you’re going to share with us today, tell us a little bit about your story and how you even got into this work?

Ursula Taylor  03:03

Sure, so I practiced commercial litigation for 17 years. Wow. I went to law school, got my JD, started a big firm, and never felt completely settled in what was going on and how we were going about it in terms of efficiency. And then as I kind of grew in my practice, I sort of always told myself the way out is up. Ursula, just make partner. Ursula, build your own client base. Ursula, build your own niche practice. Ursula, go start your own law firm. So I did all those things, and then I was still left with sort of this sense of limitation around the ability to actually achieve results for my clients, to actually align to their business objectives, to use litigation as a path to realize their greater goals. It often doesn’t. The business case for it is often not there. And I felt, I would say, stifled and limited, and I got to a point where I just really couldn’t do it anymore, yeah, and I decided to leave to close my law firm, transfer the files, leave the practice of law, and I kind of thought I would go in house, or I I thought maybe I’ll go into policy or something like this. And I took some time to really just kind of reflect and go inward. And I started conceiving of this like conflict, reimagined what’s actually driving conflict, and how do we actually help clients, help businesses get back to doing the thing that they’re there to do? And started realizing and understanding within myself and more broadly in the world, that conflict is actually opportunity, if you understand what it is.

Maria Ross  04:38

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s the absence of conflict. Is not empathy. It’s that’s not collaboration, right? We need a little bit of that conflict, that friction, to innovate, to grow, to question what we’re doing, to make sure that we’re getting another perspective and another point of view. And I come from an Italian American family where we’re not afraid of conflict. Yeah, yeah, but it, I do understand how it can go off the rails for people in so many ways, and so let’s talk a little bit about that, and kind of the link to empathy and perspective taking. Because the way we talk about empathy, as you know, on this show, is more about perspective taking. You can share emotions, and that’s often a part of sort of the traditional definition of empathy, but it’s also about being willing and able to see, understand and appreciate another point of view. You don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to condone it, you don’t have to cave into it in order to be empathetic. So it speaks right to this idea, especially, one of the myths that I bust about empathy is that empathy is not about agreeing with someone, right? It’s just about being able to get their perspective and understand each other’s perspective enough that you can take a next right step

Ursula Taylor  05:53

forward, right? You can ultimately realize your own goals and understand in the first sense, is what those are. So the way I kind of approach conflict resolution, and I think this will resonate with your approach to empathy as well, is that you’re not going to be effective in a negotiation or attention or a conflict or in an effort to espouse empathy, unless and until you have a good awareness of yourself and you’ve released your own charge and you’ve gained your own sense of clarity. If your back is up, if you’re amped, even in the smallest irritation. And a lot of us, especially high performers, are really good at not knowing or feeling ourselves, but the energy is still there. And so we’re driving forward. We’re bulldozing forward. We’re achieving, we’re getting stuff done. We think we’re on the path, but we are transmitting and spreading an underlying energy unconsciously that is actually limiting us and the teams around us. So you’re not effective in navigating conflict or in realizing conflict as opportunity unless you’re really utilizing it to go more inward in yourself and release your own blocks.

Maria Ross  07:03

I love that. And we were talking before we started recording that the first two pillars of my five pillar framework and the empathy dilemma are self awareness and self care, because you’ve got to get your own house in order and understand how you show up in the interaction. What are you contributing to it, right? And what are your emotional triggers? So you’re prepared. You can sort of rehearse that ahead of time, but I would love to hear more from you about that key role of self awareness and authenticity. You know, again, even before you get to empathy, in the role of having healthy instead of saying conflict resolution, I’m going to say having healthy conflict, right? We both were talking about Chris Voss, yeah, the expert in negotiation and kind of using tactical empathy, tell us where he might be getting it wrong or missing.

Ursula Taylor  07:52

Sure, yeah, I’ve read his book. I think it’s never split the difference is that, right? Chris Voss, he comes at empathy from the background of an FBI hostage negotiator, right? So he is basically using different strategies and tools to make the other side feel heard, mirroring, mirroring their voice, their cadence, their body language. All of that is great, but what I will tell you that’s missing from that analysis is that that is not effective unless and until you have a handle of your own energy and emotions. Because if you are irritated, even if you are doing a great job of keeping it repressed, it’s coming through. We are intuitive beings. We feel each other’s energy. It’s not the words, it’s not the scripts. It’s the energy that underlies it. It’s the emotion that underlies it. And so if you’re an FBI hostage negotiator, and you’re negotiating with someone to release a hostage, that’s not your child, that’s not your family member, that’s not you know, so yeah, you can come in and like, have all these great external strategies, and they’re brilliant and effective, but if you’re not doing the work to know what this is and how that transmits to the other side, then you’re not going to be at your full power. I guess I would say, yeah,

Maria Ross  09:11

absolutely. And I think, you know, it works for the situations for which it works. But when we’re talking about everyday empathy, when we’re talking about empathy at work or in our relationships, we are bringing, I don’t want to say baggage, because that sounds so negative, but we’re bringing our stuff to the situation always, even if it’s at work and we think we’re very analytical and data driven, we’re still human beings, and we still have our biases, we still have our perceptions, we still Have our lived experience that we’re bringing to those discussions or conversations or debates, no matter how hard we try to be neutral.

Ursula Taylor  09:49

That’s exactly right, and that’s what needs to be honored. You know, this idea that we can like emotion is the problem, so let’s put motion to the side. No, you can’t. Yeah, we are emotional beings. We are. Driven by emotion everything we do, and emotion underlies every conflict and every tension, so the quicker we can just accept that and honor that the best we can do as human beings. Because, to your point, we’re never not going to have fear or insecurity or anxiety or worry or pride or shame or guilt. The best we can do is develop a self awareness or the habits and patterns that will allow us to be self aware, because once we can bring self awareness to it, that’s when we’re empowered to not only navigate what limits us, but to actually have an impact in a negotiation, in a leadership team, in any kind of high stakes or low stakes conversations?

Maria Ross  10:42

Yeah, absolutely. And just side note I’m going to put for my listeners, I’m going to put a link to my interview with my two interviews with Robin dreek, who was head of the FBI counterintelligence behavioral unit, and we talked a lot about this, and he has evolved his strategy to move beyond just the specific situations that he faced in those roles, of converting people to be spies, right? And he talks a lot about self awareness and emotional regulation, and it’s like he’s got that missing piece in there. So I’m definitely gonna put a link to his episodes in the show notes for everyone who’s kind of interested. But I want to talk also about this idea of we talk a lot about it takes two to tango, and that’s true, right? You’re bringing your energy, I’m bringing my energy. We’re both bringing our baggage to the situation, and we’re reacting and responding to each other in the moment. But you talk about the fact that it only takes one person to resolve a conflict. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Ursula Taylor  11:47

Yeah, it takes to tango. So what if you don’t have two you have no tango, conflict, tension, or any kind of interaction between two humans is an exchange of energy. There’s energy in our words, there’s energy in our feelings, there’s energy in our actions, and we are spreading that back and forth. You know, you can go back to quantum physics and little law of attraction and think about, you know, subatomic particles being attracted to subatomic particles of the same frequency. That’s what happens, unless and until we change the energy. So if you’re in a tension with someone, and we see this in our national politics too. Actually, we can see this broadly and on a collective level or an individual level, like what we’re going to do when we’re sort of just going back and forth and not pausing and taking stock of ourselves is we’re just going to reverberate the same back and forth. Now, if one person takes a break and they really go into themselves and do the work of unraveling their limitation or their block. They release the charge. I like to say they they are releasing the charge of their own to use your verbiage baggage or their own emotional block, they’re going to come back to the conversation emanating something different. And guess what? That spreads too. Okay, that spreads too. And so if you are coming into the conversation with a sense of courage, neutrality, hope, love, peace, you’re going to bring that energy, and you are going to affect your counterpart. If you can stay in it, you cannot stay in it until you’ve brought the self awareness, the consciousness and sort of some of the strategies that I utilize to kind of help people, like move those blocks. But what’s awesome about it is it’s not just about self improvement. Oh, I’ve got this issue. I’m sad, or I’m, you know, this, or I’m that, and it’s limiting me, or I’m scared I need to block that it’s you can actually harness real power to affect change within your high stakes negotiations, within your teams, it’s incredible you can become the more full, powerful, creative version of yourself.

Maria Ross  13:50

Essentially, I love all of this because I have to share with you one of the things I talk about in my leadership workshops when I get the question of, well, what do I do if the person I’m in tension with is not being empathetic to me, and you know listeners, I know you’ve heard me say this before, but we can’t control other people, that’s right, and so the only element we can control is ourselves and what we’re bringing to the interaction, and we can model how we Want that interaction with that person to go and they may not be impacted by it in the moment where they stop and they realize what they’ve done, you know, in an unhealthy way, and they’re thanking you for changing the tone of the conversation. It’s probably not going to happen in the moment, but you are impacting that person even when they walk away to realize that, wow. You know, I was being asked questions. I was heard. They really remained calm, even though I was coming at them, they’re going to be thinking of all of those things when they walk away. And so all you can do is set the tone for the kind of interactions that you want to have with people. And I love hearing this today. Just. Because I am struggling with my own feelings of being an empathy teacher, and where I’m not embracing empathy for people right now, and I’m struggling with that and and it’s like, well, it just feels, it feels like such a Herculean task. You know, I feel like Sisyphus of like, pushing the rock up the hill and having it roll down again. But you’re reminding me, you’re sort of giving me a touchstone on you can always have the impact with what you bring to the discussion and what you bring to the challenge that you’re having.

Ursula Taylor  15:32

That’s exactly right. So for me, the way I like to think of it, when you’re in an interaction with someone who’s not capable of empathy, or, let’s say, even worse, they’re really just like in their cave. They’re in their cave. It manifests as like a self absorption, or you could even use the word narcissism, you know you’re with someone who’s not there to hear you. They’re there to talk. They’re not there to listen, they’re there to tell and in those moments, what the way I like to think about it when I find myself in those moments, and I was in one yesterday, is that you want to make sure you are sourcing your energy from you and not from that person. So it’s I was in on this call yesterday. It’s not what I expected. I suddenly realized the person I was talking to like the call was to understand me and my approach and my way of thinking, right? So I was expecting to talk and have other people listen and take notes. And I found myself dealing with someone who was bringing in energy that was resistant, and I don’t want to say antagonistic, but it was like defensive and arguing, and he was telling me starting, and then I just, I took a breath, I noted where I was. I didn’t know I was going into that kind of a call, noted where I was, I took a breath, and I said internally, back to me, like, back to me. So I brought all my energy back to me, and I stopped resisting and engaging and trying to get a word in Edge wise. Because when we’re doing that, even if it seems polite or professional, if we like, like this, like, we are actually energizing that. Because now we’re battling it. We’re bringing a resistance, yeah, you know. And so it’s the same energy because we’re fighting it. So I said back to me, like, I’m not doing this with this person. I’ll find another way speak to another person, speak on a different day. All my energy has got to come from me, because if it’s about the ping pong with him, all I’m doing is draining myself. So if you’re with someone who’s not able to be open and curious, that’s not what they’re there to do, they’ve got their own stuff happening, their own dynamic internally, or maybe with other people on the call. It’s that awareness, that moment, and you can feel it in your own body, oh yeah, yeah. Feel my feel it in your head. Was like, Yeah, I felt like

Maria Ross  17:41

I was a kid back in my childhood home trying to be like, but listen to me, and I was like, no, like, you don’t need to convince

Ursula Taylor  17:47

anyone that’s not losing. Want to be no. I’m energizing the wrong thing. And so I bring it back to me, back to me. I focused on my own body, my own breath, and I got a little more quiet and a little more observing, right? And I stopped trying to convince and persuade and compel and like, that’s a resistance energy, and it’s not powerful, it’s draining and limiting.

Maria Ross  18:10

Okay, this is so good. I’m so glad we went down this route. So I want to ask the follow up question that I get from this, which I don’t know how to answer very well. I’ll be vulnerable. Let’s try. Does that mean I’m condoning or I’m sort of relinquishing my position if I do that? No, and how do I get you know if you’re in that conversation, how do you still stand firm in your way that you want to do it, or the strategy that you’re recommending, or whatever it is, in that moment where you’re not making the person feel like they, quote, unquote, won. That’s what I get. Like, how do I do it so they don’t feel like they won?

Ursula Taylor  18:46

Oh, you. Well, first of all, you can’t affect how they feel, right? And I would submit that you have to let go of winning. Winning and losing is not the paradigm to operate in. Go back, have a conference with yourself about what do you need, and what you need is never to win, to make them wrong, to make them feel this to you know, righteousness or victimhood, no business is built on righteousness and victimhood like that’s not what drives the bottom line. No one is cusping into the next level as an individual or a leader of business by like, being right and making other people wrong. That doesn’t that’s not right. What do you need for this deal? What do you need for this contract? What do you need for this relationship? What do you need from a practical, logical neutral like, pretend you’re an Excel spreadsheet. There’s no you’re an Excel spreadsheet of neutrality, right? What do you need you know, and you know that within yourself, right? And I was on a call with someone who’s like, I just need them to know that, like they can’t push me around.

Maria Ross  19:44

Yes, exactly. Yeah, you’re still

Ursula Taylor  19:47

carrying an emotional charge, and you need to go back and release that charge so you can get the clarity to answer that question and when you can answer that question, and so you’re in more of a grounded, neutral state. You’ve released your charge, coming back. At that person. How do you deal with them, making sure you’re sourcing energy from within yourself. And then once you’re in that space, you can start doing a little bit of what Chris Voss does, right? Your curiosity, like you’re just a you’re kind of a blank canvas. And then you can hold space for them, and you can ask them questions and put the focus on them, and it is not letting them win, right? Giving them the room, the space to release their own emotional charge. Yes, and you’re basically kind of almost like a friend or a therapist or something like observing when we know our worth, when we know our worth, and we feel solid and grounded and powerful and clear. We don’t need to convince anyone of anything, right, right? So, right? It’s so interesting, because you don’t need to find your energy or your power, your worth, from what that person does or thinks, because you just know, yeah, you know, yeah.

Maria Ross  20:53

Well, that’s why that Foundation’s gotta be so solid, so that you can take on another perspective and ask the curious questions to get to what’s underneath. Get to, like, what’s actually causing this resistance for this person? Let’s let them talk and be heard, and let me be in a place where I don’t take that in with defensiveness or fear, exactly right? So, yeah, because that’s the thing, is being able to get curious about finding out what their context is. And again, it doesn’t mean we have to agree with them, but it’s going to give us more information. And I love, you know, telling this to my more analytical types. Think of empathy as information gathering. Think of it as a way for you to just remain curious and try to understand where the other person is coming from, so you can figure things out together, because the more information you get from them, number one, like you said, when you get them talking, it lowers the temperature of the whole thing. They start to feel heard. They start to maybe even bring their energy down, because they realize there’s nothing for them to rail against. There’s no you put down the rope. There’s nothing for them to tug anymore, right, right? So, right? That actually kind of gets them in a state of like, Oh, I’m actually being listened to right now exactly. And again, we don’t have to do what they say at the end. We can just now have a conversation where we’re sort of, and this sounds a little patronizing, but you know, we’re, we’re the adult in the room, right?

Ursula Taylor  22:19

Yes, you’re the adult in the room, so you have to release the charge. You have to release your own charge, your own emotional charge. You have to go a little deeper with yourself in terms of what is being touched or effect. If you’re in a space where you’re like, I’m letting them win, then you haven’t released the charge. Yeah, you know, if you’re still worried about letting them win, or what they might feel, or

Maria Ross  22:39

getting your weight, like, I’ve got to close the like, the pressure of like, let’s say it’s this, you know, I’ve got to get my contract terms. I have to get my contract terms. You’re just like, you’re holding on so tight. Or, you know, I’ve got to get my budget plan approved. I have to do it this

Ursula Taylor  22:53

way, right, right, right. When you release the charge, it’s less like I need to get my budget plan approved. It’s more like what I need is a budget plan that’s approved. I think this is the highest and best way to go about it. I’m going to talk to this person. You come into the call, you’re more neutral, you’re clear, yeah. And then they’re bringing in energy and the magic power. The thing that’s wild that happens is when you’ve released your emotional charge, you also get clarity, not just about strategies and solutions, but you get clarity about the other person. Yeah, you mentioned you’re the adult in the room, because you can suddenly see, oh, this person is like you would view your child, who’s having a tantrum. They’re going through a storm cloud. They’re or they’re scared, or they’re scared insecure, or they are overwhelmed, or whatever it is. I want to ask a follow up question that Sure, what are some ways to release your emotional charge? What are some ways that work for you? That’s a great question. And I think for those of us who are just like, I’ll use the word of my 14 year old daughter, big brained. We’re like, big brains, you know, is so much intellectual power. And like, yeah, we get stuck in the story. So the ways are going to vary person by person, but the core of it is you want to replace the energy, the energy of the emotion, and bring in a new feeling. It’s not about the story, it’s not about the what you tell yourself. It’s not the drama or the script or the thing. It’s not a mantra, it’s an energy. So you literally go into it, find the feeling, feel into it, acknowledge what

Maria Ross  24:29

it is, don’t try to deny it.

Ursula Taylor  24:30

Yeah, don’t you gotta honor it, you. But drop the story, because like an emotional feeling is like something that passes through. We keep it alive with our thoughts. So when we add the drama in the story and the He Said, She Said, we pick up the phone and we complain to our best friend. We can’t believe what happened. Like we are just keeping that energy alive and perpetuating it forward. But if you can go deep, and maybe you need to take a walk or exercise, and for a lot of people. And this includes me, at times, finding that feeling can be hard, yeah, take a break and go get into nature. For some people, it’s yoga. For other people, it’s meditation. This is exactly what I say all the time, yeah, yeah. Maybe it’s lifting weights at the gym or walking your dog or doing a puzzle.

Maria Ross  25:16

It could be active. It could be rock climbing. It could be going to do improv. It could be, you know, all of these things that we talk about when we talk about self care. Self care is not just Manny and peas, yeah, and I love this new way you’re framing this. For me is self care is actually a way to change the story and release the energy, release the energy that’s not serving you, I guess I should say, right,

Ursula Taylor  25:41

and replace it with something different.

Maria Ross  25:43

I love this because this is such a new way for me to talk about this with full props to you on looking at this, and I love how you are balancing that we don’t take the emotion out of the interactions, but we find a way to work through it. So you know, when using all those analogies about a blank slate an Excel spreadsheet, you’re not telling people not to feel what you’re saying is get yourself to a place where you’re more grounded and work through the emotions. Don’t deny them, and don’t pretend that this is all so cold and clinical. And I think that’s hard for some people to understand. They’re like, well, am I supposed to embrace my emotions, or am I not supposed to embrace my emotions? Embrace my

Ursula Taylor  26:23

emotions? Yes, yes. It’s feel it to release it, but be careful not to perpetuate it. Feel it to release it, but don’t stay stuck in the churn of He Said, She Said, drama. Don’t post on Instagram about it and comment here, or pick up the phone or text this, or don’t spread it, even journaling to yourself. If you’re like complaining and angry journaling, yeah, angry journaling, you can be perpetuating the energy within yourself. Yeah, feel it to know it’s there, and then make a conscious choice. Because there’s power in our thoughts. There’s power in our choices to bring in something new. Think about time when you felt at peace. Think of a time, you know, like an exercise. I like to do with myself is to sort of imagine myself as separate from me, maybe a different time in my life, when I was a teenager, when I was a child, or some other version. And speak to that version, and bring that version and talk to it and say, I’ve got you. I care about you. I I’m interested in hearing what you have to say. And, yeah, bring that energy, that energy of self love and self care. Replace it with replace that feeling of being uncared for or unseen or unheard. And yeah, and it’s really about the feeling, and less about the words in the story. And I think we’re humans have gotten tripped up is that we’re so smart, we’re so intellectual, there’s so many books and words and things that we’ve lost touch of the feeling, in the emotion and the energy, and we’re trying to intellectualize everything. Yeah, and the best self care are those things that create a gap between our intellectual mind, ego mind, and like the energy in our bodies. Yeah, yeah.

Maria Ross  28:09

One of my past guests, Chris Johnson, talks about the power of the pause and just being able to take a minute to realize what’s going on and try to take yourself out of that loop that you’re talking about, that endless loop. So, yeah, oh my gosh, this is so good. I’m just curious, when you were in litigation, was this where you discovered some of these techniques, were these almost survival techniques for you? Like, how did you go from applying it there to the work you’re doing now with leaders and teams, like, where, yeah, great

Ursula Taylor  28:44

question. You know, I think what’s woven into this is my own human evolution, my own sort of, like awakening and like, growth, right? Like, and, you know, as I I’ve always been an intuitive and empathic person. I’ve always been a bit of a sponge and, like, absorbing it. And so I’ve always sort of wanted to, like, help my clients, right? And, you know, I’m not helping them if there’s a huge legal bill attached to whatever win you know, occurred. And so there was that, there’s this intuitive, empathic part of me, and then I think I just got to a point where, you know, I didn’t come into litigation wanting to talk about fear and feelings. I didn’t even start this consultancy, like, fully like, with the idea that like, I want to talk to people about their feelings and their fears and get to the root of it. Yeah, I wanted to solve problems. I wanted to make people better. I wanted to help my clients achieve their business goals. Guess where that took me, fear and feelings, because that’s what’s at the root. Totally. You know, I came at this as like, this very like practical, intellectual like law school, legal process, and right, I’ve got all that, like, I got all that I can do that that’s not a problem. But if we’re really solving what’s at stake, I gotta go into fear and feelings

Maria Ross  29:54

we do. And I’m just wondering, I guess my question is more like, did that come up with for you in litigation? Were you sort of started to see this, and did it actually change your outcomes within that profession?

Ursula Taylor  30:06

I mean, it helped to have this mindset in that profession, but there’s so much fear around the process of litigation. Yeah, and I can remember one of the last cases I was handling, I got a hold of an audio recording of the other side call. I was representing a managed care like health plan, and I got a copy of the recording of the other side calling in. And I could hear the person. I could feel their energy. I could hear their voice. And I got it. I was like, I get what’s happening here and why this is turned into all of this. Yeah. And I remember saying to my client, who is also a lawyer on the inside, not the business person, not the person on the other end of the call, not right? The Council, yeah, in house lawyer like, this is what’s going on. This is what this is really about. And can we talk to this person or that person? Oh, no, no. We don’t let our outside litigation Council talk to our business clients like it was, like, you’re over there. That’s your lane. So, and then there’s all this worry and fear once you’re in that process. Like, you don’t want to give anything up, you don’t want to reveal anything, you don’t want to show weakness, you know, just the mirror. Like, I think we should mediate this dispute. Oh, then you don’t think you’re right, you don’t think you’re going to win.

Maria Ross  31:17

So it’s counterproductive to resolving the issue, which is what you thought you were there to do, right?

Ursula Taylor  31:22

It’s counterproductive, because it perpetuates everything and almost disconnects it all too, right? So, yeah, I really wasn’t permitted as outside, you know, I’m not even I’m outside litigation counsel, and the next to me is in house, litigation counsel, and the next to that person is, you know, her boss, and the next to that person is maybe a business leader, and then down the corporate tree, two or three steps is the person who’s actually responsible for this relationship, who could speak to it and say the words that might make a multi $100,000 litigation process go away. Yeah, I don’t have the power or the proximity to do

Maria Ross  31:58

it. You’re like, I’m out. I can’t do this anymore.

Ursula Taylor  32:01

Yeah, you want me to write interrogatories. What

Maria Ross  32:05

you’re like this is, this makes no sense, yeah, yeah. So, and now you’re helping leaders, and you’re helping teams and organizations navigate this. What as we kind of wrap up, I’m curious, what kinds of challenges? How are they phrasing the challenges they have? They might not be coming to you saying we’re having conflict resolution issues, right? So what are some scenarios for our listeners to understand where this advice is applicable? I guess. What are the pain points your clients are communicating to you?

Ursula Taylor  32:34

Yeah, the pain points is maybe an organization is scaling rapidly, and they’re feeling like the growing pains. They’re feeling frustrations between and among themselves and or maybe they are dealing with an external partner or someone internally, and they’re just feeling the pain of not being able to get their way. And they’re like, they’re a little amped, and maybe they have an idea that what litigation costs they want to talk to someone else first. Or maybe it’s more internal. They’re like, I know we’re not going to make it if we don’t like smooth some things out, because we’re going quickly and right, this is only going to get more painful. And so I think my ideal I do sort of workshops and trainings and internal stuff, and then I also consult on like, potential disputes or tensions. And I think what’s nice about me is that I bring in this backdrop of litigation, litigation process, what it is, what it isn’t, what it costs. So we can speak to all of that and compare and contrast and sort of it’s, I’m a good person to talk to before you call your outside litigation counsel.

Maria Ross  33:33

That’s a great way to look at it. Well, I mean, and there’s so many issues that are just these people and communication issues that get in the way of the actual work that the organization is there to do. And it’s if you’re feeling that that tension, if it feels like people are not working together as a cohesive team, if there’s a lot of, you know, side conversations and backstabbing, it’s and it’s this is inherent on the onus to solve this is on the leadership, to be able to see that this is going on and to not be afraid of it, not to try to ignore it and hope it resolves itself, or hope it goes away like No, we’ve got to have an intervention here if we want to move forward. Things are moving too rapidly. We’ve got AI. We’ve got five generations working in the workplace. We’ve got a market that’s like going all over the place these days, we don’t have time to help to for these things to kind of work themselves out on their own, because they won’t. So we need people like you within organizations to be like, Yeah, let’s nip this in the bud. Let’s be honest. Let’s be vulnerable. Let’s just deal with it so we can move

Ursula Taylor  34:37

on. Right, right, right. And it’s interesting, as you were talking, what came to me is like, one of the red flags when I know like an organization needs some work, is when everyone is dead quiet. You come walk into the room or on the Zoom call and no one’s talking, right? No one’s chit chatting, no one’s how’s your weekend? No one feels free, no one feels safe. Yeah, everyone’s eyes on the voice. Was allowed to have an opinion. Yeah, exactly that. Why it is deafening, like I when I feel that and see that in a room with a group of business leaders or colleagues, I’m like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, oh

Maria Ross  35:16

my gosh, Ursula, you have just, like, charged me up today. I love it. This is so good. I need to put this episode in my ear for a lot of situations that I run into these days and just honestly dealing with the world at large right now. So so thank you so much for this. We are going to have all your links in the show notes, a link to your company, conflict reimagined, but for anyone, when anyone that’s on the go, tell us where they can connect with you and find out more about your work.

Ursula Taylor  35:43

Yeah, conflict, reimagine, that’s my website, www dot conflict, reimagine.com, google me. Ursula Taylor, I think I pop up here and

Maria Ross  35:51

there. Great. So, yeah, great, great, great. And we will put, like I said, we’ll put all the links to things that we referenced in the show notes as well. But thank you so much for your time and your insights today, we really appreciate it. Thank you, Maria. It’s my pleasure, 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 or share it with a friend or colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive, take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events, please follow me on Instagram at Red slicemaria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place. You.

How can you challenge yourself as a leader to embrace empathy and think bigger, not just about success, but about significance?

Joining me today is Mark Mears, a visionary business leader, best-selling author, keynote speaker, consultant, and visionary business leader. He has a significant track record of building stakeholder value, driving innovation, and profitable growth among world-class, high-profile brands such as PepsiCo/Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, JCPenney, NBCUniversal, and The Cheesecake Factory. He is currently the founder and Chief Growth Officer for LEAF Growth Ventures, LLC, where he inspires leaders and organizations to grow with purpose.

Mark shares insights from his powerful new book, The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder. We’ll dive into how empathy fuels meaningful growth, not only in business outcomes but people, teams, and culture. Mark believes that when leaders operate with purpose and put people first, they don’t just build companies—they build legacies. He shares why “culture” is not the right word, how to stop managing to the org chart, the four brands you need to consider within your organization, how to build your legacy starting today,  and how to think about inner diversity as much as organizational diversity. He also shares powerful stories from his past Fortune 500 mentors that you will love.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• True success comes from building communities where people belong, not just cultures where they merely exist.
• Leadership is a role to be earned daily through empathy and self-awareness, not just a title like “boss.”
• Empathy fuels performance, proving that compassion and results go hand-in-hand.
• Recognition and fulfillment drive engagement, motivation, and lasting impact in organizations.
• Purpose must be lived through four interconnected brands: personal, internal, external, and employer.

“I never let anyone call me a boss. I said, if you want to refer to me as your leader, that’s a title I have to earn every day by how I show up.” —  Mark Mears

About Mark Mears, Founder & Chief Growth Officer, LEAF Growth Ventures: Mark A. Mears is a #1 best-selling author, keynote speaker, consultant, and visionary business leader. He has a significant track record of building stakeholder value—driving innovation and profitable growth among world-class, high-profile brands such as PepsiCo/Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, JCPenney, NBCUniversal, and The Cheesecake Factory.

Today, Mark serves as Founder and Chief Growth Officer for LEAF Growth Ventures, LLC—a consulting firm inspiring individuals, teams, and organizations to find purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential while making a positive, lasting difference in the world.

Mark has just released his new book titled The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

Mark is also a member of the Senior Leader Network within Conscious Capitalism, Inc., a global organization whose mission he shares:  Elevating Humanity Through Business.

Connect with Mark Mears:

Website: LEAF Growth Ventures LLC – https://www.MarkAMears.com 

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

Book: The Purposeful Growth Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/Purposeful-Growth-Revolution-Leader-Builder/dp/1636182135

Free Purposeful Growth Self-Assessment: https://www.MarkAMears.com

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. How can you challenge yourself as a leader to embrace empathy and think bigger, not just about success, but about significance? Joining me today is Mark Mears, a visionary business leader, Best Selling Author, keynote speaker, consultant. He has a significant track record of building stakeholder value, driving innovation and profitable growth among world class high profile brands such as PepsiCo Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito Lay, JC Penny, NBC Universal and the Cheesecake Factory. He’s currently the founder and chief growth officer for leaf growth ventures, where he inspires leaders and organizations to grow with purpose. Mark shares insights from his powerful new book, The purposeful growth revolution, four ways to grow from leader to legacy builder. We’ll dive into how empathy fuels meaningful growth, not only in business outcomes, but in people, teams and culture. Mark believes that when leaders operate with purpose and put people first, they don’t just build companies. They build legacies. He shares why culture is not the right word, how to stop managing to the org chart, the four brands you need to consider within your organization how you can build your legacy starting today, and how to think about inner diversity as much as organizational diversity. He also shares some powerful stories from his past fortune, 500 mentors that you will love and don’t want to miss. If you’re ready to lead with impact, inspire others and elevate humanity through your work. Take a listen. Welcome. Mark Mears to the empathy edge podcast. I am so excited to have this conversation. I think we could have talked for an hour before we even started recording, and we’ve got a lot in common, and I can’t wait to hear more about your book and your work and helping move people from being simply leaders to being legacy builders. I absolutely love that phrase. So welcome to the podcast.

Mark Mears  02:50

Well, thanks, Maria. It’s a pleasure and honor to be with you today, and I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Maria Ross  02:55

So tell us before we dive into the content, as I do with all my guests, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got to this work and what drives the passion for

Mark Mears  03:04

it. It’s been a journey, literally and figuratively, as we were kind of touching base before the call, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I went to the University of Kansas to become a lawyer, but you can’t major in pre law. I had a wonderful mentor, and I got into the school of journalism, which KU has one of the top schools of journalism. And as I asked around, what would best prepare me for law school, they said, You can do a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of research, a lot of critical thinking, a lot of presentations. And I said, Great, what will prepare me? And they said, Well, you should look at the School of Journalism. So that’s how backhanded I got into studying strategic marketing communications. And that Professor saw something in me I didn’t see in myself, and said, Are you sure you want to be a lawyer? And I said, Well, yeah, sure, I’m just doing this to, you know, prepare me. And he said, Well, you really have a lot of talent in marketing communications. You have a good understanding of psychology and the way to connect with people. Have you thought about grad school, and I hadn’t at the time, and I went around and I said, Well, maybe I should check and I had some fraternity brothers who were in law school. Some were out. I knew some people that actually had their name on the door. And everyone I talked to, nobody was encouraging. And so I went back to Dr Bankston, who later I created a DR Bankston J school faculty mentor award in his name and his honor, because he literally changed my life. And he said you should go to Northwestern and get your Masters. And I went to Northwestern and learned at the feet of Dr Don Schultz, who created the concept of integrated marketing communications before IMC was cool, right? And so now it’s become this thing that I’ve used as my kind of lamp post to guide me through all of my branding and marketing career. And so I’ve had these wonderful mentors, and I got to thinking as one of the darkest days of. My life was when I was president of a half billion dollar casual dining chain that was owned by Bob Evans farms, which you were talking about Columbus, Ohio. It’s been, oh yeah, with Ohio, and was recruited from being the Chief Marketing Officer for the Cheesecake Factory to come and be president of Mimi’s cafe. And it had was in 24 states, 150 locations, and turned a brand around, put a new concept in play, new brand positioning and a new kind of concept that parent company, which was publicly traded, could, you know, earn the right to capital? My team and I did that all in two years. And instead of getting the right to capital, we had this whole program to refresh our restaurants, re image, and our test restaurant was doing really well. And instead of giving us that, I got a call from the CEO, and they said, Well, we’ve decided. The board has decided to move in different direction. I need to put you up for sale, but don’t worry, you’re going to lead the process. And I’m sure whoever buys you, if someone buys you, we’ll keep you and your team, because you’ve done such a fantastic job. Well, fast forward to February 21 2013 and it’s a Monday morning. We had a new buyer who we’re really excited about. Have a meeting with the CEO eight o’clock to plot our new future together. 805 I’m out the door.

Mark Mears 06:19

Decided to move in a different direction.

Maria Ross  06:22

Yeah, yeah. I’ve been there.

Mark Mears  06:24

I’m out. They clean all of us out, and they moved our headquarters from Southern California to their Dallas location. So everything they said they wouldn’t do, they did. Next morning, I get up early after a pitful night of sleep, I take the dog out back. And this is in Southern California. So February 21 is at the time we see first signs spring. So I took the dog out back to do his business, and we had a fig tree in our backyard that was barren from the five or six weeks of winter that we do get, but Maria there on the end of one branch as the sun was coming over. The wall in our backyard was this little, tiny green sprig of a leaf just starting to bud. And it was in that moment I got this epiphany that a leaf is a symbol of growth and rebirth. And I got to thinking further about it. I took the dog inside, went to my office, and kind of started banging out a treatment for this. And then I realized that it’s more than just a symbol of growth and rebirth. All growth happens through the leaf of a tree, through the magic of photosynthesis, as we all learn in middle school, right? Well, it got me thinking that I was managing with the rule of threes. We’ve all heard about the rule of threes. If you focus on three things, you’ll be more effective, and then people be more focused. My three things were leadership, engagement and accountability. So I wrote it down on this piece of paper, as I’m kind of going through this whole thought process, I said, What did I do wrong? And it was there I got the second epiphany, that what was missing was the film. I wrote fulfillment down, and then as I stood and I watched those words, I saw an acronym called leaf emerge. That’s how I created this whole leaf growth model, leader, wow, accountability and fulfillment, which are four interwoven elements, all revolving. Think of it as a four circle Venn diagram, all revolving around purposeful growth. That fig tree only knows how to be a fig tree. That’s its purpose. Is to grow fig leaves so it can grow tall and strong, but also to bear fig fruit, that fruit has seeds in it that can be scattered. That’s how I got this notion of this revolutionary concept all around purposeful growth leaders, and helps them grow into legacy builders.

Maria Ross  08:38

I love that. And just to remind people, the book is called the purposeful growth revolution. So tell us again what the leaf acronym stands for. I want to make sure people get

Mark Mears  08:47

that leadership, engagement, accountability and fulfillment. So think about that fig tree. Leadership represents the seed in the root system. And you have to have a strong root system for any plant to survive. But if you have that, then engagement represents the trunk, the branches, and the system of nourishment, which I learned is called Savia, which in Spanish, translates to English as life blood. What’s the lifeblood of any organization? It’s people, right? And then that leads to accountability, which is all around achievement. And again, that fig tree’s accountability is to grow strong and tall, but also bearing fig fruit that leads us to fulfillment, which is the ecosystem, the soil, the sun, the rain, that environment that creates the best habitat for that fig tree to grow up into its purpose, much like the culture of an organization, which we’ll talk about, because I prefer a better word than culture.

Maria Ross  09:45

So let me dig into that. Why do you not prefer the word culture? You know,

Mark Mears  09:49

I don’t have very many gifts Maria, but one of them is vision, and it’s the ability to take and look at something and twist it like a prism and see a different light pattern, or a kaleidoscope that you could look through. Different things. It’s the same kaleidoscope, but if you twist it, you can see something different. Yeah, well, I think words matter, and that coming back to my journalism, back preach, I’m all about that we throw words out indiscriminately, and we just assume people know what they mean. And so I look at the word culture, and I think that’s just a place someone may feel merely a part of. That’s not bad, but I prefer the word community. A community is a place someone feels they belong in. Notice the difference. More emphasis on the word feels. I go back to the great poet, late great poet, Maya Angelou, who said, I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what they did or you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And I don’t care what vocation you’re in, what industry sector you’re in, I believe we’re all in the people business, at least until the robots or zombies are away. But if you’re in the people business, to be successful, you have to be in the feelings business. So when you’re in a community where you truly belong, that is where the magic happens. There’s a lot of hue and cry about dei right now. Well, diversity gets us in the door. That’s good. Equity gives us an equal voice. Better yet, inclusion gets us a seat at the table. Holy cow. Now we’re cooking with gas, but if we don’t feel we belong, we are likely not going to feel psychologically safe, to be vulnerable enough to give our very best, like the quote from Hamilton, we’re going to just be happy to be in the room where it happens. The best out of that person, right? That will likely happen is they’ll leave over time, right? Oh, Maria, you know, had such a great interview, and we thought she was going to be really good for us, but she doesn’t really speak up in meetings, maybe because we didn’t make Maria feel that she belong in that room.

Maria Ross  11:54

First of all, yes to everything you’ve just said, and that is like, completely what this podcast is all about. Many of my guests have talked about different facets of that over time, but, you know, talk a little bit more about the missing link of fulfillment, because versus, you know, merely getting paid to perform a job. You know, we hear that a lot of like, you don’t need to be fulfilled. You just need to do what I tell you to do, so I can give you a paycheck, kind of an attitude of certain leaders, right? And just like I always equate the work I do a lot to parenting, just because I’m in it. I have an 11 year old, you know? And it’s sort of like saying, Just do what I say, because you’re my kid and you have to, and then there’s no growth for that person. There’s no engagement, there’s no contribution, there’s no ability to feel that they can relax and take a risk and be creative and try new things and fail and learn and try new things again. So can you talk a little bit specifically about your past experiences? You know you’ve worked with some really big brands, McDonald’s, Universal Studios, the Cheesecake Factory, as you mentioned, where have you seen either good or bad examples of fulfillment being present in order to get the best out of people to maximize results, if you will?

Mark Mears  13:15

Yeah, I think a couple, and they go back to a couple of mentors of mine throughout my career. I mentioned a few of them in academia, but David Novak, when I worked for him at Pizza Hut, when it was owned by PepsiCo, his kind of attitude was, work hard, play harder. And he created this competitive environment, but it was all a healthy competition. Kind of be that rising tide that lifts all boats. And he later became the co founder and chairman of yum brands and retired a few years ago, and he’s still very active, and he’s written books and doing all sorts of leadership stuff, because he’s easily the best leader I’ve ever worked for. And I say the word leader because words matter. Yep, the word boss. Unless you truly are a boss, and you are, you’re probably not going to be in that position very long, because I’m not going to name the company, but I did work directly for president, who was a boss, and it was about just getting the work done. Keep your nose to grindstone. Don’t bring that weak shit in here. I don’t want to hear about your personal life, you know, keep that at home and just get the work done and do as I say. And he had a bit of a Napoleonic complex

Maria Ross  14:22

Well, and, you know, and you look back at experiences like that, and, you know, I do too, and I go, I did not do my best work there because I didn’t want to. I wasn’t incented to contribute in a way that made me feel that that would be appreciated, that that would be, you know, listened to. And so think of all the ideas and the insights we lose out on because we treat people in that way.

Mark Mears  14:48

Yeah, it’s fear and intimidation, and it’s what I refer to as the old command and control. Man and control exactly. It no longer serves us. You know, it did for a long time, because it. Emanated, based on my research from GIS, who came back from World War Two and got into the workforce, and that was how they were trained to go to combat and survive and protect each other, was by following a chain of command. So we look at org charts that are all boxes of people in a hierarchy, right? And if you manage that way, then people are going to feel that they’re at the lower end of that. Then their voice doesn’t matter, and they may have a lot to contribute, because it has to go up the chain. You have to tell your boss, who has to tell their boss, who has to then clear it with their boss, filter and water down, and you don’t have the ability to shine. Now, on the other hand, the example I would give at Pizza Hut. I was a young marketing executive, had opportunity to make a huge stamp on that business, and actually won what was called the silver pan award that was given out by David each month at a monthly meeting for someone that lives out the values of Pizza Hut and has made a significant difference. And so he was a big believer in reward and recognition. When he was the CEO of yum brands, in his office in Louisville, Kentucky, the yum headquarters, he had pictures of everybody that won different awards. For pizza had been morphed into the cheese head award, KFC, it was a rubber chicken award and sauce packet award, and he would take pictures with those who want it, and he would put it on the walls in his office. When he didn’t have any more room on the walls, he put it on the ceiling. Oh, my goodness, more room on the ceiling. He put it outside his office, down the hall, and everybody who came to his office knew that he stood for recognition and reward based on performance, and that’s really important. As we’re talking about empathy and leading with love, you still have to perform.

Maria Ross  16:51

Still have to perform. This is it’s not. I always talk about both and leadership. It’s not either or we don’t become empathetic leaders at the cost of not meeting our objectives or not increasing our growth or having the impact we want to have. We enable that to happen through empathetic leadership. It’s a catalyst. It’s not a seesaw where you have to choose one side or the other. Yeah, it’s

Mark Mears  17:16

when you’re in a community where you feel like you belong and you are working with, not for I never said anyone worked for me. I never let anyone call me a boss. I said, if you want to refer me as your leader, because that’s a title I have to earn every day by how I show up. And I learned a long time ago as a young leader that people are watching your every move. You’re in a fishbowl. Whatever you say, whatever you do is getting filed away, and they’re shaping their view of how you lead. And if you’re not self aware, you may miss a lot of cues that otherwise could make you a better, more effective, more empathetic leader.

Maria Ross  17:56

Well, and that’s the key right curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people, of empathic leaders, and it’s knowing that you don’t have the all the answers, that other people can contribute ideas from their unique life experiences, from their perspective on the customer or the product or the issue that you’re facing. And it’s so funny that you talk about this, because I just want to share a quick story with you, because my husband just started a new job. He’s a chief marketing officer at he just started a new job, and his first week is devoted to not only sharing with his team some values and principles of how he hopes that they get work done together, which completely supports my clarity pillar in the empathy dilemma. But then he spoke about having those one on one conversations with every single member of the team and finding out, how are things going for you? What do you think is going well? What do you think needs to be improved? And it was such a stark contrast to, I have to say, a very psychologically abusive boss that I had earlier in my career. And I don’t use that term lightly, yeah. And this person came into the vice president role and talked to everyone else in the organization, but the people on their team, they didn’t check in with us at all. They were too busy trying to find out what everyone else thought about the team and how everyone else thought things were going and then basically just came back and shamed and blamed us for everything. Yeah. And I was like, What a difference in leadership, what a difference in legacy. That is to just really understand that you’re there for the people that report to you. You’re there to enable them. You’re there to empower them. And if you do that, it’s sort of like, trust me, they’ll make you look good,

Mark Mears  19:41

well and similar in some ways, to abusive relationships, some people, that’s where they came from, and that’s exactly you weren’t trained, right? And they thought, well, that’s just the way it is. And I’m just transferring that to now, when it’s my turn to lead. So yeah, for me, this dovetails perfectly into. So the next book that I’m working on right now, so the first book is the purposeful growth revolution well,

Maria Ross  20:06

and before we go to the new book, I really quickly just want to touch on the current book. So we talked a little bit about the model, about the leaf model, and then in that book, are you providing sort of a framework or a roadmap for leaders to embrace each of those pillars.

Mark Mears  20:22

It is exactly that, okay, it is a step by step road map that has, well, when I say four ways to grow from leader to legacy builder, there are four different sections of the book, and they’re all related to this idea of nature. Again, twisting that prism or that kaleidoscope, I’m able to see that we can learn a lot from the world around us if we just keep our eyes open. Uh huh. So, for example, leadership has four different CS. And so instead of the rule of threes, I’ve come up with this higher power of fours. You think about it, there are four directions, not three. There are four, you know, elements to an atom, the source of all life, not three. There’s four seasons, right? Not three, and there are four chambers to the human heart, not three. And I could go on and on with this foreplay, but you get the idea, right? And again, this model of a four circle Venn diagram you’ll see throughout the book, because I don’t believe life is linear. I don’t believe anything’s really linear. And I think it’s all connected and all revolving around purposeful growth, not just growth, but purposeful growth. And we were talking about the and before, I’m a big believer in purpose, as you can imagine, but I’m a growth junkie, and I don’t think they’re separate. It’s purpose and growth and profit that will help that organization. So the first section of the book is really about setting the stage, and it’s cultivating your field for purposeful growth. I live in Kansas City. I grew up in Wichita. Kansas is a very agrarian part of the country, right? We don’t just rush out and plant seeds. You got to cultivate the field first, get it ready for growth. So there I built the business case for the power of purpose and this whole idea of growth across different dimensions, we look into ourselves in the second phase, which is, you know, all about self growth, right? And how we can look at ourselves in those four different ways. And then the third one is what we’re kind of talking about. The meat of the book is growing you forward for purposeful work. That’s the leaf model, leadership, engagement, accountability and fulfillment. And then finally, it’s scattering your seeds for purposeful life. And so it follows, step by step by step, through a curated reading experience, which is what I tried to create. And like use the phrase paying it backward when I talk about mentors, when I go to Starbucks, I pay for the car behind me in the drive through. Uh huh. I go up to the counter the window and I’ll say, I’d like to pay for the car behind me. They say, Oh, that’s nice. And I said, Just do me a favor and tell them, God bless you. Your debt has been paid. And I drive away, and I say a silent for that person. They don’t know me, and I gotta believe in that moment they felt valued, yeah, seen, and to me, that’s really important. And I’ve been told that oftentimes there’s something called the rule of the law of reciprocity, which states that when someone does something nice for you, you feel a deep seated urge to do something nice for someone else, right? And I’ve been told that the car behind me maybe pays for the car behind them and the car behind them, behind them, yeah, and that’s what I mean by legacy. We talk about being a leader that people look up to. That’s great, but when you are the leader, they want to not only follow, but lead like, if not better, when it’s their turn to lead. Now, as however many direct reports you have, you’re creating a ripple of that, multiple ripple of that. And so to me, that’s really important, but that core of that model is leadership, engagement, accountability and fulfillment, right? I’ll just pick on one, because we don’t have time to go through all four. But leadership, it’s four C’s, it’s clarity, who you are, what you stand for, your vision, mission values, it’s connection. It’s connecting that brand architecture to how you make money and do business, right? Because, if not, you’re just going to have a bunch of posters on a wall and empty platitudes, yep. And then it’s communicate. And I often say that CEO as an acronym should be changed from Chief Executive Officer to communication executive officer, because now you’re communicating to all your constituents, up, down in the sideways and then it’s now about getting people committed their heart, head, hands and habits to make that whole vision come to life. So imagine, leadership leads to alignment, engagement leads to empowerment, accountability leads to achievement, and fulfillment leads to the environment that, again, creates that ecosystem. So that’s the model that you’ll see, and it’s step by step by step throughout the book, connecting.

Maria Ross  24:54

So I want to just go back real quick in the time we have left you put so much emphasis on purpose and fulfillment. Film in I’m wondering, I’m curious, about the larger brands you’ve worked for, right Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito, lay JCPenney, the Cheesecake Factory, Universal Studios at that scale, which of the larger companies that you worked for really did well when it came to clarity of purpose?

Mark Mears  25:20

Yeah, they all did in different ways. But the key, when I look at purpose, as I look at the brand, is actually four brands, and you’re a brand expert, so you this may be old habit to you, but for a lot of it blows people’s mind. Like four brands, isn’t there just one? Isn’t it Frito Lay and it’s Cheetos, or isn’t it Pizza Hut and it’s, yeah, there’s the personal brand, which asks and answers the question, Who am I? Which we used to not care about, as we talked about command and control, right? But now there’s the internal brand, which is the collective we. What do we that leads to the external brand, which most people think is the brand because it’s guest or consumer facing, that answers the question, what value is exchanged here? Because I believe all marketing and sales is about a value exchange. What do I get for? What do I pay? But most importantly, how do I feel about it? Right? That then leads to the employer brand, which asks and answers the question, Do I belong here? So when you have like, a four circle Venn diagram all revolving around purposeful growth. You’ve got people coming in and being who they are and feeling comfortable being who they are, and that’s the personal brand, but then melding together as a team all around our shared values that gets us to the internal brand, that leads to being able to deliver the promise to the end user, right internal brand then attracts new and better people to come into the organization, which is the employer brand, right? So I would say, I don’t want to leave anybody out, because wonderful. Here’s an example, the Cheesecake Factory, known for being an immersive over the top dining

Maria Ross  26:55

experience, known for the ginormous menu. Yeah.

Mark Mears  27:00

So David Overton, who was another mentor of mine, the founder and still CEO of the Cheesecake Factory, he is a hospitality expert, not just a restaurant tour. He wants people to share a wonderful dining experience. So I picked up on that word share. And he would often say that portions are large because he wants people to share with each other. So picked up on that whole idea. We created this whole calendar around the word share and what that meant. And the first quarter tied kind of to Valentine’s Day in the season of love, was share the love. And we did this wonderful cheesecake recipe contest that ultimately led to the selection of Stephanie’s ultimate red velvet cake cheesecake. And so we allowed our fans, our guests, to be able to participate in this idea. And we narrowed it down to five, and went on Facebook, America voted, and that’s what it won. Then later that summer, during National cheesecake day, which is July 30. I’m sure you have it circled on your calendar. We do now, yeah, and we featured that. We then did a tie in with Feeding America, which is the nation’s largest food bank network. And so we donated 25 cents a slice for that cheesecake throughout the year and raised money. But we also took it on the road in September, which is Hunger Action month. And we took this old milk truck that we revamped and rebranded and called it the drive out hunger tour. So we started in LA at our headquarters, and we went 30 days of September to a different cheesecake restaurant all across the country, till we ended up on September 30 in Washington, DC, our nation’s capital. And there we unveiled the number of cans of soup that were able to contribute to Feeding America the dollar amount. And we unveiled this huge can structure, 30,000 cans of soup that were in the shape of, you guessed it, the Stephanie’s ultimate red velvet cake cheesecake, right? So showing how we were able to not only enlist the hearts of our teammates in the restaurants, but our guests to participate, right? That was a win win for everybody,

Maria Ross  29:18

but all but kind of, the important point here is all going back to a shared purpose, value of sharing,

Mark Mears  29:25

sharing, right? We’re sharing the love, the love the Cheesecake Factory. We’re sharing the love of our team members. We’re sharing the love of our guests in our communities who were motivated to come. You know, before the restaurant opened, each day, we had radio remotes, and we gave them a free slice of this cheesecake, if they donated two cans of soup, let them take their picture in a green screen and then put it up on the website that every day, all those pictures were updated and pixelated. The final day revealed what that. That pixelated, you know, group of photos represented, and it was the Stephanie’s ultimate Red Velvet, right? Everything hung together in a tight story, right? This notion of sharing the love with one, right, right?

Maria Ross  30:16

Oh, I love it. Okay, so we’re out of time, but we will definitely have all your links in the show notes so folks can check out the new book. I know we teased that you have a new book coming out that puts the human back in human resources, and we’ll have you on again to talk about that book whenever it’s ready. But I just really want to encourage folks to check out the new book, a purposeful growth revolution and Mark it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your stories with us today. For anyone that’s on the go, where’s the best place they can get in touch with you or find out more about you?

Mark Mears  30:49

Yeah, excellent. Thank you, Maria. People want to connect with me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my newsletter. That’s the best way to do so, and that way we can get connected and I can learn from you. Again, I’m a growth junkie. I don’t have all the answers. I love learning. And also, you can go to my website at mark a Mears, M, E, A, R, S, don’t forget the A, mark a mears.com and there you’ll find a purposeful growth self assessment. It’s free, and it takes about 567, minutes to fill out, but it’ll give you kind of a benchmark on Where are you with this concept of purpose in both your life and your work? That’s really my goal, is to meld the two together where people can find purpose in their work and not just outside of work. I love

Maria Ross  31:32

it, and we’ll put the link to that purposeful growth self assessment as well. But as Mark said, Folks, you can find it at mark a mirrors.com We’ll have that link in the show notes too. Mark. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you Maria. Been a pleasure for me as well. 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 with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events, please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your super power. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Featuring guest Mike Humphries, SparkEffect CEO and former Fortune 500 Executive.

Welcome to Courage to Advance, hosted by Kim Bohr and brought to you by SparkEffect, in partnership with The Empathy Edge.

Our show is launching off on its own! Come check us out for twice-monthly episodes at www.CourageToAdvancePodcast.com or subscribe to Courage to Advance on your favorite player.

Kim Bohr opens with a striking boardroom paradox: “The person who can most impact your organization’s success or failure, your CEO, is also the person most likely to receive the least comprehensive, least rigorous performance evaluation.” In this conversation with Mike Humphries, they explore why traditional board-only CEO evaluations fall dramatically short.

Mike reveals why most boards focus on KPIs that capture only 15-20% of a comprehensive CEO evaluation, missing critical competencies like adaptability and stakeholder leadership. The conversation unveils how co-creating evaluations with CEOs prevents feedback rejection, why different stakeholders experience CEOs differently, and how independent assessment creates psychological safety for honest feedback in the loneliest executive role. To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Most CEO evaluations focus only on KPIs—missing 80% of a comprehensive assessment
• CEOs who help design evaluation processes can’t honestly reject feedback
• Board members and executive teams experience CEOs in different environments
• Independent evaluation eliminates bias and creates safety for honest feedback
• Early warning signs surface first with direct reports, not board members
• Comprehensive evaluation covers adaptability, stakeholder leadership, and culture stewardship
• Longitudinal analysis tracks CEO growth and identifies systemic challenges

“I don’t think any board goes into this process thinking that they’re taking a superficial approach… but there is a different way, and especially for this unique role.” —  Mike Humphries

About Mike Humphries: Mike Humphries serves as Chairman and CEO of SparkEffect. He joined the organization in 2001, bringing experience as a successful entrepreneur and business executive with deep knowledge in finance, technology, and administration. Over two decades, he has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards, giving him a unique perspective on effective governance and leadership evaluation.

Connect with Mike Humphries:

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

Website: sparkeffect.com/about/mike-humphries

Connect with Kim Bohr and SparkEffect

SparkEffect: sparkeffect.com

Courage to Advance recording and resources: sparkeffect.com/courage-to-advance-podcast

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/sparkeffect

LinkedIn for Kim Bohr: linkedin.com/in/kimbohr

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hi everyone, and welcome to our last partner episode with courage to advance and our wonderful host, Kim Bohr, they have brought you such wonderful episodes this year to help you really leverage leadership as a competitive advantage within your organization and bring your team along to optimize performance and win in the market. And today’s last partnership episode is no exception. Today they’re talking about making sure that you are properly and effectively reimagining how you evaluate your CEO. They’re going to be talking about a 360 degree approach that every board needs, and this episode is full of advice and insights with their guest, Mike Humphries. So take a listen, and then please tune in to courage to advance as it launches off on its own into its own podcast. Subscribe to it on your favorite podcast player, at courage to advance or go to courage to advance podcast.com and check out episodes there. Take a listen.

Kim Bohr  01:52

Here’s a boardroom paradox that should cause every director pause. The person who can most impact your organization’s success or failure, your CEO is also the person most likely to receive the least comprehensive, least rigorous performance evaluation. I’m Kim Bohr, president and COO of Spark effect, and host of the courage to advance podcast. And on this episode, I’m joined by my colleague Mike Humphries, who’s the chairman and CEO of Spark effect. Mike joined spark effect when it was known as Waldron back in 2001 and he came as a successful entrepreneur and experienced business executive, bringing deep knowledge in finance, technology and administration, along with a strong commitment to the social sector. Over more than two decades, he’s served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards and worked extensively with both enterprise and nonprofit leaders, giving him a unique perspective on effective governance and leadership evaluation. Mike, welcome to the courage to advance podcast. Thanks very much. Kim, as many know the CEO is the only person in an organization who must excel at strategy, operations, finance, leadership, really Stakeholder Relations all at once, and yet, most boards evaluate them narrowly, only on performance, KPIs and operating objectives, or in some cases, take an approach that they might take with any other executive. And we really think that this is such a critical role, it really needs a very unique approach for a wholly unique role. Today’s discussion is really allowing us to dive deeper into that. So my first question is, there’s this wide spectrum of CEO evaluation approaches out there, from something very basic board questionnaires to comprehensive third party assessments. What are the key elements that separate a superficial evaluation from one that actually drives meaningful insight and development?

Mike Humphries  03:50

My immediate reaction to that question is that I don’t think any board goes into this process thinking that they’re taking a superficial approach. I mean, after all, they are the board, and on the other hand, they are talking to the CEO, this wholly unique position among executive leadership. I think everybody is really doing the best job that they can, based on what they know about how to evaluate a CEO the most common, and as we know from the research that we’ve done in the benchmarking we’ve done over the years, the most common approach is that a director, sometimes the chair, or sometimes a designee, go out and they interview each of the board members. Sometimes they’ll take a measured approach to that and sort of pre select the questions and have everybody agree on them. Then they’ll interview the board members, and then they’ll write up a summary, which ultimately gets shared with the board and gets shared with the CEO, and that’s the feedback that they get. It’s typically heavily focused on operating performance, on, as you say, the KPIs, and it does accomplish one thing. Thing, which is, did the CEO accomplish the operating and profitability and other metric performance attributes that they were asked to perform from the prior year? Like I say, Nobody goes into this thinking that they’re taking less than a great approach. But there is a different way, and especially for this unique role, for this role where no other executive has to exhibit the range of talents and personal characteristics and performance that the CEO has to execute, and they don’t typically live in a world where it’s completely honest with them all the time. They have this unique power position where with their board, they have to constantly be thinking about how the board perceives them, and therefore their actions can be very transparent and so forth, but they could be guarded. On the other hand, their executive team is not likely, unless they have an extremely great situation due to their transparency and their openness to feedback, that people are going to be completely honest with them and then internally, can they be completely honest about their own self doubts, about their own fallibility. And the answer is typically no. There needs to be a process that cuts through all of that in a very non intrusive way, in a very non threatening way, so that they can get nuanced feedback that covers that entire spectrum for the unique role.

Kim Bohr  06:40

I know that it sounds very much like as well intended as people are. There’s this incomplete nature of how many boards approach this, and yet, through the work we’ve done, through the research we’ve done, we think we’ve got the solution in that way, one of the areas that you and I have talked about is really how critical CEO buy in is, and how critical it is in making these evaluations so successful. We often refer to this as that co creation process. Can you talk a little bit about what happens when organizations try to evaluate their CO without involving them in the process? Why is that inclusion so important?

Mike Humphries  07:17

Right? Well, I think that it’s useful to start with an example and a story, and this is a client story of ours, ran into a situation where I was called by a board to talk to them about our process. And the reason was that the CEO had completely rejected the process by which they were being evaluated. This was a CEO a couple years into the job they had, essentially, at the board’s behest, just inherited the approach to the evaluation that a prior outside, independent consultant had been executing with the former CEO. And everybody thought, Okay, well, we’re going to do this evaluation. The CEO is busy. They just said, okay, yeah, let’s just do that. And the board said, yeah, that’s been good for us in the past. When the feedback came back and had some challenging things in it, the CEO really rejected, not only the feedback, but they also rejected the consultant, and thus the call to us so one of our deep philosophical pillars, if you will, about this work, is that the CEO needs to be involved. One of our deep seated pillars, after deeply benchmarking this over several years, is that the CEO and the executive committee of the board, or the board chair, or some representation of the board, need to be involved in the construction of the evaluation, and they need to be involved right down to what is the CEO being evaluated on? How is that being done? What questions are going to be asked of the participants and have full visibility to all of that evaluative research that’s going to go on, so that they can be comfortable that the right questions are being asked, that they’re being asked in a way that they might ask them, and that the feedback is going to be aligned with something that they have embraced as the right way to measure my performance and the board, because they’re participating, is in agreement as well. What we end up with is, in the end of the process, we end up with a CEO who’s totally bought into what they’re being measured upon and can’t honestly, really reject the feedback because they participated in the construction of this, and then a board that also has a full understanding of what the process is going to be, what’s going to be asked. These are important CEO competency areas. That are going to be examined in addition to the operating and KPI portion of the performance.

Kim Bohr  10:07

Let’s take that just a little bit further. We talk about how important it is for the CEO’s buy in that there’s challenges if the board alone is the one evaluating and not taking additional input. Let’s talk a little bit more about why is expanding beyond the board so critical from that stakeholder gathering and input,

Mike Humphries  10:27

well, this is one thing that is similar to other executive evaluations. It is very, very useful for a person to get feedback, where they understand themselves and they also understand the stakeholder perspectives around them and stakeholders with whom they need to work, either on a day to day basis or over long periods of time. And these can be internal stakeholders like the executive team or other people that have direct working relationships with the CEO. Or they can be external stakeholders. They could be business partners. They could be political organizations that the enterprise needs to be involved with and has a perspective on that CEO’s performance in that particular area of relationship. It’s useful for them to have the perspectives of the entire stakeholder environment.

Kim Bohr  11:21

You and I often talked about you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think what’s so critical about what you’re describing here in the different category of stakeholders that have interests, is that often there can be some very different experiences in those different categories. And one of the things I know you and I have seen more than one occasion, is that boards often can feel very positive about the experience of how they engage with their CEO and what they’re experiencing, and yet some of the most critical stakeholders may be those CEOs direct reports and finding out what their experience is, could sometimes be very different you think about those inputs and outputs right? And sometimes we have the sense that the outputs are the only thing that matters, and yet our argument is the inputs perhaps matter. Maybe even more so when we encounter organizations where the CEO is hitting the numbers, the outputs look great, the performance looks great, and the board feels good about the performance. There’s sometimes these underlying issues that we’re starting to discuss right now, what are some of those early warning signs that boards might be missing in a way that perhaps this sort of approach could really surface.

Mike Humphries  12:30

If you think about the environment in which the board operates with the CEO, and you think about the environment that the senior leadership team operates in with the CEO. They’re very different environments. The board is focused on strategy, longer term, sort of a bigger, a bigger set of issues, and the CEO’s leadership of their direct team is really focused on execution, on achieving the strategy through operational execution. And these are very different environments. Both require a type of followership to be developed. The board, in a way, has followership of the CEO. They want to be led by a CEO that knows where they’re going, that has their hand firmly on the tiller is taking the ship in the right direction all the time. The followership among an executive team is very different than that. Some aspect of it is development. CEO is trying to develop people, not typically trying to develop board members, right? Some aspects of it are pure performance and operational execution, and some of them are a different kind of relational build than they have with board members. There’s a relational build on both sides of that, both individual and with the collective team. And they’re very, very different perspectives. Though, when they look at a CEO and they say, How is this person leading, how are they leading the organization as a board member? How are they leading me as an executive? And so having those different perspectives is essential, we

Kim Bohr  14:11

believe. So when boards try to handle CEO valuations internally, you know either or through. HR, whether they’re doing themselves or they try to engage. HR, what are some of those fundamental limitations they’re running into

Mike Humphries  14:24

when they’re trying to engage? Actually, restate that question.

Kim Bohr  14:29

Many boards try to do this work internally. They use existing templates that are offered by other associations out there that are just more off the shelf, and there’s a lot of challenges in that, and we’ve started to pinpoint some of them, if a board’s trying to do this internally, and just take one of these off the shelf, type of tools, what are some of the things that they’re likely to run into, versus this more 360 view that we’re describing?

Mike Humphries  14:58

I think that’s a great. Great question. The first thing they’re going to run into is, anytime you use a template, you are forced to take a look at how it fits your particular situation, what timing we are living in and in the world and in the operating environment, and who’s involved. By nature, a template is just a copy of something somebody else did, and we believe that there’s a certain amount of customization, or essentially bespoke construction, that is required to really do a thorough, nuanced, rigorous CEO evaluation for any organization, cultures are different. Businesses and nonprofits are different in terms of what their missions are. Industries are different. There are a lot of differences among organizations in general that really only tailoring something for the times and for the particular situation and culture fit. One example is thinking about another client. Had done a lot of work internally with their executive team around mission, vision and execution, and therefore they had their own language around that. When we constructed their evaluation for the CEO. We married the language so that people would recognize that the CEO is being measured on very similar things, but at a different level for their unique role as the things I’m being measured on. He essentially used the language of their own internal competency structure that they were using with their executive team, and that would be much more both in terms of taking a survey about the executive’s performance as well as in hearing the feedback, they would be able to put it in the context that they were being asked to raise their performance in as well, linking the language was very important in that case.

Kim Bohr  17:04

I know we’re not going to go deep into some of the ways that we approach this further, but I do think you sharing a few words around the sense of competencies that we feel are so unique for this role, are really underlying what you’re describing there. And I think speaking to that a little would be really helpful for the audience, too. Yeah, thank you.

Mike Humphries  17:26

As we’ve said, the most common thing is for people to really focus on operating KPIs and on operating execution and effectiveness, performance effectiveness, and that’s probably about 15 to 20% of the nuance that a CEO can benefit from and a board can benefit from in terms of visibility about their CEO. If you think about things like character, integrity, leadership of stakeholders, leadership of culture, you think about the board relationship, and does this CEO leverage the talents that they recruited to the board as effectively as they should? You think about stewardship, stewardship of the enterprise, stewardship of its financial position, stewardship of its assets, those kinds of things. One thing that comes up time and again is probably among the top three things that people who do this feel should be an important part of the evaluation is adaptability, adaptability to change, adaptability to change strategy based on what’s going on in the operating environment, in the broader economic environment. Just look at the changes that a lot of organizations are going through right now with the federal government’s changes in priorities around funding or defunding, that requires an immense amount of adaptability to change, to stay with and ahead of The operating environment.

Kim Bohr  19:00

You’re really talking about all those disruptions that we’re facing, right? And one of the most notably we’ve seen, even in our own organization, is that adoption of AI and what’s the right place, and I think that’s any organization is grappling with that at some level.

Mike Humphries  19:16

Yeah, and time and again, when we assess what’s important to organizations out there and survey them, adaptability to change and the ability to keep strategy aligned with the realities of the future environment as they expect them. Another area critical thinking and decision making, yes, another area is outside stakeholder performance. How are you doing with our partners? All of these things can be built in to an evaluation so that the nuances can come back around this complete and holistic set of CEO competency that are really required for any CEO, no matter. How large or how small the organization, no matter what industry, there’s a structure of competencies way beyond just execution of the operating strategy that both the board and the CEO benefit from D being insights into yes

Kim Bohr  20:22

during times of disruption, what I love about what you were just speaking to in some of these competency areas is that during times of disruption, you really want to feel confident that your CEO has those skills needed to navigate something that is very atypical. And what we know to be true is that not every CEO has that and especially if they’re

Mike Humphries  20:46

not being measured properly, you would never know if you didn’t measure it. Mike, you and I

Kim Bohr  20:51

have both encountered boards that are really hesitant to invest in more comprehensive CEO valuation. Some find themselves still wanting to do things more internally. Others are just trying to feel like maybe there’s time constraints. How do we fit it in, or we have this existing process? How do we make a shift? Let’s talk a little bit about how we typically approach those types of conversations, and what have you found to be most effective in helping boards really understand that kind of cost benefit equation that comes from this type of work.

Mike Humphries  21:24

Yeah, thanks. I think going back to one of the things we said at the very beginning, this is a unique role performed for a unique leadership skill set and a unique impact. So first of all, why would you not for this most important executive role that you have. Why would you not invest the time and effort in thoroughly evaluating it and being able to and never forget this is helpful to the CEO, so why would you not want to give them the most nuanced and helpful feedback that they can get. Doesn’t take a heck of a lot more time to do it on the feedback side. It takes a little bit more time to do it on the data gathering side. But why would you not want to invest that time, given how important this conversation

Kim Bohr  22:20

is, what about those who are maybe hesitant to bring in a third party? How do you speak to that?

Mike Humphries  22:29

Well, there are a number of reasons to have an independent third party. The Independent aspect of it being a very critical part of that statement. You don’t have anybody who’s coming into the process with an agenda. You don’t have anybody coming into the process that has an ax grind, has a relationship that they’re trying to nurture. You’re really bringing an independent party in to provide a fair and independent perspective on the performance based on a set of deeply evaluated and agreed upon criteria of what’s being evaluated and how are we doing it? What are we asking it also is an opportunity to make a statement to the operating team in the organization that you’re really serious about evaluating this CEO and that it’s going to be fair and measured and there’s not going to be a bias in it that misses some of the ways that executive team members may feel. We run into a lot of situations where there’s some disruption in the system, either board relationships are not perfect, or leadership team relationships are not perfect. Leadership style, maybe could use a little brush up or more. And those situations essentially by doing an evaluation that is perceived to be just going through the motions, you end up really locking in that sort of potential resentment or that potential sense of unfairness that could be there. No, it’s not there in all cases. I think most, in most situations, people are well meaning. They’re trying to do the best job they can. But in fact, having an independent party takes all that concern right away, and you get a bit more rigor, and it costs you a bit more time. But 100% of our clients that go through it come back time and again, because it is the best feedback that a CEO can get. It is the most transparent with the board. They come away with it going, Wow, that was really productive. And we had the right conversations, which is always what you’re trying to get to, right, the right. Conversations, and now we can move forward with greater confidence, or at least as much confidence as we had before, that we’re on the right track with the right person who’s leading in the right way, who’s developing the followership among the board and among the executive team that they need to develop.

Kim Bohr  25:18

I would add what comes to mind when you say that too, is the fact that the longitudinal analysis that can be done year over year, really through the work, and at least the way we approach this really creates a rich data set of observing growth or change or where there’s challenges in the system in a way that is really deeply valuable to all the parties that are involved, even when there’s change over from a board perspective, or something like that. I think that’s another as you say, that that really also jumps out to me as something that brings a tremendous amount of value into something like this work as well.

Mike Humphries  25:59

Definitely, we are able to look at the CEO’s performance across the same set of data gathering each year and see where the changes are happening, plus or minus. You can see it in the data. You can also compare the written comments that we take, and compare the sort of verbatim perspectives that people express in these things. And you can give a CEO a really good sense of, are they working on the things that they agreed with the board that they were going to work on? Are they making progress on them? Are they not making progress on them, if they are or if they are not, what aspects of those areas of competency are impacting them. Is it a leadership style thing? Is it something else? And we’ll pick that up in the nuance because of the questions that we do ask aligned with these areas of competency.

Kim Bohr  26:58

And we can really hone in. I think one of the things that is, you and I both have found so valuable as we’ve worked with different CEOs, is that we can get into the specific areas that maybe where the adjustment needs to happen, instead of it feeling like it’s a broad swath of maybe something that feels concerning. There often is a nuance in the type of statements we’ve asked or things that somebody can get in say it’s really this particular item that really is carrying a lot more weight than perhaps anyone realized, and could be targeted as an area of growth opportunity. Absolutely So as we begin to wrap up this conversation, Mike, what would you say to a board chair or a CEO who’s listening to this and thinking about their current evaluation process, what should they really be asking themselves?

Mike Humphries  27:48

Well, if I’m a director, how do we know that we have the right CEO in the role and one who’s up to today’s and the futures changes and needs that the enterprise is going to have if I’m a CEO, how do I in this loneliest of executive jobs, a one of a kind role and position? You know? How do I actually get nuanced insights that are honest and feedback that’s honest on both my talents and my actual performance? And how do I know how I’m actually experienced by the people that I lead that’s so important, they’re not typically going to tell me just outright, like we would in a normal relationship. There’s a power dynamic here that plays out both with the board and with the executive team, and these are the questions I would be asked, or I would be asking, if I were the CEO, and that is, how am I going to get honest feedback as to how I’m doing from

Kim Bohr  28:48

all directions, especially when we know it’s always so lonely at the top.

Mike Humphries  28:53

Yeah, it’s a role in which you have limited ability to express your own insecurities. Everybody has them limited ability to have the most frank and direct conversations, because everything has to be packaged for impact and for effect. Yeah, the independence allows a relationship to occur that is both pure feedback and honest feedback, but it also has an element of coaching in it. Typically, we get into conversations with CEOs where they want to explore a little more deeply, not only what’s going on and what might be causing it, but they have the ability to work with somebody who’s an experienced board member, an experienced executive been in an operating role as to what their ideas are about development opportunities, and I say development at that appropriate. At CEO level, yeah, you got to learn to lead. That is very, very rare that somebody doesn’t know right in the CEO role, but nuances absolutely well.

Kim Bohr  30:10

Thank you so much for this conversation and for being a part of it. On the courage to advance podcast, I think it’s been really insightful.

Mike Humphries  30:19

I’m happy to do it. It’s really wonderful work, and we enjoy doing it, both of us, indeed. Thanks, Kim, thank you, and thank you

Kim Bohr  30:28

to the empathy edge for hosting our podcast sub series and to the listeners for tuning into this episode of courage to advance where Transformative Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about having the courage to find them

Maria Ross  30:41

for more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slicemaria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.