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My guest today, Charles Gellman, is the CEO & Co-founder of HiDO Health and he has leveraged empathy from his own health experiences into AI-assisted robotics that will alter the future of medicine and healthcare. Charles is an outgoing data scientist with a Masters in Clinical Informatics, an accomplished speaker, and one of the top voices on AI-assisted robotics, digital health, and the impact on care.

Today, he shares his personal story and shocking statistics on the big and costly problem of inaccurate home health care. We discuss how AI-assisted robotics can impact emotional well-being and why empathy is not going away because of all this new technology. We even take a detour and talk about how to ensure that leaders who succeed passionate founders possess the same empathy for customers and commitment to purpose. Finally, we discuss the importance of empathy to understand both providers and patients and help them alter behaviors to improve health outcomes.

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• When selecting a successor as a leader, you want to make sure they are aligned with the vision and mission, not just capable of running the business side of things. 
• Providers struggle to get care to everyone. Patients struggle to communicate their needs. AI can help to bridge that gap and allow for better communication. 
• Around $300B is wasted each year on medications not being taken as prescribed. HiDO is using AI to help reduce that and make life easier for patients, caregivers, and physicians. 

 

“One out of four patients in the US have chronic care diseases. More than 10% of the population have some type of caregiver responsibilities. We have a health care system, where we are solely dependent on people at home to care for themselves. How is that working out for us?”

—  Charles Gellman

 

Episode References: 

• AARP, Caregiving in the United States 2020
• PubMed, National trends in prescription drug expenditures and projections for 2023
• The Empathy Edge podcast, Ron Gura: How Technology Helps People Navigate Grief and Loss

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

About Charles Gellman, CEO, HiDO Health:

Charles Gellman, MSHI is the CEO & Co-founder of HiDO Health, where AI-assisted robotics will alter the future of medicine and healthcare. An outgoing data scientist with a Masters in Clinical Informatics, he is also an accomplished speaker with 100+ podcast interviews scheduled for 2023 from notable university professors, leading researchers, and forward-thinking podcast hosts. NIH-funded research in collaboration with Stanford and Rush Universities. He is one of the top voices on AI-assisted robotics, digital health, and its impact on care.

Charles was recently featured in a full feature documentary, “AI Robotics… The HiDO Story.” He publishes his analyses regularly in the newsletter, “The Future of Care.”

He is a former advisor for StartXMed and has worked in various executive roles at Startups as well as Fortune 500 companies. He received an MSHI degree from University of California at Davis, Medical School.

Connect with Charles Gellman:  

HiDO Health: https://www.hidohealth.com 

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

HiDO Summary Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljnFImTNpwg 

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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. Taking our medication properly at home is a huge problem that has serious consequences on our health and lives. Many patients do not get all the benefits they should from prescribed medications when they’re not taken properly. Often, we’re relying on ourselves or ad hoc caregivers to ensure we’re following the right care instructions at home. Did you know that the number of caregivers increased and reached about 53,000,020 20 or more than one in five Americans and according to a PubMed article in 2022, overall pharmaceutical expenditures in the US grew 9.4% compared to the year prior, for a total of get this 633 point 5 billion with a B net net or taking a lot of drugs people and often not correctly to get the maximum benefits from what we spend on them. That leads to more than just wasting money, it can lead to death. My guest today Charles Gelman is the CEO and co founder of Heito health, and he’s leveraged empathy from his own health experiences into AI assisted robotics that will alter the future of medicine and health care. Charles is an outgoing data scientist with a master’s in clinical informatics and accomplished speaker and one of the top voices in AI assisted robotics, digital health and the impact on care. Heito is a patient friendly device paired with a mobile app that helps automate home care by assisting patients with medication compliance. It automates the medication experience and removes much of the burden on from patients on remembering the right medication, the right frequency, the right dosage, and validates that the right person took it through a remote video record. Today he shares his personal story and shocking statistics on the big and costly problem of inaccurate home health care. We discuss how AI assisted robotics can impact emotional well being and why empathy is not going away. Because of all this new technology. We even took a detour and talk about how to ensure that leaders who succeed passionate founders possess the same empathy for customers and commitment to purpose. Finally, we discussed the importance of empathy to understand both providers and patients and help them alter behaviors to improve health outcomes. This was a great one, take a listen. Welcome Charles Gellman to the empathy edge podcast. I personally am very excited to have this conversation with you about your very empathetic technology at high dough and how it helps save lives as someone who has gone through some major medical issues and been on multiple different types of medications in the past, had aging parents, all the things. So welcome to the show. And thanks for being here to talk about Hi, Joe. Rhea, thank

Charles Gellman  03:40

you so much for having me. I’m very excited. We got some very exciting things for audience so they can play behind the scenes, you’ve got some way. So be on your toes.

Maria Ross  03:50

I will I will. First tell us a little bit about your story and why you started this company.

Charles Gellman  03:56

Yeah, so my story really aimed from a personal experience that many folks have when they have interactions within healthcare. I was in my early 20s A bit naive, you know, still going to school still trying to understand how the world works. Also, I was I had a conversation with a physician where I was having pain in my lower abdomen at that time. And they thought because my father had a family history of kidney stones, that I was also having a kidney stone, but being in my 20s I didn’t really question anything. It’s an authority figure. Again, you know, I wasn’t very educated at that time. And so I just went with it, like many people do when they have the interaction with, you know, a trusted resource, but in fact, what happened is I had a ruptured appendicitis. Oh, wow. Yeah. So by having ruptured appendicitis for about a week, that caused my body to go into septic shock, which ultimately led me into the hospital for two weeks and I had a couple different surgeries and based on upon that interaction, in what really I understood from that interaction, and I think a lot of your audience can also understand is that you have a limited window of time that you have when you see a physician. And we’re very hard to articulate or communicate what is happening with your body. And they’re pressed for time. And you’re pressed for getting the information across. And it’s a very challenging interaction between provider and patient right now. And that’s the struggle that I believe many folks across the country have on a regular basis.

Maria Ross  05:38

So tell me, I mean, I so relatable to so many people, and what led you to try to tackle that problem by dealing with how we take medicine? And how we deal with our care at home? Yeah, so

Charles Gellman  05:53

this is where trivia question number one for the audience. Right? How many prescriptions are given out each year in the United States, I want you to take a wild guess, Maria, to anyone, like collectively, collectively, in the United States, oh, my gosh, total prescriptions are there in the United States per year,

Maria Ross  06:11

I’m going to say, I’m going to say something crazy, 100 million, 6

Charles Gellman  06:16

billion prescriptions are giving out each year in the United States. Oh, my goodness, 180 7% of the population has multiple chronic care diseases to manage on their own. That is very, very significant. So what’s the likelihood? trivia question number two, that all 6 billion prescriptions are taken as intended by providers? Oh, I’m

Maria Ross  06:43

gonna say 15%. Okay, well,

Charles Gellman  06:47

this one is a little bit higher. So the clinical studies, it’s about 40 to 50% of all medications are taken as prescribed. So $300 billion a year is wasted on medications, because we don’t know whether or not they’re taking as prescribed so many patients at home, that may or may not understand the complicated regimens or directions by their providers, following those directions, so they’re not getting the benefits and the medications. So my interest in medications really culminated from my background in data science, I was trying to figure out how do we connect the dots? How do we care for people, when they may not be capable, or they’re challenged with caring for themselves at all. So if the majority of time is spent away from a sterile environment, be in the hospital, or the clinic, where you have all of those resources, you have pharmacists, you have nurses, you have physicians that are helping care for you, the second you step away, and you go into your home, look in the mirror, because that’s just caring for you. And if you can’t care for yourself, who is doing it? Right.

Maria Ross  08:01

Right. And you know, what this reminds me of so much is I did a lot of work with healthcare literacy, and patient communications as a patient advisor for the hospital where I got my care after my brain injury. And a lot of what we worked on was communication and education, especially around this issue around discharge, instructions to minimize readmissions, minimize chance of death, chance of injury. And you can only do so much with the communication aspect of it because like you said, when you get home, it’s you in the mirror, or, like in the situation of my aging parents that are now gone. Now you have a you know, 90 something year old partner taken care of and responsible for the dispensing of medicine to their 87 year old spouse. And so there’s no room for error. I mean, just just in trying to put the chart together for my parents way long ago of the different times of day, my mother needed different add medication and what she needed with food and what she didn’t need with food. And this was taken four times a day, but this was taken to and this one, you had to cut the pill in half and and I thought I can’t even keep track of this with a spreadsheet. How is my father keeping track of this, right? So I mean, the technology that you’ve invented, I get let’s just get into that right now. Let’s talk a little bit about what Heito does, and the problem that it solves.

Charles Gellman  09:24

So your story is not not unique. Millions of people are challenged with the exact same thing that you described. So what Haidle is, is the AI system robotic device to smooth care out in the home setting. So we take the medications that you have, we have an embedded RFID hap which knows the medications, the name, dosage, frequency and count that you put in the device is similar to like a Keurig coffee machine. You place it in it auto recognizes read that information. You walk up at unlocks with baseline D, it dispenses the medications as prescribed, and you take it and we monitor dose by dose, whether or not you’re taking your medications. So we know whether or not you missed or taking your medications. You know whether or not you’ve taken your medications, and most importantly, your physician and nurse know what’s going on in the home. And that is why we created Heito, the importance of knowing the cocktails of medications you’re taking are incrementally impactful on your overall health. So your experience as a caregiver, you just got a taste of managing your parents, as you know, you know, remotely or, you know, within that that defined challenge, but there are multiple chronic care conditions, cardiovascular conditions, there’s diabetes, there’s cancer, there’s dementia, that it goes on and on and on. And this is trivia question number three. I love that I have a percent of patients cost me how much money for health plans 1%. It’s probably in the billions are going to ask for a percentage. So Oh, you’re set cost? How much percentage of every dollar? I’m going to say 30%? Great answer. 40% 40 cents of every dollar is 1% of the chronic care population. And 5% of the patient population cost 80% 80 cents of every dollar is going to 5% of the people. So what if we could control that? What if we already pay for the medications for those chronic care diseases, but they’re just not taken as prescribed? Would that not be a travesty? So hydro smooths out the process for patients at home with chronic ear diseases, so we can lower the cost of care and help support people in their home. unassisted so they can live independently with freedom without being dependent on their caregivers. So trivia question number four. How many caregivers are there in the United States?

Maria Ross  12:25

That sounded like a joke of like, How many people does it take to change a light bulb? I’m gonna say 300 million?

Charles Gellman  12:36

Well, there’s almost the entire population is about 300 plus million. The United States. That’s true. Yeah. It’s about maybe 3 million 40 million caregivers in the United States. 40 million. Wow. And most of these folks are not paid for the caregiving services that they’re providing. Absolutely.

Maria Ross  12:54

Because it’s family or friends. It’s yeah, it’s not an official caregiver. Yeah.

Charles Gellman  13:00

So one out of four patients in the country have chronic care diseases. And more than 10% of the population is having some type of caregiver responsibilities. We have a health care system, we are a we are solely dependent on people at home to care for themselves. How is that working out for us? Right?

Maria Ross  13:23

All right. Well, I want to talk a little bit about the fact that, you know, this is reminding me of a past episode, and I’ll put it in the show notes when I interviewed Ron gura, who is the CEO and founder of a company called empathy. And they are leveraging technology to create a better experience for those dealing with bereavement and death in their family and how to how to how to create a better, quote unquote, better experience for those people at a very vulnerable time in their lives. So obviously, with your company, you’re applying, you know, AI assisted robotics, to this very human problem. This very, this problem that touches our emotional well being is that the promise of AI that you see is that the promise of technology where you’re trying to find applications where it can improve lives versus all the scary stuff you hear about in the news every day.

Charles Gellman  14:12

Yeah, so I believe that the the significant promise of AI is enhancing our lives. So, you know, to get headlines, you’re going to have both the positives and the negatives. And, you know, oh, we’re, you know, it’s going to take us to a different realm where AI is going to take over the world to a very primitive technology, which you’ve seen, which is, you know, generative AI, which is, you know, enable text and it does some, you know, applications for efficiency and productivity. What hydro does is it has the potential to enhance and insist your lifestyle. So, a goal is if we have these basic behaviors that need to be altered, so it’s called the classic condition in behavioral modification, we are trying to elicit risk wants is to help you care for yourself. So you can spend time on the most important things like believing your life and not worrying about your medications, right? Whether you take them, you know, just the very right stuff, right?

Maria Ross  15:14

I mean, and I, again, I can relate, and I’m sure many people can too, like, even just certain medications I’m on. It’s like, Did I take that this morning? I forget if I did. And now I don’t know if I should take another one. Because that would be bad. And so that constant, like, do I need that stress on top of everything else going on in my life, like you said, it gets in the way of living,

Charles Gellman  15:34

while you’re trying to balance you know, you a lot of folks have worked in family responsibilities for them. Or maybe they’re helping a friend, family member, as a caregiver, you know, if they had an application where they could just look on their phone, and they didn’t have to remember with all of the other things that are going on, it’s just something to ease the burden on

Maria Ross  15:55

totally reduce that cognitive load for sure. What’s been the most rewarding aspect of I mean, you’re a technologist, you, you know, you’re you’re a founder, but what’s been sort of the emotional reward for you, of working with your customers and working with folks that are using the product? Can you share a story about how it’s really transformed someone’s life? Yeah,

Charles Gellman  16:17

there’s multiple stories. And you know, people, if they want to look on YouTube, just look up Heito, health, ha do health, and you’ll be able to see most multiple patient testimonials, but the biggest impact to me, you know, it’s the end of life. You know, we had a patient, Nancy, that at that time, you know, I didn’t know she had terminal cancer, she was struggling with heart failure. So we were treating her for heart failure, I got to know her and her family. And her family worked very well. Her husband is a hypertensive diabetic patient, David, who still uses our device to this day. And we were able to get to know him through Nancy and Nancy brand of a friend. So we first started this journey. This was, will this work for these patients, because they were wanting some of the things that could help alleviate the burden. And as a founder, and as a technologist, I said, You know what, I don’t know. But let’s try, let’s give it a shot. Because these people already suffering, what if we can alleviate some of the burden, and help enable them to live those final moments and memories, and focus on their family and their loved ones versus trying to manage a very complex regimen and process. So we just went in, we just said, You know what, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But let’s just lean in and see what we can do. And, you know, I was able to get to know her story very well. And, you know, ultimately, she passed and was very challenging for us, we learned a lot. And those experiences, those memories, and the type of impact that we can make on touching people’s lives to help enable them to live the lifestyle they want, or to extend into the moments they have with their family. That’s what drives me 24/7 and drives us as an organization.

Maria Ross  18:06

I love that story. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I want to pull back for a second because you sparked something in that answer that I’ve seen in my career working in tech as well, is, obviously the passion of so many founders is the people component is how is this technology going to enhance someone’s business or life? They’re very close to their customers, whether they’re doing beta testing, or MVP testing, anything like that? How do you see that transferring? Let’s say at some point the company sold, it grows so big, you’re no longer there that touch point, that singular touch point. I’m curious how you transfer that empathy and that caring and that passion in a succession plan? How do you get someone to take over a company or to lead a company that they didn’t start? And still feel that same passion, that same empathy for their customers? I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that?

Charles Gellman  19:05

Yeah. So that is a great insight, you know how to essentially ensure the legacy of compassion. Empathy will continue after you stepped aside because there will be a succession plan as we grow and scale out. And this is a product that could reach worldwide exposure out into Asia and Europe and the Middle East, and Latin America. And that’s very realistic. And my guess counterpoint would be is that, you know, when you start thinking about patients as a whole, and then being solely independent, rely on themselves. The way I see it is just by having our technology integrated within their home is a substantial lift to everybody training, manage this complex regimen, no matter what country or what language or what leaders in charge, and vice simplifying that process with AI technology, you will lift up many, many millions of people right now that are struggling, that it’s a unknown paradigm. And so the leader that will, you know, succeed in this position and roll through, they’ll understand the type of impact that they’re making to humanity as a whole, in carry on the mission legacy that we started here. Well,

Maria Ross  20:26

it’s also something you know, we, I’ve talked about this many times in terms of culture, it’s something that you look for, right? So when you’re, when you’re selecting that successor, it’s do the values of the organization and for you the values of the founder, are you aligned with that? Can you get on board with that? Do you genuinely connect with that mission, and that that vision, that purpose of our company, and so you know, that’s part of the selection process, not just the business acumen of the next person that that steps in charge, but I know, we went off on a little bit of a tangent there, but I was just so curious from your perspective, because that’s often a struggle, I hear from founders who are very passionate about the impact of their technology. And then sometimes they sell their companies sometimes, you know, I’ve talked to other founders, and they feel like the values of the company have been eroded, because the people that took over didn’t hold those same values, dear.

Charles Gellman  21:20

Yeah, I think it just depends. I mean, that’s just a question of just interviewing folks that are aligned with your vision and mission and capable of hearing it to those next levels. And there are plenty of good folks out there that want to do the right thing that and drive business and make an impact. And they are mission driven. So it’s just a question to just connect, I

Maria Ross  21:41

think them? Yeah, absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit, again, about the AI and automation industry writ large. This is a common debate that’s happening is empathy going away, because of AI, and because of automation. What’s your perspective.

Charles Gellman  21:58

So I think that AI technologies can help enhance, you know, specific items in life, if you’re solely dependent on a chatbot. And then you can eliminate, you know, all type of human factors or connections, that’s where I think, you know, things kind of get away from understanding the situations, I don’t see that taking place, unless it’s very mundane tasks, like you’re calling in for a prompt and you’re trying to get a bank balance, or, or something very simplistic in nature, where it’s just, you just need a simple task done. But once you need full understanding, they can enhance the data to bring it front and center for people to understand and synthesize and then have a educated discussion, versus you hear them typing up on the other side, and trying to pull that information. So again, I believe it’s going to enhance professions over time, and the people that lean into it and utilize it, they will be miles ahead versus people that are still on pen and paper.

Maria Ross  23:04

Love that. Love that. And let’s talk about kind of a final wrap up the role of empathy, in altering behaviors to improve health outcomes, like you’re in this space, you’re tackling this problem in a very specific way with technology. But how do you see the role as empathy of empathy evolving, or, or ramping up to achieve better health outcomes? I mean, you you’re talking to physicians all the time, you’re talking to patients all the time. What do you see as the landscape of where empathy is really improving those health outcomes? Whether it’s with technology or not,

Charles Gellman  23:44

you wonder that you have to understand the challenges that everybody has. And that’s why I proceeded the conversation, the beginning is that your providers struggle, giving care to people, and patients struggle communicating what is happening with themselves, because they’re not educated from a medical standpoint, and you have to communicate it accordingly. So you get this moment of lost in translation. So you have to understand where both parties are coming messenger and receiver to broadcast that message, synthesize it and understand it. So based upon the unique circumstances, and the constraints that exists within healthcare, and the burdens that people experience on both sides, then you can start attacking the underlying issues and address them accordingly. But you have to understand what challenges that they have in order to address them accordingly. And that’s why we stay very, very close with both providers and patients and the different types of, you know, struggles that people have. So then we can build accordingly. And I’ve said this time and time again. Heito is the culmination of the ship discussions and interactions. It’s not because of us. It’s been Designed by the customer for the customer, as needed, when needed. Love

Maria Ross  25:05

that. Love that. So, Charles, thank you so much for your time today. And more importantly for this work you’re putting into the world to improve people’s lives. And you’re you’re coming at it from such a perspective of empathy and a desire to improve people’s lives and well being. So I really applaud that effort. And we’re going to have all your links in the show notes. I’m going to put a link to the intro video for Heito as well which was really explains the product and the promise very, very well in a very succinct way. But for folks on the go, who might be exercising right now as they’re listening to us, where’s the best place they can get in touch with you or find out more about your work. So please

Charles Gellman  25:44

visit us at hydro health. It’s H ideal health or you can go on YouTube search a hydro health, we have plenty of videos on there for you to peruse and look forward to connecting you if you have any. Anything you want to drop comments or likes or feedback, please feel free to write accordingly.

Maria Ross  25:59

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

I’ve often said that many entrepreneurs get their business ideas from practicing empathy. From either experiencing a pain point themselves or wanting to solve a pain or provide a benefit to an audience who needs it. Today, we talk to one such start-up entrepreneur, Shizu Okusa, the Founder and CEO of wellness company Apothékary.

Today, Shizu shares her entrepreneurial journey from Wall Street to wellness, and how many of  her leadership and product philosophies are inspired by her Japanese heritage. We discuss why self-awareness is key for founders to be successful for the long haul and specific examples of how Apothékary creates an empathetic culture devoted to her employees’ and customers’ well-being. We discuss the number one reason many leaders can’t embrace empathy – to their own detriment. And Shizu shares how they gather customer feedback as well as how they make remote work more personal and collaborative. Finally, Shizu offers her advice to other leaders and entrepreneurs looking to lead with empathy. 

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Self-awareness is key to being an effective leader. You can’t have the space in your brain for empathy, creativity, and listening if you don’t know where you are at. 
• Rather than having a maximum number of vacation days, consider setting a minimum number of vacation days to support your team and encourage them to take care of themselves. 
• Empathy is consumer psychology in the business world. It is sometimes seen as a soft skill, but compassion and business success are not mutually exclusive.
• Surveys are a great way to gather information from your customers, but if you don’t take action on that data, that data is wasted. 

 

“The CEO’s job is to provide the healthy oxygen for your team to breathe in.” —  Shizu Okusa

Episode References: 

• The Ranch, Malibu, California

The Empathy Edge podcast episodes referenced:

• Melina Palmer: Why Your Customers Can’t Tell You What They Want
• Carrie Melissa Jones: Building Successful Communities
• Emily Vernon: Are You Gathering the Right Customer Insights?
• Aransas Savas: Forget Journey Mapping: Define a More Valuable Customer Experience
• Sandy Thompson: How to Make People Fall in Love with Your Brand

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

About Shizu Okusa, Founder and CEO, Apothékary

Shizu Okusa is a Wall Street alum-turned-wellness entrepreneur. After leaving an intense finance career, she became inspired to live a more balanced lifestyle and revisit her Japanese roots and passion for herbal medicine. Shizu set out to help others regain their holistic health using traditions she grew up with and ones she learned along the way. Now, she proudly leads Apothékary in its mission to deliver natural herbal remedies that get to the root cause of health issues rather than masking the symptoms.

Connect with Shizu Okusa:  

Apothékary: https://www.apothekary.co/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shizu-okusa-87a25415 

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

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUlZ43PITt9RsTJNZX1F6JQ 

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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. I’ve often said that many entrepreneurs get their business ideas from practicing empathy, from either experiencing a pain point themselves, or wanting to solve a pain or provide a benefit to an audience who needs it. Today we talked to one such startup entrepreneur, she zu o Kusa. She’s who is the founder and CEO of wellness company apothecary, she’s who is a Wall Street alum turned wellness entrepreneur. After leaving an intense finance career, she became inspired to live a more balanced lifestyle and revisit her Japanese roots and passion for herbal medicine. She’s who set out to help others regain their holistic health, using traditions she grew up with, and ones she learned along the way. Now, she proudly leads apothecary and it’s mission to deliver natural herbal remedies that get to the root cause of health issues, rather than masking the symptoms. Today, she’s who shares her entrepreneurial journey from Wall Street to wellness, and how many of her leadership and product philosophies are inspired by her Japanese heritage we discuss why self awareness is key for founders to be successful for the long haul, and specific examples of how apothecary creates an empathetic culture devoted to her employees and customers well being. We discussed the number one reason why leaders can’t embrace empathy to their own detriment. And she’s who shares how they gather customer feedback, as well as how they make remote work more personal and collaborative. Finally, she’s zoo offers her advice to other leaders and entrepreneurs looking to lead with empathy. So many insights in today’s episode, please take a listen. Welcome, she’s due to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you here to talk about all things entrepreneurship, culture and wellness, which wraps up your own personal history as well as the products that you sell at apothecary. So welcome to the show.

Shizu Okusa  02:41

Thank you so much. This is amazing. It feels like all those terms. And words are combinations of all the things that I’ve strived to do here at apothecary, so I’m happy to be here. Thank

Maria Ross  02:51

you. Awesome. So let’s start because your story is so interesting. Your entrepreneurial journey is really interesting. Tell us a little bit about your story, and how you got to the work you’re doing now. Absolutely.

Shizu Okusa  03:04

It’s not super linear, but I think that’s what most entrepreneurs stories are. So I was born and raised in Vancouver on a farm. My parents were both Japanese immigrants coming out of World War Two, they were actually an intern camps. And it was kind of a crazy time for them to grow out. And they were like, please get a stable job. We got you here in Canada. And of course, my first job then was in Wall Street, I chose sort of this, what I thought would be the most stable thing and the most lucrative money wise because that’s the thing that we didn’t have as an immigrant family. And I kind of flew myself to New York got myself a job on the one of the most stressful but most, I would say the most brightest of people on that trading floor. And I joined the distressed investing desk there at Goldman Sachs for about three years and kind of was again like nonlinear, I kind of quickly knew, being empathetic to myself realized this wasn’t the right fit for me. And so I really deeply thought about my eulogy virtues and my resume virtues and how I wanted to shift my focus not just from my resume my career to more of like how I want to live and how I want to be remembered when I die. And I know that sounds so crazy, but you know, I grew up again in like a very Buddhist family. So I traveled the world for a bit I lived on a Banana Farm in Mozambique and Africa. I lived there for a year, then got myself back to DC where I then started my first company. It was a cold pressed juice brand called drink. And I did that for eight and a half years making cold pressed juices and smoothies. We had 15 stores partnerships with whole foods. We got acquired and I was able to then kind of start my second company apothecary and what I call apothecary today’s Mother Nature’s pharmacy, we are providing clean, natural herbal remedies that bridge Eastern medicine with Western health care. And we provide sort of these herbal alternatives to over the counter supplements so melatonin, laxatives wine, energy drinks, quick fixes, and I don’t know what else could be more sort of empathetically focused because, you know, this whole vision has been And I know there are more consumers like me that don’t want to use melatonin as a crutch. I know there are people that drink just as much as I do with wine and don’t want to drink as much. But we want like a better alternative. That’s not gross. That’s not dark and witchy. That’s not like, on accessible from a price point perspective. And so we wanted to create that. And that’s kind of what apothecary is today, four years later.

Maria Ross  05:25

Okay, so funny because you’re describing me with the melatonin and the wine, but I’m so interested in the pivot you made from Wall Street to wellness prompted that? Was it the environment you were in? Was it the culture you were working in? Like? What prompted that? That route?

Shizu Okusa  05:41

Yeah, you know, I think it was. So be I lived, I was on a very interesting desk at Goldman, a very unique and special desk and distressed investing, which means usually, it’s companies that are going through bankruptcy or about to go through bankruptcy. So I was looking at companies that were like bus companies, yellow page books, companies, like who knew right at the time. And all of that being said, it was like, at the very end of the lifecycle for a business, it almost looked like I was just looking at death every single day of a company. And I’m, as you can probably tell, I thrive on the energy I thrive of life, I want to breathe and live and give back life. And I didn’t want to keep doing that in a world where I’d wake up at 4am in the morning, and go to bed at like 11 o’clock at night with alcohol in my system every single day. And I think a lot of people just need to ask themselves, like pretty early on, like, like, is this the life that I intended for myself, we live once we really live a very short period of time in this world. And as much as sometimes we think this day is going by too slow, or like, I just want to get to tomorrow, or I want to get to my next vacation. That’s just like not the way I wanted to live. I don’t look forward to my vacation personally, because I don’t take vacation. I don’t I don’t need it. Like I I was listening to something yesterday about like when when things are going well. And you have momentum you never burn out. Like I’m sure you feel the same way for yourself. Marie is like when you have momentum and things are going great. You can do that every day, all day, every day. Right? It’s when the entrepreneurial bumps in the road, the crashes and falls on your face happen. And that’s when you start to burn out. Right.

Maria Ross  07:13

Right. It’s so true. And I think that that’s the culture, especially for people that work inside organizations. Yeah, that’s the part of the culture that gets to them where they’re like, you know, I am starting to burnout, I do need to refuel, I need to re energize I need to replenish in some way. And I advocate very strongly for that, because as you know, we were talking before we started recording, is that empathy is more accessible to you when you’re in that state of being when you are feeling replenished and rejuvenated. And you’re well as full, as I like to say, because then you can take on another person’s perspective without defensiveness or fear. You can you can get curious, you’re not in such a self protective mode. Yeah. And what I loved about apothecary, and your story is that you had that need as a person in the world. And then now you’ve created this company that creates that for other people. And that’s a common thread, I actually spoke about it or wrote about it in my book, The Empathy edge, where the spark for entrepreneurship is oftentimes, I mean, nine times out of 10. Yes, empathetic, it’s, yeah, I have this challenge and this problem and this need. And I want to help other people with this as well. Yeah,

Shizu Okusa  08:29

yeah. It’s really, really good point. I mean, we recently did a whole rebrand for this very reason around empathy. Because I was just, you know, I just told you that was just on the interview right before this. And I was sharing that I think apothecary wouldn’t be alive in a year from now, if we didn’t do that rebrand. And I think it’s such an important investment that we did. And I know investors are probably like, Bran doesn’t matter. But like, I’m like, no,

Maria Ross  08:53

no, we have a whole other episode about that as a brand strategy.

Shizu Okusa  08:59

It’s probably better than anyone. Looking specifically just for numbers. And as an investor, those are all former past indicators. They’re not leading indicators. And when I was looking at some of our leading indicators, as an early stage company, it’s really important that you’re looking at affinity to brand and, you know, engagement to brand. And it was very clear to me that the packaging at the time was not suited for that we were putting powders into juice shop bottles, which was my first company, of course, it didn’t work out. And so now we did a rebrand, we’re being much more thoughtful about like, the packaging. So things, you know, you know, given the podcast is very clear, like, you know, there’s an opening on the side so that people can look inside. It’s very apparent that people from an empathy standpoint, like they want to know what’s inside. So we give them that opportunity we give them so that they know exactly what they can expect inside. Being again, like, if I was a consumer, how would I want to be treated like me lately?

Maria Ross  09:53

Completely and being in lockstep, you know, again, I write about this a lot being in lockstep with your customers. so that you’re speaking their language and you’re creating something they need, from their point of view. I mean, it’s great to start with a product that you have in mind or a service that you have in mind. But you’ve got to road test it. And then you have to understand how does it fit into my ideal clients life? How did? How do they interact with it? How do they feel about it? Because I work with a lot of tech companies, even though I’ve worked with b2c as well. And that’s the thing I’m trying to always drill into their heads is that I know you’re selling to IT people, for example, but every human being buys based on emotion and logic. And often they use the logic to justify the emotion, they don’t even always realize why they’re making the decision that they’re making. And just since we’re talking about this, I’m gonna put a link in the show notes to another episode, Melina Palmer, where we talked about behavioral economics, and why people buy and why sometimes customers can’t tell you why they feel a certain way, or why they’re making the decision that they’re making, because they actually don’t always consciously realize it. Yeah.

Shizu Okusa  11:07

But it’s also like, Do you think that’s a function of just being busier as a society now, like, consumers just don’t want to think

Maria Ross  11:13

no, it’s human. It’s actually how our brains are wired. And she cites a lot. In her books, she cites a lot about basically how the brain works, Daniel Kahneman, ZZ work, and different studies and research projects that have been done around pricing around packaging, around display, and have you we say that it doesn’t matter to us that it doesn’t matter. If you say, Buy one, get one free or buy three get to, you know, if you word it a different way, but it actually does the data show that it does, right. So I love that you’re already building the business and working through the business and I love that you rebranded like, it’s sometimes you have to rebrand, like you do you do consumer needs change, the marketplace change, competition changes, messaging changes all those things. So I love that you’re doing that from a customer point of view. So is that something you know, for leaders and entrepreneurs listening? Is that something that was intentional from day one for you to be so in lockstep with your customers? Was that something that the company came to? Over time? Where did that philosophy develop?

Shizu Okusa  12:20

I think this was so tight, I don’t know if this ties into but I’m just gonna say it, I, I have a lot of focus on one thing, right. And so when I’m building apothecary, I’m very hyper focused on this chapter of my life, which allows me to give space and boundaries to other parts of my life, that maybe otherwise other people would do. So like, I don’t have kids, I’m not married, I’m very focused on the company, my team, and then supporting myself so they can continue to breathe healthy oxygen into the business. And what that means, though, is I also have downtime in my day, make it I’m not running around chasing kids or chasing diapers, or like serving my husband food. I don’t know what other people do. But like that capacity allows me to take journaling time, and really get into the weeds of like, what did I do today? What do I want to do accomplish tomorrow? What were some of the challenges that we faced, and really kind of manifest the things that I think I need to do, and that I think that ties into I think a little bit about the empathy piece has been just around self awareness I’ve been, I’ve been very aware of my journey, both as a founder, both as a prospective partner, for other person, and I just want to be thoughtful about that before I enter a new chaos into my life. And so I think to that, to that end, I’ve been, I’m always thinking about the business. And I’m always thinking about what how to better serve the community and the customers. And when that when I run out of ideas, or when I think I can’t do that anymore, that’s the time that founders also need to be really aware and empathetic to the fact that that’s, your time has maybe passed for this journey of this company. And it’s time to now think about a succession plan. And so I think any healthy entrepreneur will ask those questions, and we’re not going to be self imposed by, you know, restrictions around the shoulds. The, the, the expectations on ourselves that a founder will always be a part of the company. I don’t know about that. You know, and I think it’s for now, it works for now. It’s great for now, I think I’m needed for now, you know, it’s so important for the stage of the business, we’re only less than four years in that we’re really listening to the consumer. It’s a consumer business, right? And so we have to be listening we have to be watching and ultimately be creating for something that they don’t even know they want yet.

Maria Ross  14:31

100% I have so many things to unpack there that I’m like lighting up about because the one of the things you mentioned was that ability to create enough stillness in space. Yeah, to be able to hear yourself and to be self aware and for the new book that I’m working on that’s coming out anytime you’re raising 2024 You’re one of the one of the pillars of being an effective empathetic leader is self awareness. Because if you don’t know your strengths if you don’t know your blind spots if you don’t know your triggers. Yeah. And like you said, if you don’t know, when you’re hearing that voice that says you need a break, or you need you need to read, refresh, you need to re Energize. Yeah, you can’t have the space in your brain to be able to go. Let me get more creative over here. Or let me take time to listen to my employees over here. Or let me take time to listen to my customers over here. Absolutely. I love that that was such a key component for you. Yeah, in building the business. And so I want to ask you, you know, how do you foster a culture of empathy? Yeah, I think we’ve talked a lot on the show to to larger companies. Yeah. And a few smaller companies. But I really want to dive into this. Because what I love about startups and small businesses that I’ve worked with in the past, is you have the opportunity to build things right from the beginning. Yeah, we don’t always, but what have you done to build a culture of empathy into into the company, so that you can continue to empower and engage your employees to do their best work?

Shizu Okusa  16:07

Yeah. So I think there’s a few things. It’s, I think about mostly scheduling the types of work that we give and mental health days. And so one thing that we started from the very beginning of a company was mental health days. So, you know, this was even before COVID. I mean, we was gonna say, was it before it was trendy? Yeah, it was before 2020. And so like, we gave everybody once a month has a mental health day, you know, you can take that in addition to your PTO. You know, we encourage people to take that, because it’s actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, because I’ve started to take vacation. Finally, personally, myself, even and I’m like, I, we need to have a minimum vacation day. Not a maximum, but a minimum. Because, yeah, the way that we hired apothecary, because I do come from Wall Street, I have at Wall Street expectations. But I also have, but that also comes with like being Japanese and having very high expectations and sort of on ourselves, right? I think the Japanese culture is a lot of perfection, unfortunately. But it would balance, right. And all these like nomenclatures like do wabi sabi which means imperfection, is is beautiful and iki guy, which means life purpose, and like, there’s all these words that I think I’ve been surrounded by, through my culture, and my family, that I’ve we’ve tried to, like really instill that with the business. So whether it’s like through a harmony video with my mom, the heritage video with my dad, we tried to really interweave the side about self awareness and meditation and using the lifestyle component of plant medicine. And so that’s one piece. I think the second is like, you know, when I first took my vacation earlier this year, I went to this place called the ranch Malibu, which I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it’s like a, you have, okay, great.

Maria Ross  17:50

So,

Shizu Okusa  17:50

you know, I absolutely love that it was like, seven days of complete offline, not having to think about a single decision or what I was going to eat or where I would need to be, you didn’t need to be anywhere, but there. And so that was kind of a journey for me to say, you know, I schedule my emails now for our team, I don’t send an email be beyond seven o’clock at night. I don’t send emails on weekends, I scheduled it for Monday morning. And so it’s just being again thought I turned my email on a way purposely so that because I know my team is going to check their email, they’re going to see if I’m on Gchat, or slack. And they’ll be like, Oh, my God, she’s working again. Right? So I purposely go on away, which should also just

Maria Ross  18:28

creates anxiety for people like, even if they’re just checking it, to make sure there’s no fires, if they see, you know, like, I know, when I checked my email, I’ve got like, 300 new messages a day when I log on in the morning, and it just, I feel it rising in my chest, just like, oh, you know, that feeling of like, do I need to go through this do I need to just spend some time clearing it out, so I don’t have to face it. When I come back. It just creates all kinds of anxiety.

Shizu Okusa  18:53

It does. It does. And I mean, as you know, we can schedule things we can boomerang or inbox, we pause the inbox, but the very least from my job, like, again, if the CEOs job is to provide the healthy oxygen for your team to breathe in, if I’m if I am breathing carbon dioxide to my team, that’s gonna kill the team pretty quickly. And so again, if we’re nature is medicine, we’re sourcing sustainably we’re recycling sustainably from a team side, I also have to be breathing in the right medicine for my team. And part of that is the words that they use the emails that I send out the content that we share the time off that you get the offline and online component. I often tell teams like if you’ve had 10 calls already today, please turn off your video camera. Just get off the camera. I know it’s exhausting. Just get off, take calls while you’re walking. Send voice notes instead by the beach. I don’t care. I just want a job. And I don’t care about formalities. I really don’t

Maria Ross  19:48

know. Why do you think what do you think gets in the way of more entrepreneurs and more leaders quite frankly. Yeah, having that perspective. I’m just curious. I always like to ask other people what they think gets in the way of people being able to be an empathetic leader like that. I think it’s scarcity. Yeah,

Shizu Okusa  20:08

I think I have to admit that like when I was a, you know, when you’re when this gets very spiritual, but if you’re thinking about your root chakra falling off, or you’re like Maslow’s hierarchy are very bottom doesn’t have any base, ie like money issues, like you go into complete scarcity mode, and I think you then try to control everything. And then you try to like, you put parameters in place, and then you lose all sense of empathy. Because your empathy, I think, is one of those things that you think about at the very top, it’s close to self awareness, self actualization, in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy. And so, again, if you’re at the very bottom, because you’re just trying to survive, that’s where I think people can’t make those decisions from a place of abundance.

Maria Ross  20:47

100% I feel like if that foundation is weak, yeah, you just you’re in self preservation mode. Yeah, there’s no ability for you to think beyond your own needs, and see and hear and understand someone else’s point of view or someone else’s perspective. Exactly. So I love that I love that. You talked a little bit about, you know, prioritizing the well being of your employees. What about the products you choose to sell, and even this industry that you’ve gotten into? What role does empathy play in that mission? Of being empathetic to community being empathetic to the planet? Like, Was that intentional? Is that because I don’t know that every wellness company talks that you say, yeah, yeah,

Shizu Okusa  21:34

it’s a good point. And I think it’s interesting. It goes, this sounds so silly, but I think it goes a little bit to like color psychology, because when I when we were doing our rebrand, we were very intentional about like, what Pantone colors to choose for our brown book, you’re very intentional about moods.

Maria Ross  21:52

speaking my language right now, like, seriously, all of those things, say something, whether you want them to say it or not, they’re going to say something. So you have to be intentional

Shizu Okusa  22:02

about that. Yeah. And so you probably know, this is like light purple is more like lilac and calming, right, yellow is more uppity and energizing. Green is something that feels more like filling and like its nature. So you feel like you’re just left with like abundance of energy. And so that’s why it’s on our energy blend, to chill the eff out. It’s like a light blue, because we want to take you to the moon and sky and we want even like relax and be expensive. And so we use a lot of that with like color therapy and color psychology. And then I think layering on top of that has been always like the opening unboxing experience. So when we how do we want to feel when we open that box? We want people to be like great packaging, she’s to, like, if I hear that. I’m like, my job’s done. I’m done. I’m retiring. Now, like you, we know that we’ve done our jobs. Right. And most times, it doesn’t require like a 5000 bajillion dollar investment in brand. Like it can be as simple as a little gift note, yes, simple as like a little additional bubble wrap around a certain thing, because we knew it might break or just little touches, you know, and it goes such a long way.

Maria Ross  23:09

Yeah, it really does. It really does. And so, you know, again, kind of getting back to beyond your customer and beyond your employee. What policies or practices do you have in place that are empathetic to the community or empathetic to the environment, let’s say,

Shizu Okusa  23:24

Yeah, so right now, so all of our packaging is completely biodegradable. So we use all of our sort of these secondary cartons and the primary packaging, everything is recycled goods. And then we use wood pulp packaging from this guy here. And then when customers subscribe, which is about 30% of the business, so they subscribe to like a regular product getting delivered. At their second delivery, we actually send refills. And so we know the customers wanting to save money by the time they’re on their second or third order. So we make sure we send them a refill. And that refill actually is like 30% more product. So they get the benefit of having more product, and it’s cheaper. But also for mother nature, we can ship it in a lower, sort of like just basic USPS mailer, and then it saves money on the shipping environment and the bulk, we don’t need to use a box, which is more water intensive, too. And so everything is so thoughtfully, I think created from like our rebrand experience and always putting ourselves where the customer is in terms of what really matters, rent as we think about like all of our new formats, you know, alcohol alternatives continue to be a very big category for us. And so when we’re thinking about the names of the product, like take the edge off, very, very clear, but what that is intended to do wind down very, very clear what it is and what the intention is right is to like wind you down, rose a tinted glass, it’s very clear. You want to lose your mood. It’s a Rosedale alternative. And so there’s just a lot of I think consumer psychology maybe, and empathy. It’s very interrelated. And I think to your it’s interesting because empathy I think, in many ways is consumer psychology as a terminology for business and business world. Yeah, for sure. It’s just kind of sad because it feels like sometimes there’s workplaces that may not feel like the word empathy is like a safe word to use. Because they think it’s too soft.

Maria Ross  25:12

I don’t know. Exactly. I mean, I mean that, yeah. Welcome to like my world of just trying to make the business case for empathy. When really what I’m trying to do is just make the world more empathetic. I’m just starting at the place where we spend the bulk of our time and energy, which is that work. So but but the benefits, they’re there. They’re not mutually exclusive. I talked about this all the time. Actually, when I sign off on the podcast, I say cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. No, we’re not signing a light on on entrepreneurs and leaders and companies like yours, who are showing that you can find success that way. Yep. And everybody wins. Like, yeah, this Yeah, nothing bothers me more than the either or thinking of like, purpose or profit. Yeah, it’s not mutually exclusive. The or ambition? No, there, it’s both and right. So, uh, gosh, so many questions I want to ask you. What would you what are some ways that you can share that are great strategies or methods for staying in touch with your customers on a consistent basis? Do you do anything innovative in terms of gathering that customer feedback? And it doesn’t have to be, you know, overly innovative? It could be something. Yeah, effective. But what are the ways that you actually gather feedback? How many different mechanisms and methods do you have?

Shizu Okusa  26:33

So you know, the craziest thing is like, we have over 500,000, email customers subscribers, and when we do launches, we send it from Shizu. apothecary, the people are willingly going to be able to just be me back. And then on our Instagram, you can look today it says, founder, Japanese and female founded by she’s a Prusa, you can click on that, and you can DM me at any time. So my door’s always open for our customers. And I think the surprising thing is, most people will probably still not reach out to you, even though it’s that accessible, but at least knowing that the door is open, and there is a door means so much to people already. And so when people ask questions on Instagram about a certain product, or like they ask questions, generally, I always respond to that myself. As for my personal, my personal account, and so there was always a means for someone to get in contact with me whether it’s by email, hack, I don’t know, smoke, smoke signal, by letter for sure. Because shipping from our facility, so people, people write letters to me from to the facility. And then they can also DM me. So I think it’s one of those things where it doesn’t matter as much. Like we don’t purposely need to say she’s just reaching out to you, we always have a door open. That’s always been an open door. But that

Maria Ross  27:50

may not scale over time, like you’re one person with one personal account. So how do you think about actually making sense of that feedback? So not? Not just the gathering of it, but just synthesizing it and prioritizing it? Are there methods that you use that could be helpful for listeners of trying to figure out you know, everyone just falls back on surveys all the time, right? Yeah. And yeah, that’s very methodical. And that’s a very organized way to gather information and collate it and, you know, make it into pretty graphs and charts and all the things. But you know, it’s also about are you asking the right questions? Are you getting getting feedback that’s useful? How is that feedback being implemented in a future product decisions or pricing decisions? So can you talk to us a little bit about your process around synthesizing that feedback? Yeah,

Shizu Okusa  28:43

absolutely. So there’s a few things that we do do, including like, you know, we saw not, so we have automations, running so few automations. Right, which are after you purchase something, there’s a post purchase survey, like did we serve you in terms of all of your needs that you were looking for today? That’s part one. Part two is what were you primarily here looking for? And 80% of our consumers say stress? So that’s on one thing. So right, I think if that continues to be the answer, we’re doing a good job, because I would say 50% or more of our products are focused on stress, if not the connection to stress. And so from that perspective, I think we continue to serve our consumers where they are. And then we have every one week, so t plus one week, meaning the time upon delivery, and a week later, we’ll send a post purchase survey through a review system. So it allows him to anonymously review. So that you know, it is a survey system on that regard. And I think that there could be a world and this is actually a world that we believe will come very soon because we are hiring the community liaison community person, so that person will be dedicated specifically to creating and fostering a healthier community of communication. And so that includes things like our Facebook group and they make sure that we’re engaging people through the right recipe. We are creating journeys soon as well right which are going to be these plot Medicine journeys that will be international. So to allow consumers to come with us and go through journeys of meditation, heart opening exercises. And so it’s just been like, that is all part of listening, I think to our consumer and where they are today. And then also just getting gathering input from like these reviews and surveys. But to your point, I think from a brand perspective, we still have room to go, right? Short, right, we will always have room to go.

Maria Ross  30:26

And I love this because I love hearing this from the perspective of an actual in the trenches practitioner, and I’m gonna put a link to a few episodes I’ve done around customer journey mapping, gathering customer insights, and also on building effective communities, because I’ve interviewed experts in those areas. And I think anyone listening to this, with their eye on trying to gather the best practices of things, will just give them a little package in the show notes of other places they can go as well. I love that, though. Because we want to hear what’s really going on, you know what I mean? Yeah, you can talk to consultants and experts all you want, but how are people actually leading? How are they actually running their companies? Right? And so how will you this is kind of an interesting question that maybe some founders have on this that are doing everything very old school personal touch away? How will you know, when you get to a point that you can’t manage? people contacting you directly? Um, have you thought about that? Or is it Yeah, I know, it’s, when you come to it. Yeah,

Shizu Okusa  31:27

you know, you can ask my team, but like, I tend to operate in a capacity where I don’t think I feel like I actually have 50 people working for me, I think I operate from a world where, like, I today was a launch of our wind down product or like, which I think is going to be like our number one SKU going into next year, I sent a photo to literally everyone in the entire company, because we have like one email that goes to everyone is a listserv, and I sent a photo of my nails. And I was like, Look, guys, in celebration of wine now launching, here’s my matching manicure. Er, and I was like, I was like, I don’t care if people don’t perceive me to be the CEO that they think I need to be or whatever. It allows me to continue to be free, not feel bogged down, not feel bogged down by bureaucracy. Yeah. role. And I think what I’ve learned the most about myself over the last year is that it’s, it’s money to me is less important than freedom. And I think about the moment where I know my freedom becomes constrained, whether through customers emailing me and there being that being just too much, I’ll know, my body will tell me and I’ll hire someone to like, you know, potentially be my EA or something. But that’s far, I actually gave my EA to our head of operations, because

Maria Ross  32:37

like I don’t want to manage. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Oh, my God, I love it. Well, you’re speaking to really about tapping into your authentic leadership style. Yeah. And I think that’s why so many entrepreneurs go off on their own. I know, I went off on my own because I was tired of the politics, right and tired of, I wanted to do things my way and not like at the expense of not listening to people. But you know, when you have there’s so much added stress on employees. Yeah, you know, which is some of their dissatisfaction with workplace culture is most a lot of it’s not about the actual work. Yeah, it’s about the environment that they swim in. It’s about the, like, I can’t just focus on my work, because I’ve got to worry about politics, and I’ve got to worry about optics, and I’ve got to worry about that person that’s going to stab me in the back. Which is, is. It’s not hilarious. It’s sad, but you know, CFOs, do you realize how much productive hours are being wasted by your people? Because of poor workplace culture? Yeah, like to say it’s fluffy. You say it’s soft? Yeah. Like, attach $1 value to that if you need to, to understand the impact. And so I know, because you’ve stretched you know, you’ve been in Wall Street, you’re starting your own business. I know, you get that. Yeah.

Shizu Okusa  33:50

I mean, you know, the trading floor is probably a whole new extreme, right? Like, I learned to yellow across the room and be yelled at, and to be sitting beside someone with their, their pants, kind of like half on button because they’re trying to eat lunch. And they’re just kind of like, I don’t give a shit like that vibe. That’s the vibe of trading floors. Right? And, you know, recently with apothecary, even because we’re fully remote, and I was reading about this, from a culture standpoint, it’d be really easy to feel like you’re just a zoom face, right? Like you’re just a face that logs on and then logs off and can be really replaced, replaceable, but like, that’s not what we want to create. And so now, you know, onboarding has been a very big progress and work in progress for us. The onboarding now has a buddy system, and like a full transparent 3060 90 Day goal setting process. And so we know that that all that first 90 days will really set the company up for success with that first employee, but the buddy system is huge. Because otherwise in remote, you’re kind of just talking to your three or four people in your department. And so the buddy system allows for that cross functional relationships and to be able to make friends Isn’t the company that could because you might not have to work with them directly? So that’s a lot, I think on retention,

Maria Ross  35:05

for sure for sure. Because you can’t, you know, I’ve done a few episodes on hybrid work. And yeah, actually spoken to people that do really great team building and skill building work with remote teams and how they’ve managed to combine that with philanthropy. Actually, it’s really cool. But I’ll put a link to that Terry Terry Schultz is episode. But it’s this idea of, you know, what people do miss about the in person environment is the happy accidents. Yeah, the the magical moments that you don’t plan for that just happen. And unfortunately, when we are on Zoom calls all the time, when we hang up, we hang up, and we’re by ourselves. There’s no one to debrief with. There’s no one to sort of collide with in the hallway. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be innovative. And it doesn’t mean we can’t form close connections. Sure. So I love that you’re being really intentional about that, rather than what I’m seeing a lot of leaders do is out of fear of the unknown. They’re snapping back to the way things were because they’re more comfortable leading that way. Instead of saying things have changed. Now let’s figure out how to make this work environment work for us and still foster collaboration and foster creativity. Yeah, I love that you’ve actually looked at the the pressure points within that process. And you’re addressing them very specifically, like the onboarding process, for example, or the buddy system being very specific examples of like, these were the these are the problems, the challenges, we’ve pinpointed with working remotely? Yes, solve for those rather than throwing the whole thing out and demanding everybody come back to work. Yeah, absolutely. So I love that. Okay. So as we wrap up, I could talk to you for another hour, like I say to all my guests, but we can’t as an entrepreneur, what advice would you give to other businesses, looking to build companies with an empathetic approach, looking to understand that empathy and profitability, empathy, and success

Shizu Okusa  37:05

can coexist? Whoo, new processes. Say more. I think for us, you know, so recently, what we’ve tried to do with every launch that we’ve done, so for example, we had our very big black Friday, this past Black Friday, and it has defeated all expectations that we originally would have had. And because we’re starting, we’re always kind of like, on the next thing, we’re already thinking about January. Now we’re thinking about like our new launch in February, March, April, May, June, it’s exhausting to keep going that way. And it’s exhausting. For me, too. As much as I’m excited about the next new thing, it’s really important to do a post mortem. And so now we intentionally create these post mortem calendar invites to ourselves, keeping ourselves accountable with the right people on that call to say what went right, what went wrong? What can we do better? Where did we struggle? Where could we have done better and supported each other? What actual mistakes happened? What was the cost to that and also celebrate the wins along the way. And so, from a company standpoint, those are new processes that we’ve put in place. And I think like, that allows us to always just be better. And that’s also just the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, right? Kaizen has always been this idea of constant improvement. It’s also tiring to say that because my life is full of constant improvements, and I’m never perfect, but hey, that’s the life that we live in. So right now is probably one concrete and good example for other leaders to put into place. So what

Maria Ross  38:32

I hear you saying, If I can paraphrase that, is that never losing sight of that growth mindset? And being willing to learn from mistakes? Yeah, and create new processes or new ways of doing things going forward? Absolutely. We

Shizu Okusa  38:44

are never a fixed mindset company. I think that from a culture fit, we probably wouldn’t ever hire someone that had a fixed mindset from like a culture personality standpoint. And so it’s very early on that we recognize that if we made a bad hire, because they’re not growing, and it’s very clear, yeah, right. They’re

Maria Ross  39:01

really happy with the status quo. And they don’t want. Yeah, that’s actually a really good piece of advice, too, is is higher, right and higher, don’t just have, you know, as part of my branding work, we will articulate values and will our vision as part of it. But those can’t just be pretty posters that live on the wall. Yeah, those have to be applied in everyday actions and used to vet everyday actions and used to vet new hires. Yeah. And not to not to create a very cookie cutter culture or cook cookie cutter employee base where everyone looks and sounds the same. Yeah, but do people embrace these values? Are these values they can get on board with are these values that they live, eat and breathe as well? Right, right.

Shizu Okusa  39:49

Right. Absolutely.

Maria Ross  39:51

I love it. I love it. So such great advice. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank

Shizu Okusa  39:56

you for having me, Maria. I appreciate it.

Maria Ross  39:58

We’re gonna have all your link in the show notes to all your wonderful products. I think you you gained a new customer in me so yay. But we’re gonna have all those links in the show notes. But for folks that are on the go or listening while they’re working out or on their morning walk, where’s one of the best places they can get in touch with you and learn more about you?

Shizu Okusa  40:16

Yeah, I think if you’re on a morning walk, YouTube is the best place to listen and engage with our video content. So that’s just apothecary ko on YouTube. For Instagram. You get a lot of recipes if you’re looking for inspiration on your next healthy mocktail or a digestive bitters tincture relief recipe, liver detox, all of that apothecary CO on Instagram. If you have business questions, you can find me on LinkedIn that she’s Yakuza. It’s a pretty rare name in the world of Japanese. Japanese names there. And yeah, I think that’s, that’s awesome. Yeah, just Google us and you’ll you’ll definitely find us

Maria Ross  40:50

and I will just point out for folks listening it’s apothecary with a que nada. Yes. So off the carry.co. But again, we’ll have all the links in the show notes. So thank you so much for your time. It was great to connect with you. Yeah,

Shizu Okusa  41:01

I appreciate it. Appreciate you. And thank you everyone for

Maria Ross  41:04

listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that kashflow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access, 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.

Burnout is one of our biggest workplace challenges. Turnover and lost productivity due to burnout cost businesses $322B globally. Voluntary turnover costs 15+% of a company’s payroll annually. Most employees will seek out workplaces that support mental health in the future, showing the importance of these benefits in employee retention.

Today, I chat with Amy J. Wilson. We talk about how burnout is the biggest obstacle blocking us from empathy, what burnout is and its symptoms, where it comes from, and how it is especially a challenge in traditional care professions but can impact any of us in any organization. We discuss the difference between compassion fatigue and empathic distress. Amy also shares the Four Rs framework for healing from and preventing burnout.

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Burnout is preventing people from feeling empathy. It applies blinders that keep people from connecting with those around them. 
• Modeling is more effective than telling. You can model empathic behavior even in the face of adversity. 
• Curiosity is the first step in empathy. Burnout stops us from making that connection with someone else’s and their story.

 

“People think of burnout as a mental health condition, but it isn’t defined as a mental health condition as currently in the DSM. I think it has an origin in our own personal abilities and conditioned responses,  but at the same time, it is a product of the system around us that often prioritizes profit over people.” —  Amy J. Wilson

 

Episode References: 

• The Empathy Edge: 
• Amy J. Wilson: Leadership’s Larger Duty And Avoiding Empathy Deficit Disorder
• Jamie Greenwood: Why Empathy for Others Starts with Compassion for Yourself
• Articles on empathic distress:
• Rob Volpe: “Which Is It? Empathic Distress or Compassion Fatigue?”
• Adam Grant: “That Numbness You’re Feeling? There’s a Word for It“
• Amy J. Wilson: “What Makes Us Human”

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

About Amy J Wilson, Founder and Guide, Healing for Work

Amy J. Wilson believes in the power within each of us to shape the future we want to have—a future with more awareness, compassion, connection, and love. They specialize in building and sustaining compassionate cultures that can hold change so that individuals and the organization can thrive. They have challenged the status quo and redesigned systems centered on empathy and equity in action at more than a dozen organizations with thousands of people within the private and public sectors. Amy is the bestselling author of Empathy for Change: How to Build a More Understanding World with language and frameworks to evolve individuals and organizations to meet the realities of today and reimagine a better way forward.

Amy founded Healing for Work, a community and program rooted in scientifically-proven ways for individuals to overcome burnout and improve workplace well-being. Through the Empathy Action Lab, they work with ambitious, purpose-driven organizations or entrepreneurs to design communities & movements with more empathy, to tell powerful stories, and to advance collective action.

Connect with Amy J. Wilson:  

Empathy for Change | Healing for Work: healingforwork.com 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/healing-for-work 

Instagram: instagram.com/healingforwork/ 

Learn more about Amy’s FREE Burnout Support Sessions at: healingforwork.com/join 

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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. Burnout is one of our biggest workplace challenges have life challenges. According to my guest today, 79% of US workers are emotionally detached or miserable at work. Two thirds of us employees are looking for more fulfilling work, and 75% of US workers reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition, turnover and lost productivity due to burnout costs businesses 322 billion globally. Voluntary turnover costs 15 to 20% of a company’s payroll each year, most 81% of employees will seek out workplaces that support mental health in the future, which shows the importance of these benefits in employee retention. Today, I chat with Amy J. Wilson, founder and guide of healing for work, a community and program rooted in scientifically proven ways for individuals to overcome burnout and improve workplace well being through the empathy Action Lab. She works with ambitious purpose driven organizations or entrepreneurs to design communities and movements with more empathy to tell powerful stories and to advance collective action. You may remember Amy from her past interview, talking about her book empathy for change, how to build a more understanding world. Today we talk about how burnout is the biggest obstacle blocking us from empathy, what burnout is, and its symptoms, where it comes from, how it is especially a challenge in traditional care professions, such as medicine or teaching, but how it can impact any of us in any organization. We discuss the difference between compassion, fatigue, versus empathic distress. And you will not want to miss out as Amy shares the four our framework for healing from and preventing burnout in your own work and life. This is such an important episode, take a listen. Welcome back friend of the show, Amy Wilson to the empathy edge podcast. Hi, how are you doing? I’m good, I’m good. I don’t know if people listening know that you and I are on a superhero team. Together, we are part of the empathy Superfriends which is this lovely little brain trust of empathy advocates and empathy ad activists who write and teach and speak about empathy. And so I get to see your smiling face at least once a month. So this month is a treat for twice. Yes, I love it. We mentioned you’ve been on the show before. But we are here to talk about burnout and sort of the next iteration of your empathy work and the next iteration of your programs. So let’s talk a little bit about first remind people really quickly of your story and how you got into empathy work. And what has led you from that empathy work into the field of burnout? Hmm.

Amy J Wilson  03:35

So I want to talk about it. Since we’re talking about burnout, I wanted to talk about like, experiences when I’ve experienced burnout in my own life, right? Because a lot of this work is like work you wish you had when you’re doing doing things through life. And so I have what I call my burnout supernovas that experienced that happened in my life. And it’s a really geeky thing. But a supernova is a really bright, super powerful explosion that happens when a star explodes. And so, but for me, that’s something when I have a really big project that expands really quickly, but it and then I burned out really quickly at the same time because of that explosion that happens. And that’s kind of happened three times in my life. And I’m on my fourth career right now. So as you know, I’m there’s a lot of things that I do but the first supernova I had was when it was after Hurricane Katrina, and I was living in a gutted out elementary school, doing rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. And I was asked to build in my early 20s, a rebuilt rebuilding project about 50 ohms and four months. Wow, which is why old with very little resources, right? And I had to like kind of pool resources within the second supernova. I’d say is that I went to work at Booz Allen Hamilton. I had done management consulting for 12 years after Hurricane Katrina, and I at Booz Allen was turning 100 years old. And so they decided, they asked me in a team of five people to come together and say, How can we build? It’s 100 years old. And we’re How can we build the next iteration of Booz Allen, for 25,000 people. So that was called building a culture of innovation. And I burned out very quickly wrote the playbook, the blueprint, the like ecosystem, we the team really worked around the clock. And then the third one, I would say, is I also focused@innovation.gov. And the better government movement is the third one. And this is I was an entrepreneur in residence in the Obama White House. And so during that time, I helped create co create a shared language around what innovation means in the public sector, but also a community of practice called the better government movement. And like a 200 active volunteers 5000 people grew that huge movement there. So it I have done a lot of very complex work, and also work around empathy at the intersection of empathy and innovation, right. So big cultural change, but also recognizing that empathy, and transformation is at the center of all that it’s an individual transformation, as well as a systems transformation. So that’s kind of like where the My career has taken me to. And where the world, my world like Island Empath, that highly sensitive person. And a, an empathy is my biggest strength. And so I bring that to everything that I do.

Maria Ross  06:50

And now that has led you into the world of burnout. So you’re doing this, you’re doing this project now healing, for healing for work, where you’re helping leaders and professionals deal with burnout in the workplace realm. But I’m sure that spills over into other areas of their lives. So how did you make that jump from empathy to burnout? Because I think you have a theory about what is our biggest blocker to empathy? Hmm,

Amy J Wilson  07:17

yeah, I call it my empathy epiphany. But I got names for all these things. I got a supernova, I got an empathy epiphany. And for me, I think I have in my research I published my book was published about three years ago, but I’ve been working on it for several years prior to that. And with that work, I, the more and more people I talked to, the more and more I realized that people are burnt out, right. And yet, especially post pandemic, there’s a mental health crisis there is there is, you know, a lot of systemic inequalities that are showing up in the world, you know, the politics, a lot of things that are happening in the world, are also making us really distressed as well. And so what I found is that we are in a perpetual state of burnout, especially in the United States. And so but then what I started thinking about what is blocking us from having empathy, I thought I’d oh my god, goodness, if we’re burnout, we are, that’s what’s blocking us from having empathy and compassion in the world. So when if you think about it, when you’re in burnout, you’re putting your blinders on your, your reach, you’re reacting instead of acting in the world, you know, just being responding, you’re really mindless to tell you the truth, right? You’re, you have tunnel vision, that so that blocks you from seeing the people around you and connecting, because you’re not even connected to yourself, let alone the people around you. Because it’s too painful to be connected to your, your inner self preservation

Maria Ross  08:47

mode. I know. Yeah. You know, this is why in the in the new book coming the empathy dilemma. The first two pillars are self awareness and self care. Because if your well is dry, you have nothing to draw on to stand study and be able to take on someone else’s point of view or someone else’s feelings or someone else’s perspective.

Amy J Wilson  09:06

Exactly. It’s about the oxygen mask on yourself. Yep, we like to say.

Maria Ross  09:12

And so So that led you into the work that you’re doing now, which is helping leaders and organizations not only deal with burnout, quote, unquote, but heal from it. And so I’d like to take a step back and talk about what exactly is burnout because I feel like it’s one of those terms where we all it’s like empathy, we all have our own definition. And a lot of people lay claim to it based on lots of varying conditions and feelings and emotions. So what is burnout and what are its symptoms?

Amy J Wilson  09:45

Right, right. So burnout is a state of emotional, mental and often physical exhaustion, that we that is brought on by prolonged and repeated stress that we experience in our lives. It’s often caused by problems that we have at work. But it can also appear in parenting and caretaking and romantic relationships and

Maria Ross  10:09

raising my hand for those of you listening as a mother, you

Amy J Wilson  10:13

know yourself. And so how that manifests in an invalid individual is that they might be physically or mentally exhausted, they might have a sense of dread about work, and, and the work that they do, they might be cynical, or angry or irritable at the end of the day. Those are the key signs of burnout. But there’s also people helping professions, doctors, nurses, you know, teachers, I notice really dwindling compassion, that’s called compassion, fatigue, and towards people that they’re caring about. So. And then also, if you’re feeling like you can’t really do your job effectively, you know, from a mental perspective, that’s, that’s something that shows up with burnout. So if you want to know where burnout is coming from, and like, if you think you’re experiencing burnout, we are on our website, we have a questionnaire of 15 different questions that you can ask yourself to determine if you think you’re burnout. So check that out on our website,

Maria Ross  11:16

and that website is the healing for

Amy J Wilson  11:18

work, healing for website.

Maria Ross  11:19

Okay, great. Yeah, everyone should check that out. I’m gonna go check that out after we finished recording. And so I think what’s, there’s a couple of things I’m hearing and what you’re saying. And one is that it’s not necessarily something you’re born with, or necessarily a propensity towards burnout, you might be a highly sensitive person or a highly empathic person, and you can get to burn out more quickly. But it’s not sort of a condition, it’s really something that can come and go and be healed from Yes,

Amy J Wilson  11:47

yes, for sure. It actually doesn’t show up. People think of it as like a mental health condition, it actually isn’t defined as a mental health condition is currently in the DSM, which is the manual for mental health conditions out there. So it is actually something that I think has an origins in both something that we all like our own personal abilities and conditioned responses that we have been learned from the world around us. But also at the same time, it is a product of the system that is around us that often prioritizes profit, you know, over the people that are around them, right? So I think it’s an in this world of burnout, it’s not not an either or in this way. It’s a yes. And what I would say as far as the origins of where this comes from, at the end of the day, right.

Maria Ross  12:42

And I think that that’s, that’s a hopeful thing to remember. Because sometimes it feels when you’re, when you’re experiencing the depths of burnout, it feels like you will never get any fuel back in your tank, it feels like you won’t ever climb back up out of that abyss. Right. And I think it’s important to know that you know, like you do with your programs and with your coaching is help people learn strategies and learn methods, to not only help them prevent burnout, but to sort of get themselves out of burnout when they’re in it. And then ultimately, when you talk about healing from burnout, do you mean that from like, a long term impact perspective of the burnout? Or are you talking about literally healing from when you’re in the depths of burnout? I

Amy J Wilson  13:27

think it’s both, right, it’s a yes. And for that, because when you’re in that, you know, state where you’re just reacting to what’s in front of you, you’re in fight or flight mode, right. And so, your or Feign is another part of the responses you can have. So that is something that’s your, your body, your entire body is connected to that. So you need to be able to what we call regulate, so regulate yourself in that instance. But then there’s also what we know is like, is so many people who like are taking for sabbaticals. For example, we were talking to somebody the other day, who was like, who works in you with overcoming with a war in Ukraine. And she says that people just fall off the face of the earth, right? So the map because they have such deep burnout that they’re experiencing. So what I’m what we’re also noticing is that it’s not just a band aid approach. It’s not just there’s a book that came out that we talked about on our on our website as well around. It’s not just self care, right? It’s much be much more beyond that. It’s not it’s not going to you’re not going to take a mani pedi for example. Like it’s going to be like I’m going to be done. It’s something that really have to go inward. Yes. Build the power within yourself. To be an actor in your life. Set the boundaries you need to set, build the relationships you need to build to create a better life for yourself.

Maria Ross  14:57

Well, and I love that you brought that up because when I talk about the self Hair pillar in my new book. It isn’t mani pedi it isn’t massage is my friend of mine who’s a women’s coach I’ve had on the show before Jamie Greenwood, and I’ll link to her episode where she talks about that self maintenance. That sorry, self care is Minar it’s physical care. It’s emotional care. It’s also not necessarily static or silent self care could be what rejuvenates you what refreshes you? What recharges you you know, maybe for some people, it’s paragliding, like that’s self care, even though that’s a huge adrenaline rush. But I think you know why it was so important for me to pare self awareness and then talk about self care is, if you’re not self aware, you don’t know what self care you need. You don’t know what what your triggers are, you don’t know where your blind spots are, you don’t know what lights you up unless you are more self aware. And so yeah, it’s funny, because the work that we do around empathy is so outward focused, as it you know, as it shouldn’t be, it’s about dealing with people’s perspectives. But there’s so much inner work that has to take place before you go, yeah, empathy effectively. Yeah, yeah. Every new conversation I have, like this conversation right now, it just it reiterates that point, and not that we want to spend all of our time navel gazing. But yes, we do have to do some work by getting our own house in order before we can open that house to other perspectives and a needs and opinions. So I’m gonna I’m gonna segue us for a second, we weren’t planning to talk about this. But since you brought it up, I haven’t talked about this yet on the show is this difference between compassion, fatigue, and empathic distress. And we both have a really good friend Rob Volpe, who did a wonderful article a few weeks ago that I’ll link to where he talked about the difference. But what is the difference from your perspective, and especially as how it relates to maybe I’m not using the right language recovering from burnout. Mm

Amy J Wilson  16:55

hmm. So they also wrote an article probably about like six or eight months ago, I’ll send it to you. So you can, you can also link to that to around empathic distress in particular. And so I talked a little bit earlier about compassion, fatigue, and with compassion, fatigue is a condition that many people it’s someone becomes numb to the suffering of others. And they’re a lot less able to feel empathy towards those individuals. And there, they feel less hope in their ability to help at the end of the day. So it is actually an like an equation of secondary trauma, experiencing the trauma of someone else. Plus burnout equals your state passion fatigue, okay. And so, and that’s the emotional duress, secondary trauma is the emotional duress that you experience with that firsthand trauma that you’re experiencing. So it makes it makes sense that nurses or nurses, doctors, first responders, even therapists, I would think teachers to teachers, yeah, there’s experience. And that’s a large, we actually have my co conspirator on this work. She is a teacher who left the profession and wants to help a teachers heal. Right. So we’ve been co creating that forum for that reason, for as we’re up on healing professions. But if you take him on the other side of the spectrum, you asked about empathic distress. So empathic distress is, is what’s happening in our bodies, we are wired to pick up signals from other people’s nervous systems. And so that is called empathic resonance. But sometimes we’re going to when other people are giving these signals, like distracts it does distress signals. And I’m like, SOS, like, if you’re in the, in the middle of the water, like these SOS like, yeah, these beacons going is that are, like going off, you’re picking up those signals, whether you like it or not, right? Your body is just wired to do this. And so what’s happening? Is it making you even more stressed at the end of the day, and that is why that people who are in workplaces that are challenging workplaces, other people are around you are in distress, even in your own personal relationships. If somebody is in distress, you already start feeling that distress as well. And so what happens with that is that over time, over the course of a day, you might start off with energy, but at the end of the day, you’re showing up depleted, and exhausted. And so we check out, we start disconnecting from ourselves and from others.

Maria Ross  19:43

We numb ourselves within up with negative behaviors, drinking drugs, all the things right, the things that distract us. I’m wondering too, I’ve heard that empathic distress is also something that can happen to us when we’re hearing about so much violence and pain. Heat and suffering going on in the world, right? And right now we’re sort of in that situation where you just feel like it’s so much, you’re never going to be able to have an impact, you’re never going to be able to help anyone. So you sort of just like, I’m done, I’m out, I can too much.

Amy J Wilson  20:18

Shut off the faucet. Right, you know. And I think Adam Grant did a piece recently about empathic distress when it comes to that, too. And I think of it in my own therapy of like, it’s like a gray door that shuts down when there’s emotions coming up, like I have to do. Like, that’s, that’s part of my own story about dissociation is like, when it gets too emotional, you shut down, and you shut that off, because it’s too hard to feel. Right.

Maria Ross  20:47

Right. And our bodies will do that to us to protect us. Yeah. So it’s emotional. And it’s mental, but it’s also physical, right?

Amy J Wilson  20:56

Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot of this work is the physical reconnecting to who we are, and recognizing what’s our inner life? What is the what is our feelings? How are we showing up? It’s even deeper than just awareness. It’s like, how does that show up? Up in like, in Cymatics? In our body, right, so Right, right. Part of what we do. Okay,

Maria Ross  21:16

so let’s talk about the solution. Right? For people listening, who are going they’re nodding their heads vigorously going, Yes, I’m in it, I’m there, what can I do, and you have a framework that you are going to share with us and then also that you go deeper into in your program and on your website, but give us a little a moose boosh of your framework,

Amy J Wilson  21:36

and love a moose. Boosh. So I’ve got the four R’s framework, the first part of the framework is called regulation. So earlier, I mentioned that the first part of this work, it has to start with yourself in Trump personal work. So we’re going to go deep into uncovering your emotions, your feelings, what you need to do to understand and define who we are, and our purpose and principles. So we focus on something like the mirror, like what we look in and look at ourselves. But we also look at what the the window is how our identities show up in the world. So give us an example of that. Yeah, so some something I would say is like, we actually go into all the different pieces of identity. So one piece of my identity is I am I show up as a pansexual. Woman, and so but I’m also have a, like a disability, like an invisible disability. And so I sometimes people see me and see that I’m showing up in in, in a certain way, right? And I’m if I’m holding hands with a man, for example, they’re going to assume that I’m heterosexual, right? And but I do have this additional identity. So like, how is that mindset kind of shaped, being how I perceive the world at the end of the day?

Maria Ross  23:01

So if I can reflect back, what I hear you saying is that you’re it’s not just your own identity for yourself, but your perception of the identity. Others have a view? Is that, am I on the right track there? How we

Amy J Wilson  23:14

perceive the world? It’s so it’s how can we we take in the world when we talk about identity. And there’s lots of different pieces of of that and we go into like 20, some dimensions of, of your identity. But identity can be things that we’ve inherited, you know, so this mindset of, you know, what we’ve gotten done in the US, for example, we have a focus on rugged rugged individualism is really big here, you know, and so

Maria Ross  23:43

don’t get me started.

Amy J Wilson  23:45

Individualistic versus the collective. Right. Exactly. Yeah, spectrum. Yeah. So all of these things exist on a spectrum. So where do we live in these kind of like spectrums of life? Right? So that’s, that’s a deep exploration. So that’s like the first piece where you’re just being like, who am I? How do I perceive myself, but how do I perceive the world? That is what regulation so I can get into that space, right? Part two is called relationships. And so that’s where we talk about the work relationships, we help you to start seeing the system we call it. This is where you start doing interpersonal relationships. When people think of empathy, they usually think of interpersonal relationships. And, you know, we said earlier it’s inside and also engaging with the other people. So you’re now starting to share emotions with other people, share feelings with other people, you’re going to challenge your assumptions. This is where you start set setting boundaries, and understanding what our boundaries and we were never taught boundaries growing up, especially

Maria Ross  24:50

women. Yeah, especially especially women. You’re not supposed to have a boundary as a woman. Yep, yeah, worse.

Amy J Wilson  24:56

Just do what other people tell you to do. Yes, exactly. So 100%. So also we help you reframe failure as learning as you go out into the world. And then you’re overcoming the self doubt that you have inside of the, the your comfort with ambiguity and changing and also, how do you take action. So throw this out this whole experience, it’s like, looking inward, but it’s also been like, action is a big part of what we do. So that’s part two. Part three is resilience. And so this part of the framework is where it’s putting things into practice. And so the first two are is like, inter intrapersonal, interpersonal, part three is where you start seeing the start engaging with the extra personal, right. So that is like the system that’s around us and start seeing how do we manage our adversity by drawing on our resources, as we keep showing up in this space. And so we’re going to be more equipped with that to deal with setbacks in this work. But it really has to do with like taking all of those things you learned in the first two sections, and show up to pause and reflect? How am I doing? Because we don’t do that enough. We don’t get to sit and be like,

Maria Ross  26:16

we’re on. We’re on to the next thing. Yeah, right.

Amy J Wilson  26:18

Exactly. Right. How do we How did we I did I react to somebody in a very interesting way there, right? How can I reframe conversations that and have conversations that people perceive as hard conversations, but but at the end of the day, they create better relationships at the end of the day. Right? So and then also, what is who are your trusted allies? Who are your who’s the community around you, that can help you grow and be better? And then the fourth piece is called reintegration. This is a piece that I love myself. And it’s, it’s actually where empathy and innovation meet, and that experience. And so we know that you’ve learned in this container in a better way that you get to see what are the things that we’re doing? How do we, we know that there’s in the world that you’re integrating into, they’re not going to be focusing on like the world of work? It seems authentic, you want to try to go out into the world in an authentic way. And so the world around you doesn’t speak the same language. So how do you go into that language, and start creating a system that will allow you to not just change yourself, but change your team and also change the system around you?

Maria Ross  27:35

I love that this is the final step of the framework, because I actually wanted to ask you about that before you even got to this part. And it’s that idea of we can do all this work, and create this language and the system for ourselves. What do we do when we’re confronted in, in interpersonal relationships where the other people don’t have that awareness? Don’t have that language? Don’t have that understanding? Right? I get that question. A lot of like, I’m doing all this work, and I’m trying to but then when I actually integrate and engage with someone else who has not had that those learnings, those epiphanies, that, that deep reflection, what is the advice that you give to those people?

Amy J Wilson  28:17

Well, I personally think that if you are showing up differently than I know this from my own personal healing work, that if you show up differently, the people around you start showing up differently as well. So that is a key part of this work is like you’re continually having a community in turn to. But we also can be beacons of hope for other people at the same time. So I can’t always control what somebody else does. But if I’m reacting or responding actually, to somebody in a in a kind and compassionate way, people are going to understand they’re like, Oh, well, this person is responding to me in a different way than I was expecting before. So that that change can actually occur through that. But there’s also a lot of things that you learn from, like community organizing, that we’re bringing into this piece around. How do you get people to engage? It’s quite the ladder of engagement. So how did you get different people who are leaning into this work already, and get them to be change leaders, and almost build a movement of empathy? And, and overcoming burnout within the system? Because we can’t have one individual can’t just change a system. But we have to build a coalition of the willing. I

Maria Ross  29:35

love that because that’s actually how I answer that question a lot is that it’s kind of not it’s not our work or our job to necessarily convert someone else. But we can show up in the exchange, we can show up in the interaction in a certain way that models the behavior. We all know that that modeling is more effective than telling. And so if you’re modeling that in the behavior and even if someone’s being antagonistic For argumentative or, you know, withholding, they’re going to notice if you’re not getting fazed by that, if you’re still reaching out, if you’re still, if you’re still acting with empathy, if you’re still asking questions, they may not admit it in the conversation, but they’re going to know something was different about that conversation, because quite, quite likely, that’s not the reaction they get in their other exchanges, they probably are met, the reason they have those reactions, and they have that that model for themselves is because that’s what they’ve been getting back from other people who haven’t done the work either. And so it’s sort of like, you’re kind of shocking them into, into engaging with you of like, oh, usually somebody yells at me by now for asking that question or doing that thing, or usually they walk out of the room and slam the door when I react that way, but this person has stayed, this person is actually engaging with me, what’s going on here, and you sort of create that intrigue around, maybe there’s a different way that you can interact with someone and you you might, that other person might actually really like the experience of being in that exchange and want more of it. Right? So little by little, it’s like these little ripples, right? Like, and then they go on, and they you know, let someone in front of them in traffic later that day, you know, it’s that whole ad knock on effect is

Amy J Wilson  31:21

the ripple impact. I know I wasn’t thinking about in the bigger in a bigger context of curiosity is something that is the number one thing I teach people, like, that’s the first step and empathy really, like a lot of judgment. And like, if you start having curiosity about the other person, you know, you start questioning, like, why are they reacting this way? Maybe something happened to them at work, or maybe they’re just having a bad day, all these different things. You start having, you know, self compassion, you have compassion, but you have compassion for them. So you’re like, Okay, where are they coming from? And then you can be like, how do I respond in a way that might be helpful for them?

Maria Ross  32:01

That’s so interesting, because Well, number one, I am constantly working on my Miss Jegi Ness all the time. And what I’ve what I’ve interjected into my thoughts, is, instead of judging making myself go, well, that’s interesting. Yeah, and just kind of like observing it and thinking about, and it also reminds me of when I wait, you know, folks that have listened to my podcast know about my experience, surviving a ruptured brain aneurysm. And when I was in therapy, we did cognitive behavioral therapy to help us with the damage that had been done to our emotional regulation and our emotional filters, especially with a frontal lobe injury, and cognitive behavioral therapy, challenges you invites you to come up with potential alternatives to the initial explanation, you’ve given yourself in your head about what someone is doing. So for example, that person just rudely cut in front of me in traffic, they’re a jerk bla bla, maybe they just found out their wife is in the hospital, and they’re trying to get to the hospital, maybe they got fired today, maybe they and that’s a very simplistic view of that therapy, I don’t claim to be an expert in that therapy. But that’s what I took away from it is, because what we would do is we would measure our emotions before. And then after we thought of alternatives. And always the emotions were less angry, less resentful, less, you know, less aggressive, when you when you start to think of alternate theories or alternate reasons why someone might be behaving the way they were behaving, if you don’t feel so self righteous after that. And so what everything you’re saying is reminding that because I, you know, you forget after you’re not in therapy anymore, but but it’s it’s a muscle that you have to practice. Yeah. And luckily, we get lots of opportunities to practice dealing with bad behavior, right? So,

Amy J Wilson  33:58

yeah, well, when it comes to what you were saying, when you were saying that it was like, it’s all coming back to empathy, right? Because what empathy is it’s feeling with someone instead of for them. And so when you are having that curiosity, when you’re thinking and using the CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, you’re starting to say, what is not the story that I’m having? It’s their story. Right? Right, the story they could be having, and you’re now having empathy, right? And so, but that’s the exact thing that burnout stops us from doing right. Yeah, able to open up No, and to have that that space, you know, as your your,

Maria Ross  34:33

your bruised your, your, your sense. You’re just like, Ah, I’m just, I don’t deal with somebody else right now. Right. So I love the connection that you’ve made there. And this is such a great conversation. We could talk a million hours more sure. But all your links will be in the show notes, your your link to healing for work to your books to some of the articles that you mentioned, but for folks on the go listening while they’re In exercising and practicing self care for their physical body, where is the one place people can go to find out more information, right?

Amy J Wilson  35:07

So healing for work.com. It’s healing for work as a community and a program for individuals healing from burnout or preventing burnout. That’s also another part. We’re not just talking about healing from it. And so it’s, it’s also helping to shift the system for everyone. So there’s programs for individuals, there’s programs for organizations, I always want to get one plug, we have weekly support sessions, every Tuesday from at 3pm. Pacific 6pm. Eastern time. So later today, it is a Tuesday, we’re going to be having anyone experiencing burnout can come and participate in us go go to healing for work.com/join. And you can learn about our two coaching programs, and also about support sessions and sign up there. I love that.

Maria Ross  35:58

Thank you for sharing that. I’m sure a lot of people are going to run over to that URL right now, Amy, a pleasure as always talking with you, musing about all these big issues with you. And thank you for spending the time with us today.

Amy J Wilson  36:11

Yeah, thank you for having me. This has been great. And thank you everyone for listening

Maria Ross  36:15

to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you liked what you heard, you know what to do, rate, review and share with a friend. And until next time, remember that cashflow? Creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

We are experiencing a transformation, an evolution in how we lead and what makes a successful leader. Today, I had a great conversation with Alain Hunkins, CEO and author of Cracking The Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders about the common leadership assumptions that can get people into trouble, the obstacles we face in how to connect, the three secrets of strong leaders, and how we can communicate better. He shares the story of how one leader went from being ranked at the bottom to achieving outstanding results by focusing on people first before the numbers and the work.

Alain and I discuss what gets in the way of empathy, the role transparency plays in killing the old leadership paradigm, how employees got to the point that they have such low confidence in their leaders – and what we can do to reverse that – and he’ll also share a great trick to ensure you are communicating effectively. 

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Studies show we judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions. 
• The old model of command and control leadership is a dying paradigm. Leadership must evolve – all leaders are now living in a glass house with the technology available. We no longer live in a world of information asymmetry. 
• Numbers are neat and tidy, people are not. To lead people, you have to make the time to connect with your team empathetically not just look at the business numbers.
• Ask for a receipt in your communication. It doesn’t take much time, but it does increase understanding and clarity.

 

“All leadership development is personal development, and all personal development is leadership development. Whether or not you have the job title, we all lead every single day.”

—  Alain Hunkins

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

About Alain Hunkins, CEO and Author, Cracking the Leadership Code

Alain Hunkins helps leaders, teams, and companies achieve performance goals easier.     

Over his twenty-five-year career, Alain has worked with over 3,000 groups of leaders in 27 countries, including 42 of the Fortune 100 companies. In addition to being an executive coach, leadership and team development facilitator and keynote speaker, Alain is the author of the book Cracking The Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders.

Alain is a faculty member of Duke Corporate Education and serves on the Academic Board of Advisors for the New Delhi Institute of Management. Alain’s work has been featured in Chief Executive, Fast Company, Inc., Training Magazine, Chief Learning Officer, and Business Insider. He’s also a monthly leadership strategy contributor to Forbes Magazine.  Alain was recently named #33 on the Global Power list of the Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership for 2023 by LeadersHum.  A father of two teenagers, he lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Connect with Alain Hunkins

Hunkins Leadership Group: https://alainhunkins.com/ 

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

Join the 30-Day Leadership Challenge! https://alainhunkins.com/30-day-leadership-challenge/ 

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

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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 are experiencing a transformation and evolution and how we lead and what makes a successful leader. If you’ve been with me for a minute, you know, we’ve spoken with amazing guests about the changing paradigms of leadership. Some leaders are embracing this new model, while others may be having a harder time. Today I have a great conversation with La pumpkins, CEO and author of Cracking the leadership code, three secrets to building strong leaders about the common leadership assumptions that can get people into trouble, the obstacles we face and how to connect the three secrets of strong leaders and how we can communicate better, and he’ll share the story of how one leader went from being ranked at the bottom to achieving outstanding results by focusing on people first, before the numbers and the work. LA is CEO of Hawkins leadership group, and helps leaders teams and companies achieve performance goals easier. He’s an executive coach, leadership and team development facilitator and keynote speaker. And for decades, LA has worked with over 3000 groups of leaders in 27 countries, including 42 of the Fortune 100 companies. Alliance work has been featured in chief executive Fast Company, Inc, training magazine, chief learning officer and Business Insider, and he’s also a monthly leadership strategy contributor to Forbes magazine, LA was recently named number 33 on the global power list of the top 200 biggest voices in leadership for 2023 by leaders home. Today we discuss what gets in the way of empathy. The role transparency plays in killing the old leadership paradigm, how employees got to the point that they have such low confidence in their leaders, and what we can do to reverse that. And he’ll also share a great trick to ensure you are communicating effectively. This one has so many good nuggets. Take a listen. Allah Hankins, welcome to the empathy edge podcast to talk to us about cracking the leadership code. I love that title. Welcome.

Alain Hunkins  02:50

Thank you so much, Marie. I’m really excited to be here with you today. Thank you.

Maria Ross  02:53

And I’m so glad we connected because you have such an interesting background. And you’ve been doing this work for a long time. So let’s get right into it. About what are some of the common assumptions about leadership that can get people into trouble?

Alain Hunkins  03:08

Yeah, so let’s start from the point of view of the assumptions that leaders have about leadership. And actually, I learned this, like I thought about this, because, you know, the studies would say that only about 23% of people think their leaders lead well, right only. And so the state of leadership overall has been poor for quite some time. And I thought about this, you know, I’ve been studying this for a long time. And I got this great hit one day about a little over 10 years ago. So I have two kids. My son is Alex, my daughter is Miranda. He’s now 19. I’m recording this, my daughter is 16. But take take them back. They’re about six years old and three years old. And the two of them are playing in the living room. They’re goofing off, they’re getting really loud. And I have to confess Maria, I was in the kitchen. I was trying, I can’t even remember what I was trying to get done some kind of work thing. I was trying to get something done. And they were really loud in the living room when I was getting out a little trigger. And I went into the living room. And these were the words that came out of my mouth. I kid you not I said, Would you to stop behaving like children? Right? And I say this. Been there? Okay, you know this right? So this is like not your this is like sub optimal parenting moment. Yeah. So here’s the thing. I say this for two reasons. One, it’s a ridiculous thing to say because they were a six and three year old, they aren’t kids. So how would they behave? But the real reason I’m telling you is because as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I was in shock. Because honestly how they said parenting moment, I had this moment where it was, oh my gosh, I have just said the exact same thing. My mother said to my brother, I think I had to come my mother. And so I shared the story because I think about the assumptions we make we unconsciously inherit habits from the leaders that we have learned all through our lives, whether those are our parents, teachers, people, bosses we’ve had at work all over. And I think one of the things that so many people the original and premature people have around the leader follower role is power struggle, right because I’m your dad. Add because I’m your mum do what can I say so and so I think when people step into their first formal authority leadership roles, they kind of step into this weight and like, oh, this power thing kind of feels nice, you know, and like, I feel I’m in control, I get to tell people what to do. And that I call that in my book, I write about this too, and other places to call that old school leadership, right, the old school leader was the commander in chief, right, and we don’t need commanders in chief. In fact, the world has changed. So significantly. So that’s one of the big assumptions is that we have around that the other assumption is what psychologists call the fundamental attribution error, which is a cognitive bias, which basically means that we judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge other people by their actions. And so we step into leadership, like, I mean, well, I care about people, I appreciate my people. Well, again, the studies would say that, you know, 80 to 85%, of supervisors, managers, bosses say, Yeah, I tell my people, I appreciate them, yet only Why is it 15 to 20% of employees feel like they’re being appreciated. So we tend to judge ourselves by, oh, I think this, I feel this, I intend this. But you know, what, you’re not closing the gap, which is why only 23% of people believe their leaders, they will. So those are a couple of the big assumptions that people have about leaders. Okay,

Maria Ross  06:22

so many things there. I’m like nodding my head vigorously for people that can’t see me right now, because this old model of command and control is a dying paradigm. And what we’re seeing right now is people embracing the new paradigm, but struggling with it, which is why I’m writing my next book called The Empathy dilemma. Our people snapping back to boss ism, because it’s all they know. And it’s what got them as far in their careers as it did. And you’re going back to the conditioning that you had in whatever work environments you’re in. So you can almost tell the leaders that had really great leadership models, their whole career, because they’re actually modeling those behaviors. And, you know, when I talk to those leaders about the secret to being an empathetic leader, or the secret to connection, they almost can’t verbalize it. They’re like, I don’t, I actually don’t know what I’m doing. What am I? What am I doing with people that’s enabling me to understand them? Because it’s so innate, it’s so ingrained in who they are and how they lead. They didn’t learn or adopt the old way. But, you know, there’s so many experts, I’m sure you included, who are talking about the fact that this isn’t a preference thing. If you are leading in that old way, you will not win, you will not succeed going forward, we are evolving the leadership paradigm and it’s going to move with or without you.

Alain Hunkins  07:42

Totally. And the thing about this evolution of the paradigm, it isn’t just human consciousness that is evolving here. This the big kicker, and I write about this too, in my book, is technology. Just think about the level of transparency we have like we didn’t have LinkedIn, we didn’t have Glassdoor we didn’t have indeed 1015 years ago. So now every single leader and company is living in a glass house to realize everyone knows your dirty laundry. So how are you showing up if you are not aware of that. And the thing is also with millennials and Gen Z in the workplace, particularly, I mean, it’s amazing because like, I’m dating myself, I’m a Gen X or myself. The idea that, you know, you know, I see this Millennials constantly like, this is a crappy job, I’ll quit, I’ll move back in with my parents. Rather than take a bad job. Like Gen Xers, we would never move back home. Under eight, I was stuck in a lousy job for years, it meant that things we didn’t have the transparency, were they what we do now, as you can tell, how are things what are the Glassdoor reviews? What are things like to work here? And so leaders can’t, they can’t we don’t live in this world of information asymmetry anymore. You know, so this is this is a huge connection. And obviously, people who are more digitally native get this even more so. And also mean the way that millennials and Gen Z’s have been raised. They’ve been asked their opinions their entire lives. I’ve my kids are now 19 and 16. I mean, my daughter, I remember she had to write a persuasive essay in the third grade, like who’s writing it? No one cared what I thought until well, I don’t know maybe like I was 35. Somebody was like, yeah, no, no one wanted to know what you thought. And so when you when you grew up with this baseline level of respect, why would you settle for a boss who doesn’t show that to you? Again, the number one thing why people leave jobs is a toxic workplace. And the number one toxic behavior is lack of respect.

Maria Ross  09:37

That’s it. 100%. So actually, I’m gonna put a link in the show notes of this episode. Since we’re talking about it. I interviewed an amazing woman named Ana Liana, who’s a generational expert and wrote a book unlocking generational codes. And she, she has a way of describing and writing about the differences in generations that are not the classic tropes you’ve heard, right? It’s very much about generations our behavior and the way they view everything from voicing opinions to how they value information to what they determine is respect, quote, unquote, or what they determine is professionalism, quote, unquote. They’re all influenced mainly by events that happened around their ages of 10 or 11. You can think back with these different generations, what influenced things. And just one thing that stuck with me from what she spoke about, because you mentioned it was how the different generations value information. So boomers and traditionalists saw Information is power to be hoarded, not to be shared. We don’t talk about that at work. We don’t talk about that with our colleagues. Meanwhile, Gen Z and younger millennials value the democratization of information, we have to disseminate information to as many people as possible so that we can make better decisions. So yes, I am going to air my dirty laundry on Glassdoor Yes, I’m going to share with my colleagues what I’m making and what I got from my raise, or what I got for my bonus, and that might be shocking to leaders. But that is what’s happening. And you can’t just have a mandate of we’re not going to talk about those things at work. Because when we fly with those generations, I mean, that’s just such a small example of what you’re saying. But it just sparked it when you were talking about this idea of information. Yeah. Yeah, that’s huge. All right. So let’s talk about the challenges that leaders have in developing empathy with their teams, and how they can overcome that we’ve talked a lot about on this podcast that many people, we all innately have empathy as human beings. Yes. And some of us the muscle has atrophied. For some of us, it’s very strong, but it can be strengthened. So when people when leaders say, I’m just not good at all this connection stuff, right? What is What are they actually saying to you? What is actually getting in their way of forming those connections? Yeah,

Alain Hunkins  11:56

I love this question. So So here’s the thing about empathy. I’m sure you’ve touched on this elsewhere, if this is the empathy edge podcast, is that you know, while human beings we are innately wired to be empathetic, we’re not equally empathetic with everyone, right? So if you’ve talked about the empathy circle, right, so like immediate, close family, great old friends, etc, they’re kind of in your immediate empathy circle. And the further you get away, the less empathy that we have for other people. So then throw into the mix now, work. So what does that mean? That means we now have deadlines, and limited resources and performance targets and expectations and too much to do and then of time, suddenly, we start seeing other people as task getter donors, as opposed to people right now, I’m amazed at how often you know, if you listen to a leaders language, it tells you a lot is like when they talk about my people, or they need to do this I it relationship, it’s like you really hear that language of now we have to drill this I mean, and again, this is all old inherited history, because the language of business came out of the language of mechanical engineering, you know, which is why we talk about rolling things out and drilling things down. You know, I can’t yet I’ve yet to meet a single employees that, gosh, you know, senior leadership hasn’t drilled anything into me lately. Gosh, how I missed that. Right? No one ever says things like that. But that language is so pervasive. Yeah. So this thing about empathy. So what are the things that get in the way, there’s a few if you like, your point is like, I’m not really a people person, well, then maybe you shouldn’t be leading people. I mean, I have this conversation with a lot of organizations where it’s like, you know, like, for example, everyone has heard of like, the tech superstar, who’s an amazing software engineer or coder. But you know, don’t let them lead the team. And a lot of companies are starting to go down the track of how do we create a specialized, you know, expert contributor track, where you can get more money, more status, because traditionally, in every organization, if you wanted to get promoted, and all the perks that go along with that the salary, etc, the title, you needed to lead people. Thing is, if you’re going to be leading, you’re going to be leading people. So frankly, a lot of people just don’t like people that much, and they shouldn’t be leading, you know, it’s like, they want all the perks that come with it. So this is an issue, this is definitely an issue. The other thing I would say, around the other big, a few big barriers, right? I run about six of these in the book, but I’ll just share the kind of top two. So top number one barrier, empathy is time, right? So I define empathy as showing people that you understand them and care how they feel. Now we live in a digital workplace where information travels the speed of light, the last time I checked, human beings travel at the speed of human beings, which is a lot slower. And you think about the ability to step back, pause, reflect, how am I feeling? How are you? Listen, reflect, affirm, that takes time, and so many people are feeling compelled, you know, I can’t tell you how many leaders I’ve talked to where they say, you know, the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning is I have all these things to do. And they go through their very busy day. And the last thing they think about when they go to sleep at night is I didn’t get all these things done. Right. It’s like that’s A horrible, challenging way to live. And so in a lot of companies, we were enforced this right? If you think about how many companies have values that say things like, drive for results, or bias where we have a bias for action, I get it. Like, I understand that you’re in the for profit enterprise business to get things done. I have no quibble with that. However, part of the wisdom of being a leader is there’s a time and a place to go fast. And there’s a time and place to go slow. And leadership, wisdom is knowing when to do which, where and sometimes you need to slow down on the people side, before you can speed up on the task side. And unfortunately, I see too many leaders who, in their drive for results, end up driving over the people who are trying to deliver those results. And there is massive collateral damage when you do that. And we’ve all experienced it at work, right? When you have the talking the meetings after the meetings, and then like, all this is about, you know, the going escalating things to HR, all these things. And just thinking about the amount of time it takes, you know, most managers would say that HR and interpersonal related issues take up a huge percentage of their time, right? That’s all that stuff. And why is that because we didn’t catch it earlier. So that’s the first number one is time, right? The other big barrier to leading with empathy is that emotions and people are messy by nature, we are we’re messy. We’re not always the same. I think part of why we love numbers in the business world is because numbers are discreet, neat and tidy. Like if you and I show up to a meeting, we can be guaranteed that if eight walks in that meeting door, eight is always one more than seven and one less than nine today, tomorrow, next week, next year forever. And you know, when you think about how many businesses start their meetings with, let’s go over the numbers, right? Because it gives us a sense of certainty and security, right? Oh, our profits are up 12% This month, that’s great, because last month, they were 10% liquid. And we can kind of create this whole story based on this. And it gives us the sense of confidence and certainty, when we don’t stop and realize you know, all those numbers, which by the way, can be fudged and often aren’t, depending on what the numbers are. But all those numbers are only lagging indicators of the behaviors of someone, right? revenue targets, revenue doesn’t sell itself. People sell things to make things happen. And so recognizing, you know, what if we shifted our meetings around, and instead of starting with the numbers, and then maybe getting to the projects? And if there’s any time talking about the people? What if we flipped the script, and instead started talking about our people? Right? What if when we started our meetings, we checked in where everyone like actually took a centering breath. I’ll do one right now, right? And be like, how am I? How are you feeling? Like, and I teach this and you might do something similar? Teach people a check in three simple questions. Number one, how are you feeling? Number two, what’s on your mind? Or what’s distracting you? Right? Because there could be something distracting. And number three, how can I or how can we support you? And it’s amazing how if people get into the ritual of asking these three questions, what it does is it actually helps people to get their prefrontal cortex back online, because like as humans, we’ve got all this distraction, all the stuff going on. And so by giving people the time and space to be present, to notice how they’re feeling, and you’re living in a body, so just to go, Hey, how am I feeling, then suddenly, I can be centered and present, and then I can get on with the task at hand. But if we skip through that all the time, what ends up happening is this sense of uncertainty. And people feel like they can’t actually show up as themselves. So Deloitte did this wonderful study a few years ago, and they found that 61% of us employees feel the need to cover their identities in some ways, right? That they don’t feel safe, being fully themselves for jetting judged for all sorts of reasons. And the reasons can range from, let’s say, I am a lesbian woman, and I don’t feel safe coming out at work. That’s one reason they might not feel safe. Another reason might be, I could be a white heterosexual man. And I don’t feel comfortable saying I want to leave early, because I want to go see my kids at their ballet recital. And I don’t want to seem like I’m not a team player or high performer. So I can’t actually say that or do that. Right. Totally different reasons. Yet, at the same time, at the end of it, what we’re getting is disconnection. And what we know is when we have a low connection, low empathy, culture, what we have is we have low trust and ultimately low performance. So it’s a lose, lose, lose, lose, right across the board. Right. So

Maria Ross  19:14

I just want to summarize this, the two biggest obstacles are time. And the fact that we’re messy as human beings, right? I love there’s so many things in there. I just You were on a roll. I wanted to let you go. But there’s so many things in there because this idea of checking in. And well let me back up. This idea of time, comes up over and over and over again. I don’t have time. I don’t have time to make friends with my team. I don’t have time to ask somebody how their weekend was I don’t have time. We’ve got to go go go. And you talk to every variety of experts. And they will say if you don’t make the time now you’re going to pay for it later. You’re going to pay for it and disengagement you’re going to pay for it and lack of cohesion and lack of collaboration. You’re going to pay for it in terms of poor performance. Yes. So that’s almost like somewhat like a leader saying, I don’t have time for strategy I just need to execute. Now even though some of them do that, they would never actually say that they do that, right? They would say, of course, we’re gonna build a strategy before we go off and spend resources and spend money and have people doing all these things why that would be crazy, right? But yet, we don’t do that with our people, which is like one of our most valuable asset classes within the organization, right. But this time issue, I actually did a very informal survey with about 50 respondents, I want to ask what gets in the way of them being empathetic leaders? The number one answer was time. Yeah, whether it’s time that you’re dealing with work, or the fact that time dealing with your life, no one seems to have enough time. But if like your point, if we actually slow down with we have some self awareness, which is why that’s one of the pillars in my new book about being an effective empathetic leader. Spoiler, is that we need to recognize number one, where are we spending our time? Number one, where are we making our connections? And our number two? And number three, what triggers us? Yeah, you know, what, what actually, what about this situation is going to make me go off the rails? What about this situation? Am I going to be able to bring my best foot forward? But we don’t stop to think about that. And we think it’s a luxury to sit. Think about that when it’s really a necessity. Yeah.

Alain Hunkins  21:25

So true. And other thing I like to frame when I’m coaching leaders around this, too, is, you’ve got to stop thinking about I don’t have time as like, Oh, this is costing me something. This is an investment, this eyesight, you have to think you’re investing in your people. And not because you should do it’s because you need to and want to make because if you just think, oh, this leadership expert told me that I should do this, I’ll do this. Hi, how are you feeling? Anything distracting you what’s on your mind? How can I support you? Like, everyone’s gonna smell that BS a mile away? 100. So it’s, so it’s like, you have to recognize this. And honestly, like, Look, if you don’t, if you don’t want to lead people, because they’re people, then you’re in the wrong job, my friend.

Maria Ross  22:07

No, I always tell people that as they say it, Detroit, it takes me away from the work. But you as a leader, that is the work, you’re not the doer anymore. So if you are doing doing doing and you don’t have time to lead and manage, then you should be an individual contributor somewhere. You don’t get the fancy title and the pay raise. Just for you know, doing the work you have to lead people that is the work of leading people. Yes. So in your book, you talk about the three secrets to building strong leaders. Can you give us a little sneak peek as to what those secrets are? And I know, folks, when you go back to the book,

Alain Hunkins  22:43

and you’re out, and I’ll tell you the secrets through a story about a guy named Matt. So I met Matt, Matt works for a retail company. And the company has 100 districts all around the USA, but 900, retail 950 retail stores. And there’s 100 districts. So every retiree, basically, each district manager has about nine or 10, stores to ish, okay, and I met Matt and a bunch of his colleagues because I was coming in to do a keynote speech at their district manager conference that they have once a year here. And I got a chance to meet a few of the district managers in advance. So I could, you know, tailor the talk to make it more relevant as it were. So it turns out that Matt was the number one top rank district manager out of all 100. And I said, Matt, that’s really quite impressive. Have you always been such a high performing leader? And he said, No, actually, when I first got promoted from being a store manager to district manager, I was about 84th out of 100. And I was in the low 80s for about three years until things started to change. So I said, Matt, you got to tell me what changed because this here’s a story right at point number one, and you were stuck. There wasn’t just random. He said, Yeah. And I think Matt story is sort of a good archetype for many people can recognize and ourselves. And so Matt said when he first got promoted to being a district manager, he was an excellent store manager, which is very executional based, right? It’s all very tactical and execution. So basically, he thought, as he said, he said, he thought his job was to be the fixer, like, Okay, I did this all really well in my store and I have nine stores, I’m gonna help them all to fix what they need to do. And in their world, they have a printout they call hotlist. It’s basically a metric a key performance indicators every day, they get metrics of, you know what a revenue is in the store, etc. Like the all these things they have. And so the first thing that Matt would do every morning is you print a copy of the hot list for his nine stores. And he’d circle what was in red, right? It’s all color coded reds, not measuring up there’s the yellow caution green, right. So he’s circle, it was in red. And this was his strategy. He would hop in his car and he drive to the first store and and see the store manager. And he’d say, Hey, see this, you got to fix this, you got to do this, fix this, do this. And then he just like I’m bark at them, like, fix this, do this, fix this, and then go to the next store, and you do the same thing. And he said, I have never worked so hard in my life. And you know what, it didn’t work. I was struggling and the stores weren’t getting better. He said I had my personal hit Bob, bottom day, when I realized there were people on the teams and the stores they were quitting and I didn’t even know what their names were. And he realized he needed to change his approach. And so this is what he did. He got some mentoring, and then he shifted his strategy. So on the outside, some things were the same every morning you get up. He pulled out the hotlist, but he wouldn’t circle what was in red and played, just take a look at it. And then he would drive to the first or let’s say, the first store manager was Maria, he’d say, hey, Maria. Good morning, happy Monday, how was your weekend? What’d you do this weekend. And then he started to talk. And then after a while after talking and connecting, he say, Maria, here’s the hotlist from this morning, here’s the information, what do you think we should do? And then he let whoever it was that you write, speak, and then together, they co create a strategy together. And what he found was when he started doing all of this, the numbers, the performance started to go up and up, and up and up. And what he said he learned was, that the secret to hitting the numbers was to stop focusing on the numbers first, instead of us to start to focusing on the people because it’s those people that are hitting the numbers. And so what Matt story really demonstrates are what I call the three secrets to building strong leaders, and they are connection, communication, and collaboration. So first, what connection because I don’t care what industry you work in, whether it’s retail, or pharmaceuticals, or manufacturing or high tech, we’re all in the people business, and you’re all having to connect with another live human being. So first, it’s about connection. So how are you doing that? And obviously, empathy is the gateway drug of connection. Right? Without that, and all the studies would say that, like the number one thing is that, you know, do people feel valued and cared for is what makes them most engaged in performance, you know, and then think about it valued and cared for sounds like the softest and fuzziest thing ever. But it’s so true, because it’s the thing about because we’re human, we’re wired to connect, we’re wired for empathy, we’re wired to belong. And so connection is the first one communication.

Maria Ross  26:45

I’m gonna I’m gonna interrupt you first. Yeah, sure. We go to the other two. Yeah. So with connection, the rebuttal you often hear to that is, but I’m not that type of person. So if I go and start asking people, how was their day? How was their weekend? We’re both going to know it feels fake and false. Yeah. What would you say to somebody to say, here’s how you can actually create an authentic connection with somebody? And does it start with just rote questions, and eventually, that becomes your mechanism?

Alain Hunkins  27:15

Look everything at people usually I find when they say that I don’t do this. They’ve given it like, all of two seconds of practice. Like, I can’t do this. I know. I asked a question once, but didn’t answer me. Right. So.

Maria Ross  27:27

So forget it. Yeah. This connection thing? And

Alain Hunkins  27:30

it’s also again, here you are, you’re judging yourself, based on how it feels to you on the inside? Or do you actually have feedback from the outside of how it feels? You actually know that? And so what I saw, I say is, I think try it, right? Try it for 30 days, like a percent, you know, try this first, you know, and if you don’t start with, like, how are you feeling? And find an open ended question about work, that you could actually probe and get a sense of their input. And then I always say, listen, and I put a little asterisk after listen, and I put the an asterisk means then shut up and let them keep talking, right? Because some people listen, actually

Maria Ross  28:07

listen to the answer. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Okay, so I wanted to interject on that. I know that that’s a pain point for people. So totally, one is connection. Second is communication,

Alain Hunkins  28:18

communication. And so here’s the thing about communication. There’s often big barriers between what people mean, and what they say. And what we hear, right? So those three are should be all aligned. Think of like, Do you ever go to a carnival day pay or something, you know, the Midway when they have that ring toss, but you want to get all three rings in perfect alignment. But you realize how hard that is actually to do. Because oftentimes, what I mean isn’t what I say. And what I say isn’t what you hear. And so we have to constantly go back and clarify. And the reason that getting to the point of communication isn’t communication, that’s the trap. It’s like, well, I have to communicate better. No, communications goal is not communication, the goal of communication is shared understanding. And why that is so important is because shared understanding is the platform on which you are going to take all future action. So if you have a solid foundation, understanding, guess what, you’re gonna make some good decisions, you’re gonna get some good results. But if you have some shoddy understanding, like I’m not quite sure what they mean, but I didn’t check. So let’s go off. And we all have those meetings after the meetings. And hey, Maria, what do you think we just decided that I don’t know what do you and we have 10 different versions of reality, and then 10 Different people going off in different directions. So anyway, I like to tell leaders that you should assume that the default setting for human communication is misunderstanding not understanding but miss, and then make sure you’re putting scaffolding to shore up to make sure you’re getting confirmation of what it is. Because it’s too important not to it’s too important not to right so you all know the carpenters Maxim, right, measure twice, cut once. So in we have to like think of communication before we take action, which is the cutting, the measuring is the back and forth. It’s all that back and forth of how we’re dealing with that. So that’s the second secret. And the third secret is around collaboration. So when it comes to Collaboration, it’s up to leaders to design environments where people can work at their best. And in my research, I found that there’s four key elements that need to be in place for people to perform at their best, which is for them to be most engaged, and as productive as possible. And the four things are safety, people need to feel safe, obviously, physically safe, but also psychologically and emotionally safe, right. And we can get into more detail on that if we have time. That’s the first one. The next one is that people have to feel energy that certain environments are going to energize people, other environments are going to drain them to a greater or lesser extent. So what is the leader are you doing to create environments where people can be energized, I’ll give you a quick example, how many of us have been to a meeting that was scheduled for two or three hours, and the person running the meeting has now gone an hour and 45 minutes, and we still have not taken a break. I mean, it’s something as simple as that. Right? Another example, that even closer to home that people can relate to is how many of us have our meetings scheduled, your nine o’clock meeting goes right until 10, which starts your 10 o’clock meeting goes till 11, etc, etc. That all works fine on paper and for Outlook might not work for human beings, human being to the point from

Maria Ross  31:04

earlier is we’re not giving each other the space. That’s actually one of the best ways to ground yourself so that you can be present and actually maintain empathy for someone else and be clear headed enough to take on someone’s point of view is put some buffers in your calendar for crying out loud, like don’t be going next, because you’re going to be in the one meeting, worried about if you’re going to get to the next meeting in time.

Alain Hunkins  31:28

And we’ve all been there, right? And the thing is, what it creates is a certain sense of franticness. And what happens is our prefrontal cortex goes offline, we’re just like, and we’re kind of in this slightly whacked out fight or flight or freeze mode, like what’s happening and just trying to catch up and, and we wonder, like, what is actually getting done? And how many of us have gone through those days were like meeting after meeting after meeting at the end of the day, like, what did I actually get done today? I was incredibly busy. I’m exhausted, I’m drained. And yet, what the heck do we actually discuss do what was significant? Did we move anything forward today? Exactly. So yeah, so energy, that’s we got safety with energy. The third one is around ownership, right? Giving people a sense that people need autonomy, right? No one wants to be led by a micromanager are so how can you give people a clear what they need to do? But you know, in terms of the goals and outcomes, but give them some flexibility and parameters on how they can bring their own creativity and how they go about doing it? Because just because you do it a certain way, doesn’t mean they should do it certain way, because they’re not, you know, which is the whole

Maria Ross  32:24

tension between hybrid remote work, it’s, you know, so millions of people realize they can actually do their jobs really well. Yeah, not being in an office. And for leaders who only know how to lead people if they can see them. That’s the inherent tension. So you’re not giving me the flexibility to do my best work for you. If you’re going to mandate that I have to do it in an office when I actually know about myself, I’m more productive and focused, if I get to work from home, and I don’t have to do a two hour commute to get to work. And so it all comes down for me, all of what you’re saying is coming back to this idea of Do you want your company to make money? Do you want your company to hit its performance targets? Do you want to be profitable? Do you want to be sustainable? If so, you’ve got to let people thrive. You’ve got to let people as your assets quote unquote, do their best work. It’s an it just drives me up a tree when I hear that that’s fluffy. That’s, that’s, you know, pandering to them. That’s this that’s that. If they don’t do the work, you have no company.

Alain Hunkins  33:27

Yeah. Yeah, it’s like get on the human bandwagon. And don’t don’t just give it lip service. And I think there’s too many leaders are like, hey, if we just wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and it’s going to be our way through this, like, yeah, people are our greatest asset. So it says in a big, glossy poster on the wall, yeah, whatever. Everyone’s sniffed that stuff out. And people are just, and things like, and I think we are at this amazing inflection point, host pandemic, right? Because everyone’s had this taste, where it’s like, you know, what, I when the chips were down, and you needed me to be autonomous and responsible, I did it. I showed up. And I was great. To Who are you to tell me that I have to come back in now two or three days a week? Because you say so, you know, and then you know, and people will come up and they’ll say, oh, but you understand, like, we’re missing out on the water cooler chat. And this, there’s no data that shows that people are any more innovative or productive this way. I think what would be much, much more honest, if the leaders would have said, hey, you know what, folks, I need you back in the office two or three days a week, and this is why I have really high control needs, and I just feel a lot better if you’re here next to me. I mean, I think people like got it, boss, I’m sure. Okay, I understand. Thank you. Right. Okay, I can that’s honest. Like, that’s what so often it is, or there may be some other things going on. Like we spent all this money on the real estate, commercial real estate we have to show who knows what the reasons are? Yeah, yeah. So all of which I think we’re in heated agreement that autonomy, people need their autonomy, right? Ownership flex.

Maria Ross  34:47

Well, they cite in many studies that flexibility is their most important desire of of a workplace environment of a culture to make a job desirable for them. The number one thing is flexibility.

Alain Hunkins  34:57

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then therefore Arthritis purpose, right? The sense that people feel that what they do matters that they’re contributing to something more than just a paycheck. It’s not just a job, they feel like, you know, because what we know is that when people are connected to something that’s greater than themselves, they bring more of themselves and they perform better. They just do. Right. And so what are you doing to remind people of that, and not it’s not enough just on orientation day, to show them your last year’s annual report and say, Read this? You know, it’s like, I like to say, it’s like telling your beloved on your wedding day that you love them. It’s like, well, I said, on our wedding day, I mean, nothing’s changed. Right? I have to say it again. Come on, like, No, you need to remind people of the purpose on a regular and frequent face. Absolutely. So those are the secrets, connection, communication, and collaboration.

Maria Ross  35:41

I love it. I love it. So I want to get back to I have two more questions for you. I want to get back to this idea about communication. Because I’m a stickler about this. I, from a very young age, I have been convinced that most of our problems in the world are due to lack of a lack of effective communication, that we could avoid issues at work, we could avoid interpersonal issues, if we communicated better, but unfortunately, I’m going to date myself here. We live in a world that’s like an episode of Three’s Company, where it’s someone overhear something, and then they make assumptions. And then they spend the whole episode trying to figure out what the real story is, right. And I have been told in the past by managers that I can be too literal, because I will repeat back several times to make sure I understand that we could have a whole other episode as to why I’m like that from a past leadership failure. But I actually would rather err on the side of over communicating to ensure that we’re on the same page, and to the point that when I’m in groups that are not work related, if it’s like the parent teacher board, or like another group, I’m actually the one I can’t help myself, I step in, and I go, I think you guys are misunderstanding each other. I think what I hear her saying is x, but what you think she’s saying is why and then they go Oh, and everybody laughs and then they figure it out? Yeah. Why? What are our obstacles to communicating? Well, like, why is aside from probably we’re moving too fast? Assuming that might be one of them. That is, what are some of the other obstacles we have? And how can we overcome them so that we can communicate better, literally just message transmission, better sender received better?

Alain Hunkins  37:14

Totally, totally. So there’s a few things that are kind of are not working in our favor as human beings that get in the way, we talked about it already a little bit. It’s that sense of the difference between what I say what I mean, when I hear, right, so I may mean something, but the way in which I communicate it is not actually what I mean, which of course, then then leaves you having to interpret it through your own filter. So that is a huge piece already. Alright, and connected to that. The second one is this bias that we have, which is called the projection bias is like, and how many of us have ever said something like, well, I sent the email, they should know what to do, right? Because we think just because we’ve communicated that it’s now done. It’s not done. It’s a you’ve communicated it one way. But if you think about it, it needs to be two way where you have to confirm the receipt of that. And in fact, one thing I coached leaders, I’ll share a little tool that hopefully the listeners will find really useful. I calling it asking for a receipt, if you stop and think about this idea of receipts, right? What are receipts receipts are confirmation of a completed transaction. So when you buy something, it’s a transaction. And when you want proof of that transaction, you ask for a receipt. Now obviously, the more important the transaction, the greater likelihood, you ask for a receipt. So for example, you will go to the local convenience store, you want a pack of chewing gum for 79 cents, you might not need that receipt, whatever, it’s fine. But I can guarantee you, you would never buy a house or a car without getting a receipt, right? So then when the stakes are high. And so there’s a great anecdote that comes out of the fast food industry. So you might remember this I certainly do the beginnings of in the early 1980s is when all the fast food franchises started putting drive throughs in, right and so when they first put in the drive throughs to all the fast food restaurants, the first few months, the processor clock across the board was a nightmare. It’s very common people would order things and they drive up to the counter and you know, the window, I should say the window to pick up their food and be filled with mistakes. And this was across every single thing. And so that went on for months and months and then suddenly drive through mistake rates just started to plummet. And what was the what was the new technology? What did they change? It was so simple. What happened was they realized, Oh, we’ve been getting one way communication and acting on one way communication. What if we do this, what they started doing is having all the employees repeat the order back to the customer before they started to make it let’s say although this use McDonald’s, I’m not playing favorites here, but it’s like, okay, you choke to McDonald’s. I like to get to Big Macs to medium fries and too small, whatever. So it is the habit, McDonald’s these days. Um, okay, and so that they go back, right. So you want to Big Macs to medium fries and two Cokes, right? Yes. Got it. Okay, and guess what? So it’s asking for a receipt. And the thing is, it doesn’t take much time. Now I’ve talked to leaders and I’ve talked to like senior executives like I don’t know like a CEOs have said, I don’t know if if I asked my my C suite at our meetings to like, go around. room and ask for a seat like, What is everyone walking out of here? They’re gonna think like, I’m treating them like kids. Like, was that you are? Is that them? Okay? Because the fact is, if it’s it look, if Taco Bell will invest in this technology for a 99 cent taco supreme, don’t you think your million and billion dollar strategies are worth the same level of clarity? mean? So it’s just we have to get over that ego when they say, I don’t know if that’s an ego talk? Yeah, yeah, that is such ego, it’s

Maria Ross  40:25

gonna be unhappy that you prevented them from wasting a bunch of time and effort. Because you took five seconds to clarify what the marching orders were. Yeah,

Alain Hunkins  40:34

and this you just named the third big challenge that I think that we have around communication is that we live in a world where leaders think the ultimate pinnacle is efficiency, whatever we can do to be more efficient. And we sometimes confuse efficiency with effectiveness. And sometimes an advertiser’s know this really well, how many times do you need to hear a message before it sticks? Right? Eight 910? Whatever it is, we need to repeat ourselves often and frequently and confirm like, what did you get? Did I get this? Did I get that and to be vigilant around working to shore in all the misunderstanding to get back to a point of clarity. And so we have to do these things, we have to recognize that the default setting for human communication is misunderstanding, like I said, and so how can we create clarity, and don’t let efficiency get in the way of effectiveness and the same the and the other piece around this around challenges to communication is that people are just swimming in information overload. So another example, let’s say I have 10, direct reports. And I have a really important project. And I need their ownership. And they’re in there. And they’re all going to lead teams. And so the most efficient thing for me to do is to send an email to all 10. Like, hey, and here’s the subject, this is what I need you to do, boo, boo, boo, boo, boom, done, right? send one email to 10 people, scale is great, right? I just efficiently communicate that out. However, if I really need their commitment, and engagement and buy in over this important project, I’m probably better served having one on one meetings and talking to each of them, and creating a relationship of connection and communication and collaboration. So that I know when they walk out of there, they are ready to rock and roll. Right. And so if you think I don’t have the time, it goes back to what we said before, are you willing to invest the time because a little bit of time from a leader goes so far for the people that are wanting to follow them. And I think we forget the power of that those little moments doesn’t have to be a lot of those little moments to make things happen.

Maria Ross  42:26

Great stuff. I’m going to ask you one last question. Before we wrap up quickly is it’s a little bit of looking backward. But I want to leave on a positive note looking forward. And that is how did we get to the point that employees have such low confidence in their leaders? And what can we do to turn it around? Or what is being done to turn it around? Yeah,

Alain Hunkins  42:46

I mean, we got to this place, because we unfortunately have this inherited leadership legacy, where basically, we have a lot of 21st century knowledge work, workplace leaders, bleeding with an industrial age mindset, there’s still leading as the commander in chief, right, and people don’t want the commander in chief what they really want. They want facilitators in chief, right? We need people who can make things easy for us, we live in a very complex world. And so that’s kind of how we got here, in terms of what can we do moving forward is to realize that we live in an age of incredible opportunity for all sorts of whether it’s for employees, for leaders, for organizations, for society, we live in this time and opportunity, where if we choose, we can lean into being exceptionally human. Right? And what I mean by that is, what does it mean to be an exceptionally human leader, it means to be someone who was masterful at connecting, communicating, and collaborating. And if you take care of those things, and start with the people side of connection, communication and collaboration, then the results will start to take care of themselves. So kind of like Matt story, we got to flip the focus, make it less about the work and more about the people because it’s the people, the ones that are actually doing the work. And if you’re in a leadership role, it is not your not your job to be an excellent Doer anymore. You’ve been promoted beyond doer, you are now a leader of doers are a leader of leader, a leader of doers, depending on how many levels up you are. So I’d say the most important thing is to continue to lean into being an exceedingly exceptional human being. And I like to say that all leadership development is personal development, and all personal development is leadership. Because whether or not you have the job title, we all lead every single day. We certainly lead ourselves, we lead our families around, we lead our kids, our parents, our friends all over and so these skills are going to make for better workplaces, but they’re going to make for better families and ultimately, ultimately a better world. I

Maria Ross  44:48

love that we all have that sphere of influence whether we’re officially a leader or not. And how we show up in that space is going to be a model for everyone around us of oh I can find success. Is that way by being a very human leader and a human centered leader? Allah, this was so wonderful. Thank you for all your insights. The book, again is called the leadership code three secrets to building strong leaders highly recommend folks pick that up and take a look. And we’ll have all your links in the show notes including a link to a 30 day leadership challenge that you are offering. But for folks on the go right now or exercising or walking, where can they learn more about you and your work?

Alain Hunkins  45:26

Well, first of all, well done you for exercising and walking or whatever. Because we’re not Yeah, we’re sitting here having a nice chat. So go to my website, you can find all things leadership related. Is Atlanta Huggins. I’m gonna spell that for you. It’s a l a i n. Allah Huggins, H U N. K I N s.com. There are links to my book there, there’s links to my articles, etc, lots of resources. And yeah, if I can be of any support, please do reach out. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. That is my social media of choice.

Maria Ross  45:55

Thank you so much for your time and your insights today. It was a great conversation.

Alain Hunkins  46:00

Thank you. I really appreciate it really enjoyed our conversation too.

Maria Ross  46:04

Thank you, everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you liked what you heard you know what to do, please share it with a friend or colleague and of course rate and review on your podcast player of choice. Until next time, please remember that kashflow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access, 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.

Empathy is a superpower, yes, but what about those people you just truly believe are unbearable to work or talk with? I know someone is coming to mind for you. And how much more complicated does it get when you work for that someone, or they work for you?

Today, I am delighted to share my conversation with leadership coach, speaker, and best-selling author Michael Bungay Stanier. Michael and I talked about the difference between leadership and coaching and the role empathy and curiosity play in those skills, why so many leaders misunderstand what coaching means, why rescuers create victims and the importance of learning how to listen. He shares the key to having Keystone Conversations to create a better working relationship. And he shares five questions that will help you build the best possible relationship with almost anyone – and why he says “almost!” Plus, we had a love fest for our mutual publisher, Page Two. Michael is a legend and as kind and generous as they come. Take a listen.

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• There are six different leadership styles, and the greatest leaders know how to utilize each of them at the appropriate times. 
• If you’re a leader, your job is to help figure out what the right stuff is to work on, and then help get the best people to do their best work working on the stuff that matters.
• Rescuer behavior appears to be empathetic and kind, but it’s actually being nosy and it hurts more than it help others in adult-to-adult relationships. 
• You are doing the work of leading when you’re doing the work of self-care and self-reflection.

 

“I do believe…that every working relationship can be better. If you could make all of them 10-15% better, that would make a difference, because not just your success at work, but your happiness at work is dependent on the quality of your working relationships.”

—  Michael Bungay Stanier

Episode References: 

• The Empathy Edge podcast: Shasta Nelson: Why Successful Leaders Encourage Work Friendships
• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive) by Ed Batista
• Page Two Publishing

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

About Michael Bungay Stanier:

Michael Bungay Stanier is best known for The Coaching Habit, the best-selling coaching book of the century and recognized as a classic. His most recent book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, shows how to build the Best Possible Relationship with the key people at work. Michael was a Rhodes Scholar, and was recently awarded the coaching prize by Thinkers50, “the Oscars of Management.”

Connect with Michael Bungay Stanier:  

MBS.works: https://www.mbs.works/ 

X: https://www.twitter.com/mbs_works 

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mbs_works-113849977032317 

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

Book: How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships

Check out a FREE Video example of Michael’s Keystone Conversation at: https://bestpossiblerelationship.com/ 

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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. Some people am I right? I mean, empathy is a superpower. Yes, but what about those people you just truly believe are unbearable to work or talk with? I know someone is coming to mind for you. And maybe it’s Norman accounting who I made up for this episode. And how much more complicated does it get when you work for that someone or they work for you? Well, you’re about to hear five questions that will help you work better with almost anyone. Today I’m delighted to share my conversation with leadership coach, speaker and best selling author Michael Bungay Stanier. Michael is best known for the Coaching Habit, the best selling coaching book of the century, and recognized as a classic. His most recent book, how to work with almost anyone shows how to build the best possible relationship with key people at work. Michael was a Rhodes Scholar and was recently awarded the coaching prize by thinker’s 50, the Oscars of Management. Today, Michael and I talked about the difference between leadership and coaching, and the role empathy and curiosity play in those skills. Why so many leaders misunderstand what coaching means, why rescuers create victims, and the importance of learning how to listen, he shares the key to having Keystone conversations to create a better working relationship. And he shares those five questions that will help you build the best possible relationship with almost anyone. And why he says almost, plus, we had a love fest for our mutual publisher, page two. Michael is a legend and as kind and generous as they come take a listen. Welcome to the empathy edge. Michael, I am so excited to have this conversation with you after following your career and your work for a long time, as I mentioned to you earlier based on a client’s recommendation years ago, but welcome to the show to talk about empathy and coaching and relationships and all the things. Really I’m

Michael Bungay Stanier  02:45

happy to be here. I mean, I feel like it’s been a long time brewing. You know, we haven’t we share a publisher page true together. You know, I would say my work is very connected to compassion and empathy and this kind of human connection. So I think this is going to be a really rich conversation for people.

Maria Ross  03:01

I love it. I love it. So before we dive in, we’ve read your bio. But tell us a little bit about your story behind the story. How did you get into this work of coaching and leadership and relationships? And what makes you most passionate about it? Well,

Michael Bungay Stanier  03:15

I would honestly say I’ve kind of stumbled board into it accidentally. It wasn’t I mean, occasionally you meet people have the plans, like I’m in this age, and I’m going to shape a career in this profession. And I’m like, I was never that. But I

Maria Ross  03:29

don’t know who those people. I don’t know what makes them tick. Yeah, I’m

Michael Bungay Stanier  03:32

still going. I don’t know who I’m going to be when I grow up. But I better figure it out sometime soon, because I’m now declining rather than growing. But if you if you believe in the quote, which I love, inspiration is when your past suddenly made sense. There are moments from the past, which in retrospect, I can go all this was grist for the mill. So probably the starting point was your 1718. I did two things I

Maria Ross  03:59

joined not the year 1718. But when you were 17, I’m not that old.

Michael Bungay Stanier  04:05

But when I was 17, or 18. In that kind of age group, I volunteered at a youth crisis telephone line, a suicide hotline sort of thing. And it was my first training in asking questions, not talking, listened, learning how to listen to an answer. Learning how to listen for what not being said, learning that the first answer is not necessarily the only answer or the best answer. And there’s also the first year I did a kind of self help self growth thing. You and I go into an all boys school. And so this year, this touchy feely self help stuff was a bit weird. And it didn’t help at that cost was a course on how to be more spontaneous. But then I told my friends I’m doing a course on how to be more spontaneous. I know they took the mickey out of me for basically months because I’m like, why are you doing a course on spontaneity? I’m like, Sure, it just felt like the thing to do. What’s the

04:59

syllabus for are a course on spontaneity.

Michael Bungay Stanier  05:03

So, kind of seeds were planted there. And then there’s another theme, which is, as I, as I went to university, finally got came out of university. I wasn’t living in England now. And I got my first jobs, I’ll say, No, I, I enjoy working. But I don’t really enjoy organizational life, I don’t really enjoy having a boss. And there’s a way that working life can be a bit diminishing, rather than ennobling. And it is a sense that a big part of what drives me is a kind of core value is like, how do I make? How do I help people be the best version of who they are? And because a lot of my work is about people in work, how do I have organizational life be something where people flourish and grow and learn rather than not. And I think organizational life bends to the humanizing. It’s kind of a blunt statement when you put it like that. But your organization’s are set up with a purpose, and they’re trying to get an outcome, and you’re part of a structure and you’re part of a process. And it’s very easy to lose sight of the humanity of the people you’re working with, because of systems and structures, and efficiencies and KPIs and OKRs, and whatever else, all the things, yeah, all the things, and it was discovering the philosopher Martin Buber. And I don’t know his work deeply. But he has a very powerful model where he says there are just two types of relationships in the world there are I eat relationships, and I thou relationships, and I eat is when you’re in that kind of you objectify the other person a bit, and it’s a bit transactional. And I thou, which are rare, and wonderful, are when you’ll kind of be able to show up more in a fully human like, messy, complicated, glorious, excellent. And I would love there to be more i thou relationships, I’d love there to be more adult to adult relationship, you’d want to use a different piece of jargon a different type of language. And then right, these are all hard, in the best of times, these are hard. So how do I create tools and support people to help with some of that.

Maria Ross  07:15

And that’s how, and that’s how you got here. Now you’re now you’re writing and you’re teaching and you’re coaching, and you’re,

Michael Bungay Stanier  07:19

like stumbling, and you’re placing bets that a bunch of stuff failing and some of the stuff taking off, you know, I I will I had been living in Boston, came up to Toronto in 2001. I literally had a flight out of Boston on 911. So because of all the things and amongst other things, it meant that the job I had lined up, which was as a kind of consultant vanished, and it accelerated me into finally starting my own business. And honestly, when I started my own business, I didn’t know what to do, I could do a whole bunch of things. I was a jack of all trades. So I did a bit of this did a bit of that. And got lucky somebody, you know, nestle in Canada said, can you design a coaching program for me for you know, for them, and it turned out that that was such a that was really helpful, because it turned out as you know, a, I think coaching is a really powerful technology, I think it can unlock the best to people been, I think it can be done really badly. There’s a lot of gum in coaching. And there’s a lot of rudeness and a lot of kind of jazz hands mysterious black box Afghan wearing staff drives me nuts, as particularly doesn’t work in organizational life. It’s it’s not useful to the busy life of the typical busy manager and leader in the work that she’s doing. And thirdly, I thought I had an opinion on how it could be better and how it could be different. And so Jim Collins, the writer of Good to Great has this metaphor of your strategy is a question of firing bullets and firing cannon walls, you fire bullets to figure out what the target is. And these are kind of small experiments or small tests or kind of like a try this out. And designing a coaching program was was a bullet for me is one of the things I was doing. I thought I’d do market research. I was also teaching innovation. I was also starting to do keynote speaking, I was also building a coaching program. But with the coaching program, as I this is actually the thing I’m interested in. And so that’s when you fire the cannon ball as like when you commit to it. And from that grew the Coaching Habit book, which is the book that I’m best known for. And you know, that went through a process of being turned down repeatedly by a publisher who published other books of mine. So I then had this moment where I’m like, Well, what do I do with this? And that’s when I found the path to page two and self published or hybrid published his book. Of course, that then took off and became its own phenomena and its own thing. So you know, it’d be foolish to think that a I really have ever Knowing what the heck I’m doing the year is placing bets and being brave and going. Here’s the stuff that’s taken off. And you know, what never gets talked about in the context. Like, this is like all the stuff I tried that didn’t work,

10:14

per se. Oh,

Michael Bungay Stanier  10:17

yeah, well, that’s sort of stopping. That’s plenty of stories about that. Yeah. So I could fill up the remaining hour and a half with you. Like, here’s all the stuff that I’ve tried that has been mediocre. The interesting

Maria Ross  10:26

thing is I asked this of every guest, and most of them don’t start out with like, from the moment I was eight, I knew that this was the work I was going to do or how I was going to have my impact. And so I think many of us that just have more of a growth mindset, even though we didn’t call it that back then. But an insatiable curiosity and annoying curiosity as some people might say, the inability to accept no as an answer. Yeah. I, we meander, and we find these to us what seemed like perfectly connected related paths, but from the outside looking in might be like, you know, Maria, how did you get from brand strategy to empathy? And I’m like, Well, that should be a straight line. I don’t understand how you don’t get that, you know. So I love that you just further validate my career choices by talking that way. But I want to get to this question. Because you are so well known for the Coaching Habit, we’re going to talk a little bit about your latest book, which is how to work with almost anyone. But I want to talk about first the difference between because to your point this these terms are used interchangeably, leader and coach. So what makes a great leader? What makes a great coach? And are those two one in the same? Or is there a Venn diagram where it overlaps? Talk to me about your viewpoint on that?

Michael Bungay Stanier  11:40

Well, I’d say in a quick summary, great leaders are typically also facile with coaching, and they know when and how to use that as a leadership skill. But there is more to leadership than just coaching. Your Gangrel Goleman wrote an article in 2000 or 2001, in the HBr, Harvard Business Review called leadership that gets results. And he says, Look, there are six different leadership styles in great leaders know how to use all six at the appropriate time, because each one has pros and cons, prizes and punishments. And coaching is one of those six leadership styles. And in fact, it was the least utilized, even though it has this direct impact on engagement and also profitability. So it’s a really powerful leadership skill. Yeah, the government at the time said, do it. People feel it takes too much time, as part of the grist for the walk, I do it. It’s like, you know, let me show you how you can coach fast, you can coach in 10 minutes or less. So the benefit of coaching, is that it you show up with curiosity. And when you show up with curiosity, you’ve got a better chance of figuring out what the real challenges are kind of staying open. And in a place of ambiguity long enough that you get a clearer sight on what the big picture is, and what really matters. And also, when you’re curious, you get a sense of who the other person is across the table from you. So that I thou relationship that we were talking about earlier on. So curiosity is a bit of a leadership superpower. But I think leaders have to do things like see the pictures exist in the future. Oh, look at the stuff that isn’t working. make the hard decisions, take the be able to take the best gas. Understand that, you know, if you’re a CEO or a leader, and you’re getting 60% of your, your decisions, right? You’re actually winning the game. It’s not a ray or 90. It’s like 60%. And you’re like you’re you’re doing great, right? So I do think leadership. And leadership also probably means taking care of yourself, and like self care, stuff. So I do think coaching is necessary, but but not sufficient to be a good leader.

Maria Ross  14:09

I love so much to unpack there. But I love that thinking because that’s the crux of my work as well is that it’s a both and scenario. I think so many leaders get locked into this thing of like, I’m either going to be a leader or a coach, I’m either going to be empathetic or high performing. No, you do them both simultaneously, you hold both of those things to be true at the same time. And that’s why leadership is hard. That’s why hopefully they pay the big bucks. Like there’s a reason why not everybody is an effective leader. But we’ve we’ve sold ourselves ourselves, this bill of goods that because we’re, we’re if someone is good at the work, they’re gonna be good as a leader. Right and and being good at the work and not being a great leader doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Right? It just means that you lacked that capability. And that’s okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier  14:58

Yeah. You know, when we’re teaching this work in organizations, we will we say to people, we’re not training you to be a coach, we’re training you to be more coach like, so we give them a specific behavior. So not an identity, because the behavior is like, can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly. And part of the work we’re trying to do is I want to free people up from this binary of like, being a coach, because I’m like, most people don’t want to be a coach. Most people want to do the job or be a marketer or

Maria Ross  15:36

just do their work. Yeah, exactly. Work done.

Michael Bungay Stanier  15:38

But But the essence is, if you’re a leader, your job is to help figure out what the right stuff is to work on, and then help get the best people to do their best work working on the stuff that matters. So that strategy and culture or strategy, what’s the stuff that matters? Culture? Who are the best people to work on the stuff that matter? And that is hard. All of that is hard. Curiosity, is a powerful contributor to being successful on both of those two things. Well,

Maria Ross  16:13

and that is a perfect lead in to my next question, which is, you know, empathy is what we talk about on the show, but all these different facets of empathy of how you come out emotional intelligence, or compassion, or what have you. And curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people, because clearly, it’s about not just guessing what the other person’s point of view is, it’s about finding out what it is, right? So in your view, and in your work, where have you seen curiosity and empathy show up? In the most successful leaders in the best leaders in your, your your best clients? Can you give us some stories about where maybe someone wasn’t curious and empathetic before? And then when they unlocked those habits, those behaviors, it improve performance for

16:58

them? Yeah, I,

Michael Bungay Stanier  17:01

I would I go to if you’ll be okay with me doing this, you know, I started this company called Box of Crayons. And about four years ago, I stepped away from being the CEO of that gentleman who is as brilliant woman who I recruited from behind the bar of my local pizza, Ria, like one of the best recruiting moments of my entire life, it was like this woman who was doing a PhD and finishing it up and working in a bar part time, or they come and help me out with a little bit of book stuff. And now she is the CEO. It has been interesting watching her shift from being very driven around the strategy, which is like one of the things we need to do to going, how do I also keep thinking about the people and keeping the right people involved? So I think the stories are, that they feel a bit generic, actually, when I think about it, which is, it goes something like this, you become a leader, you freak out, because you’ve now you’re responsible for other people getting work done. You a obsess about what the work is, and how do I get the work done? You become a bottleneck, because you keep trying to do all the work that other people should be doing for you. Because you’re trying to be helpful, you suddenly realize that the only way this works, is if you trust other people. You go through a process of a dark night of the soul about what is trusting other people? And how do I do that? I trust myself, how do I trust other people, right? And you start going really start going well, what are the what are the ways that I build a relationship, where we do the best job we can and trusting each other and supporting each other? And finding that balance that you’ve been talking about Maria, roaches like it, look, I want to be kind and compassionate, and empathetic. And I need to get stuff done. And I need to have accountability. And I need to call it when you’re not when you’ve screwed it up, or you haven’t done it or you’ve made the mistake. And how do I do all of that while maintaining my humanity? Yeah, so for the most part, I’d say most people, as they grow as a leader, what they expand from is our work happens through people. So I’ve got to get better at thinking about or just acknowledging or being more nuanced and empathetic towards the people who I manage. And then there are occasionally some people who are on the other side where the like, I’m all about just wanting people to, to feel loved and liked and appreciated. And the work doesn’t get done in a way that doesn’t work either, which is

Maria Ross  19:47

not empathy, which is why I’m writing the next book, the empathy dilemma because so often the burnout and the stress and the overwhelm happens because you think you’re being an empathetic leader, but what you’re doing is actually something else. It’s people pleasing. It’s yeah, you haven’t gotten your own triggers and emotional regulation in place. All these other things. Yeah, I

Michael Bungay Stanier  20:06

talk about and use the model which I’m, I’m gonna guess you might be familiar with the Cartman Drama Triangle. And you’re basically you know, it’s got its roots in transactional analysis, which gives you adult to adult relationships and parent child relationships, that kind of jargon. For the Drama Triangle says, when things get dysfunctional, there are three roles that play out. There’s the victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer. And when you teach us model, people instantly get it that leads them to get what the three roles are. But what they don’t always get is that the rescuer is as dysfunctional a role as the victim and the persecutor. It sounds better. It’s got better PR. Yeah, but it is just as screwed up. And it is just as bigger contributor to the dysfunction as as the other two roles. And when you ask people, you go, Okay, so here are the three roles that see who identifies with which role 90% of people put their hand up when you go who feels like they’re a rescuer? The a jump in a save it, I solve it, give it to me, let me take it on the help. That’s how I have conflict. That’s all be nice. Yeah. That it is exhausting. And it is frustrating and rescue as create victims and rescue as create persecutors. So it actually is this kind of infecting behavior

21:30

that isn’t, you know, and believe me, I

Michael Bungay Stanier  21:34

have lived this whole story, because this is the stuff I’ve had to unlearn or partially unless

Maria Ross  21:39

we write about what we what we need. Yeah, exactly. So I

Michael Bungay Stanier  21:43

I’m really, I’m just kind of like enthusiastically agreeing with you, Maria, when you’re like when you go. This range of behavior, which you’re like, dice can be rescuer behavior, which is dysfunctional, limiting. Exhausting, creates burnout creates resentment breeds and victims, it is the very opposite of empathy. And it’s the very opposite of an adult to adult relationship. Well, and

Maria Ross  22:13

so much of that stems, which is, the new book is based on five pillars of being an effective and empathetic leader, right, we sometimes we forget the effective and we just focus on the empathetic leader. The first pillar is self awareness. The second one is self care. So the first two pillars are about you digging, and understanding what motivates you what triggers you? And it’s to your point is, Am I doing this? Because I think I’m, I’m saving people, or I’m rescuing them, or I’m being an empathetic boss, or am I doing this because I need control? I’m fearful, I’m afraid of how I’m going to look if this project fails. What is it really about underneath?

Michael Bungay Stanier  22:55

Yeah, I love that. Because I do think that rescue behavior is it’s it’s a very controlling behavior, you’ve got your fingers and everybody’s pies. look like you’re being nice. But really, you’re being nosy? No, but let me ask you a question right. Now. How do you help with that first pillar of self awareness? Because it’d be like, it’d be so much better if everybody was enlightened, so much easier. But you know, we’ve all got blind spots. We’re all flawed. We’re all oblivious to a bunch of things that we do. I’m wondering in your work, how you help deepen that sense of this is actually who I am. And this is actually the impact I have in the world. Yeah,

Maria Ross  23:35

I think the first step is losing the stigma of self awareness as a wasteful nasal gazing exercise, right? So when I write in the new book that’s coming out and even a little bit in the empathy edge. Why I mentioned for example, as an effective leadership practice is practicing presence is you have to get your own house in order. If you’re going to be open and receptive enough to take on another person’s point of view, or perspective, empathy, without defensiveness or fear. So if we actually want the benefits that empathetic leadership provides, it has to start with you and the interior work. So number one is letting go of that stigma. Number two is what? How are you getting that assessment? Are you just aren’t you know, are you doing one modality of just journaling or therapy? Are you doing another modality of taking a self assessment tool like an Enneagram or Myers Briggs or the strengths finders test? And are you getting feedback from other people so that your reality checking whether you are ego tripping or selling yourself short? Yeah. And just being able to use that and I try to make executives feel good about that and leaders feel good about it as again, not a navel gazing exercise, but you’re gathering information so that you can be more effective going forward and I think once they once that And I would love to hear what you have to say in your work. Once they calmed down a little bit about the fact that things like self awareness and self care are not done out of selfishness. They’re done out of service. But you have to, you have to start with that compassion and empathy for yourself, so that you understand yourself enough. And you know that when you fall back, like many leaders have in the post pandemic world, on command and control, that’s out of fear. That’s out of fear of like, I don’t think I can handle this new way of leading this new way of working. And I need to go back to what I know. Can you honestly admit that to yourself? Or do you make excuses like, we all have to be back in the office because that’s the only way we can innovate? We all have to be in the UK in the office? Because how will I know if you guys are getting any work done. So it’s just being able to check yourself on those things. And I think once you let people relax, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, relax into it as like you are doing the work of leading when you work on self care. And when you work on self awareness. Do you see that with your clients as well, and the people that you talk to? Yeah,

Michael Bungay Stanier  26:04

I mean, I think I think navel gazing gets a bad rap. Like, I think like there’s something actually about staring at yourself in the mirror, staring at kind of reflecting on who you are and how you show up. makes all the difference. I mean, this new book of mine how to work with almost anyone. There are these five questions which Bramer conversation with the person you’re trying to build the best possible relationship with? Where you kind of share? A this is how I am how I work best how I work worse,

26:36

you need to know this. So that about yourself before you can share it right? Well, exactly. So

Michael Bungay Stanier  26:42

in some ways, it’s meant to be a business book, but there’s a kind of self help navel gazing book inside that film. Like, if you never have a keystone conversation, but you do the work to be able to answer the five questions, you’re going to be more effective in the workplace, because to your point, you know, empathy without being effective is not a winning strategy.

Maria Ross  27:08

There’s a great leadership consultant named Edie Batista who wrote an article he’s got a quadrant. Are you familiar with it? Yeah. Where it’s empathy. Accountability without empathy is a bootcamp. But empathy without accountability is a daycare. And I love that. I love that I’ve included it in the new book. So I love that you, you keep segwaying. For me, this is great. So I would love for us to talk a little bit about that book, how to work with almost anyone. And out of curiosity, why do you have the almost in parentheses? What’s your philosophy on that?

Michael Bungay Stanier  27:40

Well, why don’t I ask you that? What do you think he almost brings to that dead title?

Maria Ross  27:45

I will I personally think it lets you off the hook of feeling like you have to have an effective relationship with every single human you come in contact with. That’s a lot of pressure. Yeah. And you might feel like there’s something wrong with you. If you can’t get along with everybody. Is that kind of where you’re going with that? So?

Michael Bungay Stanier  28:02

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think the book title how to work with almost anyone is the best book title I’ve ever come up with. It’s like, it’s so good. Because people love the almost it’s it’s intriguing. Light, and it lads laughter and kind of insight and sparkle to the title. And you know,

Maria Ross  28:20

they’re thinking of someone when they like almost anyone except my in laws or

Michael Bungay Stanier  28:25

Exactly. You know, who you almost is. Yeah, I personally would never believe a book called How to work with anyone. Um, like, either, as soon as I see it, I like that. I’m like, have you met? A, B, and C? Yeah. Nightmares. The psychopathic, the the sociopathic, there’s something. And I’m sure people say the same about me. So I say, Okay, I have too many failed working relationships to come close to making the claim of how to work with anyone. Right. But the idea is, every work, I do believe, you know, even as I say that title that every working relationship can be better. And it

Maria Ross  29:05

can be better. I think that’s the key is it’s it’s a it’s a shift, it’s a delta.

Michael Bungay Stanier  29:11

Exactly. So if you think of the bell curve that probably describes most of our working relationships, you know, a few at one end where they’re like, sparkly and wonderful, a few of the other end where they suck badly, a bunch of them in the middle where they’re like that, okay, they have their ups and their downs. But if you could make all of them 10 to 15% better, that would really make a difference, because not just your success at work, but your happiness at work is really dependent on the quality of your working relationships. Like everybody listening to this conversation right now. Can imagine back to a time Well, maybe it’s happening in real time for them where they’ve had a really tough working relationship. And it has soured everything. No, it is. If there was a single single word It’s like it’s a diminishing experience, you lose a sense of self, you lose your confidence, you lose your trust, you lose your ambition, you kind of play small. And it doesn’t matter if you’re working on the best thing in the world, and you have a manager who sucks, it’s gonna suck as an experience.

Maria Ross  30:18

Yeah, or the inverse that I’ve experienced is I had I worked within a company where the culture was awful. Yeah, it was a grind. But our direct team of five people were amazing to work with. And they made it worth it. Exactly, yeah. And

Michael Bungay Stanier  30:36

most of us leave the quality of our work and relationships to chance, you kind of go, I hope I get my day, a person who somehow creates magic within this otherwise. But somehow, they’ve made it okay. Yeah. And you’re just like, I’m gonna roll the dice. And I hope I get lucky with this team or with this person, or with this client, or with this boss, or with this colleague or with this vendor. And I’m like, you don’t have to just leave it down to luck.

Maria Ross  31:04

Are you familiar with the work of Shasta Nelson, she’s a friend of mine. And I’ve had her on the podcast before. She’s She’s a friendship expert. She’s written several books. But she actually wrote a book called The business of friendship, that is about all the benefits you get from forming friendships at work, and what the definition of friendship at work really means. Especially if you’re at different levels. And it’s fascinating because there’s so much proof like there is for empathy in the workplace, that it boosts productivity, it boosts engagement and boosts retention. All of these things happen, this magic does happen. But it doesn’t magically happen that you create those friendships. And so she also gives advice about how to create those friendships in a way that works for you. So I’m gonna put a link to that episode in our show notes. But yeah, definitely want to Yeah, definitely want to let you know about her work, because it’s exactly that. And so I would love to get into what are those? You know, just give us a little amuse boosh, because we want people to get the book. But what are those five questions? A few of them if you want to tease us with some of them?

Michael Bungay Stanier  32:08

So the core idea is how do I build the best possible relationship with somebody. So again, not a perfect relationship, not every working relationship is going to be a unicorn, burping up a rainbow. You’re like each of your key relationships with a boss or team or colleague or vendor or whoever? The ones that affect your happiness and your success. They have a kind of potential to how do you make them live up to as much potential as that relationship has, and you know, the attributes for me that it should feel safe, it should feel vital, meaning lively for all of life, and it should be repairable. Then you go well, okay, Michael, that sounds good enough. But how do I get that you like where you have a conversation about how you work together? Before you leap into the work itself? That’s to be active conversate, it’s as simple and as difficult as that. So I call it the Keystone conversation in the book because I spoke about how we were before we were

Maria Ross  33:06

before we talked about what we’re doing. Let’s talk about how we’re going to make it happen naturally.

Michael Bungay Stanier  33:11

And that is hard and rare, because the worker was suckers us in like we always put you you

33:18

always let’s get down to business. Right? As he will say, yeah,

Michael Bungay Stanier  33:21

right, because it’s either a crisis or it’s exciting, or because you’ve just had years of going okay, we’re here to have a meeting. Let’s talk about the stuff that we’re having only half an hour. Yeah, right. And so the five questions that I think can shape a keystone conversation, and I’ll give everybody the headlines for them. The first one is the amplify question, which is, what your best, you know, when do you shine and when do you flow? And, you know, this draws on all that kind of positive psychology and appreciative inquiry and positive deviance, all this kind of going, how do we amplify the good rather than worrying about the bad? Like, if I was, Maria, you and I were going to launch a joint podcast together or write a book together with Paige to know it’d be really helpful for me to go Sumeria Kelly, when you’re right, when you’re creating and CO creating with somebody, and you’re at your best what’s going on? What does that look like? What are you great at, you know, what’s the thing that lights you up and puts you into the zone? And let me tell you what true about me, because you and I have just met. And we’ve already made up a whole bunch of stories about each other. You’ve made up stories about me, I’ve made up stories about you. I’m like, I Okay, I figured out Maria, I kind of know what she probably good at what she’s probably not good at. Yeah, and I’m drawing and all these cliches and whatever else stereotypes. And I’m like that you’re some are going to be partially true, but but actually, what if I heard from you what it is that lights you up and makes you in that place where you flow where you shine? Okay, that alone is sustained. Really lovely conversation where you’re like, This is talking about how we what we look like at our best. And then the Nathalia like, so how do we get some of that? Because that sounds pretty great. The second question is kind of a bit more mechanical. It’s like, the steady question, what are your practices? Or what are your preferences? Because many working relationships get damaged just by logistical hiccups, like, you know, it’s like, I hate zoom, and you keep making me come to zoom meetings. Like, I’m not a morning person, and you keep scheduling meetings for 7am.

Maria Ross  35:34

I don’t understand texts that are all emojis. Exactly.

Michael Bungay Stanier  35:38

Exactly. LOL LOL, lol. So, yeah, so a conversation about what are the logistic even mean, you know, the last number of years we’ve started going well, let me tell you what my pronouns are. But it can be as simple as go look, my name, for instance, is Michael Bungay Stanier. So let me tell you about my name briefly. When I got married, my wife and I combined our surnames and it became Bungay Stanier. But it doesn’t have a hyphen. There’s like an invisible hyphen. So it’s not Michael Stan year. And I like just tell you really my middle name, your name, My surname is Bungay Stanier without a hyphen. people mispronounce it all the time. You know, I heard a letter once to Michael banging spaniel. That’s not my name. It’s Bungay Stanier. And by the way, my name is Michael, not Mike. So don’t do this kind of funny thing around going back pulling your mic. I’m like, no, no, no. This is a mic. This is a mic. I speak into it on stage. I’m a Michael. Yeah. So just that mean, so I don’t have somebody unilaterally deciding that they want to call me Mike. And me basically hating them for the rest of their life. Yeah. Because I’m like, you just really started calling me Mike. So that’s just an example. third, and fourth question are the good date and the bad date question. So you can see they’re related. And the Insight is patterns from our past, repeat again and our future. So talk about the patterns from your past. So the good day question is, what can we learn from past successful relationships? I can you like, and when you’re answering that, talk about what the other person did that really made that relationship zing. And then the bad day question is what can you learn from past frustrating relationships. And when you’re answering that, particularly talk about how you contributed to the dysfunction of that working relationship, is that you know, it’s kind of interesting for a bit, they kind of have you bitch and moan about that other person. But actually, what’s really helpful for the other person is to go, this is how I screw relationships up. I do that all the time with the people on my team. Now, let me tell you how I will drive you nuts.

37:50

I read a wide put it out there, they’re gonna figure it out eventually, right?

Michael Bungay Stanier  37:53

And done right. And let me tell you how you manage me when I’m driving you nuts. This is how you, this is how we work around my flaws as a human being because of my flaws and manifold. And I would love them to all go away, but they probably won’t. So you can bet on me screwing up this way somewhere down the line. And when what happens, what

Maria Ross  38:16

I love about that is you give people permission, and you give it levity as well. And having that conversation because now we can go back to remember Michael, you know, You warned me that you were gonna do mansplain me that’s probably not one of your things, but you’re doing it and it’s like, Oh, am I like you can just have an honest conversation without putting up these facades. That’s right.

Michael Bungay Stanier  38:39

And it’s so much easier to do that. At the start. When the relationship when things are going well or just in a camp, you know, you can you can do this with a relationship that’s been ongoing for a while but do it in a calm period. It’s harder to have this conversation when you’re in that stress moment because you have screwed up you’re like that. That’s trickier. Yeah. And then the fifth and final question, the repair question is how will we fix it when things go wrong? And what’s powerful about that is two things. One is it says and just acknowledges the truth, which is it will go wrong.

Maria Ross  39:14

It’s not F right. It’s a win,

Michael Bungay Stanier  39:16

it will go off the rails at some stage, sometimes a big explosive wave more often in a smaller the fabric tears are away. Right. And secondly, it’s a kind of already a shared collective goal to fix it when it goes wrong. So there’s a shared commitment to the future health of the relationship. So

Maria Ross  39:35

as we wrap up, because this is all such great stuff, but what would be a few pieces of advice you would give to a leader listening to this who’s going Yes, I want to build a better relationship with my team. It has been maybe subpar at best so far. Do they go guns blazing into work tomorrow with like, I’ve got five questions that I want to talk about to you or like how would you But how would you encourage someone to, if you’re encouraging them to wade into this? So they don’t shock their team? Yeah. What are some ways they can they can get this moving for themselves?

Michael Bungay Stanier  40:12

So most people when they hear this or they read the book, they go, this sounds really good. I’m not sure I can do it. Again, it feels a bit anxious, kind of a bit odd and makes people feel a bit anxious that away, how do I do that? So one very fast thing people can do if this would be helpful for them is, at best possible relationship.com. There’s a video of me actually conducting a keystone conversation. So the first thing you can do is go What does that even look like? In reality? Well, let me show you a little video, you can just go there, it’s free, just access it at best possible relationship.com. But then, the call to action, if you like that I most hope is that people are brave enough to say this is worth giving it a go. Because at the moment, they’re in there to spend it between their will I do it or will I not do it. And both of those choices have prizes and punishments. If you don’t do it, the prize is that everything carries on, there’s no disruption, there’s no chance of failure, there’s no awkwardness, there’s no awkwardness, the punishment is the dysfunction rolls on the misery rolls on, there may be a low grade misery, but it’s still a misery choosing to be the person who starts it there are there are advantages to that this may boost the relationship, this may reset the relationship, this may enhance your leadership, this may build your your empathy capacity and your empathy muscle. The punishment is that it may not work, you know, there doesn’t always work, it may get rejected, you may feel like an idiot, you probably will be a bit weird and awkward. All of that is true as well. Somebody said to me recently, nobody likes to be the first person to say hello, everybody loves to be greeted. So what I would notice is you going so what are the reasons you’re making up about why it wouldn’t work with that person? And then I would tap in to our Roger Martin’s question. He’s a writer and a strategic thinker. And one of his best questions is what needs to be true for this to happen? And what I love about that as a strategic question is it doesn’t have you in the present going, how will I make this happen? It imagines you haven’t completed it. And then looking back and go what needed to be what needed to happen for this to be true. So I would go or a pick, pick one of your relationships. Sometimes it’s one of the relationships that’s already pretty strong. And you’re like, let me work in a way that feels safe. Some people pick a relationship that’s already so badly broken, that it just can’t get any worse. I have nothing left to lose. So I really go with this relationship. But our relationship

Maria Ross  43:00

like norm and accounting, who you can’t stand every time he walks down the hall, right? Yeah. So you’re like, setting norms and accounting. But yeah, it

Michael Bungay Stanier  43:08

can’t get much worse. But no. So why don’t we go? I know, we have a cup of coffee, I’d love a chat to go look, how do we make the way we’re working just a little bit better for you and for me, because I don’t sure about you. But at the moment I just tension, or at least it’s a bit irritating at times. And you might feel that as well, I suspect you do. I reckon we can, I reckon we could just make it a little bit easier for both of us who you are for a conversation around that.

Maria Ross  43:34

I love that because that is the whole crux of the work that I do around empathy, which is that if you actually try to reach out and have a conversation and make yourself a little bit vulnerable, you will understand someone’s context. And maybe what you thought, or why you thought that person was acting in a certain way. Could be something completely unrelated to the work Ah, you

Michael Bungay Stanier  43:56

just make all of this stuff up. Yeah. As soon as something happens. I mean, in writing this book, I did a lot of research into the people who are really deeply wise about writing about romantic relationships. So people like Esther Perell, and Dan Siegel, and Carrie all and the like. And you’re one of the themes that goes across all of their work is that a ie the relationships that flourish are the ones that get repaired, and be most of a sucker repair. Most of us when something small and damaging happens, we tend to go through that just proves that and you make up all these stories, and you make up all this drama and you try to go over it’s always going to happen, they’re always going to betray me or whatever it might be. And, you know, it kind of comes back to empathy and curiosity again, which was like I actually you probably got it wrong. So being brave enough to reach out, knowing that it doesn’t always work, right. You may your outreach may get rejected be the conversation itself may not really work, but see Will the ones that don’t get rejected and all the relationship conversations that do work will help you build the best possible relationships with many of your key people.

Maria Ross  45:09

I love that what a great, what a great piece of insight to leave us on. Thank you so much, Michael, for your insights today. We really appreciate it such good stuff. I know everyone will check out the book, I will put links in the show notes to all your books and your site and all the great work as well as to best possible relationship.com which has that free video that you mentioned. So thank you for being

Michael Bungay Stanier  45:31

here. Ria Thank you for having me. It was a lovely conversation. And thank

Maria Ross  45:35

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

Resilience might be eligible for word of the year. You hear it everywhere you go. We talked a lot about resilience during the Pandemic. How do we bounce back and adapt?

One definition of resilience is “The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”

Clearly, we need to embrace resilience as human beings. In a chaotic, unpredictable world where the only constant is change, you might drive yourself mad if you cannot adapt.

But more importantly, how is the skill of resilience strengthened, taught, or learned?

Today I share two examples from my childhood on how I learned resilience that I hope will not only enlighten you, but entertain you. (HINT: One involves my theater geek high school days!)

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below. 

Key Takeaways:

• Practice having a growth mindset – it is not about being externally praised, it is about your innate desire to practice and improve and look at what can be tweaked to change the outcome on your next attempt. 
• Learn from those losses in your life. You can process the grief of losing but still embrace the opportunities in front of you. 
• Try anyway! Even if you don’t have all of the boxes checked for whatever you’re aiming to do, try anyway, you may surprise yourself with what you do accomplish. 

 

I learned from moments like that to process my grief over what I’d lost, but embrace what was in front of me – and make it my own. —  Maria Ross

 

Episode References: 

• Dinah Manoff from Grease: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001503/ 
• Growth Mindset: https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means
• #Hypewomen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hype-women/id1704488532
• Greater Good, Five Science-Backed Strategies to Build Resilience: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_science_backed_strategies_to_build_resilience 

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

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

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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, welcome to this month’s hot take where you get me solo in your ear guest free. And I hope you’re having a wonderful February, the month of love, the month of Black History Month. And I hope you’re able to celebrate all forms of love, platonic love, romantic love, parent parental love, love for your job, love for your community, love for your pets.

All of the things, whether you’re celebrating with a romantic partner or you enjoy celebrating Galentine’s Day. I hope you have a wonderful month full of love and actually I hope you have a wonderful year full of love. But today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about resilience because resilience might be eligible for word of the year. You hear it everywhere you go. We talked a lot about resilience during the pandemic, and how do we bounce back and adapt. One definition of resilience is the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness. Now, clearly, we need to embrace resilience as human beings. In a chaotic, unpredictable world where the only constant is change. You might drive yourself mad if you can’t adapt. But more importantly, how is the skill of resilience strengthened, taught or learned, can only be built when you face change or disappointment? Is it kinda like skydiving, like you only learn how to really do it by jumping out of the plane? And how can I teach it to my son before he actually needs to draw on it. So thinking back, I got lessons in resilience and rejection early from professional acting as a child where I never held on to any one opportunity to lightly and was on to the next if I wasn’t cast to participating in plays at school. While I got many juicy roles in school plays I remember the ones that stung, particularly one a school theater director organized a joint seventh, eighth and ninth grade summer production of the musical Grease and I wanted to be Marty Mara Tino so badly. She was the sophisticated red haired Pink Lady brilliantly portrayed by Dinah man off in the movie version. My favorite line of hers was on Marty Mara Tino as in Cherry. Before the audition, I studied the lines I watched the movie, I perfected my sex pot pout, even though I had no idea what I was doing it 1314 15 However, however old you are, when you’re in eighth grade ninth grade, the director somehow knew I wanted the role so it was mine to lose and lose. I did. While I have been a choir singer for a very long time. I was and still am very insecure about singing solo. So I bombed the singing portion of the audition, singing Freddie my love off key and likely to softly the director even sharply I might add, ask me later what happened? I don’t know. But the role went to a much more deserving classmate who did a fabulous job. And I got the part of Dorothy the cheerleader. I loved that my school plays would often give names to the extras so we didn’t have to simply be known as cheerleader number five, but I could play Dorothy and give her a whole backstory. I got to be an every dance number I sported a very fun fifth. cheerleading outfit. And I even got to do the hand jive with a cute boy during the big dance scene. I learned from moments like this to process my grief over what I’d lost, but embrace what was in front of me and make it my own. Play Dorothy to the hilt and perhaps, maybe even steal the show. I mean, I was voted best pickpocket in the seventh grade production of Oliver. Another unexpected resilience lesson came when I was in middle school. I desperately wanted to be on the drill team, which was the middle schools and high schools dance squad. I loved to dance, channeling Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson with my bestie to their iconic 80s hits on her living room couch. I even gained some brief notoriety with an unforeseen gift and rhythm for Dirty Dancing. We shall not speak of this. But my Achilles heel was not being able to do the splits. Despite being you know, a person who took ballet and gymnastics as a little girl, this flexibility eluded me, I even remember following random remedies like stretching after a hot bath or doing five minutes a day of slips against a wall. If you were on the drill team, you knew how to do the splits, high kicks and all of that. But that didn’t stop me from trying out three years in a row. I tried out in seventh, eighth, and then ninth grade for the high school team. The feedback, I nailed the routines. My smile was magnetic, but I couldn’t do the kicks or splits. And competition was fierce. So others made the team when I did not. With each disappointment, I still got up and tried out the following year. What can I do better? How could I finally limber up enough to do the splits? Could I make up for this inability with precision moves and bringing the energy. They now call this a growth mindset. But it just came naturally to me. It wasn’t about being praised. It was about my own innate desire to practice and improve. What could I tweak to change the outcome next time. A popular girl’s mom was on the selection committee one year and even told her to tell me how amazing I was at tryouts that I had such a great smile, but that the splits stopped me. But here was what I consider the truest test of resilience. Back then there was no email. So you had to go to the school on the designated day and check the list posted on the door to see if you made it or not. Once again, my name was not on it. But two of my good friends were. And I remember being on the phone in my kitchen with one of them. As we compared notes, weeping in silence. As we talked, I found a way to share in her excitement, through tears. She didn’t know I was crying. I said I’m so happy for you. You deserve this. She said all the right things that she was sorry. And it wasn’t fair. But in the end, she made it and I didn’t. on that phone call at the tender age of 13. I learned how to hold my own disappointment and check while still being happy for my girlfriend. Talk about hashtag hype women. Thank you, Aaron Gallagher for naming this needed ability, starting this movement in 2023. And showing how it only lifts all of us up. None of this answers my initial question about how you can teach resilience without any real fire actually testing your strength. There are some great science backed ways presented in an article by greater good on ways to build resilience. And I will put that link in the show notes. Some of their advice, change the narrative, face your fears, practice self compassion, meditate and cultivate forgiveness. But I submit that these are more like things you can do to shore up your foundation. So when you need to practice resilience, you’re ready. I don’t know if these tips actually build resilience because I’m still not sure it can be built until you’re actually tested. I believe that they make your internal landscape more amenable and open to resilience. They seed the soil, so to speak. Happy to hear other opinions about this. So ping me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I’m curious how you have learned resilience in your own life as a child or an adult? Do you intentionally do things to set up a better environment for yourself to be resilient when you need it? Did you have good role models? Or was this something you had to teach yourself? Please let me know. As you think about resilience as you think about shoring up your foundation. I hope you go on to have a wonderful week. And until next time here on the empathy edge. Remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria never forget empathy is your superpower use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Can allyship be fun? Or do you envision every inclusion or diversity training as a slog? It doesn’t have to be so heavy-handed!

Today, Jeannie Gainsburg shares why, as a cisgender woman, she became a strong ally. We tackle how to get over the heaviness and blame of allyship and focus on having conversations with an open heart. We discuss pronouns and why sharing your pronouns (even if they seem obvious) is a great ally action. She also offers the best ways to gather pronouns from others without making it awkward. We talked about what being out and authentic at work looks like. Finally, Jeannie shares a few concrete tips and policies for creating a more LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace.

Her encouraging, passionate, and warm-hearted approach will surely jumpstart even the most tentative ally.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• There are many causes to fight for – just pick one and start going. Fighting for rights for one, is fighting for rights for all.
• People want to learn, so encouragement, not judgment, is critical.
• We all use pronouns all day, every day. It doesn’t only affect those who are transgender. 

 

“Being an ally is an ongoing journey of messing up. We need to get comfortable with and understand that. Don’t let the fear of messing up or not knowing the right word stop you from having conversations, and know how to apologize. Just have the conversations with an open heart.”

—  Jeannie Gainsburg

 

Episode References: 

• Daniel Jahn, The Empathy Edge Podcast: Racial Solidarity and the Psychology of Racism
• Leo Caldwell, The Empathy Edge Podcast: Why Anti-Trans Laws and Homophobia are Anti-Business
• We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle

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

About Jeannie Gainsburg, Founder, Savvy Ally Action

Jeannie Gainsburg is an educational trainer and consultant in the field of LGBTQ+ inclusion and effective allyship. She is the founder of Savvy Ally Action, a small business that offers fun, accessible, and encouraging workshops and videos on how to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. Before forming the company, she spent 15 years working for the Out Alliance, the LGBTQ+ center in Rochester, NY.

Her book, The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020, with the revised 2nd edition published in March 2023.

Jeannie has a BA in psychology from Brown University and an MA in social work and social research from Bryn Mawr College. She is the recipient of the Empire State Pride Agenda’s Community Champion Award and the Rochester LGBTQ Community Appreciation Award. In 2019, Jeannie also received a citation from the New York State Assembly for Distinguished Educational & Human Rights Services for her work in promoting LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion.

Connect with Jeannie Gainsburg:  

Savvy Ally Action: savvyallyaction.com 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeannie-gainsburg 

Facebook: facebook.com/savvyally 

Instagram: instagram.com/jeanniegainsburgauthor 

Book: The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate (2nd Edition)

Bonus: 100% of royalties from 1st-year sales of the 2nd edition are donated to LGBTQ+ nonprofits working to create a more inclusive world!

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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 and Ally ship be fun. Or do you envision every inclusion or diversity training as a slog? An excuse to just argue blame and shame? Well, it doesn’t have to be so heavy handed. Learning to be empathetic and inclusive is not only not political, but good for business. And yes, it can be an encouraging and enriching experience. My guest today, Jeannie Gainsbourg is an educational trainer and consultant on LGBTQ plus inclusion and effective ally ship. She’s the founder of savvy ally action and wrote a wonderful book, the savvy ally, a guide for becoming a skilled LGBTQ plus advocate. Now in its second edition, Jeannie offers fun, accessible and encouraging workshops and videos on how to be an ally to the LGBTQ plus communities. Prior to starting her own company, she spent 15 years working for the out Alliance, the LGBTQ plus Center in Rochester, New York, and has received numerous awards and citations for her work. Her encouraging passionate and warm hearted approach will surely jumpstart even the most tentative ally. Today, Jeanne shares why As a cisgender woman who knew very little about the LGBTQ plus community, why she became a strong ally. We tackle how to get over the heaviness and blame of ally ship and focus on having conversations with an open heart. We discuss the deal with pronouns and why sharing your pronouns, even if they’re obvious, is a great ally action. Genie offers the best ways to gather pronouns from others without making it awkward. Jeanne responds to the common complaint. Sexual orientation is inappropriate to discuss at work, and why that thinking confuses the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior. We talk about what being out and authentic at work actually looks like. Finally, Jeanne shares a few concrete tips and policies for creating a more LGBTQ plus inclusive workplace. Such a great episode, take a listen. Quick offer for you. Listen up all your marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs, all of you trying to connect and engage with an audience to grow your impact and revenue. I’m all about strengthening empathy to achieve radical success. And this all started for me in my wheelhouse of marketing. See, I realized the key to attracting and engaging the right customers is all about understanding them seeing things from their point of view. Empathy is a marketers superpower if it’s wielded responsibly. So after running too successful real time cohorts, I now opening up my brandstory breakthrough course as an on demand offering. Take it when you want how you want for as long as you want five modules of videos and playbooks designed to help you articulate your goals. Understand your customers, define your different and land on your perfect brand story and marketing message. So you stand out and attract that perfect fit audience. Marketing is not about lying to people. It’s about empathy. are elevating the truth of your story. And in this on demand course, you’ll learn the exact steps that my past brand clients have gone through to craft a clear and compelling and consistent brand message that guides everything you do. You’ll walk away with a brand story strategy, ideal customer profiles, and even website and social media profile copy. Plus, with this on demand course you get access to weekly Friday office hours with me. Yep, ask questions, get feedback, share new memes, discover new insights to help your business shine. It’s insanely cost effective and extremely valuable to your business and goals. So check out the details@bit.ly slash VSP course, that’s bi T dot L y slash V S v course, or click the link in the show notes. See you on the other side. Well, welcome Jeanne Gaines burn to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so glad to have you here to talk about how we can be savvy allies in the workplace. Welcome.

Jeannie Gainsburg  06:05

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Maria Ross  06:08

So tell us a little bit. You know, we just heard your bio. But tell us a little bit about the story of how you actually came to this work. That’s always the most interesting nugget of how people get to the work and their calling that they do in the world.

Jeannie Gainsburg  06:22

Yeah, so I am a straight cisgender ally to the communities Meaning I’m not transgender, I’m not part of the LGBTQ plus communities, I grew up in a very straight cisgender world, always felt like LGBTQ plus inclusion was kind of a no brainer, but was never an ally was never active, didn’t even know there was a role for me to play as an ally. You know, back when I was a kid, I don’t even think I knew the word ally wasn’t being used the way it is today in social justice circles. And so I did a lot of nothing for a long time. And then at age 40, and 2003, several things came together at once that really launched me into what ended up being a career as an active ally. One was that I had young children who were in school, and I was not happy with what I was hearing. They were the especially the boys were teasing each other over at school, you know, saying some pretty derogatory things about gay kids. And I was like, Really, we’re still there. I don’t know, I somehow expected things were in better than when I was looking at marriage equality was newly in the media. And it was one of the first things that I was able to latch on to and think, oh, there’s something I can help with. Because in my ignorance, I really didn’t even know what there was to, to support. And then finally, my husband gave me a book about the women who had fought in the US for my my right as a woman to vote. And I was doing that thing that I do when I read history. I don’t know if you do this, Maria. But when I read history, I tend to think, you know, how would I have behaved if I live back then what I have salutely no known that this was right or wrong would have been involved. And I had course convinced myself that I would have been marching right alongside all those amazing women who fought for my right to vote. And it suddenly hit me how hypocritical I was being because I’m like, here, I am fantasizing about how I would have behaved 100 years ago, and I am not doing a thing about any of this right now in my lifetime. And there’s, you know, social justice fights going on in my lifetime. So it was something that really struck me that evening, it was still with me in the morning, I looked up the word gay in the phonebook, because I didn’t know what else was out there. And actually, ironically, our agency I’m coming to you from Rochester, New York, our LGBTQ plus agency at the time was called the Gay Alliance. So it was very easy to find. And I picked up the phone and asked if I could volunteer, and that ended up launching me into what ended up being a career as a as an ally, I worked for that agency for 15 years, two years as a volunteer 13 years as staff. My final five years there, I was the education director, which just put a wealth of information in my head about how to be a really effective ally. And, and then following that position. I wrote the book because it was information I wanted to get out into the world. Well,

Maria Ross  09:04

and I’m curious, because I, I relate to so much of what you’re saying. And sometimes I get paralyzed with. There’s so many groups I want to work with or double down on. And so is it. Is it the gay community? Is it women’s rights? Is it you know, racial equity, is it So what specifically made you land on, you know, opening your eyes to the hypocritical nature, which again, I completely relate to, and I see you on that. What made you double down on gay and lesbian and queer rights? An ally ship?

Jeannie Gainsburg  09:40

Yeah. So of course, the more I do this work, the more I realized these are all intertwined all of these intersectional identities. So I’m actually fighting for all of the things you just mentioned. And, you know, that was a slow realization for me, but you know, I’m really starting to understand that this is true, but I really think that I’ll be vulnerable here. I think it was a And parents, I really do. I think that what I was hearing from my kids was teasing about, you know, the boys being gay in a derogatory way. I wasn’t hearing negative racial comments coming from my kids. In fact, they seem pretty, pretty comfortable with racial difference. So, again, I think that was totally my, my ignorance. You know, since then I have educated myself a bit more on racial justice. And, you know, so, you know, and disability to wasn’t even on my radar, but disability rights, I mean, all those things, I think are blossoming now, as I’m involved in this work, but I really just think it was ignorance. That’s why I said, when I heard marriage equality in the news, I was like, oh, there’s something I can fight for. You know? Yeah. So yeah, I really think it was that that this population, it wasn’t anything personal. I didn’t have anyone in my family who’s part of the LGBTQ plus communities. So interest zapper an answer.

Maria Ross  10:54

I love that. No, I love it. I love the vulnerability of it, because that’s where, again, and I’m sure people listening too. Sometimes we get paralyzed. And like, I don’t know which battle to fight first. So I’m not going to do anything, right. Yes, it just feels so overwhelming. And I love that you took that feeling of like, I’m not doing anything, and you did something. And as you said, they’re all interrelated. When we’re fighting for rights for one marginalized community, we’re fighting for rights for everybody. Right? So I want to bring up something that I loved that I saw on your website, which is that you say, you offer a fun and encouraging approach to being an active ally to the LGBTQ plus communities. What does that mean? And why is that different than what you see out there?

Jeannie Gainsburg  11:41

Hmm, great question. So this isn’t 100% across the board, what I’m seeing, but I do sometimes see information for allies, which sounds like this, being an ally is a 24/7 job, you don’t get to take a break, here’s a list of things that you have to do in order for you to call yourself an ally. And I see these things. And I think, okay, being LGBTQ plus is not a choice being an ally is people can do absolutely nothing, who is going to sign up for a job that you can’t take a break, it’s 24/7. And you have to check off all these boxes, which by the way, I do this work full time, and I can’t check all those boxes, you know, it’s the daunting list. It is so intimidating. It’s so unforgiving of mistakes, it’s unforgiving of, you know, the ally who’s fairly active, and then all of a sudden, they’re suddenly they’re taking care of an aging parent, and they just don’t have the time that they had before. I’m like, this is not the way to get people on board. With ally ship. I really So my approach is very much well, I’ll see fun for a moment. But my approach is very much encouraging it, I let people know that being an ally is an ongoing journey of messing up. We need to get comfortable with that and understand that. And, you know, don’t let that fear of messing up or not maybe knowing the right word, stop you from having conversations and just know how to apologize and you know, have conversations with an open heart. And most of the folks I talk with who make up the participants in my workshops, for example, are these big hearted people who want to do the right thing. And they’re scared to death to open their mouth, they’re so afraid they’re going to make an error. And so, so I am very encouraging. And then the fun part. I just, you know, I wanted my book and my workshops to be just enjoyable. I didn’t want someone to, I didn’t want it to be like an academic slog that somebody had to read. I’m like, why not make this fun? Why not add humor where it’s appropriate? My book and my workshops are filled with fun pop quizzes, like what do gay people actually do in the bedroom? Choices are, you know, read books, change the sheets, you know, only back and under the bed, have sex all of the above, you know, just goofy things like that to make right giggle about the stereotypes and the myths and the misunderstandings about the community. I add fun facts like you can’t actually tell a lesbian biker shoes. For those who think, you know, you see someone wearing Birkenstocks. Obviously that’s a lesbian. I was the only woman who wore Birkenstocks in our center. So I love I love that, that I busting that myth. But I just think it should be fun. It should be, you know, again, as entertaining as possible. So people want to read the book, and they want to learn and I think that in that encouragement pieces is so critical.

Maria Ross  14:33

Thank you for saying that because you’re reminding me of a previous guest. We had Daniel John DJ, and he does work with sole focus group and his approach. E is African American, mixed, I believe. And his approach to the work of dei is similar in that he’s like we’re not going to have conversations with people if all we’re doing is judging and shaming them. Like yes, there are things that are wrong with the system. There. things that are wrong with people who hold certain beliefs, we want to change that. But the way to get people onside is to actually this idea of coming together. And unity should be uplifting, it should be encouraging, it should be fun. It shouldn’t be. Here’s all the things you did wrong till I beat you down to a pulp. And then now we’re going to rebuild. Now we’re going to reconstruct everything. So in fact, I love that there’s way more, there’s a lot more experts in ally ship that are out there talking about this. And I don’t say that as a white woman, who is just scared of conflict. I’m not. I’m also Italian American. So I’m not scared of conflict. But this i But this idea that it has to, like you said that it has to be so heavy handed. Because how are we going to reach people, if we don’t have empathy for where they are in the process and be able to get them on side? Because what is the goal? Right? It’s just like, parenting is the goal to punish your child or is the goal to help your child learn and grow? The goal is to help people learn and grow. And so we can do that in a fun and light way. Even when we’re talking about heavy things. I think that’s the other thing you mentioned, I think some people are scared to make light of it or use humor, because they feel it’s disrespectful, or they feel like they’re just exacerbating the problem. So kudos to you for trying to make it accessible to everyone. So given you know, we talk a lot on the show about all facets of empathy and dei be ally ship across all different marginalized groups is such a part of that because it’s about understanding somebody else’s lived experience. So you know, when you do hear comments from people that say, oh, dei is inappropriate to discuss at work, or sexual orientations, specifically, is inappropriate to discuss at work. What does? How should people respond to that? And what does being out and authentic at work look like? I think people have a different idea of what it means to be out at work and the behaviors that will ensue from that. So tell us a little bit about what you say to skeptics who say this doesn’t belong in the workplace?

Jeannie Gainsburg  17:15

Yeah, this is a very common question that I hear often, you know, there’s no sexual orientation, I don’t bring my sexual orientation to work, there’s no play, you know. So there’s a couple of things that I like to do. And I often encourage allies to listen for the confusion over between sexual orientation and sexual behaviors. So sexual orientation comes to work with us, folks, we can’t, we can’t leave it at home. I say it’s kind of like, you know, you’re asking someone to leave their sexual orientation home is kind of like saying, Can you leave the fact that you’re Jewish at home, because that really has nothing to do with work? You know, you can’t leave the fact that you’re Jewish at home, and you can’t leave the fact that you’re a lesbian, or a gay man or bisexual at home. It’s part of who you are, and it comes to work, what isn’t what doesn’t come to work, unless the caveat is, of course, if you’re a sex worker, that’s different, but in the corporate world, what doesn’t come to work is our sexual behaviors. And I think that confusion is what really, really again, it just it just confuses folks. And so what it looks like when you are authentic at work, or you’re bringing your sexual orientation to work, and you’re not hiding that is, you know, you’re able to put a picture of your family on your desk, or you’re able to bring your loved one to the company party, you know, the same way that straight people are doing these things, and probably not even thinking twice about it. And so one of the things that I like to share is that even though your orientation comes to work, and the fact that you’re Jewish comes to work, I’ll use both of these examples. You can’t keep them at home, all you can do is hide them if you feel unsafe with both of those things, right. And that leads to a really ugly situation at work, where people are not being able to be themselves and they’re, they’re having to think about, you know, maybe who they told and who they didn’t, or they’re literally lying there. You know, I like to give an example of like the lesbian at work, who basically switches the pronouns when she talks about her wife, you know, because she’s, she’s not sure if she’s, it’s safe, but work for her to share that she has a wife, she’s still a lesbian at workbooks. That hasn’t changed, right? She’s just having to cover she’s having to hide who she is. Right. And, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to that, whether it’s, I don’t feel safe to sharing that I’m Jewish, I don’t feel safe sharing that I have maybe a disability, right? That isn’t obvious to people. I’m going to hide that because I don’t feel like that’s going to be okay at work. I think a lot of people can relate to those things. And so orientation is the same and being authentic at work. You know, anyone who’s done any research into this knows that it’s actually good for business to be out and authentic at work like people are more likely to have jobs satisfied. Action, they’re more likely to make connections with coworkers, that retention is better. And it’s also been shown that companies that you know, welcome and include LGBTQ plus people, that they have higher company value, they’re more productive, they have higher profits, these things are all being shown. So this is also good for business and not just good for our LGBTQ plus co workers completely.

Maria Ross  20:23

And I did an interview, I’ll put the link in the show notes to another interview I did with Leo Caldwell, who’s an LGBTQ plus consultant and teacher and workshop leader. And he talked about the fact that we titled that episode, why transphobic laws are anti business, because it is this idea of if your employees and if we want to be really cold hearted about it, your assets are too preoccupied trying to and I use this in all aspects of empathy, trying to protect themselves and survive and save their own skin. And they’re worried about you. They’re watching their backs every second. Are they innovating for you? Are they performing for you? Are they are they creating? Are they coming up with with creative solutions that actually move your business forward and contribute to the bottom line? No, they’re preoccupied. And who wants preoccupied employees? Right. That’s not good for the business. Yeah. And so it just reminded me of that, when you were bringing up that point, that what we’re talking about here is people that have to watch every move, they have to watch what they say, they can’t be who they are, that is detracting from them doing the work you hired them to do. And so it’s not good for your business. Like, I don’t know why that’s not super clear to people. But, you know, we talked about so many other distractions, right, like, oh, you know, this person’s not gonna be able to do this job because they’re, you know, they have a new puppy and they can’t do it, we’re able to talk about all these other things. Oh, sense. Yeah, that makes sense, right. But, but when we talk about this, it’s just crazy to me. But anyway, what? Let’s, let’s get specific. Let’s talk about the issue of pronouns, because you get a lot of eye rolls when you talk to certain people about why pronouns are important. And why is sharing your pronouns, a great ally action, even if you’re cisgender? Yep. So there’s a couple things

Jeannie Gainsburg  22:29

I want to say first of all, pronouns, I know that pronouns are getting such a bad reputation, and I’m just so confused by it. So I just want to say that pronouns are not something that only transgender folks use Dragoman our hour without using a pronoun like pronouns are important for all of us, they’re as important as our names are, it’s just that most of us, many of us, I should say, you move through the world, and the correct pronoun is chosen for us. And so we don’t realize the impact of having the wrong pronoun used for us and how hurtful that is, and how difficult that is. It’s not pronouns have not been invented by transgender people. I also want to let you know that there are plenty of transgender people who move through the world and the correct pronoun is used for them. And there are also cisgender people who move through the world and the wrong pronoun is used for them. So this is not just, you know, over misgendering those transgender folks, yes, I think more often, it affects our transgender and non binary friends, but there are plenty of cisgender folks who have just because of their gender expression, maybe women who have very short hair or broad shoulders, they get misgendered I, I listened to a podcast called we can do hard things, and Abby Wambach was sharing that she gets misgendered constantly. She’s in the women’s restroom, and people are like, Oh, sir, I think you’re in the wrong room. And you know, he’s, he’s used for her. So this isn’t just something that affects our transgender friends. And I like to make sure people understand that, but it’s a great question. Like, why would someone share their pronouns if even if they’re obvious, so I’m someone who I moved to the world I’ve never once had someone use the wrong pronoun for me. And here I am on Zoom. I know folks probably can’t see this, but I have my name. And I have my pronouns right listed right after my Name, which I think is a great practice. I’m going to share a story to talk about how critical this is. So I had a person in my my one of my workshops recently, I’m gonna call them Arey their pronouns are they them and they started a new job. And they walked onto this job and there were no systems in place for this person to comfortably share their pronouns and by systems I mean, you know, when they applied for the job pronouns, were not an optional section for them to fill out when they went to the first meeting to meet the other the other staff members there was not when they did the go around, hey, let’s all say our name and our titles. No one said and if you feel comfortable share your pronouns. So there is no system to share your pronouns. So people looked at airy and based on their gender expression decided that their pronouns must be she her and they just immediately started using she her so Every candidate New Job was being misgendered wrong pronoun use didn’t know if they were safe to share that their pronouns were actually they them, and went for a couple of weeks like this not knowing what to do. And finally, what they did was they noticed that a few of their co workers had shared their pronouns in their email signatures. And airy went to these coworkers and basically shared their problem and said, This is what’s going on. And those co workers group together, started using their correct pronoun for Arey helped others get their pronoun correct. And started implementing systems in the workplace, to, you know, make it at just an optional thing for anyone who wants to share. So now, this system is in place for people to do that. So others coming in now? No, it’s safe to do that. Now, the reason I like sharing the story, I mean, several reasons. It’s a very cool story. But anyone who thinks like, oh, I don’t want to share my pronouns, people think I’m just doing it because it’s woke, you know, I’m gonna get teased for being you know, ultra woke like this. This is actually not like, like virtue signaling. I mean, this is Ally signaling, it’s a great way to let people know that you are on board with, you know, anyone under the sun, regardless of their gender expression, or their pronouns, or anything like that. So I think it’s a lovely thing to do. The only other thing I’ll share about why I share my pronouns is it’s a great way to normalize the behavior. So if you think about, like, how awkward a world it would be if the only people, for example, walking around at a conference with pronouns on their shirts, were the ones whose pronouns weren’t the hobbyists, I mean, talk about othering, right? Like, Oh, those are those weirdos over there with pronouns on their shirt. Like, every time an ally, puts a pronoun on their shirt, you know, whether their pronouns are obvious or not, they are helping to create this culture, where this becomes the norm. And it makes it so much easier for those other people to share their pronouns because they have to, for people to get it, right. I

Maria Ross  26:54

love that, because it’s like you said, it’s a signal that it’s okay. And still, if a transgender individual chooses not to share their pronouns, that’s okay, too. But it always be optional. It’s this idea of saying, I understand, and I see you and I’m not a threat. And it’s making me think of a story a friend told me about the fact that they were one of the only houses in their neighborhood several years ago that had a Black Lives Matter sign in their window, and they were like, Oh, it doesn’t matter. That’s just such a surface thing. It’s like, you know, whatever. And they had a black tradesmen come to the house to do some work, who actually said, thank you for putting the sign up, because at least I knew I would be safe here. Yeah. And she said, literally, it’s the least I can do, like, stick a sign on that window. But I’m glad it’s appreciated. Because, you know, so this is sort of the least we can do.

Jeannie Gainsburg  27:49

Yeah, it’s a great ally accent it. The other thing I want to say just because there’s so much confusion around pronouns is when we ask people, and it should always be optional. So when we give people the opportunity to share pronouns, we are not asking anyone, how they identify people, I think confused this, we are not saying Are you trans? Are you lesbian? All we’re saying is how may I respectfully refer to you it’s much more similar to asking for someone’s title. You know, you look at me, you have no idea whether I’m a Mrs or a miss, or a ms or a mix, which is a gender neutral title, or a doctor or even a Mr. For that matter, unless you ask me, right? And so pronouns are the same. And if we think about it, like just respectfully asking people what their title is, I think people will, it’ll help people understand what it is that we’re asking, well,

Maria Ross  28:37

on many forms, there’s a suffix required, where I have to put Mrs. or Ms. Or I have to put something right. So why not have that be an actually you’re you’re sparking me because I have been meaning to add pronoun to my guest form from my website. So I need to do that. Usually, usually it comes through in their bio, but I need to actually ask them that. Yo, thank you for talking us through that. Because I think that’s a really confusing point for people, even if they want to be an ally, they’re like, but I don’t understand like someone should just if they want to tell me their evey or this or that they can just tell me but they don’t know. And it’s a great signal to just say that I do want to bring up one last thing before we leave the topic of pronouns that I’ve noticed. I’m a Jeopardy junkie, I DVR it and watch it over lunch hour and binge it when I’ve been on vacation. I’m a dork. They have had several contestants, where they have been I have noticed they have referred to them as they. The host has referred to them as they and I thought that is amazing that we have one of the oldest game shows on TV, a very, you know, conservative, if you will kind of game show and even they are honoring people by calling them the pronoun they prefer to be called. And so I noticed that for a few people, obviously for their transgender contestants, they were calling them the appropriate pronoun that that person wanted But there were a few people that didn’t, quote unquote, seem transgender, and may not have been, but they preferred to be referred to as they. So I was I was loving it that they wounds are changed.

Jeannie Gainsburg  30:11

And I share my cool thing that I did was silly. I was watching the movie Juno, Elliott page, and I noticed that when you watch on Amazon Prime, and you pause it, it’s got the like trivia, you know, like information about the movie, they went back and changed all of the, all of the places where it talked about Elliott and his pronouns to the current Elliott, and he didn’t know at the time that he had made the movie, he was not using that name, or those pronouns. I thought that was incredibly classy. Yeah, so they couldn’t change, you know, in like the credits that’s embedded in a movie, they can’t change that. But to go back and change all of the name and pronoun to reflect his current name and pronouns, like, that’s amazing. That’s it. I love that. Okay,

Maria Ross  30:55

so I know we’ve sort of beat pronouns to death here. But let’s talk a little bit about let’s get into the meat of it and talk a little bit about your favorite ally tips for creating more LGBTQ plus inclusive workplaces, what are things, leaders, and even just colleagues, individual contributors can actually do that, or low hanging fruit to help someone feel welcome and included?

Jeannie Gainsburg  31:17

Wonderful. So I’ll share, I’ll share two of my favorite tips. And I’m going to share them because I think as we move through the world, we should be using them both sort of in a circle. And I’ll tell you what I mean by that. So the first thing we should do is if we don’t know anything about someone, we should engender our language and our expectations. So, you know, I give the example of, you know, oh, you have a new coworker, and you see, she’s wearing a wedding ring, and you’re like, Oh, that’s a gorgeous ring, what is your husband do, which is like a really common thing that occurs, people make assumptions about, you know, who’s someone’s loved one is, so I have a husband, that’s not going to cause me any anxiety. But if I have a wife, you have boxed me into a corner, literally, like you’re forcing me into a situation where I have to come out or not make a decision, or was it come out or not. And that’s awful that we do that to LGBTQ plus people, I always say anyone who thinks that coming out, it’s like this fabulous day with music playing and glitter flying, which it totally should be. It’s not, it’s like an ongoing process, partly because of our gender to, you know, some ocean. So let’s not make those assumptions, let’s use on gender terms, let’s use spouse, that’s his partner, let’s use children, all of these things. And then the next your next tip is that we should mirror the terms that people are using for themselves in their loved ones. So if we then hear someone, say, my wife, now with this person has given us valuable information about how to be respectful to them, and we should use the term wife. So I know a lot of people when it comes to LGBTQ plus, folks, they latch on to that word partner, and they’re like, I gotta use partner, but they hold on so tight that that becomes offensive, right? So I know, like lesbian couples who are like, I keep introducing my wife. And they keep saying this is Ann’s partner and like, I didn’t introduce my partner introducing my whip. So as we move through the world, we’re on gendering if we have no idea, and then we’re listening to how people refer to themselves and their loved ones. And we’re using those words. So words like husband and girlfriend are not naughty words that we should never use, right? They’re words that are perfectly good words if they apply to people. And so that’s, that’s just those two things. And gender language mirror terms are just we should just be using that as we move through the world constantly to have respectful and inclusive conversations. And believe me, LGBTQ plus folks are listening for that they’re listening for the partner instead of the wife or the husband. Yeah,

Maria Ross  33:45

right. What what are some things in terms of policy or education that workplaces can be doing to make things more inclusive? So those are quick hit individuals that’s up to you as you as you navigate those relationships. But what can actually be done? What are one or two highlights? I’m sure there’s many What are one or two highlights that that leaders can incorporate into their processes and systems? Well, we

Jeannie Gainsburg  34:10

talked about pronouns and I don’t want to beat it to death, but I think it is, it is a really easy thing for a leader to do, which is to share their own pronouns and to create systems where everyone has the opportunity to share if they want to, and that’s the language that I use, and you have the opportunity to share if you want to, it should always be optional, but that is again with your low hanging fruit for a leader that’s something that’s pretty easy to implement. And so that that’s a good one um, engendered facilities are so important, you know, making sure that you have restrooms for example, that are single stall and unrendered. So if you have restrooms now that are single stall and gendered, there’s really no reason for them to be so in a very easy fix is to just change that sign to all gender and avoid if you would avoid the half and half person because no one actually looks like that. and really dislike that just all gender, or restroom, or a toilet image, like all those things are great. But yeah, avoid the half and half. And listen, that’s bad. And to tell you,

Maria Ross  35:12

I have to tell you, there’s such a funny sign. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a few places now, at restaurants that have all inclusive restrooms, and it’s a picture, it’s that you know, the stick figure of the male, the stick figure, the female, they do have the stick figure of the half skirt, whatever. And then they have the stick figure of for disability, and the stick figure for pregnant person. And then they have an alien. And the design just says, whatever, just wash your hands.

Jeannie Gainsburg  35:39

I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. And I giggled hard that I I’m snapping pictures, and I’m sending it to people. I actually talked about that in my book. So this is

Maria Ross  35:50

your point about let’s have fun with it. Let’s be a little bit light hearted if we can, right. Yeah,

Jeannie Gainsburg  35:55

yeah. So I talked about the different like options for for signs. Yeah, so all gender restrooms, and I think that when you get to renovating buildings, that’s when we really need to look at like, what ideally should this look like. So that’s, that’s more long term. But that’s how that’s helpful for and respectful, not just for, like our non binary friends or our trans friends who are transitioning, but like people who have disabilities, people who need a little more room, people who need a caregiver to come into the restroom with them, people who have small children, I mean, you know, there’s so many people that are helped by having a single stall all gender restroom. So that that’s, again, something to look at. One more policy thing that I would just say is that a lot of people have, you know, when they look at their non discrimination policies, there’s actually three things they should have there. Not everyone is aware of this sexual orientation, most people have that, as in we do not discriminate, you know, with regards to sexual orientation, gender identity, is the other one. And the third one is gender expression. So the gender expression protects everyone really from someone saying, Oh, you need to dress a little more feminine in the workplace. So that’s that, you know, that’s an important piece as well. But those three are important to make sure that you have those included in your non discrimination policies. Not so good. So good. Well,

Maria Ross  37:18

thank you so much for your time and your insights today, Jeanne, we really appreciate it. We hope everyone will check out the book, the savvy ally, a guide for becoming a skilled LGBTQ plus advocate now in its second edition, and I do want to mention that you’re doing something really exciting with the second edition, you’re donating 100% of royalties from the first year of sales for the second edition to LGBTQ plus nonprofits working to create a more inclusive world. So thank you for that. So, folks, not only can you glean all these great insights from the book, but you can do a little good in the world as well. So please, go ahead and purchase a copy of the book for yourself and or one of your colleagues. Jeanne, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes, but where for folks on the go or exercising or whatever, where’s a good place that they can find out more about you and your work? Yeah,

Jeannie Gainsburg  38:10

the best place is my website, which is savvy ally action.com. There, you can purchase my book, you can message me directly. If you have questions. I love getting questions from the community, it actually helps me become a savvier ally. You can see the workshops that I offer. I’ve also got a lot of free goodies on there, some free handouts and free videos and things like that.

Maria Ross  38:29

Awesome. Awesome. And like I said, we’ll have all your links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today.

Jeannie Gainsburg  38:34

Thank you. This was fun. I appreciate being on your show. And thank

Maria Ross  38:37

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 colleague. And until next time, please remember that kashflow creativity and compassion and inclusivity are not mutually exclusive. Take care of the kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Leaders, listen up: Have you ever heard the improv maxim, “Yes, and….?”

In my work researching, writing, and speaking to audiences about the power of empathy, a magnet has pulled me to one notion that gets in the way in almost every dysfunctional workplace or societal conversation.

Let me explain…

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Our brains both defend us and hold us back due to cognitive dissonance. We want only one thing to be true because it is more simple, but simplicity is not always the answer. 
• Either/or thinking is broken and got us, as a society, into our current mess. 
• Dialectics is understanding we can hold two, seemingly contradictory things, to be true at the same time. It is a concept that will strengthen our businesses and our lives outside of work. 

 

“In our world and workplaces today, it no longer serves us to focus on either/or thinking. We must embrace BOTH/AND.” —  Maria Ross

 

Episode References: 

• Improv’s famous “Yes, and…”
• Discover more about the power of empathy and how to apply it to make a difference in your work and life at your organization or event!
• Psychology Today, Cognitive Dissonance: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/cognitive-dissonance 
• Seeing things differently: Red Slice blog, Representation Matters: https://www.red-slice.com/representation-matters/ 
• Red Slice blog, What Leadership Success Requires in Today’s World: https://www.red-slice.com/what-leadership-success-requires-in-todays-world/ 
• Behavioral Psych Studio, What the heck is a dialectic? https://behavioralpsychstudio.com/what-the-heck-is-a-dialectic/ 

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

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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. Quick offer for you. Listen up all your marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs, all of you trying to connect and engage with an audience to grow your impact and revenue. I’m all about strengthening empathy to achieve radical success. And this all started for me in my wheelhouse of marketing. See, I realized the key to attracting and engaging the right customers is all about understanding them seeing things from their point of view, empathy is a marketers superpower if it’s wielded responsibly. So after running two successful real time cohorts, I now opening up my brand story breakthrough course as an on demand offering. Take it when you want how you want for as long as you want five modules of videos and playbooks designed to help you articulate your goals. Understand your customers, define your different and land on your perfect brand story and marketing message. So you stand out and attract that perfect fit audience. Marketing is not about lying to people. It’s about empathy, elevating the truth of your story. And in this on demand course, you’ll learn the exact steps that my past brand clients have gone through to craft a clear and compelling and consistent brand message that guides everything you do. You’ll walk away with a brand story strategy, ideal customer profiles, and even website and social media profile copy. Plus, with this on demand course you get access to weekly Friday office hours with me. Yep, ask questions, get feedback, share new memes, discover new insights to help your business shine. It’s insanely cost effective and extremely valuable to your business and goals. So check out the details@bit.ly slash BSB course. That’s bi T dot L y slash V sb course, or click the link in the show notes. See you on the other side.

Leaders listen up. Have you ever heard the improv Maxim? Yes. And? Well in my research, writing and speaking to audiences about the power of empathy, a magnet has pulled me to one notion that gets in the way of almost every dysfunctional workplace or societal conversation. Let me explain. Our brains seem to defend us yet often hold us back due to cognitive dissonance. I’ll link to an article in Psychology Today. But from that article, here’s the description. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are averse to inconsistencies within their own minds. It offers one explanation for why people sometimes make an effort to adjust their thinking when their own thoughts, words or behaviors seem to clash with each other. But simply, it is less distressing to us to hold one single view in our thinking. We want this one thing to be true or this one other thing, but we refuse to believe they can possibly be both. We crave simplicity. But as we know, life is not always that simple. Others see things differently based on their own experiences, worldviews, philosophies and personalities. contradictions have bound, so call it either or thinking or binary thinking but any way you slice it. This approach can lead to division, stress, mental health crises, families being ripped apart the destruction of our planet, not to mention how it stifles creativity, innovation and collaboration at work. The either or approach to leadership and relationships is broken. It got us into our current mess. It’s not working for us, as leadership paradigm shift in the new era of work and as society demands more collaboration for its own survival, we are called to embrace what are called dialectics. And again, I will link to a great article in the show notes. But from that article, dialectics is a worldview that stresses that reality is made up of polarities. Two things, regardless of whether they are holy opposites can exist at the same time, simply dialectics is understanding that we can hold two seemingly contradictory things to be true at the same time, we’re very smart that way. So we can be empathetic and high performing. We can be compassionate and competitive, we can be kind and ambitious. We can be empathetic leaders and still make tough business decisions. We can care about our people and still hold our personal boundaries. We can be stewards of the environment and still reap financial rewards. We can turn to alternative energy and rescale our people, we can marry purpose with profit, and we can deliver great results and do right by our teams. And when we extrapolate this concept out to our lives outside of work, we can disagree and love each other, or at least respect each other. We can care deeply and have to let go. We can care about the collective and also prosper individually. We can enjoy nice things and still be good to the environment. We can be gentle, but still get our point across. We can guide behavior without abuse or shame. And we can both be right. Now the question is, how will we move forward? In our world and workplaces today? It no longer serves us to focus on either or thinking we must embrace both and think about all the innovations your organization is missing out on because your leaders are clinging to command and control leadership, never leaving the door open to new perspectives, insights, information or possibilities. We have the capacity to hold two things to be true at the same time. It just may take practice for your organization for our world. It’s time we embrace the power of both and abundant, inclusive both and thinking will get us out of our current dysfunction. Are you ready though? Are you ready to see what’s possible? I truly hope you are. Thank you so much for listening to this special hot take episode for January 2024 of the empathy edge podcast. If you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or a colleague. And don’t forget to rate and review. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Both and take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

“You’re so needy” – We say that like it’s an insult sometimes, but yes, yes you are needy. Because you’re human! And until we can learn to identify our needs, find the words to articulate them, and adjust our schedules and interactions on any given day to accommodate them, we are doomed to burn out and be more unproductive than we ever thought possible.

My guest today is Mara Glatzel, author of Needy: How to Advocate For Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty. 

Today we discuss how high-achievers can identify and honor our own needs and how it helps us show up in the workplace as more empathetic leaders and better able to respond and perform iin healthy, creative ways. And how you can identify, center, and advocate for your needs in a world or workplace that is not aligned with your values Mara shares one way to be kind and generous to ourselves every day and talks about moving your relationship with yourself from a place of self-abandonment to self-partnership. Finally, we tackle how to balance your needs while avoiding selfishness – which is kind of a trick question, as you’ll learn!

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Many people do not have a vocabulary for their needs – this is starting to shift, but it is still a work in progress. 
• We lead by example – we need to take care of ourselves to show our staff that it is okay to take care of themselves as well. Everyone will benefit as more people take care of themselves.
• There is a multitude of directions our needs can take at any given time. With a little creativity, needs that feel out of reach, can be met within our current life restrictions.
• When we start our day, we should check in with ourselves first, not check our calendar and decide who we are going to be based on those expectations. 

 

“You are the vessel for everything you do. All of your work comes through you. If you’re not in good working order, that automatically impacts the work that you’re doing.” —  Mara Glatzel

 

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

About Mara Glatzel, Writer, Teacher + Podcast Host

Mara Glatzel, MSW (she/her) is an author, intuitive coach, and podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy rhythms. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Find out more at MaraGlatzel.com.

Connect with Mara Glatzel:

Website: https://www.maraglatzel.com/ 

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

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

Book: Needy: How to Advocate For Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty https://www.maraglatzel.com/book/ 

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

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Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cashflow, 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. You’re so needy. We say that like it’s an insult sometimes. But yes, yes, you are needy. I’m needy, because we’re human. And until we can learn to identify our needs, find the words to articulate them, and adjust our schedules and interactions on any given day. To accommodate them, we are doomed to burn out and be more unproductive than we ever thought possible. My guest today is Maura glatzel, author of MIDI, how to advocate for your needs and claim your sovereignty. She’s an author, intuitive coach, and podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs, and honoring their natural energy rhythms. Today we discuss how high achievers can identify and honor our own needs, and how it helps us show up in the workplace as more empathetic leaders and better able to respond and perform in healthy creative ways. And how you can identify center and advocate for your needs. In a world or workplace that is not aligned with your values. Mara shares one way to be kind and generous to ourselves every day, and talks about moving your relationship with yourself from a place of self abandonment to self partnership. Finally, we tackle how to balance your needs while avoiding selfishness. Which is kind of a trick question. As you’ll learn. This was such a great episode full of useful insights for your work and life. Take a listen. Quick offer for you. Listen up all your marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs, all of you trying to connect and engage with an audience to grow your impact in revenue. I’m all about strengthening empathy to achieve radical success. And this all started for me in my wheelhouse of marketing. See, I realized the key to attracting and engaging the right customers is all about understanding them seeing things from their point of view. Empathy is a marketers superpower if it’s wielded responsibly. So after running two successful real time cohorts, I now opening up my brand story breakthrough course as an on demand offering. Take it when you want how you want for as long as you want five modules of videos and playbooks designed to help you articulate your goals. Understand your customers define your different and land on your perfect brand story and marketing message. So you stand out and attract that perfect fit audience. Marketing is not about lying to people. It’s about empathy, elevating the truth of your story. And in this on demand course you’ll learn the exact steps that my past brand clients have gone through to craft a clear and compelling and consistent brand message that guides everything you do. You’ll walk away with a brand story strategy, ideal customer profiles, and even website and social media profile copy. Plus, with this on demand course you get access to weekly Friday office hours with me. Yep, ask questions, get feedback, share new memes discover new insights to help your business shine. It’s insanely cost effective and extremely valuable to your business and goals. So check out the details@bit.ly slash BSB course that’s bi T dot L y slash V S v course or Click the link in the show notes. See you on the other side. Hello, Mara, welcome to the empathy edge podcast. I am excited to have this talk to you about why it’s essential to be needy. If you want to be a strong high performer, welcome to the show. Thanks

Mara Glatzel  05:18

for having me. I love this topic. So I’m excited to dive in, clearly,

Maria Ross  05:22

and you know, just want to remind people again, the book that you wrote, that brought us together is called MIDI, how to advocate for your needs and claim your sovereignty. Now, we talked just before we started recording that a lot of my listeners are high performers, high achievers, many in the C suite, many aspiring to be in the C suite. So they might be a little uncomfortable with this squishy word of being needy. Right. So before we dive into that, tell us a little bit about your story and how you even got to this work. Who were the kinds of people you work with? Yeah.

Mara Glatzel  05:54

So the background piece to this is that I am one of these high performing people. And I was in my social work programs about 12 years ago and about to graduate and just really burning out significantly for the first time in my life and realizing I’m not able to continue doing things the way that I had which is putting all my needs on the backburner and performing at all costs. And I was an expert in what was expected of me and in an absolute novice in pretty much everything else like about what I wanted what I needed. And so this work is born out of that, over the course of the last 12 years, I have been working for myself and a private coaching practice, I do run your long programs and retreats and work with perfectionist, ambitious, human, I

Maria Ross  06:51

am a second year high

Mara Glatzel  06:52

performers, people who are really socialized into believing this is the track to success. And I mean success, not just in a professional capacity, but also in a relational capacity. You know, I find that, that my clients really struggle in both of these areas. And it’s like, can I bring my full self here? Or does bringing my full self here in danger, everything that I’ve built, which I think is such a big fear. And my work now really delves into needs, what we need, how to ask for it, I would say the word needy is complicated for many of us, and yet is something that we can and should reclaim in order to find that sweet spot between showing up in the world the way that we want to and also bringing our body along for the ride with us.

Maria Ross  07:43

Well, and I think it’s far easier for people to talk about needs than this concept of being needy because there’s a stigma around neediness, you’re clingy, you’re whiny, you’re not able to help yourself. That’s that’s the perception, the narrative that people have around the word needy. So how can we identify and honor our own needs? How does that? How does that help us show up in the workplace as strong leaders or strong performers? What are some ways that we can even start to go? Well, I don’t know what I need. How can we start identifying? Yeah, I

Mara Glatzel  08:20

think that many of us who are high performers are accustomed to looking outside of ourselves for those kinds of answers. And so we might listen to a lot of podcasts or read a lot of books, and I love I love books, I love podcasts. But when it comes to figuring out what you need, and how to ask for it. The first step is really to turn towards yourself and to build a relationship with yourself. Many of us are accustomed to performance and productivity, at the cost of being in relationship with ourselves. And we sort of falsely assume well, I’m with myself every day all day. But that’s a quantity over quality relationship. And the answers that we’re looking for when it comes to our needs come from inside of us and not from outside of us. And so I always recommend that people begin with starting the conversation. The great thing about needs is that many of us, for many of us, this is a transferable skill, we are acquainted with and accustomed to understanding other people’s needs, right? Because there are people sitting with us in a room around the table, we need to know where they are or how they are in order to adjust ourselves or proceed forward. And so it’s taking some of those skills and turning them on ourselves. asking ourselves genuinely, how are you doing right now? What do you need, right? Oh, by and large, we don’t have a vocabulary for needs. I think that this has started shifting over the last five years, which is fantastic. But that’s one of the main reasons that I wrote. MIDI is to give us more words for how to talk about what we need. And even what we’re allowed to need, because 10 years ago, if somebody asked me, Well, what do you need? I would have been stymied by that question. I would have thought, well, what’s on the table? What are we even taught on my art? What

Maria Ross  10:13

am I a lot of buffet? Yeah, what

Mara Glatzel  10:15

am I allowed to need? Because how I had been socialized was to see that in a really, really narrow scope, like, maybe I need some water, maybe I need some rest, maybe I actually think those things are optional. But certainly not asking for more than that. And so the conversation about needs really begins with being in relationship with yourself in these small ways. What do I need to eat? What do I want to eat for breakfast? I need to feel like I can contribute to the world in a way that’s meaningful, and also be the human that I am, you know, we have this all or nothing approach baked in. And we think, Well, you know, I have so many clients who say, Oh, well, this must work for you, because you work for yourself. But I work a nine to five job and so I can’t have needs there. And what I hear is that it is more difficult to have needs in the places where it feels as though in order to meet our need for safety, we can’t have any other needs. So when that comes to a professional capacity to keep a roof over my head, to keep earning this paycheck, I can’t have needs. And in between that all or nothing, all needs are no needs. There’s so much nuance in so much gray zone. And that really begins with turning towards yourself and getting curious about what you need, even before you might be able to figure out how to get those needs

Maria Ross  11:39

met? Well, and I think part of it is also the first step is actually admitting to yourself that you have the need. I know it took me decades before I could admit, yeah, what gives me job satisfaction is validation, and recognition. I used to bury that, because in my mind, that was too needy. That was too that I felt like that came from a place of insecurity. And it wasn’t that it was from a place of just that’s what lights me up that I, when I get that validation or their recognition, I know that I’m making a difference, which is a very different way to look at that. But I think sometimes we think our needs are not worthy, or we or we judge our own needs, and we don’t admit them even to ourselves. We’re like, I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine, right? I don’t I don’t need that other people might need that, but I don’t need that. And then we you know, burnout, we get resentful, we get cranky. All all of the things. So how can people How can high performing leaders, you know, if you’re talking to a CEO of a global company, who might say I don’t need anything right now I’ve got it i It’s handled? How could they start getting curious about what might they need to be an even better version of themselves?

Mara Glatzel  12:55

Yeah, so I like to think about it in the way that you are the vessel for everything that you do. You, you know, all of your work comes through you. And so if you’re not in good working order, that automatically impacts the work that you’re doing the people who are below you in the organization, in a multitude of ways. And this is an absolute importance. No, we may have been socialized to work, kind of at all costs at any cost and perform and put that at the top of the hierarchy when it comes to success. But in doing that, we are inherently creating an unsustainable and unstable ecosystem. Because if we’re at the top, and everything comes through us, and we are operating in this way that doesn’t have any space for our humanity, then we are setting ourselves up for burnout, for burning out our staff, we’re leading by example. And we’re showing them this is the one right way to get things done. This is the only acceptable way to show up here. And yet, we’re wondering why we have this staff turnover or why we have these mental health crises amongst our employees. And this isn’t to say that, you know, we completely reject the the way that our organization has been operating. But it’s not an enormous shift to bring in a sense that my energy is not stable 24/7 365 days a year, as a human being there are going to be fluctuations as it relates to my productivity, my capacity, my output. And the same is true for everybody. That works for me. So even just acknowledging that even just making space for that, or I’m moving a little bit more slowly today, or there are seasons during the year that I’m not as available, emotionally, intellectually and how to And we make that work for us, instead of seeing it as this huge liability, that idea that what is right and good is to be high vibration all of the time is harming us. And mentally, it really is okay to admit that that’s not true, because it’s not right. And human. Yeah, absolutely. And the more that we can bring in, especially when we’re at the top of a hierarchy in an organization, the more permission that we give the people who are working with and for us to do the same. And that impacts the health of the entire organization, which is good business. Exactly.

Maria Ross  15:40

That’s the point of all of this is, if you say you’re a high performer, and a high achiever, then you should care about this stuff. This isn’t just fluffy, woowoo, I don’t have time for this. This is the stuff this is the work that optimizes performance for people. And I hate to just bring it back to performance. But if that’s what a leader needs to hear, to make it get through the that this is worth spending time on, then that’s the language we need to talk, that’s where I try to get the empathetic towards the leaders in my audience and in my community is, if that’s how you need to hear about this great if that, if that’s what gets you to drink, you know, lead the horse to water, then fine, because you’re going to see the benefits of it when you start to pay attention to this. And as you were talking, it made me think about just how we even start to learn to listen to our bodies, right? In terms of working out, let’s say, you know, I know, when I work out, there’s days, I can go really hard. And then there’s days I go, you know, it’s just not that day, right? And I need to go easy today, or I need to like this morning, not work out today. I’ve got too much on my plate today. It’s going to be too, too much. And this is what I know, I kind of frame it in terms of like, what do I need today. And it took a long time, you know, I’m 50. Now it took a long time to get to that point where it was okay to ask myself what I need in order to perform at my highest potential for that day. And so I just want to encourage leaders to get into the practice every morning, of not only getting into their body of like, How does my body feel today? But how’s my soul today? How’s my brain? Am I Am I sluggish and slow? am I sad? Am I fired up? Like do that check in with yourself. So then you can say okay, so what do I need today? To make sure that I can still perform? And now how do you relate the physical and the the mental, the spiritual in terms of needs? Do you find that some folks are more amenable to opening the conversation about needs when they’re talking about their physical body? How does that play out in your work? Absolutely.

Mara Glatzel  17:57

And that is what we know, to talk about when we talk about needs. And that’s okay, because actually a lot of things kind of click into place if our physical bodies are in good working order. And so I recommend starting with whatever feels closest to you. Because the reality is in order to have the capacity to even be in conversation with ourselves, our physical needs, which stabilize our energy are prerequisites. Right? So are you drinking enough water? Are you maintaining stable blood sugar? Are you eating throughout the day? Are you eating breakfast? I’m a huge breakfast permanent? are you how are you sleeping? How are you moving your body? How are your work life boundaries, which I know is a hot topic. But by that I really mean are there spaces in your life where you are able where you allow yourself to disconnect and unplug even if it’s a small period of time. And so starting with our physical bodies, I think is close for many of us, and also freaky for many of us. Because toxic productivity culture and diet culture are really interwoven here. And so many of us have received a lot of mixed messages about what it means to listen to our bodies. And we may have been taught that our bodies are not to be listened to our hungers are not to be listened to. And so this is really being in relationship with yourself is a little bit counterculture in this way. But we also talk about self care all the time. And we have these listicles of this is what self care looks like. And from my perspective, self care. True Self Care is responsive and not prescriptive. And what that means is essentially what you’re saying, turning towards yourself and asking, What do I need today and doing that thing, instead of having this framework in our minds that we’re completely inflexible about You know, I have to have my perfect morning routine. And I have to do this and do this and do this and do this. Think of that instead is a menu of options that are available to you. But the most powerful and supportive self care is occurs when we turn towards ourselves and ask, you know, what do I need right now? And can I give myself that thing? Or can I give myself? What are the different options that are available for meeting that need today? Because, you know, I might need a sense of adventure that a trip to the Azores seems to be the only answer for but actually, you know, I could walk my dog on a different path today and find myself somewhere unknown to me that there is this spectrum for all of the needs that we have. And so when we experience a need, and many times we’re hyper focused on that one doorway, we want that need to walk through and we think or person, right, we have needs, and we think these can only be met through this one person. We forget that our needs are our responsibility. They, you know, live and end through us, even if we’re asking other we’re advocating for those needs in our relationships, we’re asking for other people to support us in meeting that need, that the more creative and open minded that we can be around, okay, well, how might it be possible to meet this need, who might be available? Maybe there are, there’s a multitude of directions that I could take this in, gives us that freedom and that autonomy, but ultimately, that self responsibility for our needs.

Maria Ross  21:41

Such good stuff, I mean, so much in there. I’d like to just ask a quick question, because you have talked about the steps to growing your relationship with yourself, from self abandonment to self partnership. Can you explain what that means? And how are there people out there who don’t even know that their relationship with themselves is coming from a place of self abandonment? And if so, how can they tell you no.

Mara Glatzel  22:12

Love laughing because I think most of us actually are in a relationship with ourselves that is riddled with self abandonment. And by that, I mean, we do not take ourselves into consideration. So a small example of this might be, I used to look at my account, wake up, look at my calendar for the day, look at my to do list and decide who and how I was, in order to fit my calendar. In order to fit my to do list. I was like, Well, this is who I have to be today. So it doesn’t matter how I actually am, I’m not even going to ask because I don’t care. I only care about being the person who has to show up to do X, Y, and Z thing. And then at the end of the day, those things didn’t happen as planned. I’m beating myself up, I’m feeling this sense of what’s wrong with me. And I’m not acknowledging that I set myself up by zooming or right past, talking to myself this morning, and write to Okay, well, this is the day, so make it work. And that in and of itself is an example of self abandonment that many of us operate in or, you know, we see our relationships and we think, Well, this is a relationship that I want to maintain. And this is who I need to be, in order to ensure that this relationship keeps going the way that I want it to be going doesn’t matter how I’m actually doing because belonging, the need for belonging is so close to the need for safety that we force ourselves into a direction without taking the time to genuinely acknowledge that we may be having feelings, we may be having a human experience, we may have needs that are incompatible with the relationship, which doesn’t mean the relationship is doomed. But it does mean that there are things for us to contend with. So for example, now, instead of looking at my to do list and that my schedule for the day, I take that look, I have little kids, so they are in my room in 2.2 seconds. So I take those 2.2 seconds to check in with myself and just see how am I doing today? How am I waking up? Am I more tired than usual? Do I feel dehydrated? Is my body sore? Am I anxious this morning? And that’s all information for me. It doesn’t mean that it necessarily changes the things on my schedule, but it does tell me okay, you know, I am going to need to close my laptop at five o’clock after everything’s done and really take a break. Or I’m going to need to plan on a certain kind of dinner or I’m going to need to plan on takeout because this day is really busy and I don’t want to think about dinner or I’m going to make sure that I have more water today, or I’m going to schedule a call with my therapist for next week. So I’m noticing how I’m feeling this morning, being responsive to yourself and thinking about how can I make it by which I mean, my life today as I anticipate it to go down, work in a way that is as sustainable and as kind to myself as possible? And

Maria Ross  25:24

is that what you mean by self partnership? Because you’re almost you’re almost coaching yourself at that point? Yeah,

Mara Glatzel  25:30

you’re just like, hey, hey, self, we are

Maria Ross  25:32

in this together this together totally Yeah,

Mara Glatzel  25:35

you know, if I want to be at this interview, and I want to bring the best version of myself possible, I’m going to make sure that I’ve eaten, I’m going to make sure that I drink some water, I’m going to make sure that I you know, I took a shower, because I was feeling a little just like fuzzy and I wanted to get more focused, those are the things that I needed in order to do what I wanted to do, which is to show up here with as much of myself as possible. So self partnership is really about working with yourself to achieve those goals that you have set,

Maria Ross  26:07

right. And what I want to point out here for my high achieving listeners, who are saying, you know, you’re again, you’re the CEO of a company, I wish I had that luxury, I have to worry about all these people and the numbers on the board and the meetings that I have, you can take those few minutes every morning, to check in with yourself, there is no excuse. You can do that, wherever you are. But the it’s, I think it’s the act of doing it, that so many high achievers make the excuse that they don’t have time for it. And yet, like you’re saying, your day is going to be, you know, again, I don’t want to do this at the false altar of productivity. But your day is going to be more productive if you take those few minutes to check in with yourself. And make sure that you create the day and create the space that you need to be where you are in that particular moment in time. That’s how you’re going to achieve the best version of yourself for that day, and be the leader that people need that day. So if you know, you’re checking in and you’re having a rough time this morning, maybe you do need to take a few meetings off your calendar, maybe this is not the day to, you know, you’re not gonna be able to change the board meeting. But maybe this is not the day to start a new project that you’re going to start, maybe this is not the day to, you know, have that difficult conversation with a colleague, maybe you do have to punt it to the next day. But you don’t know that unless you’re actually checking in with yourself. And then you can avoid those situations that become unproductive at best, and become contentious at worst. Yeah.

Mara Glatzel  27:48

And I think additionally to I am thinking about thickening the narrative about what success looks like to include your felt experience of that day. Mm hmm. And really reminding everybody who’s listening that no matter where you are in the hierarchy of an organization, that your felt experience of your life matters. And we have this belief that self care or attending to our needs has to look a certain way, maybe we do it on vacation or when we have wide swaths of time and our calendar and who has that, or a certain amount of money in our bank account and who has enough and I’m really talking about doing what we can with what we have, and removing the edges of perfectionism that come into how we take care of ourselves so that we’re making it work. And it may not look like the entirety as I said, I may not be zooming off to the Azores today as much as my heart desires to. But I am finding a new path to walk on with my dog during the walk that I’m already taking this morning. Because my dog needs to go out I’m already taking instead going on that walk that I always go on, maybe I’m gonna try something different. And so doing what we can with what we have is such powerful medicine because when we get into that pattern of postponing tending to our needs, there’s always going to be a reason to punt it out, there’s always going to be a reason to postpone it. And we’ll get to the end of our lives. And we’ll have been postponing it in entirety or we’ll get to a place of deep burnout and will wonder how did I get into this self care emergency. And many of us are operating in such a way that we only take care of ourselves when it is an emergency and we only kind of nurse ourselves back to health enough to get back in the game. Inevitably setting up this cycle of creating the need for that emergency self care to begin with,

Maria Ross  29:44

right? And what kind of a performer productive performer that is that make you if you’re constantly going to our cycle. So again, it’s like going back to okay if we need to speak in that language to ambitious people let speak in that language. You’re you’re going to continue to prove For and poorly, if you if you don’t take this time to, to address your needs and to help identify your needs. And given that I want to ask a provocative question here, how can people identify center and advocate for their needs in an environment that might not be aligned with their values? So, you know, in an environment, whether it’s the world, the whether it’s your country, whether it’s your workplace, how can we identify those needs that that are making me making us feel a certain way or making us react in certain ways that we’re starting to recognize are not healthy. But what do we do to start articulating and identifying that

Mara Glatzel  30:50

what we don’t do is take our needs into places that we can predict, are not friendly for those needs, we don’t start. We can assume, you know, we can sit here and say, Well, my needs don’t matter be because of so many variables that I can’t control. And the reality is, in a world riddled with structural oppression in a world that, you know, these measures of success and productivity often are not humane in nature, that the world doesn’t care about your needs. I think we can start there. And also, how are you committing to being a tender steward of your needs, regardless of what is happening in the world around you? As I was going to write needy, many people on my editorial staff wanted me to begin in the place of well, how do we bring our needs to the world around us? And there’s a lot of work that has to that is in and around that in the world now. What I really wanted to start with is how do we begin the conversation with ourselves so that we are allowing ourselves to have needs, we’re allowing ourselves to have references in everything, all of the micro decisions that we’re making over the course of the day. So starting with I am a person who has needs, I have needs to be fed, visibly nourished multiple times over the course of the day, many of us are not doing that many of us are, you know, drinking coffee until we can’t stand it anymore. And then, you know, inevitably succumbing to something that’s not nutritious and eating it while we’re running from one place to another. So even just that, in my choices that I am making, in my relationship with myself every day, am I drinking water, am I feeding myself, and I commit to going to bed at a certain time or attempting to every single night, starting with how you are treating yourself and taking responsibility for that, instead of starting with something that’s much higher test. As I said before, bringing your needs to the workplace a bump up against that, that need for safety, because you think I need this job in order to be safe, and that feels inherently very scary. might also feel like oh, well, I so many of my clients say to me, my I can talk to other people about my needs, but talking about my needs to my partner feels so scary. Well, again, the risk might be really high, you might be worried, well, if this person is unhappy with me, or if I’m asking for something that is impossible, as I can see it in my relationship, that’s really risky. That may feel much more risky than saying no to a colleague or to an acquaintance when they asked to meet for coffee when I don’t have time. So start where you are comfortable and build up from there. Because the more that you can authentically believe that you are allowed to have needs, the more confident you’re going to be in and also the more creative you’re going to be in thinking about how to get those needs met. Right? Because, you know, we have that that association of I need that needs to be met in this way. But the more we’re in communication with ourselves, the more that we can see, okay, well, there might be multiple avenues for that, and I’m open to an inflexible around it.

Maria Ross  34:22

So a couple of things in there that you mentioned. Well, number one, it’s the it’s the classic control what you can control, right and start with what you have agency over instead of just giving up on it because you can’t control the entire system or the world or the patriarchy or capitalism or just the culture of your company, you know, whatever it is, but also this idea of like, we also don’t have to take this big leap of announcing our needs necessarily, it’s like as long as we can identify them for the for ourselves. Maybe we manage the way we’re getting the work done and our particular day. No, you know, if you feel weird about nobody else has to know, like, just if that’s what you need, if you need a walk before you start work and you work from home, you don’t have to announce that to your whole team. Like, there’s things you can do, I think that’s the scary part for a lot of people is they have this image of, oh, if I’m needy, that means I come into work. And I have, you know, I gather everyone together. And I say, today, I’m feeling sluggish teams. So I’m going to do this that the other thing, just do it just, you make the time in your own schedule, or in the own way that you’re your own way that you’re working that day. It doesn’t have to be if that scares you. And you can tell me if you disagree with this. But it doesn’t have to be this big proclamation that you’re making people, I think that’s the part that scares a lot of leaders of like, Oh, I’m just going to make this a thing. Every day that I’m gonna have to like, tell my team where I am every day. Start with just admitting it to yourself, and structure your day accordingly. And nobody else has to know. They don’t, you know, not that you want to hide it. It’s not something to be embarrassed about. But, you know, sometimes no, is enough. You don’t have to know as an answer in and of itself. No, I can’t meet your for coffee. No, I’m going to need to move that meeting to tomorrow. No, I can’t meet till after 11 o’clock. And I don’t need to give any further explanation. But I can still go about my day. And so I think that’s a big hurdle for people is like thinking that they have to make this grand pronouncement about their needs. I’m curious what you think of that, because that’s kind of what I part of what I’m taking away. Not that we don’t want to be a model of expressing our needs. But it’s almost like if that’s the baby step you need to take.

Mara Glatzel  36:47

Can I take? Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that is not a baby step. That’s a pretty big step. You have to use but yeah, it did you yourself. Oh, yeah, that’s a that is a big step. And it’s really important. And this is why, you know, I wrote almost the entirety of needy about rebuilding that relationship and connection and self trust with yourself. Because before you can teach your team, how to honor their needs, you have to learn how to honor your own. And I think before even a step before that step is when we are acknowledging that we have needs is putting our experience into context, one way we can be really kind and generous to ourselves every single day is just to make sense of things. So nothing disturbs me more personally, than when we say, I don’t know why I’m so exhausted today. Right? We do ourselves harm. When we say I don’t know why I don’t know what’s wrong with me. So you know, if I were feeling tired this morning, I might say a to myself, I’m feeling exhausted today, because it was my partner’s birthday this weekend. And I was like a major birthday fairy, there was so much going on. And my four year old has started sleeping in our bed in the middle of the night randomly. So last night, she climbed in at about four o’clock and was kicking me in the back until the alarm went off. So I know why I’m tired. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to show up today. But just that piece of putting things into perspective for yourself. So you’re saying, you’re beginning with self compassion. It’s not an excuse. It’s an acknowledgement. I’m tired, because I have been, you know, I’m putting energy into my relationship. I’m putting energy into parenting my child and doing what I think is important at this stage of her life. And also, I’m a person who owns her own business and is working today. I am multiple things, and I can’t expect that I’m going to be able to do everything perfectly. And so on a after a weekend where I was putting a lot of energy in one direction, it only makes sense that I have less energy for this direction. That doesn’t mean that I won’t recoup by the end of the week, I probably will. That doesn’t mean I don’t show up today, I’m here. But just that peace of self compassion and acknowledgement of it’s not that I can’t bracket or whatever unkind thing I’m saying to myself, it’s just I am a person with a limited capacity. And I’ve been using that capacity in a multitude of ways. This bill yesterday, today, the last couple of days.

Maria Ross  39:31

I want to ask you one last question, because I know this is on the minds of people and maybe people listening to this episode, which is how can we and do we need to recognize the line between identifying our needs and when it starts to spill into quote unquote, selfish behavior. If people are concerned with if I start identifying my needs, I’m going to be perceived as selfish. Sure I’m going to actually become selfish. What advice would you give about even? Number one, whether they should even be worrying about that question? And number two, how can folks recognize that line of where their needs might be overtaking the work, or the needs of the team in a non productive way?

Mara Glatzel  40:22

I have never met a selfish person who is concerned with whether or not they’re selfish. So I think that by and large, if you’re worried about whether or not you’re selfish, you can safely say, probably not. Now, that said, this doesn’t mean that that acknowledging our needs doesn’t mean we’re gonna get all of our needs met. You know, people often ask me, Well, you know, you’re like, this needs person, right? All of your needs must be met all of the time, which I find Adorably hilarious, because I have a four year old and a seven year old, right, and a partner and a really wild puppy. And there’s a lot of things going on in my life, that I am making work, right. And so being in right relationship with myself means that I can be an honest part of the ecosystem. Because what’s not honest is to say, I don’t have any needs, and you know what, I’m gonna blow up later, everything’s gonna become a total mess, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna burn out, right? There is a selfishness. She’s sacrificing your needs and setting up inevitable burnout. As a high achiever. This was my first lesson, this was my first foray into self care was, Wow, that sucks. It really, really sucks to burnout, to have the rug pulled out from underneath you. And actually, if I care about my work, or if I care about my kids, or if I care about my relationship, I have to care about myself. Because otherwise, I’m setting things up so that other people are negatively impacted by me not prioritizing or acknowledging my needs.

Maria Ross  42:09

Mike drop. Thank you for that. Oh, my gosh, it’s such a great conversation. As with so many of my guests, I could talk to you for another two hours. But we’re out of time. So Maura, can you let folks know we’re gonna have all the links to your show notes? Sorry, links for you in our show notes. But can you tell people that might be listening on the go, where they can get in touch with you or find out about your work?

Mara Glatzel  42:33

Yeah, come hang out with me at Maura glatzel.com. That’s where you can find absolutely everything about me and my programs or come chat with me on Instagram. I’m often there.

Maria Ross  42:45

Love it. And again, we will have those links in the show notes. Mara, thank you so much for your time and insights today, it was really, I think it’s going to be not only helpful for me personally, but for many, many of our listeners. So thank you.

Mara Glatzel  42:57

Thanks for having me. This was fantastic. And thank you everyone for listening

Maria Ross  43:01

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

How will AI transform leadership and work? Can we “delegate empathy” to it? Can we have empathic AI that fills a need we all have as humans? Today, I discuss all of this and the role of empathy in AI with my special return guest Minter Dial author of Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence, the 2nd edition, just released in 2023 to include all the latest AI shenanigans and progress.

Minter shares his emotional leadership story about how 9/11 opened his eyes to his own priorities and how he wanted to show up as a leader. We discuss how to put heart into AI and three key questions leaders need to answer before investing in it. Minter shares use cases where AI can help us at a very human level, can help us create engaging customer experiences, and helps solve both the loneliness epidemic and the shortage of mental health professionals. We also muse on how AI is transforming leadership and work – and why we can’t expect perfection from a system if we can’t be perfect ourselves! 

 

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

• Not everything needs to be told to everybody. You can still have secrets and still be authentic, vulnerable, and full of integrity. 
• As humans, we are not perfect. We cannot create something and expect perfection from that without holding ourselves to the same level.
• The AI will only be as good as what you put into it. It is about intentionality and working with the AI, not just expecting the AI to do everything perfectly on its own. 

 

“People tend to hold AI up to a higher standard than we hold ourselves up to. I find this to be a problem. [If we are expecting perfection] we are never going to get it!” —  Minter Dial

 

References Mentioned:

• The Empathy Edge Podcast: Minter Dial: How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader
• The Empathy Edge Podcast: Paul Marobella: Leading Through Crisis

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

About Minter Dial, Professional Speaker, Author & Filmmaker

​Minter Dial is an international professional speaker, elevator and a multiple award-winning author. Minter’s core career stint of 16 years was spent as a top executive at L’Oréal, where he was a member of the Worldwide Executive Committee for the Professional Products Division (PPD). Previously, he was MD of L’Oréal PPD Canada and CEO Worldwide for Redken. He’s the author of the WWII biography and documentary film, The Last Ring Home (2016) and three business books, Futureproof (FT Press ​2017), You Lead (Kogan Page 2021), both of which won heralded Business Book Awards, and Heartificial Empathy, 2nd edition. He also runs three podcasts, Minter Dialogue in English and French, and The Joy of Padel.

Connect with Minter Dial:

Mydial LLP: minterdial.com 

X: twitter.com/mdial 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/minterdial 

Facebook: facebook.com/minterdial 

Instagram: instagram.com/mdial 

Threads: threads.com/mdial

Book: Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence (2nd Edition) DigitalProof Press 2023 

Substack Newsletter: Dialogos, Fostering More Meaningful Conversations 

Podcasts:

Minter Dialogue (in English and French)

The Joy of Padel

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

 

Connect with Maria: 

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

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. Oh, will AI transform leadership and work? Can we delegate empathy to it? Can we have empathic AI that actually fills a need we all have as humans. Today I discuss all of this and the role of empathy in AI, with my special return guest mentor, dial, international speaker, author and filmmaker, and author of heart official empathy, putting heart into business and artificial intelligence. The second edition has just released in 2023 to include all the latest AI shenanigans and progress. Minter shares his emotional leadership story about how 911 opened his eyes to His own priorities, and how he wanted to show up as a leader. We discuss how to put heart into AI and three powerful questions company leaders need to answer before investing in it. Mentor shares three use cases where AI can help us at a very human level, and help us create engaging customer experiences solve both the loneliness epidemic and the shortage of mental health professionals. Finally, we muse on how AI is transforming leadership and work and why we can’t expect perfection from a system if we can’t be perfect ourselves. That many of AI’s flaws are a reflection of our own human flaws, but can invite long overdue discussion and examination rather than fear on issues of bias, negative employee and customer experiences and exclusivity. This was such an eye opening and thoughtful discussion. I hope you enjoy it. Quick offer for you. Listen up all you marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs, all of you trying to connect and engage with an audience to grow your impact and revenue. I’m all about strengthening empathy to achieve radical success. And this all started for me in my wheelhouse of marketing. See, I realized the key to attracting and engaging the right customers is all about understanding them seeing things from their point of view. Empathy is a marketers superpower if it’s wielded responsibly. So after running too successful real time cohorts, I now opening up my brandstory breakthrough course as an on demand offering. Take it when you want how you want for as long as you want five modules of videos and playbooks designed to help you articulate your goals. Understand your customers, define your different and land on your perfect brand story and marketing message. So you stand out and attract that perfect fit audience. Marketing is not about lying to people. It’s about empathy, elevating the truth of your story. And in this on demand course you’ll learn the exact steps that my past brand clients have gone through to craft a clear and compelling and consistent brand message that guides everything you do. You’ll walk away with a brand story strategy, ideal customer profiles and even website and social media profile copy. Plus, with this on demand course you get access to weekly Friday office hours with me. Yep, ask questions, get feedback, share new memes discover new insights to help your business shine. It’s insanely cost of active and extremely valuable to your business and goals. So check out the details@bit.ly slash VSP course, that’s bi T dot L y slash V sb course, or click the link in the show notes. See you on the other side. Welcome, once again, my friend and mentor dial to the empathy edge podcast, it is so wonderful to have you back to talk about the release of your second edition of how artificial empathy how artificial intelligence, no artificial empathy putting heart into business and artificial intelligence, which could not be more timely right now. So welcome to the show.

Minter Dial  05:39

Hey, Maria, always great to hang with you love your energy.

Maria Ross  05:44

So tell us for folks that that missed your first episode on leading with who you are. And I will put a link to this in the show notes for people who missed that great episode. Tell us briefly about what happened in your work and your career that got you down this path where you’re really preaching the gospel on putting the heart back into business and leadership? Well,

Minter Dial  06:05

it starts with a realization that I, like many people was wearing a mosque. I was working at L’Oreal, and I was doing what I thought was good. But what I was also doing was doing some bad to me, from a health perspective, not a mental health perspective, but from a health perspective. And the nature of it was that I was doing what I thought was good within the the context and the wet the managerial framework that L’Oreal had. And then basically the the switch turned for me at 911, when, from my window, overlooking the Twin Towers, I saw the whole thing go down the second airplane flying all the way down into the tower. And like everybody has quite a memorable imprint. But for me, it was a very visceral one, because we went out the street, we had the smell, I also had four friends who were lost and dealing with that the angst of not finding bodies and, and just the feeling in Manhattan was so right. And then the and the trauma in the streets. Anyway. So this led me to think about well, what’s actually important in life is making shampoos that important. And I’m in there, it took me a while, but I then lent into this idea of being more myself. And then within that concepts of like self empathy, and developing better my empathy, because when you haven’t had the experience, it’s very hard to know how to be empathic. This was quite a revolutionary experience to go through so firsthand. And it led me to understand the benefits of empathy, just in the social circles, but also within business.

Maria Ross  07:52

And I know that was such a I mean, it was a hard time for everyone, but especially leaders who had to hold their own trauma, and process their own reactions to everything that was happening, but also being in charge of leading a group of people, where you also had to show up for them. And I’m going to link in the show notes. Another episode I did with Paul Mirabella, who is is a leader who spoke about leading through crises, and his first one was 911. In New York, the second was the financial crisis. And the third was COVID. And the lessons that he learned about what’s actually important when you’re trying to take care of people you’re trying to connect and engage while also processing your own trauma. And he echoed a thought you just stated, which is he learned the importance of self care, not from a selfish point of view, but in enabling him to be there for his people. And it sounds like that is also something that happened with you. But also this reevaluation of priorities. Yeah,

Minter Dial  08:57

well, it part of it, it was a stimulus that came from what I would characterize as poor examples of leadership in moments of crisis as in, directly above me, I still remember with great precision, the call that was made to me from the CEO, who said, from Paris aiming down in French, you have to come bass. And yeah, thanks for asking. I’m doing fine. Yeah, you could see all he was worried about was, how was I going to present the future of redkin my brand for the next three years, you know, how are we going to make the numbers I was essentially what he was worried about. And he says, Well, I explained matter of fact, we will. We have new planes flying out, will lead the way I’ll get a plane of failure. Okay. And so on the morning of the 15th of September, with one other person on the plane, I have four crew. I flew from a little piece in Islam and in LA man Long Island, and Trudeau liberals were on a plane. And I didn’t even need to show my passport. It was such a well protected plane. It was the first non military plane to fly over Manhattan. And, and at this point, I’m now preparing to do a speech. That’s two hours or 15 minutes long, that usually was delivered by my entire team, and I would look at it. So I had to learn this entire speech. And the way you do things at L’Oreal is you learn it rote. It’s a show. And you know, and I was used to doing this, that’s part of the business. That’s why I accepted. And I had to learn to do a two hour 15 minute speech in front of 550 people. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we had my four friends, their spouses in distress, my wife was sick. Manhattan was sick. And I’m running a brand by the way, redkin Fifth Avenue in New York City. And Fifth Avenue, New York City essentially meant that our DNA, or at least the imprint that we wanted to leave behind was a Manhattan feeling or a New York feeling. And to my campaigns in 2002, had the twin towers in the background. So if you imagine I had to call, you know, once I knew I had to go, I call my creative director, Chuck. And I said, Chuck, I need you to, we need to get the the Twin Towers out of the back round beads. Now, this is we’re talking on the 13th of September. And tough call. I mean, well, chuck, chuck refused to do it, he saw how NASA should let us Not over my dead body basically. And I understood that but I was the one who was gonna have to present this in Paris. And I, I was adamant that we I mean, I couldn’t reshoot them in time. And what I saw, I ended up having to call the retoucher who lived in Hoboken, New Jersey. And so this is nearby, obviously, hundreds of people from Hoboken were missing. And so obviously, the person I was calling would have known people. And so it was it was one of the most difficult calls I’ve ever made. It’s really It’s odd, just to retouch a photograph, but I called him and his name was John and say, John, can you do me a favor, I need you to make the Twin Towers invisible in the background. 45 seconds later, what floor it was just a messy, I still have goosebumps thinking about how miserable that was sounded like to Charlton. And anyway, so that, that’s to give you a little bit more texture to my experience that led me to feel that I wanted to be a little bit more real. And this mosque idea, which is something that’s going to be really true. Traveling through all of my new work. Now I’m not sure how, what how much of you, when

Maria Ross  12:43

we talk about authenticity, when we talk about being genuine, how much of you should you be bringing out? Because not everything you say not everything you feel not everything you are, should be revealed? And yet, can you still be authentic? So I’m really leaning into this idea. And I think it’s a healthy idea to understand that we have secrets that understand that not everything needs to be told to everybody, by GM, that’s even good for relationships and, and still feel your integrity is in business. Wow, very powerful. You published heart official empathy, putting heart into business and artificial empathy among the many business books, you’ve put out their way back. And you have just come out with a second edition in 2023, which, as I mentioned, could not be more timely given the hand wringing and opportunity of artificial intelligence. So I’d love for you to tell us how we I think the big one of the biggest conversations coming out about it is will we lose our humanity? will we will we lose that spark of creativity and inspiration? By relying on AI. And there’s one camp that talks about? Well, AI can help with all the rote things where we’re wasting all this mental energy on things we don’t need to. And we can take advantage of the body of work that’s been created to do things like research. And then there’s the other group that says, Oh, are they going to automate all customer service? Health care things where you need that human touch? And what will that do to people? So you have a particular viewpoint on how we can keep the heart put the heart into AI, and specifically in three areas. So tell us a little bit about your perspective on the AI revolution? And what are those ways that AI can actually reconnect us with our humaneness and benefit us?

Minter Dial  14:44

So I want to just start by talking about the fact that I, I started the first session 2018 And the second one isn’t 2220 23 In some ways, it kind of bookends the pandemic. Because pre pandemic things like empathy were and working from home were not a thing. Well, I mean, obviously, empathy is the thing, right? It wasn’t exactly top of mind all sudden, not

Maria Ross  15:08

in a business context now that you’re exactly and,

Minter Dial  15:11

and even just in society, we’ve got this divisiveness and we have had these elections and are in many countries, not just United States. And then, and then we go through the pandemic, and then people realize, oh, gosh, we can actually work from home, it’s a thing. And well, actually, now that you see people in their homes, where there’s privacy, personal issues, turns out that empathy becomes an interesting skill set to have through zoom, then we go to 2023 pandemic is, let’s say, hopefully, we can all agree over. And now we have a choice, whether we work from home, or work at the office. And the fact that it’s a choice is terribly difficult. Because you don’t have someone from above who mandates one or other, you need to negotiate that, for your business for your customers and with your employees. And that requires a whole level of empathy, which, under the conditions of tremendous economic strain, is not easy for leadership to do. And so that the need is, you say, is never never more important. So, as far as the the AI that what I love, the first premise needs to look at is, what is your intention? Before you bring in the AI? What are you trying to achieve? Is it linked to your strategy? Or is it just linked to saving money making cutting corners? Getting rid of the hassle of dealing with people? What is your intention? And the second point is what’s the business model that you’re really focusing on that alludes to the idea of value added and cost cutting? And and how do you reappropriate the money, where are you going to cut from to make space for the investments because you will need to invest in AI, you will need to bring in experts, and you’ll need to create massive data sets to allow for better learning. And the third thing is What is your ethical framework, which obviously speaks to the intentions of what you’re trying to achieve, but underlies and should underlie how you program and how you run your AI. So once that said, then I consider there are three different areas where empathic AI, or AI that has some semblance of humanity, some semblance of empathy, which is, you know, obviously, Google and many other Microsoft are are also working on. So it’s a I think it’s an important topic. And the way that I see it, there are three ways in business. There’s lots of ways that AI can be used, and even better empathic AI. The second way I like to think about it is with regard to the loneliness epidemic on our planet, especially in countries where the pyramid of age has flip flopped. And you have many, many, too much too many old people, for the younger people to take care of. We’ve got smaller and smaller as families. So we don’t have, you know, 10s of grandchildren now visiting grandparents in the retirement homes, and I think specifically of a place like Japan. And so I think that there’s an opportunity for companionship, through AI, I’d much rather be human, but in the absence of it, there could be a empathic companionship through AI. And there are definitely interesting examples of that. And the third one is with regard to therapy. And again, the issue is here, not, not only do we not listen to one another, there’s not enough therapists out there, the supply of therapists in many of the Western countries is just not up to the level of demand because mental health conditions have been spiraling higher and higher. Anxiety, depression, suicide, and we don’t have enough therapist. So I’ve been very keen to see certain initiatives that are with genuine intention, designing an empathic therapy through AI.

Maria Ross  19:16

Wow. Okay, so you’re saying there’s opportunities to apply empathy empathic AI, in business, companionship, and therapy? And do you think that those opportunities are getting lost in the hand wringing of Oh, no, they’re taking our jobs they’re taking over. Kids are going to learn how to cheat in college, all of the all of these negative aspects to it. Are people getting too caught up in the fear and the negativity or do you think that they truly are embracing the opportunity that it brings? Oh,

Minter Dial  19:53

I think the we as a race tend to, you know, pick up everything that’s fearful. Yeah, media That’s what sells. And it’s our limbic reaction. So people get much more focused on the negative side of things. And then in that, there’s a second piece, they tend to hold AI up to a higher standard that we hold ourselves up to. And I find I find this the problem, because then we’re like, well, we can’t do this until it’s perfect. Well, excuse me, Am I perfect? Do we do everything perfectly? If that’s what we’re expecting of AI, then we’re never gonna get it out. So to think that it’d be sure, unbiased work. And yet, we’re like, well, you ought to be well, you ought to be empathic, you ought to be perfect. I don’t need to be well, how does that ever work out?

Maria Ross  20:47

Well, it’s like the thing we talked about with leadership and culture. It’s just like, workplace culture is far from perfect in most places. Right now, you know, you mentioned earlier about this idea of working from home, you know, we’re seeing this backlash to boss ism, of No, the only way I know how to lead is if I can see all of you and make sure you’re actually doing your work. So I demand that you come back into the office, even though you found a better way to work that works for you. And you’re being incredibly productive and innovative, I don’t care because I want to see you in the office every day. And I feel I being the CEO or the the leader, I feel this is the best way for us to innovate and collaborate, I actually don’t care what you think. And so you know, just that’s such a great observation of like, we’re expecting this perfection, and purity of spirit from Ai, that we’re not even managing in the existing structures and systems we have right now. Exactly, I never heard it expressed that way. And it’s brilliant. Thank

Minter Dial  21:47

you. I learned it from also from observation in operational circumstances, because it’s not like empathy is a an unknown quantity, it’s, it’s difficult to define, and people have different ideas of it. But in one case, the the company that I was working with, decide decided that all of the beauty advisors who man or woman, the counters in the department stores needed to be empathic, because they will make our brand sound better to the customer. So these are independent people, the beauty advisors in this industry, and the and so we’re just yelling at them, telling them to be empathic, giving them no semblance of empathy, and telling them to do it. So as delegating empathy. In the same vein, we might be doing the same thing with delegating empathy into AI, or making our AI do things that we don’t even know how to do. And when you have that inconsistency, because the end of the day, he won’t be only AI, it’ll always be AI and humans. I mean, I suppose one day, there’ll be a pure AI business, you’re run by an AI, with AI and such, however, until that ridiculous time comes around, which may well be but in 100 year, is, we need to be congruent in the manner that we are within to the manner that we use AI. In other words, if as a human being this is who I am, are we as a culture, with our customers, make sure the AI has some congruence see, with the manner in which you operate within with your employees and with your customers. Otherwise, you start having this gap. And that gap is fatal. I mean, it means raised eyebrows, call it bullshit, or whatever. And and therefore, when ever you want to go into this, what is your intention, be real about who you are, how empathic you are, and don’t over estimate or yourself, we have this wildly positive bias idea of of we’re always better than we think we are.

Maria Ross  23:56

Do you think that some leaders or companies or brands think they’ll be able to leverage delegate, you mentioned it earlier, Delegate empathy for customers through AI, meaning, I’ve tried to train my customer service reps for years and years and years to be empathetic on the phone, we’re still getting complaints, we’re still getting negative customer satisfaction scores. Now there’s this thing AI where we can program it to say the right thing and do the right thing in the moment. Do you see that happening? Or people a little bit more savvy to the fact that you can’t completely outsource it that way?

Minter Dial  24:32

Well, they I don’t know how savvy they are. But any events, we don’t have empathic AI really happening. So you’re first of all, you’re still going to be doing human plus AI. And you’re gonna get shit out if you put shit in. So if, because what is the database, the data set you’re going to be using to do the learning? Well, each company is going to have to inform the data set is going to pull from a chat GPT or you know What are these larger new models, and then it’s going to adapt and that adaptations will be specific to your brand, your words, your customers, and that work? Well, that’s going to be a monumentally important piece of it. But if, if it comes from you, it’s going to be you. And if you aren’t empathic, and generally, if you don’t understand what empathy is top down, then whatever you’re encoding will inevitably have frailties. So what is your intention behind this AI you’re trying to do? And I want to just pull out a couple of examples how, in reality, this notion of empathy, which is still I would say, embryonic and AI, in terms of application, there is one example which is for customer care that you mentioned. And, and there are not just one, but the one I have seen, and had an opportunity to explore as digital genius. And what do they do, they work with customer care. So the API will identify a call coming in. And the call comes from this stub, or which is this, this client, this client has this profile. And in the past, this client is preferred to have very short interactions. And then if they’re short interactions, they give you a five star rating when they’re long and exploring and about a three star rating. So the AI can quickly inform the agent, and then say, and give a choice of for the safe four lines to reply. And they might be rated tagged with different empathy scores, the different efficiency scores, effectiveness, business money, you know, how much does this mean, you lose money if you do this, or whatever you want to program it in. And we digital genius allows for the customer care rep, to look at the four possibilities and pick one and say, Alright, this is the this is the message that stopped by the slot, my middle finger, this is the message that I’m going to choose and pops it in, doesn’t have to worry about typos, it’s ready and it goes out. And that type of work with AI, which is also happening, customer relationship management, where empathy is a specific component of the measurement to inform the agent or the marketer in this case, in second case was Pegasystems. And that’s what I see is really interesting. It’s going to be messy. Yeah, you’ve got to learn your way through it. And Unison

Maria Ross  27:22

relies on all that, it still relies on a human being making a choice at a certain point in the process.

Minter Dial  27:28

And there, you’re actually empowering the agent not taking them away. So you’ve talked about the rote elements. So typing out the four sentences, well, seeing them as interesting. So you can read them, you learn it, there’s notifications of ratings of of each of the questions, and then you don’t have to worry about typing errors, you just pick and choose drag and drop. And so I would characterize that is high level cognitive action, where you’re putting value on the intelligence of your individual. And they have opportunities to override to others exotic, that’s a great example, digital genius, they they work a number of companies, the one I got to look at it closely was with KLM.

Maria Ross  28:10

Interesting, really interesting. And, you know, your comments from earlier are just bubbling in my soul, this idea that, again, AI is pulling from existing datasets. So right now, I think our discomfort with it is it’s holding up a mirror to the things that are actually happening in the world. As one example, you know, all of the reports on the biases found in AI, for example, I forget which system was being evaluated, it referred to all doctors with male pronouns, and all nurses with female pronouns, right. But again, that’s a mirror of what our society is putting into this dataset. And the expectation that it’s going to be different than what’s already out there is a little bit naive. And I think it’s causing immense discomfort to people that were denying that those biases even exist in the world. Right now. They’re looking and they’re going, we told you all this, all this data, all this content, all of this media that people are consuming, is biased, like, how do we fix that problem? Right? So I think it’s it could be the optimist in me, says that AI could be a forcing mechanism for empathy of us finally realizing the impact of some of the challenges that we have with connecting and engaging with other people, because it is going to hold it’s going to shine that light in an undeniable way on this is the proof that that this is what’s coming out because these are the data sets that exist in the world. So now we can stop arguing about whether a problem is legitimate or not. And start focusing on how to improve it. He says AI is showing us what, what’s out there.

Minter Dial  30:07

So I would add that in the very programming of it, we’re going to be learning, like the mirror piece is actually sort of ongoing. Because if I right, so let’s just take empathy and AI, because there’s a lot of arguments as to what is empathy. And I think you like AI. Anyway, I define empathy having cognitive and affective. And these two are discrete, which means that you can have cognitive empathy, but not have affective empathy. And it doesn’t diminish it, per se, it would be best to have both, but it’s nice to have cognitive empathy. And the reason why that’s important is that you can’t program affective empathy

Maria Ross  30:48

now, which is emotional empathy for people that are not familiar with that it’s actually feeling with another person versus just imagining what their situation might be like.

Minter Dial  30:58

And you can imagine the feelings, right? And you can, you can detect the feelings actually probably better than humans sometimes can, which has been proven. So the the point that is discrete, allows you to say, well, let’s focus on cognitive empathy in AI. And that means that we then when we’re doing that, what does that actually mean? How do you score empathy, it even measure empathy, which is, you know, an ongoing debate, and those conversations and that encoding, because by the way, you have to go through programmers, who are generally empathy deficient or empathy challenge to be nicer. You need to recognize that whole process, starting with you inside, how are you in, in your company? Now we’re in this process of encoding it? What do we what does it actually mean, in my company for us to be empathic? And that process is, for me, the sort of organic dynamic method of of making progress in our company?

Maria Ross  31:57

Well, it’s forcing people to actually have the conversation that they never had to have before. About what are the views? Yeah,

Minter Dial  32:04

and what does that but the ever been at the boardroom, interesting conversation, holy smokes. Frightening,

Maria Ross  32:11

frightening. So as we wrap up, I would love to just get your futurist take on how you think AI might transform, leadership and work in terms of how we engage with each other, if at all.

Minter Dial  32:27

I’ll get a ticket, quick example. My daughter works at a company who names need to be said, but they want to hurt a time in timeout. And so the desire to control the hours and understand their activities if they’re typing on a keyboard. So you make all this AI to do all that kind of stuff. And, and really, it just comes that’s coming from them. I mean, that’s they come from a place of fear. They come from a place of desiring to control. And like your boss image you had earlier says, I will impose whether using the AI to monitor to control to police for compliance or employees. Yeah. And, and so yeah, well, if that’s what you’re up to, and that’s what you’re trying to do with AI a you, it’s your intentions, that’s the way you are, and you can make the AI pretty much do anything at that level. So I may, I think needs to be realistic about our humanity. And I think it’s part of the discussion, which is, like we say about bias, like we say about empathy with everybody. We can’t be empathic with everybody old. We can’t be idealistic about this idea. We can’t say that I have nobody that I hate. We have favorites, we have priorities. And the fact that means that it’s exclusionary. So we need to understand that in our world, we will have messy will have dark will have negative approaches. And then there are others who are better intentions. And what I systematically say when you evaluate the AI that’s being implemented with the desire for AI, think about what is your intention, and it’s congruent with who you are, to? What is the business model that you have? And how you’re going to ensure that over time, you you stick to that intention? And three, what’s your ethical framework? And that needs to be something that’s reasonably clear, reasonably short, and reasonably understood by everybody. And typically, we’re far from it in business right now, when we look at applying

Maria Ross  34:33

AI. Well, and again, what I’m, what I’m getting from, what you’re sharing with us today is this idea that it’s elevating these conversations in a way that people never thought to look at them before. So when we talk about how AI is transforming leadership and business, it’s kind of forcing us to have these crunchy conversations and think about things beyond just the numbers for now. next quarter, we’re thinking about afraid.

Minter Dial  35:01

I’m afraid it’s not forcing us. It’s an invitation to,

Maria Ross  35:06

but not a force. But let’s embed our albums a better way of phrasing it. Yeah,

Minter Dial  35:09

they’re forced to make the numbers they’re forced to deal with the issues that we have on hand. And these other conversations are almost luxury as far as the mentality of leadership is concerned. So my ation is reevaluate how you’re applying it. Look at these other questions, because once you do that, it will become I think, a stronger force of a company. You know, it’s a company your business strategy.

Maria Ross  35:33

I love it. Minter. Thank you so much. You as always, you know, I could talk to you for another two hours, but we’re at time, we will have all of your links in the show notes, especially to the new edition of artificial empathy. And your substack de Loggos de Lobo Gallegos. Yeah, those fostering more meaningful conversations. And you’ve got a few podcasts we’ll put all the links to all the things that our mentor dial but for folks on the go right now who might be exercising or walking, where is one place they can go to check things out with you.

Minter Dial  36:06

The easiest, is the old hub, and mentor dial.com where I have all my podcasts, my blog posts, my books, my fun, like my my nuisances, my my silliness. It’s, I

Maria Ross  36:19

love it. I love it so much. Thank you so much for your time today and your insights. It’s always a pleasure to connect with you. Big hug to you, Maria. Thank

Minter Dial  36:27

you for having me on. And thank you

Maria Ross  36:28

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