Welcome the final Hot Take of 2023! In this final Hot Take of the year, I’ll share a bit about how to find joy in what can feel like a dark, bleak time in the world and what empathy calls us to be for others. And I share an anecdote from my 9-year-old son that prompted me to think about how some leaders are being a bit lazy when it comes to reaping the benefits of empathetic cultures.
Have a wonderful holiday season and here’s to more empathy, joy, and peace in our world in 2024!
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Empathy needs to be woven into the way we interact with each other, it cannot be outsourced to HR as the one person for empathy.
Seek out ways to find ways to bring empathy, kindness, and joy into your own home, work, and community this holiday season and beyond.
2024 promises us another chance to engage, connect, and love. Let’s use it for those purposes and make creating genuine relationships one of our goals for the new year.
“The point of empathetic leadership is that your team members know that YOU, their leader, have their backs, and see, hear, and value them.” — Maria Ross
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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. 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 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. Hello, and welcome to the December issue of my empathy Edge Hot take for you. This is Maria here, my final solo episode of the year for all of you as we move into 2024 I have some musings for you about the new year and I want to share a thought with you about outsourcing empathy. So first of all, don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram read slice Maria on LinkedIn, Maria J. Ross. And let me know what you think of the show. Let me know what you would like to hear more of next year. Let me know if there’s guests that you would like to recommend. I have episodes booked and banked for you all the way through April. And I’m really excited to share some of these voices and amplify this important work from so many wonderful people that are tackling the issue of making our world and our workplaces more empathetic from so many different angles. It’s just an honor to be able to have a platform to share that with you and to amplify their work. So it’s the end of 2023. Right? How did it go? We’re all into assessments. We’re all into goals. We’re all into picking our themes for the year another year has gone On by another resolution list, another manic holiday season for many, if we’re lucky. Now sadly, for many in our world right now, these seem to be luxuries as they continue dealing with tragedy, hatred, poverty and war. And it can be hard to find the joy in our own lives when there is so much suffering. When in some cases, we are the ones suffering. Empathy reminds us that the holidays are not joyful for everyone. For many, it can be a rough time. So I’d like to invite you to do something I’m trying to do, which is seeking out ways to find the light in the dark and bring empathy, kindness and joy into our own homes, our own workplaces, our own communities. This is the way as the Mandalorian says, when we make our own lights glow brighter, we share that with the world, we infuse it with love, positivity and warmth. You can only have the impact you can have, no matter how big your sphere of influence, make it count, when and how you can, a smile, a good deed, a thoughtful note, a donation, an hour of your time, heck a minute of your time, a reassuring ear, these are the ways you can help find the light in the dark. 2024 promises us another chance, another opportunity to connect, engage and love, use it. Now I want to go into a little topic that has been top of mind lately. Obviously 2023 I feel like was the year of AI and all the hand wringing and opportunity and fear mongering and excitement that it brought to us. But what seems to be happening not just because of AI, but because of some leadership laziness is folks are thinking about how to outsource empathy. So let me explain with a little story. My nine year old son recently left a note on his dirty breakfast dishes that he put on the counter by the same the note said, Can you please pls take care of this with a sad face. And thanks. So a little post it note and this little gem awaiting me when I went over to the kitchen sink. Now the fact you must know is that he placed the dishes on the counter right above the dishwasher. Like the ultimate in lazy maneuvers. I mean writing the note took him longer than putting the dishes away, he had to go find a pen he had to go find the post it note he had to write it out. Now while this provided a great laugh with my friends and family over on social media, it got me thinking about the primal nature of laziness and how it shows up in our organizations and in our leadership. We see laziness as the customer service rep who can’t be bothered to listen to your real issue and look into possible options. It’s just easier to tell you nothing can be done. We see it in the leader who claims that adopting a more empathetic approach is too hard and takes too much time. And then falls back on the old ways of doing things which are dying, by the way. We see it in the colleague who decides getting to know other team members is a quote waste of time and forgets the importance of building relationships and connections in order to get things done. So what is the answer? Here are some options leaders like to think they have one, we will outsource empathy to HR, or to we will outsource empathy, hopefully to AI or three, we buckled down and strengthen the muscles ourselves. So let’s parse these options out. Trying to outsource empathy to HR is like a parent trying to outsource love to their child’s teacher. It doesn’t make any sense. Do they outsource kindness, courage and effective communication? The point of empathetic leadership is that your team members know you, their leader, have their backs and see here and value them. That’s the only way for you to reap all the benefits of empathy, including increased engagement, performance, loyalty, and creativity. It needs to be woven into the way that we interact with each other. It’s not a need I go to someone else to fulfill. Now trying to outsource empathy to AI is trickier. There are empathic AI technologies available. You’ve heard about some of them on our show that are helping organizations strapped for resources or staffing to provide individualized guidance and interactions in industries such as healthcare, higher ed and finance. But the organization’s leaders have to strengthen their own empathy in order to build it into the AI models and ensure the holistic customer experience is consistent and engaging. Strengthening your own empathy muscle is the smart choice. Just like going to the gym, you can build that innate human muscle if it has atrophied. You just need to put in the reps. This is why I wrote the empathy edge why I speak at leadership trainings, keynotes and customer events. To clarify what empathy looks like at work, and what is most certainly not, and give you actionable steps to strengthen your empathy. The results may not be immediate, who gets six pack abs on the first day at the gym. But over time, this is the more sustainable option that you will carry with you to great success. No matter what team you’re leading, or what role you’re in. If you’re tempted to outsource empathy, please think about the reason why are you too scared or feel too vulnerable to connect with your people or customers with empathy? If so, you may need to do some work on your own strengths and blind spots. And what causes that fear? Is it insecurity defensiveness, low self esteem, there’s some inner work to be done there. Are you strapped for time and overwhelmed? If so, perhaps prioritization is the issue and an understanding that the work of leading is connecting and engaging with your people. If you don’t have time for that, you may need to reassess how you spend your time? Or do you think machines can do it better? If so, who is teaching these machines? Where are the inputs coming from? And what happens when people interacting with AI dip in and out of workflow between humans and machines? We abour consistency. That seems like a big risk you don’t need to have to take that could have catastrophic implications on your customer or employee experience. And also No, empathy is an essential human trait about human connection. The machines will never be able to fully replicate it, even if they’re able to imitate it in some scenarios. Empathy is the most important leadership skill going into the 21st century. You can definitely augment empathy by shoring up your HR team and investing in empathic AI solutions. But you don’t want to outsource it without building it yourself. Because if you really believe that is possible, then you are making yourself obsolete. Embrace empathy, embrace connection, embrace vulnerably. admitting you don’t know all the answers, or admitting that other points of view might be more valid than yours. Or admitting that someone else might be better at something than you. It’s okay, as a leader. Leaders need to drop this facade that we can do it all be at all, that we’re perfect. Everyone around you knows that’s not true. So why are we pretending as you go into 2024 I’d love for one of your goals one of your resolutions one of your themes, to be to nourish genuine relationships. And the key to doing that is to learn how to build up your empathy capacity, to get curious, to actively listen, to understand context, and to ground yourself so that you can be a solid foundation and able to take in other points of view. I wish you the best this holiday season no matter what you celebrate. I of course wish for more peace, more empathy and more compassion in our what seems like a very broken world. And I can’t wait to share more good work with you in 2024. Until next time, remember as always, that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Catch you next time and next year on the empathy edge. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
How does trauma impact the workplace and organizational performance? If you’re a human being, then yes, trauma impacts you and your team. Trauma doesn’t care whether you’re at work or not. Everyone experiences trauma differently in their brain and body. The solution is to create a safe and trusting environment for leaders to get curious about their people and for someone in distress to be able to get support. The important thing to remember is that this isn’t a competition – no one’s trauma is more or less “worthy” than another’s.
Today, my guest Katharine Manning and I discuss what is trauma, how it affects the workplace, how we can recognize trauma in others, and 5 steps to respond to a colleague, team member – or frankly anyone – dealing with trauma. She shares great examples of how we might brush things off or inadvertently let go of a great employee when we’re not cognizant of trauma, what it means to be a trauma-informed organization, and three steps to creating one. This was a robust conversation and I know whether you are a leader or a colleague will get so much out of it to boost performance and engagement – while also supporting someone in need.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Any trauma will change us – we need to acknowledge that change, we can then embrace that new version of us.
Trauma can manifest itself in different ways in different people. It can also be triggered by situations that, for some, may not be triggering and for others it’s life-shattering.
You can make tough decisions and be a strong leader with empathy. Those are the best leaders with the most successful companies.
“Trauma isn’t a jacket that you can just take off when it’s time to go to work. We carry it with us and it affects how we show up…I want to get people away from trying to decide whether what you have gone through counts as trauma. Just focus on the person in front of you and what they need.”
— Katharine Manning
About Katharine Manning, President, Blackbird DC and author, The Empathetic Workplace
Katharine Manning is the President of Blackbird DC, which provides training and consultation on empathy at work. She is the author of The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job, and teaches at American University and in the Master’s in Trauma-Informed Leadership Program at Dominican University. She has worked on issues of trauma and victimization for more than 25 years.
References Mentioned
The Empathy Edge podcast, Sarah R. Browne, It’s Possible to Parent AND Lead without Punishment- the Brain Science Behind It
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. Well, does trauma impact the workplace and organizational performance? Well, if you’re a human being with a brain, then yes, trauma impacts you and your team. And trauma doesn’t care whether you’re at work or not. It can manifest in a variety of ways disengagement, dropping the ball forgetfulness crying, the solution is to create a safe and trusting environment for leaders to get curious about their people, and for someone in distress to be able to get support. The important thing to remember is that this isn’t a competition. No one’s trauma is more or less worthy than another’s. Everyone experiences trauma differently in their brain and body. I may be fine brushing off an argument with my husband, or even a near miss car accident, but another person may not be able to focus or think straight when they get to work. And if we can’t recognize and feel safe enough to talk about trauma in the workplace, the organization’s performance suffers. Today, my guest Katherine Manning, and I discuss what is trauma, how it affects the workplace, and how we can recognize trauma and others. She shares five steps to respond to a colleague, team member, or frankly, anyone dealing with trauma. Catherine is president of Blackbird DC, which provides training and consultation on empathy at work. She’s the author of The empathetic workplace, five steps to a compassionate, calm and confident response to trauma on the job and teaches at American University, and in the master’s and trauma informed Leadership program at Dominican University. She’s worked in issues of trauma and victimization for more than 25 years, including working for the US Department of Justice. As an attorney and advisor on victims rights. Katherine shares some great examples of how we might brush off or inadvertently let go of a great employee, when we’re not cognizant of trauma, what it means to be a trauma informed organization, and three steps to create one. This was a robust conversation. And I know whether you’re a leader or a colleague, you’ll get so much out of it to boost performance and engagement, while also supporting someone in need. Take a listen. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com. And sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips, and find out how you can book me as a speaker. I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at V empathy edge.com. Oh, and follow me on Instagram, where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Welcome Catherine Manning to the empathy edge podcast, you are here to help us talk about workplace trauma. I know this is a subject that is very top of mind for certain people, and also for all of us to be able to navigate that with our colleagues, with our team members, and all those people that were close to so welcome to the show.
Katharine Manning 04:23
Thank you. It’s really such a pleasure to be here with you. So
Maria Ross 04:27
I’d love to hear you know, I’ve mentioned a lot on this show how I came to this empathy at work, work. And I would love to hear your story briefly of how you came to be someone who talks about empathy at work and specifically, trauma you know, your book, The the empathetic workplace five steps to a compassionate, calm and confident response to trauma on the job came out in 2021. So tell us how this all came to be salutely
Katharine Manning 04:54
First of all, just thank you so much for having me. It’s really such a pleasure to be here talking about these topics with you My story is I am a lawyer who has spent most of my career working with crime victims. I started back in college doing hotline work on domestic violence and rape crisis. It was through that work that I decided I wanted to go to law school because I kept seeing that victims were not being treated fairly within the legal system, and I wanted to do something about it. After law school, I went to a firm for a few years in San Francisco, but then eventually ended up at the US Department of Justice. And my role there was I was a senior attorney advisor on victims rights. What that man is, I did policy and training and consulting on cases, all on this issue of how the department works with crime victims, and I worked on such a wide array of cases, anything from fraud to human trafficking, terrorism, everything under the side, one of the things I started to realize was people didn’t need different things based on what they were a victim of, like a victim of identity theft, didn’t need wildly different things than a victim of domestic violence, everybody needed to feel heard and acknowledged, everybody needed some support to get back on their feet again. And then I began to realize that it wasn’t just the victims who needed those things that my colleagues did to colleagues who were maybe dealing with really difficult issues at work, like the cases that were really traumatizing, or issues like having a an abusive boss. So workplace issues experiencing bias and harassment, you know, workplace issues can cause trauma. And in addition, there are traumas that people are dealing with every day outside of work, people who are in abusive relationships, who are struggling with alcoholism, and addiction, who are caring for loved ones who are facing mental or physical illness, all of those issues take a toll on us. And a, you know, I sometimes say trauma isn’t a jacket that you can just take off when it’s time to go to work. I mean, we carry it with us. And it affects how we show up our communication, our engagement, our absenteeism. And when workplaces can get better at recognizing and responding to trauma in the workplace, they build stronger workers, better relationships, and ultimately stronger organization. And so I left DOJ in 2019, and started working on the book. And since then, through my company Blackbird, I have been doing training and consulting for just a wide array of organizations, anything from higher ed to the corporate, to government, to nonprofits, but all on this topic of how to you better support your employees and your clients, the communities that you serve, through periods of trauma, distress?
Maria Ross 07:50
Wow, I mean, what a journey and what a link you made between victims rights and supporting victims, and the need for empathy, not just justice, in that role, but the ability to connect with them as human beings. And I love how you notice that impact in the workplace as well, because I think there are many people who still have that notion that trauma, quote, unquote, is not something that happens to you in an everyday situation, they associate it with war, or, you know, big global disasters, they don’t associate, even things like PTSD, with something that people do every day, working nine to five, and myself having been in a like mentally, not so great relationship. And in a psychologically abusive workplace. They feel the same, it doesn’t matter what the causes or the environment, it feels the same as a human being. So I would real quickly love to find out why you called your company Blackbird.
Katharine Manning 08:54
So I am gonna admit I am terrible at naming things. Like when my book sold the, the editor at HarperCollins was like, We love everything, but you have to change the title. Right? Right, right. This is just not my strike. But I kept coming back to the word Blackbird. And it is the reason it speaks to me, it’s because of that old Beatles song, you know, Blackbird singing in the dead of nines. And what I especially love is that line take these broken wings and learn to fly. What I love about that is that it acknowledges that when you’ve been through something hard, something traumatic, or changed by it, you’re not the same afterward as you were before, but you can still go on and do incredible things not in spite of but because of all that you have been through in your life. And that’s really my goal through my work is to help understand that it’s okay to acknowledge that this is hard, and to trust that supporting each other we can get through it.
Maria Ross 09:53
I love that so much because I’m going to take a little segue my left my longtime listeners know about my story. I have recovering from a near fatal brain aneurysm in 2008. And I wrote a book about that experience rebooting my brain. And a big part of my recovery was understanding that you have to acknowledge that things have changed, you can’t pretend everything’s fine. And we can just quote unquote, go back to normal. Any trauma that we experience brain injury, abusive relationships, a crime against us, we have to acknowledge that it’s changed us. And the sooner that we acknowledge there’s a new version of ourselves, the sooner we can embrace that new version, and come up with new strategies for how to cope and new strategies for how to live and set goals and find our joy. But even in my recovery, that was actually the biggest hurdle I had to overcome, because I kept trying to get back to the way I was before. And I had a very kind, tough love physical therapist who said, Forget about what you used to be able to do before, we’re going to deal with what’s in front of us now. And it was at that moment, literally, that things turned around for me. So I love that you said that. And that idea of trauma doesn’t have to, it doesn’t have to kill us. It doesn’t have to destroy us. It just but it will change who we are and how we see the world. And if we can acknowledge that and work through it, all the better and empathy from others and to ourselves, can really help with that. So thank you for the work that you’re doing. Now, let’s just for sharing that story. Yeah, it’s just it’s so it’s so interesting that whenever we deal with any trauma, I find that the natural reaction is to go back, we want to make things sort of erase it and go back to what we were before, but we can’t. It’s like, everything that happens to us becomes the story of our lives. And we need to work with that as the clay we have in front of us now. So let’s help people get a better understanding. Because trauma is thrown around a lot. It’s thrown around in mental health circles, and even you know, some workplace circles, where people do sometimes call a workplace traumatic when maybe that’s not quite what’s happening there. So what is trauma?
Katharine Manning 12:11
You’re right, there are a million different definitions of it. The definition that I use in my work, is that trauma is a psychological injury that affects performance. That is a kind of slimmed down version of the definition used by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMSA. What I like about that definition is that, in contrast to some others, it doesn’t give you a list of life events, and define trauma as if you have experienced one of these life events, and you’ve experienced trauma, right? I don’t like defining trauma in terms of the life event or the experience. Because the reality is that we all have different experiences of the same events. I mean, if you have more people who were in a car accident together, you know, one might walk away and be a little shaken up, but able to make their way to work and be kind of fine for the rest of the day. And the rest of the week, another one falls apart at the scene can’t go to work for the rest of the week, can’t get in a car for a month, maybe a third one seems fine heads into work. And then that night falls apart. sobbing. None of those is the right reaction. They are all just within the range of normal human reactions to a dramatic and woman. So I want to get people away from trying to decide whether what you have gone through counts as trauma. Yeah, has just focus on the person in front of you and what they need. And that’s the other piece of it is that it affects performance. Because we’re when we’re in a workplace, that’s really what we’re talking about. Is there something that you are going through right now that is keeping you from being able to perform, you know, at home at work in the ways that you want and need to? And if so, let’s get you some help.
Maria Ross 13:54
So how can leaders or even colleagues recognize trauma and someone else they might be able to see an outward reflection of, you know, sudden anger or disconnection or someone who’s, you know, not turning things in on time anymore? It might manifest in 1000 different ways, as you said, so how can we have our eyes open to recognize that maybe the behavior that we’re witnessing is a symptom of trauma? You know, I
Katharine Manning 14:21
think it’s helpful to talk a little bit about how trauma affects the brain because I think that context can kind of help frame why different reactions can all be evidence of trauma. So there is a part of our brain called the amygdala, whose job it is to keep us safe. And it is always scanning our environments, trying to figure out if we’re in danger in any way and when it perceives a danger of any kind. It triggers the stress response where one thing it does is gives us a flood of adrenaline in case we have to take some action like fight off an attacker or run away. It also in Another important thing that it does is the parts of the brain that are less relevant for immediate physical protection get dialed down just a little bit, well, it’s relevantly, the parts in your prefrontal cortex that are associated with complex thinking and rational decision making, they get dialed down, because I think the amygdala is reasoning right now I don’t need to read a spreadsheet I need to run. So I’m just gonna focus on getting blood into your legs and right,
Maria Ross 15:23
I don’t need to organize my schedule, I do
Katharine Manning 15:27
it so that obviously, you know, we developed that way for very good reasons. And I think it does keep us safe and a lot of instances, but one of the things that’s difficult is the amygdala, while it is very good at keeping us physically safe, it’s not always very good at telling when we are in physical danger. So you, for instance, maybe you stand up to deliver a presentation and your mind goes blank, your hands start shaking, you’re having that stress response, obviously, you’re not in physical danger. But it’s maybe reputational danger, right? If you have to go in to your boss and say, I need you to understand that I’m going to need to telework for a little while because I’m in an abusive relationship. And I need to go live in a shelter for a little while. And I don’t, I want to make sure nobody knows where I am. Even, that is a terrifying conversation to have, right? And you can have that stress response. Right. So it can manifest therefore in things like, you know, a flood of adrenaline, so you’re suddenly pacing, or you can’t keep still, other things are brain fog, difficulty remembering things, difficulty comprehending or explaining, all of those can be signs of trauma, in terms of recognizing it in the workplace, I think one of the things I tend to advise and try to live by myself is to start with an assumption of best intentions, and provide clarity and, and grace wherever possible. So when somebody is, for instance, you know, showing up late a lot, let me tell you a story. There was a guy I spoke with who was the CEO of a company, and I was talking to him about the work that I do and why I do it, and why it matters. And he was listening and, and he got quiet for a second. And he said, you know, we almost fired one of my best friend’s, he said, this was this guy was the head of sales for the company, they had come up together and work together for more than a decade, you know, been to each other’s houses, their wives were friends, he had always been a pillar of the organization’s success, you know, that he was part of why this company was what it was. And then one day, his performance just fell off the cliff. Wow, like he started showing up late, he was not engaging on projects. He was dropping the ball a lot. And the leadership team had a meeting about it. And they were like, we can’t have somebody in this position who can’t perform. It’s too important a role. And I think we got to let them go. And then finally, somebody said, Well, why don’t we talk to him? And see talking? I know exactly.
Maria Ross 18:12
I know, we talk and get curious about what’s going on for this person. Right?
Katharine Manning 18:17
Ask. So they did. And what they found out when they asked that question was that the man’s wife was dying, oh, my goodness. And he had wanted to bring it up at work. Because he thought, you know, my personal issue is, and I don’t want to be making excuses or something like that. But once he was able to be open about everything he was going through, and they got some support around him, obviously, they were horrified and you know, did what they could to support him. According to the CEO, this guy’s performance did a 180 like that day. And when I think about it, you know, there’s the stress of work, which is, you know, going to be there and we’ll do what we can, there’s the stress of knowing that his wife was dying, and they can’t do much about that. But then there is a third stress, which is what is worth going to say about the fact that I’m worried about my wife. It’s the
Maria Ross 19:04
optics, the stress of the optics of what will people think of me? Yeah,
Katharine Manning 19:09
exactly. Exactly. And because they could get rid of that it was like this burden lifted, right? And then you know, you also think about, like the loyalty of that, right? Like you stood by me when my wife was dying. Like, I haven’t been here forever, I will, I will do anything to stand by you because of the way you stood by me.
Maria Ross 19:28
I think that that’s, you know, this is the crux of what people mean when they talk about bringing yourself to work. We’re not talking about letting it all hang out and being completely unprofessional at all times and becoming in your bathrobe. Talking about this, we’re talking about taking that stress out that unnecessary stress away. That for all practical purposes detracts from your performance. Like if we’re looking for bottom line reasons to understand why we should be more empathetic for our colleagues and for our team members at work. That’s why it’s you take that step. and burden away from someone. So now you can get to what can we do to help improve the performance and support this person, especially if they’ve been a high performer in the past. So what a great story and a not a great story for that person, unfortunately. But a great story to exemplify why we need to lead with curiosity and getting to know people and not being afraid to sometimes bring our personal life into our workplace environment, because whether we want to admit it or not, it’s impacting the work. So we can pretend it’s not there. But it really does impact the work and it impacts the performance of the company at the end of the day. Definitely, definitely. I love that. So now that we might have some, some cues to recognize that, you know, not always, but trauma could be a factor here. What are some good ways to respond? Because I have talked in the past about, sometimes our best intentions can actually cause more harm than good. And I always use the example of empathy hijacking, whereas it’s, it’s, you know, you tell your story you share with me, and I instantly try to connect with you by talking about my story and what happened to me, right. And so how can we respond to someone that we suspect might be dealing with trauma? I love
Katharine Manning 21:22
that you talked about that empathy, hijacking, and that’s something that I focus on a lot of this oil. Yeah. And I think you’re right, there is a desire to connect, but what you’re doing is really pulling the microphone, you know, towards yourself. So, in all of this work with prime victims, a lot of what I did you know, I’m a lawyer, and my role was to, you know, my, my job was to advise on victims rights. But what I found over time was that the legal aspects of my job were less than less, and it was much more about this. How do you express empathy? How do you support people in trauma, and so it was something that I was doing a lot with prosecutors, law enforcement agents, just try to help people know how to better support people. And I know that it’s hard. First of all, let me just acknowledge that it is hard to me, for me to this day, I mean, I’ve had conversations in the last six months with people where they say something, and I feel like I’ve just been punched in the stomach. And it takes me a second to like, you know, reconfigure and realize, okay, this is a story of trauma that has just been shared with me. So I need to make sure that I’m responding appropriately with compassion and column. So because I know all of that, and because I also know that feelings are contagious. And that’s another aspect of empathy, right as we feel the feelings of the people that we’re interacting with. And so when we are interacting with somebody in trauma, we can get a little contagion effect of that surge of adrenaline and suppression of complex thinking. So suddenly, we’re like, playing with our pen, we keep looking at the door, our brain goes a little blank, it’s hard to respond well, in those moments. So I came up with the five steps of what I think you should do to support somebody when they’re sharing a story of trauma with you. And this is really geared toward the workplace, but a lot of it is applicable in any context. So the acronym is laser, Le s e r. And I like to say it’s to help you stay laser focused on the person in front of you and what it is that they need. The five steps are number one, listen, this is active listening, showing them that you actually want to hear what they’re saying. You nod you say, Aha, you ask questions, open ended questions to let them know that you want them to keep talking. Next step is acknowledge. And this is really just letting the person know that you’ve heard them. So rather than watching into your own story of something similar that happened to you, or the scrape resource that you think they should access, first thing is just let them know that you’ve heard them. Something as simple as thanks for sharing that. Or I’m sorry for everything you’re going through, or that sounds really hard or scary, or whatever it sincerely sounds to you. So just a quick statement that acknowledges that they’ve shared something with you, and thanks them for it. Try to avoid responses that either deny or distract for what they’ve said. So the distraction is the one that you just mentioned, you know, something similar happened to me. So let me tell you about that. Distraction can also be something like, oh, well, really, you need to focus on your kids right now. So let’s just talk about how you’re taking care of your kids, instead of the thing you just shared. A denial is something like Oh, I’m sure you misunderstand, right? Or
Maria Ross 24:35
it’s nothing. It’s all going to work out. Yeah. What would under that under that also fall the trying to problem solve it right away, trying to get the advice and you should go talk to this person or you should do this or you should listen to this podcast or the show. Yeah, absolutely.
Katharine Manning 24:51
Yeah. And I think honestly, that problem solving thing is, I think it becomes harder to avoid the more senior you get at work in this way you get more senior, it’s by being really good at solving problems. So it becomes instinctive you think this is my value in a work situation is that I can solve a problem. And in a lot of context, I’m sure that’s true. And it’s excellent that you’re such a good problem solver. But in this context, problem solving can come across as trade or minimizing, because probably, they have already thought of all of the solutions that you’re thinking of view. And it can make them feel kind of dumb. You know, like, oh, well, have you considered? You know, you tried? Of course I have. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the reality is, you’re never going to come up with a solution as good as what they will come up with, because you don’t know their situation as well as they do. So when I talk about this, in training, I have a slide of a person, like a superhero wearing a cape and, and I say it’s it remember that you want them to wear the cape, like problem solving feels really good. Let them do it. Right.
Maria Ross 25:58
So good. So we’ve we’ve gone through listen and acknowledge and then we have s er,
Katharine Manning 26:06
yeah, so share is the next step. One of the things I saw in working with crime victims is everybody created information. They wanted to know what happened to the what, when what was gonna happen next. And I began to realize that one of the things about periods of trauma or distress periods of upheaval, is they feel very out of control. And knowledge is power, when we can share information with people that helps them feel a little bit more in control. So you can share facts if you know them, like you know, if there was an incident of workplace violence. This is what we know about what happened, can share process information, maybe somebody comes to you to report bias. And you say, Well, you know, we have a process for handling complaints of bias, here’s what it is. Talking through process can be helpful. Sharing value, this is helpful, you know, we take these issues very seriously, safety is of paramount importance. Values, information can be helpful and even being open about what you don’t know, like, I don’t know how these public complaints are handled, no, but let me know what I can find out. And I’ll get back to you. Even that is giving information. So when you
Maria Ross 27:11
talk about share, though, I could see that being interpreted as what we just talked about, which is sharing advice and sharing problem solving. How do you discern those two?
Katharine Manning 27:22
Yeah. So share is really giving the person information that they want and need, that’s helpful for them. And really, I mean, I think of the blocks of information as being facts about the situation, process information, like your our steps, right, you wanted to do X or Y, or Z, or these are how decisions are being made around this issue of values and things that aren’t known but hope to be sin. And so this is not your time to open up about like the great thing that your sister did when she was in a similar situation. It’s really this is factual information that’s going
Maria Ross 27:57
to help them in this moment. Yep. And is there any guidance on if they’re ready for that? So for example, is it? Is it okay to ask for consent? Have you know, is this talk? Are we talking now? Are you just are you just wanting to vent at this point? And have me listen? Or would you like me to talk you through some of the resources we have available? Is that ever appropriate? Yeah,
Katharine Manning 28:22
it is. Absolutely. And you know, the next step in power is all about resources. It’s going outside. And for both of these steps, really, I think getting consent is helpful, and just saying, you know, what, how can I help you? What do you need right now is always a worthwhile thing. And then actually listening and trying to provide that sometimes people don’t know what it is that they want, or need. So just reminding them, I remember having a conversation once with a colleague who she came to me to say that she was concerned that her ex boyfriend, you know, he was just acting in ways that were a little scary, you know, like showing up a lot. And, and she said, you know, a few times when she’s walked out of the office, he’s been right there waiting, and she’s not really sure, like, why he was doing that. And oh, by the way, he’s law enforcement. So he’s always carrying a gun. And I mean, that she was sharing all of that. And I was listening and acknowledging, and I said, and have you thought about talking to security at our office? And she was like, No. And I said, Well, you know, there’s, there’s really smart people in our security office, and it might just be helpful for them to understand that, you know, the guy hanging around up front, you know, maybe has a previous relationship with somebody inside and she did go and talk to them. And they were great. I mean, incredibly kind and supportive and didn’t make a huge deal of it. And right, you know, took a picture of the guy that she had and you know, just were very supportive within
Maria Ross 29:53
and I love the way you phrase that because there’s the difference between you should go do this with Have you thought about I mean, words matter in these moments. And so you might be saying the same thing. But you’re saying it in a way that’s a little bit more empowering. And also, like you said earlier, acknowledges that maybe she didn’t think of that before. And so you’re not putting her in, in a defensive position. It’s just have you thought about that. So I love I love those ways of those little cheats we have of ways that we can say something and still share the information with people in a way that they might better receive it in that frame of mind. Yeah, that’s
Katharine Manning 30:32
such a great call out. Thank you for that. And you know, one of the things that amygdala response, right, the flood of adrenaline suppression of conflicts, thinking all of that is around safety, do I feel safe here. And it can really affect your ability to comprehend and to articulate what you’re going through, if you don’t feel safe, doing so wherever possible, try to find ways to make the person feel more safe, is going to help you. So that’s why we lead with things like questions, what would be helpful to you what, you know, what do you need? I will even start off with like, Hey, do you want me to close the door? Or do you like it open to other shades open? Would you like a glass of water, just giving people as much opportunity to express their own needs, and have those needs met? All of those things are going to increase safety and are going to help the conversation. And
Maria Ross 31:24
I think that that’s why that’s important to understand that we can’t determine for somebody else, what is traumatic to them? We the it’s it’s in the environment where they don’t feel safe, and they may feel threatened by something we are perfectly fine with. And so, you know, it’s that it’s that judgment again, over i don’t i don’t think what you went through sounds traumatic. You know, I, my uncle fought in World War Two, and whatever you know, is, it’s this comparison of like someone else’s trauma not being as important or as bad, quote, unquote, as someone else’s, when we can’t help how we respond, how our brain responds as human beings that impact on our psyche, on our emotions on our brain chemicals can feel exactly the same. And we just need to acknowledge that for people.
Katharine Manning 32:13
Absolutely. And it’s, it’s just not effective. You know, I mean, if you approach somebody and you really, you’ve got a team member who, you know, you’re really frustrated, because he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do, and you come in with like an attack, and he gets defensive. And like, none of this is helping anything, you know,
Maria Ross 32:33
everything, all the all the higher functioning things in our brain shut down. I was just talking to a parenting coach yesterday, and I’ll put a link to her episode. But Sarah R Brown, and we were talking about the fact that even with little children, why punitive doesn’t always work, because your brain is literally shutting down. There’s brain science behind why that’s an ineffective way to parent. And by the way, lead. And I just, there’s so many parallels with, we have to we have to work with how our brains work. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I mean, that maybe you you hear this a lot, too. I will get responses sometimes from leaders of like, I mean, I get all this empathy stuff. But the reality is, I have to make difficult decisions, sometimes I have to take actions that are not going to be popular. And it’s important that I have the respect of my people and their, and like, okay, drives me, it drives me up a tree when I hear that, yes, I know.
Katharine Manning 33:33
And, I mean, here’s the thing, like, you can lead with fear, okay, and you can get a lot done in the short term, I will not deny that, but you are building your house on a minefield, because people are not going to tell you all of the problems that you know, that you are looking over, as you’re in this, you know, sprint to get this house up as quickly as possible. And so that’s where you end up with things like where you have planes falling out of the sky, because nobody’s willing to listen that maybe there’s a problem with this, where you have like the Larry NuSTAR case, where with US Olympics, gymnastics where they had 200 women and girls being abused. Why did that happen? Well, I think part of it is there was a culture of fear on that team, and where nobody felt like they were allowed to open up about what they were going through. So what ends up happening, huge, you know, bankruptcies and major problems, and a lot of smaller problems as well like decreased engagement, turnover, all of the other issues as well. So yes, you can lead with fear and you can get a lot done very, in the very short term, but it is never going to work out over the long term.
Maria Ross 34:42
Now, this idea that it’s an either or that either I’m going to be respected or I’m going to be empathetic, drives me absolutely insane. Because it’s this idea that it can’t be both when really, you can make tough decisions with empathy. You can be a strong leader with If empathy they coexist, and actually the best leaders that we are willing to follow into the fire are those that we know see us as humans and respect us. And the exact same task that an unsympathetic leader asks me to do, I’m going to be completely unwilling to do it.
Katharine Manning 35:17
Okay. So like, yeah, I totally agree in terms of people following you. It also gives you better information. Yes, yeah. He will just go down this path blindly. Yeah, right to the fact that there’s some major flaw that somebody would tell you if you know, if you look like you cared,
Maria Ross 35:35
right, right, exactly. So let’s wrap on this idea of so your leader listening, how can you build a trauma informed organization, which is sounds kind of scary to want to build a trauma informed organization? It’s like you’re inviting it in, right? But we’re humans, it’s already gonna be there in some way, shape, or form for people. So what does it mean to be a trauma informed organization? And how can what are some steps that leaders can take to start down that path?
Katharine Manning 36:05
Yeah, absolutely. First, let me just wrap up the laser. So the last step, yes, sorry. No, yeah, that’s okay. So we did listen, acknowledge, share and power, which is the referral to resources like EAP. And then the final one is return. And that’s both literally returning to the person check in on the later let them know you continue to be a resource. It’s also returned to yourself, acknowledging that supporting others can take a toll on us. And so we have to be taking care of ourselves as well. I’d love to add at least Yeah, I got
Maria Ross 36:36
I got too overexcited there. So yeah. Oh, good. Just a point on that is this idea of self care. So important, I’m going to be writing about it as one of the five pillars of effective empathetic leadership in my next book that’s coming out in 2024. Because we have to get away from this idea that self care is indulgent. Because we have to, we charge our phones up every night. I know, we’ve heard that ad nauseam. But we do, there’s assets we take care of, to ensure they are working properly. And we as leaders have to take care of ourselves to ensure that we are working properly. And to your point, if you are the receiver of someone’s traumatic experience, or they’re sharing a traumatic story with you, that is that is going to impact you as well. So you need to make sure that you are taking care of yourself, you’re not getting lost in the process of trying to be empathetic to someone else. Yeah,
Katharine Manning 37:33
absolutely. And it is normal and healthy for it to take a toll on you like no one worse, hearing something horrific is going to have an effect. So it’s not that that effect is the negative thing. It’s the failure to give yourself space for recovery. Isn’t the problem, Asian, so allow yourself like, wow, that was really hard. I mean, it’s happened to me recently, I did a training and somebody shared a story in the training that just really left me kind of reeling. And I came away feeling hopeless, and just really depleted. And I took a little time I reached out to a friend and I, you know, just gave myself a little room to process all of that. And it took a day or two, but I felt better and hopeful again, and I think that’s the key is just giving yourself the space and the support that you need to be able to recover.
Maria Ross 38:23
Yes, absolutely. Okay, so we will return to the trauma informed organization. How, what is that? And how are what are some steps that leaders can take to build it? What’s the payback for doing?
Katharine Manning 38:36
Yeah, absolutely. So a trauma informed workplace just means that it’s a workplace where there is an understanding that trauma is affecting the organization, right? We have people here who are experiencing trauma, that it has a negative effect, and we work to mitigate those negative effects. That’s all it means. We are aware of it and we’re doing our best to try to make it better. Okay, so it’s not, not rocket science. It’s just an understanding and efforts to improve. And then in terms of building a trauma informed workplace, I really think there are three aspects. First, is this idea of acknowledgement, that people there feel like I can be heard, if I express something, people will hear me, okay, it’s okay to open up about challenges. And I will be acknowledge, the second one is support, I can get help when I need it. And that means there are policies on the books that are helpful, you know, things like mental health, you know, days or miscarriage leave or any of a number of different programs and policies that are there. That also means things like transparency, are we open about the direction we’re going and challenges we’re facing? And then finally modeling self care showing that it really is okay. And that’s where we talk about leaders. I always say you have to engage not just in self care but noisy self care. Be very, very Are you clear about I’ll have boundaries to that is okay, where I need to get help. I just went back to therapy. And it’s been really helpful for me, like just saying that think about how much possibility you open up for other people in your organization. And
Maria Ross 40:14
I love that last one real quick, I just want to have to say, because we’ve been in a culture so long, where people have worn the badge of busyness as something they boast about, I can’t wait for the point where the norm is that we boast about how we take care of our emotional health. Like a lot, yes to be our badge of honor. Right? You found my gun lately? Well, yeah.
Katharine Manning 40:42
And then we’re aspect of the trauma informed workplace that I think is important is this idea of trust and safety, that I understand the rules here that they apply equally to everybody that you followed through and do the things you say you’re going to do, we don’t have one set of rules for one set of employees and another for others. So creating a safe environment for everybody is also important.
Maria Ross 41:07
I love it. Well, thank you so much for sharing all these insights. I want to remind folks again, to check out the book, The empathetic workplace, five steps to a compassionate, calm and confident response to trauma on the job. Katherine Manning, thank you so much for your time today. We’ll have all your links in the show notes. But just real quickly, is there one or two places where folks can find out more about you and your work?
Katharine Manning 41:28
Sure. So my website is Catherine manning.com. But if people are interested, you know, every Thursday, I send out a text message on empathy and leadership and resilience. It’s just a free thing. But it’s been fun. So if people are interested in joining that just type, it’s the number is 833-975-1945. That’s 833-975-1945 and just write the word Blackbird, which is my company name, you just send that word and you’ll be automatically entered. And
Maria Ross 42:00
we will put that in the show notes for anyone that’s on the go right now and scrambling for a pen. But thank you so much again, it was so lovely to talk to you and I look forward to more conversations with you. Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate and review and share it with a friend or colleague. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be Kai. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
A military historian walks into a company and transforms their customer engagement strategy to increase revenue and retention. While this might sound like the start of a very strange joke, it’s a true story. When searching for frameworks on how to better engage your customers with empathy, look no further than my guest today, John Southard.
Backed by more than 10 years of research built into his book, Defend and Befriend: The US Marine Corps and Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam, John has transformed the lessons from his historical research into a simple and proven empathy framework that companies can leverage to better understand customer needs – and we discuss that framework today, as well as examples each stage in action. We discuss why some leaders view the customer as the enemy and how that’s hurting their growth, why simply responding to customer surveys is not the way to build engagement, and how your hiring decisions impact customer retention and engagement in ways you may not realize.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Exposure to groups other than yourself is the gateway to empathy. Getting into conversation is the first step to breaking false assumptions and realizing that both sides are human.
A recent study shows that a lack of empathy from brands to consumers loses companies money, to the tune of $300M, every year.
Cultivating communities and relationships with customers allows you to get feedback from them directly and build trust with those customers.
When trying to find your differentiator – start with what your customers need, both overtly and covertly. It takes time, but the ROI is worth it and sustainable in the long term.
“What unfolded is…the greatest unknown story of empathy, because these Marines show up and realize quickly, we have to live here, we have to abide by their rules, we have to understand their culture…because our personal survival literally depends on it. They lived a day in the life of these villagers to gain their respect.” — John Southard
Brand Story Breakthrough course to help you craft a clear, compelling brand story – includes weekly office hours with Maria!
About John Southard, Customer Engagement Expert, Speaker, Author
John has a Ph.D. in U.S. Military History and is an author, speaker, and expert in customer engagement and empathetic leadership. He has applied his historical research on empathy to corporate America to build empathetic leaders and cultures and optimize customer and employee experiences. Backed by more than 10 years of research, John has transformed the lessons from his historical research into a simple and proven empathy framework that companies can leverage to better understand customer needs.
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. A military historian walks into a company and transforms their customer engagement strategy to increase revenue and retention. While this might sound like the start of a very strange joke, it’s a true story. When searching for examples and frameworks on how to better engage your customers with empathy, look no further than my guest today, John southern. John has a PhD in US military history, and is an author, speaker and expert in customer engagement and empathetic leadership. He has applied his historical research on empathy to corporate America to build empathetic leaders and cultures and optimize customer and employee experiences. Backed by more than 10 years of research built into his book, defend and befriend the US Marine Corps and combined action platoons in Vietnam. John has transformed the lessons from his historical research into a simple and proven empathy framework that companies can leverage to better understand customer needs. And we discuss that framework today, as well as examples of each stage in action. We discuss why some leaders view the customer as the enemy and how that’s hurting their growth. Why simply responding to customer surveys is not the way to build engagement, and how your hiring decisions impact customer retention and engagement. In ways you may not realize this was such an interesting and enlightening episode. Please enjoy. 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 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. Welcome John southern to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m So excited to have you here to talk about customer engagement, and especially your fascinating background, as a military historian, and what lessons we can learn about leadership from that work. So an end customer engagement from that work. So welcome to the show.
John Southard 05:17
I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so
Maria Ross 05:20
you have to tell us how you got from academic historian to customer engagement expert in corporate America, because that is not a linear leap, let’s talk about that. It
John Southard 05:31
really is like the most random abrupt career change. I obviously used to be a history professor in academia. And my last job in academia was kind of a visiting professor job. So it was only three years. And it was right after I got my PhD. And so the gold standard, of course, in academia is to find that tenure track job. And over the course of those three years that I had that temporary job, I just for the life of me could not find a tenure track job, which is a whole nother TED Talk. But I just decided, instead of moving my family halfway across the nation every one to three years looking for new jobs in academia, I said, I’m just going to quit academia. And as random as it is, jump into business, my undergrad degrees actually in business. But at that point, who cares, because it had been like, 15 years since I’d done anything. So when I moved, we were in Atlanta, moved from Atlanta back home, which is Texas. And that’s where my network was, and is. And so I made it my full time job to network and figure out, how do I explain how a professional historian generates revenue for a company. And that was really, really difficult to try to figure out, or people asked you the question, when you’re networking, what do you want to do? And I was like, I don’t know how I’d write that, actually. But I had a meeting with the CEO of this real estate investment company. And he happened to really enjoy military history. And so he was asking me about my dissertation and my book. And I explained to him, what this small group of Marines in Vietnam did, to become essentially best friends with these Vietnamese villagers, even though they absolutely hated these people before they met him. And he said, Wow, you just explained to me our new customer engagement strategy. I said, I did. And he said, Yes. And so long story short, I put together a plan, distilled everything we can talk about, of course, in a minute, everything that these Marines did, I distilled it down into a four part empathy framework, and pitched that as, here’s how you get to know the tenants of these buildings that you own, and get your occupancy occupancy up from like 60, or 70%, to 100%. And then that work six days, it was crazy how that worked. And so it was just that light bulb moment where I said, this is what I’m going to do is I say it’s the power of empathy learns through history. And so now, I’ve been in operations and strategy and change management, and innovation and doing human centered design and design thinking work. And it’s all based on what this group of Marines in Vietnam did, which I call one of the greatest yet unknown stories of empathy and world history. Well,
Maria Ross 08:42
and that’s, that’s amazing. And we should mention the name of the book is defend and befriend the US Marine Corps and combined action platoons in Vietnam. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that story? I mean, obviously, folks can pick up the book and get all the juicy details, but give us the highlights and how it applies how that practice of empathy, first of all pointed out for us, because I think it’s hard for some people to see that in other realms, like business like the military, like all these places. And then let’s talk let’s, let’s parse that out into how that impacts a customer engagement strategy.
John Southard 09:17
Sure. First, I know that not everyone listening is an expert, or reads about American involvement Vietnam every day. So I’ll give a little bit of historical context here. And that first Vietnam War, we’re looking at the 1960s and early 70s. And for me, when I was getting my PhD and learning about American involvement in Vietnam, you know, you learn that the American GI interaction with the Vietnamese and especially the villagers was awful. And that’s putting it lightly. They hated these people. They saw them as subhuman. And if you can imagine a group of 19 year old Marines on patrol in Triple Canopy jungle, it’s 100 degrees and 1,000,000% humidity. And there’s bugs you’ve never seen before. And all these things and you’re walking through rivers, and now your feet are wet. And the America’s enemy in Vietnam was intentionally elusive and operated in these really small unit. So unlike World War Two, they operate in the small units, it wasn’t these two gigantic armies going at it. And so what happened is the Marines would be on patrol for days and sometimes weeks and not see one enemy. And then every once a while, they would engage in combat for like five minutes, and then the enemy would disappear into the jungle. But as you’re patrolling for days, you’re going to come across these Vietnamese villages. And these Marines assumed that the enemy were in the villages because they couldn’t find them anywhere else. But the problem in Vietnam was that America’s enemy dressed like civilians, they looked like civilians, they talked like civilians. So it was nearly impossible to differentiate friend from foe. And a lot of really unfortunate incidents happened as a result of that, because the frustration of not finding the enemy and then having your buddy killed and still not finding the enemy. That frustration, turned into hatred and turned into thoughts of these people as subhuman. And the crazy thing is that the Marine Corps early in the war in 1965, came in and said, the way that this war is being fought is not working. And instead of just patrolling the unpopulated jungles, and just trying to rack up enemy body count, we should measure success by the number of Vietnamese civilians that we can protect. And so the Marine Corps devised this program called the combined action program where they would send gas 19 year old Marines to live in Vietnamese villages. But of course, the problem is everything we just talked about, they hated these people, they saw them as subhuman. And what unfolded is, again, when I call the greatest unknown story of empathy, because these Marines show up and realize quickly, we have to live here, we have to abide by their rules, we have to understand their cultural do’s and don’ts because our personal survival literally depends on it. And the Marines started to my message, like my overarching messages experience, what they experienced, like that’s my definition of empathy within the context of these Marines. And that’s what they did, they lived a day in the life of these villagers to gain their respect, in hopes that they could gather intelligence about food the enemy really was and where they were going. So over the course of weeks, and months of living with these villagers, every day, they start to learn about their culture, and they started to respect their culture. And you start to see Marines helping the villagers celebrate the Tet holiday. And he saw the villagers helping the Marines celebrate their holidays, and the Marines start playing Vietnamese board games, and you start to see this interaction. And then you get to the point where the Marines start to understand what are like the big physical needs in the village. And so through interaction, they’re starting to build school houses, and they’re starting to build water wells. And it’s just this, you keep going. And by the end of those 12 months, they served, you have Marines that had gone from seeing people as subhuman, to literally dying for them. Like, because they love these people so much. And it was just this process of empathizing with these people to understand what their day was, like, gaining respect for them, and completely transforming their perception of not just 200 villagers in the village, but a higher culture.
14:03
So there’s so much to be out there. Because there’s, you know, there’s,
Maria Ross 14:08
it’s always been this idea of exposure to different groups or groups different from yourself, that is the gateway to empathy. And sometimes you do have to force people to get to know other people. And I’m, I’m sort of like, whatever leads people to empathy is a good thing. And that’s why, you know, I talk about the ROI of empathy of trying to get skeptics on board to say, well, empathy is good for our business, if that’s what gets you there to ultimately be in the room with other people and see their lives and listen to their perspectives and find a new way to think about something if that’s what it takes. Then ultimately, they’re going to transform from the outside in which it sounds like happened in this situation on a very large and you know, important scale, you know, a life or death scale. And so that is in and of itself amazing. And so when we talk about, even when we talk about dei in the workplace, this is why like getting us all into the same room is the first step, getting us in conversation with each other is the first step to, you know, bust false assumptions to get to know someone is human to all all of the things you just talked about. So that really struck me. The other thing that struck me is how this CEO saw the link between Yeah, a group hating another group and applying that to their customer strategy, which I think is very telling of companies that continue to see the customer as the enemy, even though you have no company without a customer. So why do you think that thinking even begins in a lot of companies? What Why are they seeing the customer as the enemy when, again, no customers no company?
John Southard 16:04
I think, and I’ll use him as an example. And that company is example. But But I think it speaks to the larger issue. And that there is just whether it’s intentional or not, there is this disconnection between leadership of a company and customers, and the cause of that disconnection could be all sorts of things, it could be that they’re making assumptions, it could be that they’ve got 5 million other things to do. And so the concept of empathizing with a group of people they don’t know, is just so foreign to them. And in this particular case, and talking to the CEO of this investment company, these apartments that they needed help with were very distressed apartments in low income areas, and they had no idea how to deal with the tenants in those neighborhoods, no clue, because all they had grown accustomed to was you buy a property, you change the carpet, you paint the walls, and you put flowers at the front, and then you raise rents. And so getting them to understand that it’s going to improve the customer experience and the tenant experience, if you actually focus on how do we improve the lives of the people and not the buildings surrounding them. And for me, getting that light switch to turn on for them to understand we do need empathy, business reasons, is you have to understand what drives them from a revenue standpoint, what gets them going, like if I say, hey, if we don’t do X, Y, and Z to empathize with these customers, your company is going to lose $20 million every year. And we know like, there was a recent study several years ago, where it was this massive research 34,000 consumers across more than 200 brands. And they found that the lack of empathy from those brands to consumers cost those companies $300 million every year.
Maria Ross 18:05
This is the thing, they’re This is not a soft skill. This is like a bottom line imperative. It’s costing you money, like, again, people get on me about how can you talk about empathy that way, you know, we need to be talking about the moral imperative of it, and I get it, but that argument has not worked for a lot of people. So if we need to tell them, you know, companies are losing what was it 30,000,003 100,000,300 300 million? Because of a lack of empathy, you need to start paying attention CEO like, yeah,
John Southard 18:35
and then once you get their ear, it’s explaining bow.
Maria Ross 18:39
Right? What does empathy look like in the business model? In, in our communications, in our training, in, you know, the type of people we hire? Like, are we hiring people that? Are we? Are we distilling them down to, you know, can do they have emotional intelligence? Can they connect with people? And if they can’t, are we willing to invest to close that gap?
John Southard 19:06
For that, you know, what, the fourth part of the empathy framework I talked about is, I call it preserving the culture. And what these Marines did is once they, once they established this culture within the villages, they wouldn’t let any other Marines in from the outside because they were concerned that if they brought in a guy who sees that the villagers are subhuman, Everything’s ruined. And so that’s one of the things that I preach to companies is okay. Now you have to hire people that believe in this and keep them or else one person can completely ruin the whole. Let’s
Maria Ross 19:43
back up a second. Let’s talk about those different levels. Real quick. You mentioned level four, but take us through quickly the different levels you talk about. Yeah, so
John Southard 19:50
it’s four parts to the empathy framework. The first is cultivate mutual respect. The second is deliver what I call overt needs. The third is deliver holdover needs. And then the fourth is preserved the trust. And I can explain any of those in greater detail if you’d like. Yeah,
Maria Ross 20:10
just real quickly give us give us a summary. Because we, you know, we want people to interact with your work and read your book and hiring you to speak. So let’s, let’s give them a little taste. Sure.
John Southard 20:21
So cultivate mutual respect, they all sound pretty self explanatory for the most part. But, and I’ll place it within the context of what the Marines did is, they showed up and one of the first things I realize is we have to respect them in the hopes that they respect us. And then once we can do that, in retrospect, we’re building this foundation of trust, but we still have to build this whole house. So by living a day in the life of these Vietnamese overseas villagers, had never even thought of the fact of an American much less than US Marine. experiencing what they experience on a daily basis to try to show them respect. And then the villager started inviting them to dinners, and you have all these things that happen. So there’s this cultivation of mutual respect that has to happen first.
Maria Ross 21:09
Okay, so let’s talk about that in the business context, how do you apply that, that part of the framework to a business,
John Southard 21:15
so I can give you two examples. One is this real estate company, where the first thing we did is, I knew that we had to show up not in great numbers to overwhelm tenants who had never seen us before. But in small groups show up. And were what they were taught like, they talk as much as you can, and just try to form relationships with them. It may take days and may take weeks. But it has to be consistent, you have to show up not once a week, but as often as you can, we did it every day. But if you can’t do that, that’s fine, as long as you’re consistent with it. And once you build that foundation of trust, like with these tenants, it’s just showing up and going in the same place every day, sitting down, interacting with people, finding the social butterflies, and getting them to start chatting with more people, then more people start talking to you, and you can start talking to them about your vision. This is why
Maria Ross 22:15
communities of customers are so important, and not just oh, we have a Facebook group for our customers, right that you leave to just 10 fend for itself. But really cultivating those connections with customers so that you can get that get that feedback. And so many companies are scared to talk to their customers, it just boggles my mind. So many executives, I should say, are scared to talk to their customers.
John Southard 22:39
Yeah. And in my experience, some of that is because the old adage, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So we’re making money doing things a certain way. However, if you do things a certain way that doesn’t involve empathy, you’re going to plateau. And there’s another case in my business career where that’s exactly what happened. And they just needed to start a conversation with customers. And once they did that, things started to change. And I could move on to the next step in the framework. So
Maria Ross 23:12
that’s the first phase, what’s the second stage of the framework
John Southard 23:17
deliver overt needs. So these are needs that are pretty much plain as day to everyone involved? Meaning you or I could be dropped into a Vietnamese village in 1967. Give us a few days, and we’ll look around and go, Oh, yeah, they definitely need a school house, they definitely could use a pig. And they definitely could use a water well. So it’s like starting empathy, you start to understand the overt needs that are going to improve their day to day lives. And a lot of that just them telling you what they need. I don’t like quick wins. So let’s, once we’ve built that foundation of trust and mutual respect, now let’s start delivering them the over needs. And then once the overt needs are being met, you move on to delivering covert needs, which are the needs that the customer doesn’t even know that they have. And once you expose that to them, now you’ve gone from a foundation of trust to lifelong trust.
Maria Ross 24:21
And that’s the third stage as delivering, yes. So how do you how do you recommend that companies discover and articulate what those covert needs are if their customers don’t even know it’s a need? I’ve I’ve always been, I find Steve Jobs, a fascinating figure because when I wrote the empathy edge, I spoke to someone who worked directly with him. And he has got a horrible reputation as a mercurial leader and not the best people person as a leader. But when it came to to users when it came to customers, he was so in lockstep with them, and not just how they wanted to Use the product itself. But what did they want to accomplish? What were their lives? Like? What? What were their goals and build the product that they don’t even know they should be asking for? That’s why Apple is so innovative, because they’ve given us things we didn’t even envision. So how can I? How can sort of like your everyday company and everyday CEO, who says, I’m not Steve Jobs? How do they figure out what those with those
John Southard 25:27
covert needs are? What I think you just spoke to it is you have to think beyond just sending out surveys. And assuming that the responses you get tell you everything you need about your customer. And it goes back to the overarching message that I mentioned about my empathy framework, which is experience what they experience as best as you can. And this is where I really think design thinking is so important in pushing empathy forward in business, because and Steve Jobs, new design thinking as much as anyone, is it you can’t, you have to experience what the customer experiences with them. And when you do that, you start to see certain behaviors, and you start to see certain ways that they operate that you wouldn’t know if you weren’t there with them. And so, for the Marines, that meant medical attention, because they show up to these villages, you know, middle of nowhere Vietnam, and there’s no sanitation, they don’t take showers, there’s no electricity, there’s no refrigeration, there’s nothing. And their idea of medical attention, or hearing an open wound was boiling a spiderweb and water and then applying that. And what the Marines had to do is say, Okay, we care about these people now. And they need modern medical attention, but how do we deliver it to them. And because of their empathy, they knew how to deliver it to them, they just had to let the villagers come to them. So each Combined Action platoon had a medic, and he would sit there, again, consistency day after day after day. And over time, the villagers as trust was gained, showed up. And six months later, they’re suddenly taking aspirin, and they’re accepting the modernized medicine because that trust had been built in the covert need. medical attention was now an overt need. And the villagers now we’re getting these needs that they didn’t even realize that they had, because for hundreds of years, to no fault of their own, they thought all boiling spiderwebs and water work. And so in the same way, in the business world, it’s just applying that same concept. So for me with these apartments, it was living a day in the life of a tenant, riding the bus, it was the longest day ever, but riding a bus with her from one fast food job to the next. And that nine hours later, we’re back at the apartment. And you find out that if she would tell you up front, if I said, What do you need, she would say, I need a car. But then you start to ask questions, you start to experience a day in the life. And you figure out No, no, your need is a high school education, not a car. So once she realized, you know, that was this covert knee that she didn’t even realize that she had that changed everything because we were offering all the social services on site to improve their day to day lives. And then we started introducing G ed classes. Because you’re not getting to the root cause of your problem with a car, you’re probably actually at your problem.
Maria Ross 28:45
But how do you balance that with what you know, the mission of the company, there’s only so much they’re not in the business of providing education for router ends, right? So where do you draw the line of like, that’s all important information, but we have to focus on what our business is capable of delivering?
John Southard 29:05
Yeah, and that’s where the business case for empathy is really important and understanding
29:12
that in order to employ some
John Southard 29:15
type of empathetic strategy, or an empathy framework, the people at the top app to be involved. They have to it’s not going to work, probably if they’re not. And so as the person who understands the importance of empathy and wants to employ empathy, you have to give them a business case where regardless of what a mission is, or what their strategy is, it’s undeniable that they have to do these things rooted in empathy. In order to move forward as a business like you are losing money. You are you’re costing yourself revenue, if you’re not doing X, Y and Z grew,
Maria Ross 29:54
but I’m going to push back on that a little bit. Again, they’re not in the business of providing an edge Question for people there in the real estate business. So what? What could they do based on that information that they’re getting?
John Southard 30:07
So part of that was there, they weren’t paying for it. So they weren’t getting them an education because we partnered with local community leaders and nonprofits that came to the site to provide so that was all done. Got any extra cost
30:22
them, right, but a huge value add? Yes,
John Southard 30:26
exactly. What isn’t, then,
30:28
then you get to Okay.
John Southard 30:31
Once this happens, and now we start to see tenant staying longer and more tenant showing up. And now we’re at 90% occupancy, you know, like, Okay, let’s do more, let’s do more. And then you’re at 100% occupancy with a waiting list, right? Where are your prior there at 60%? Going? What do we do here? Well, and
Maria Ross 30:49
this is the thing that leads to viral word of mouth. Like, again, what I love about this is they didn’t have to, it wasn’t extra cost, it might have been extra effort and coordination, but uncovering that need, and then filling it. That’s what differentiates you from every other real estate company out there, every other apartment complex. So when people talk about, we have to find something to differentiate ourselves, start with what your customers need, start with empathy for the people that are already in your orbit, and figure out what you can do for them that makes sense financially, and resource wise, but it’s those little touches that those are the things everybody talks about, those are the things that get pressed, those are the things so this idea of executives, and you know, even senior marketing executives chasing something to be viral or chasing something to get word of mouth, just engage with empathy, fill the gap. And that will actually be your differentiating factor that will actually help you get the buzz that you seek. And, and it takes time. And it’s you can’t see the ROI of it right away. But we’ve got to get out of this short term thinking, because if you really want your company to be sustainable, we’ve got to have our eye on the longer term as well. And there might need to be investments made in something that you might not get an ROI from for three, four or five years down the road. And I know that there’s a lot of leaders who say, Well, I’m not going to be here then. So I don’t care. But those are not really the leaders you want to have.
John Southard 32:31
Exactly. And all those needs that customers have today, they’re going to change in six months or 12 hours. Yeah, and you’re not engaged with your customer and understanding their needs and their changing needs, which means you’re empathizing with them, then you’re just you’re going to fall behind your competition. You
Maria Ross 32:51
know, it’s really interesting, I’m gonna put a link to this episode, I interviewed the CEO and founder of hint, Kara, golden. And they do such a great job of making customer feedback, the linchpin of their growth strategy in terms of what new products should they develop distribution strategies, all the things. And because they are so close with their customers, they discovered use cases for their product that they had never thought possible. And it helped them increase their reach and increase their ability to message to different groups of people they never thought possible, they never would have had that information. Even with the best focus groups, they might have put together without the consistent feedback of customers, knowing that customers felt they could give feedback to the company, and having people that actually listened and actioned on that feedback. For sure. So briefly, you mentioned it at the beginning, but just refresh us on the fourth stage. Preserve
33:53
the trust.
John Southard 33:54
So you’ve gone through all of this effort to do the first three parts of the framework. Now, you can’t ruin it. By hiring someone who doesn’t fit that culture of empathy that you’re trying to create. It’s just for if you have if you’ve started to create that culture or create that strategy or project that involves empathy. And there’s a person existing in your company who doesn’t fit. HR people close your ears you got to get rid of it’s not worth keeping them around. They’re going to ruin it. And there’s plenty of examples in everyone’s careers. Have that one person, I don’t care if it’s a 20 person, startup toxic Rockstar, yeah, or a fortune 500 with a billion people working for it. Like it, there’s that one person that just stirs everything and can really create that mistrust. And it’s just not worth having around. And for the Marines, it was their lives, so we can’t risk having what they call the shitbird come into our community. And so what am I I say in order to preserve the trust, you have to kick out the ship birds.
Maria Ross 35:05
It’s true. And we’re not talking about people that don’t think like you or see the world like you or, you know, we’re not advocating to black diversity. What we’re saying is if people fundamentally don’t hold and align with those values, those are not going to be a good fit for the company. When we say cultural fit that can sometimes get mishandled. And we don’t mean cultural fit in terms of it’s not a cultural fit, just because everybody looks and sounds like you. It’s a cultural fit. If people can’t embrace the values of the organization, and see the customer and see each other, the way we want them to see people. And if you’re not on board with that, if you’re going to come in of like the customers the enemy, that’s probably no matter how good that person is at their job. Like you said, it’s going to cause more problems than benefits. Yeah, it’s
John Southard 35:59
one thing if someone doesn’t understand and needs to be trained and needs to be taught. That’s one thing, right? But it’s another thing, if the person understands or is trained, and is taught and still
36:13
doesn’t alone, is still burning everything down behaviors
John Southard 36:17
that you’re trying to cultivate. Absolutely, absolutely.
Maria Ross 36:21
So talk to us, as we wrap up, what are some final bits of advice you can give to some leaders or even folks who feel like they don’t have the authority to make changes? What would be one or two big changes you would advise a company to make in order to be in closer lockstep to their customers and engage their customers more fully?
36:49
I would say, you have to figure out a way to experience
John Southard 36:54
what they experienced. And I know that sounds so generic, but I think it’s so true. And there’s different ways that you can try to experience with the experience, it doesn’t mean you
37:05
have to live with clay. What are some ideas?
John Southard 37:08
So there’s things like contextual inquiry, now we’re getting to like design thinking methods for empathy, where you can just observe somebody and ask them questions along the way. Or even in our hybrid virtual world, there’s ways that you can empathize with people. If you’re in Canada, and they’re in Mexico, you can do diaries, where you go over every day, pay at the end of the day, write down what your pain points were in all these things. And then let’s review them. And so the first thing is you have to try to figure out what’s the first step for me that I have to take to cultivate mutual respect with my customers. And it’s, it’s not hard, I just think what’s the first thing I need to do to start that process?
Maria Ross 37:52
Well, John, this has been some really great stuff. So more to come, highly recommend folks check you out and check out the book, all your links will be in the show notes if people are interested in finding out more about your work and hiring you to speak but where for folks on the go listening on the go, where’s a good spot for them to connect with you or find out more about your work?
John Southard 38:13
Your spots would be LinkedIn, John southern party, um, there’s not many John Suthers out there. So she you should be able to find me. And then my website is John Southern speaks.com. So either one of those are the best ways to get a hold of me and to see more about what I do. Great.
Maria Ross 38:31
And thank you so much for your time and your insights today. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do. Please rate review and share with a colleague or friend. Don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Parenting has so many parallels with team leadership and after today’s episode, you’ll be better equipped to raise healthy, emotionally connected kids AND be a stronger leader that enables your team to collaborate and perform more effectively. Today, my guest parenting coach Sarah R. Moore shares insights from her new book Peaceful Discipline: Story Teaching, Brain Science, and Better Behavior.
Sarah is the founder of Dandelion Seeds Positive Parenting and today, she shares her story of leveraging more than 20 years in Corporate America and had no idea how well her executive negotiation skills would serve her in parenting! We discuss what peaceful discipline means, why empathy in parenting is more important than people realize, and why brain science tells us that punishments or punitive leadership fails or backfires and doesn’t help you achieve your goals. We also talk about the power of vulnerability and why it may look very different from what you may think. Throughout, we talk about the parallels between applying these principles as parents and as organizational leaders.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
For children and adults, it is only possible to learn when there is a sense of emotional safety in the body.
There are ways to set our children and employees up for success with empathy, no matter what age they are. Speaking with curiosity and neutrality rather than accusation can help to foster the feeling of safety.
Every human on the planet wants to be viewed positively and have a sense of belonging and community.
Story can give people a sense of safety, even in business. And everyone can tell those stories, even if they don’t feel creative or like they’re good at it.
“If we lead with punishment, the learning part of the brain shuts off. So (they) might be able to go through the motions in the moment, but there’s not going to be any lasting change in behavior because they’re literally not in a place where they can assimilate new information.”
— Sarah R. Moore
Episode Reference:
Brand Story Breakthrough course to help you craft a clear, compelling brand story – includes weekly office hours with Maria!
About Sarah R. Moore: Parenting Coach, Speaker, Author, Peaceful Discipline
Sarah R. Moore is best-selling author of Peaceful Discipline: Story Teaching, Brain Science, and Better Behavior, and the founder of Dandelion Seeds Positive Parenting. She’s a public speaker, armchair neuroscientist, and most importantly, a Mama. She’s a lifelong learner with training in child development, trauma recovery, interpersonal neurobiology, and improv comedy. As a certified Master Trainer in conscious parenting, she helps bring JOY, EASE, and CONNECTION back to families around the globe. Her work has been featured in HuffPost, Scary Mommy, Motherly, Yahoo!, Her View from Home, and The Natural Parent Magazine, among others. She worked in corporate America for 20 years and had no idea how well her executive negotiation skills would serve her in parenting.
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. parenting has so many parallels with team leadership. And after today’s episode, you’ll be both better equipped to raise healthy, emotionally connected kids and be a stronger leader that enables your team to collaborate and perform more effectively. Today, my guest is parenting coach Sarah are more and she shares insights from her new book, peaceful discipline, story teaching brain science and better behavior. Sarah is the founder of dandelion seeds, positive parenting, she’s a public speaker, armchair neuroscientist, and most importantly, a mama. She’s a lifelong learner with training in child development, trauma, recovery, interpersonal neurobiology, and improv comedy. As a certified master trainer in conscious parenting. She helps bring joy, ease and connection back to families around the globe. Her work has been featured in HuffPo, scary mommy and the natural parent magazine, among others. Today, Sarah shares her story of leveraging more than 20 years in corporate America, and how she had no idea how well her executive negotiation skills would serve her and parenting. We discuss what peaceful discipline means, why empathy and parenting is more important than people realize, and why brain science tells us that punishments or punitive leadership fails or backfires and doesn’t help you achieve your goals. We also talk about the power of vulnerability, and why it may look very different than what you think. Throughout we talk about those parallels between applying these principles as parents and as organizational leaders. I selfishly loved this conversation both as a parent and an empathy speaker and leadership trainer. And I know you will walk away with so many great nuggets, 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 marketer’s superpower, if it’s wielded responsibly, so after running two 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 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 BSB course, or click the link in the show notes. See you on the other side. Hello, Sarah Moore, welcome to the empathy edge podcast, I can tell you as mom of a nine year old, I have been eager to have this conversation with you about children and empathy, and also how we can apply some of those lessons to us adults in the room. So welcome.
Sarah R. Moore 05:24
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
Maria Ross 05:26
So tell us a little bit about just briefly about your story. How did you get to this work of working with parents and being a parent coach? And speaking about positive parenting?
Sarah R. Moore 05:38
Yeah, honestly, I never saw it coming. I spent 20 years in corporate America, doing corporate America things I spent time with, you know, all of these executives, I was in leadership roles. I had a lot of very adult interactions with executive negotiation, persuasions, sandeels, effective communications, all of these things. And I had so much business sprain, if you will, that after a while, I realized that I needed to do a little bit of something to bring some more joy and creativity back into my life. So at night, when I was done working, I went to improv comedy school. And we the funny thing is, I didn’t realize that every single one of these experiences was setting me up for parenting. Because as it turns out, executive negotiation, guess who the best negotiators are their five year olds?
Maria Ross 06:34
Oh, my gosh, my husband always says it’s like negotiating with terrorists. Yeah.
Sarah R. Moore 06:39
Exactly. Yeah. So I didn’t realize that most of my formative years in corporate America, were actually preparing me for parenting. Now, that being said, when I was about to deliver my child, I was about two days away from becoming a mom. And I was a so called older and mother, everyone loves that terminology.
Maria Ross 06:56
Yes, magnetically.
Sarah R. Moore 06:58
I remember this executive vice president leaning over to me in a meeting and saying, and to his credit, he was a great guy, I still think really highly of him. But he leaned over to me and said, Hey, Sarah, just so you know, I know you’re planning to take the full three months off. And, you know, in our culture, we can collectively roll our eyes and say that goes by so quickly. And but he’s just saying, you know, you’re not going to miss a beat here. I will be feeding you work under the radar within 48 hours of you having that baby, so you won’t have to miss anything. And that was really my first clue that maybe this path wasn’t going to serve me in the long
Maria Ross 07:37
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a reason we need the three months off. Yeah, for sure.
Sarah R. Moore 07:43
Fast forward, I made it through my maternity leave my full maternity leave, you know, all whopping three months without really plugging in very much. And at the end of that time, I knew that I needed to ship something, because I was going to crumble. I could not be 150% at work, and 150% at home, which of course is the minimum requirement of any brand new parent with a child who doesn’t sleep for more than 20 minutes at a stretch. And I talked with my pediatrician at my child’s early Wilczek. And he said, By the way, how sleep going before you go back to work. And I said, Well, honestly, she’s up every couple of months or every couple of hours. But this is normal, and holistically, she’s getting plenty of sleep, so I’m not too concerned about it. And he looked me in the eye and he said, Sarah, you’re ridiculous. Don’t ever go to her when she cries. She’s manipulating you. It’ll let me know when you’re ready to get serious about parenting. Well, jaw dropped moment I was in. But she’s tiny. And of course, I want to be responsive to her. And all of my nervous system just rose in that moment. And I really couldn’t even respond to him. And why when I started researching that, indeed, we should be responding to our young children. And guess what, we actually should have empathy and understanding and connection with our older children, too. Yes, I dove into the research for my own parenting, the more I realized, this guy is working with outdated information. Now, it’s the switch pediatricians. But number two, I want to help empower other parents and caregivers so that when they hear advice like this, they feel like, I know that I can push back on this. Because whether it be me Thera or somebody else who does this work doesn’t have to be me. They can say, I’m not going to take that advice, because I know better. So that was really my first shift into I needed a career change because I did indeed get serious about parenting not in the way that he implied. But in my own brand of being passionate about supporting parents and caregivers to be and I responsive all of these things, and went and got all of the credentials and everything I would need. So I wouldn’t just be some random mama on the internet. And people could say It was with a trustworthy source I, she knows what she’s talking about Zalora it really came from a passion to support not only my own child, but also to make this shift in being available to the extent that I could be based on what we know about brain science, child development, all of these good things that we know under.
Maria Ross 10:18
Right. And I would say your lane is positive parenting and with the new book, which again, is called peaceful discipline story, teaching brain science and better behavior. Can you talk to us a little bit? Because I think there’s going to be we’re going to weave in a lot of lessons here on how to apply this to adults, especially in your relationships at the workplace, but your relationships as an adult with other adults, because quite frankly, many adults act like Children and Toddlers a lot of the time. And so, talk to us about what peaceful discipline means, because it does sound a little bit like an oxymoron. I’d be happy to Yeah, I intentionally
Sarah R. Moore 10:56
chose this name. Because when I say the word discipline that most of us have a fairly negative association. We have a finger wagging? Yeah. Yes, oh, that means punishment. Oh, that means somebody who’s in trouble. Oh, that means correction? Well, in truth, if we go back to the original definition of discipline, it means to teach. If someone is a disciple of something, it means that they are a student of something they are learning. So the initial definition, it was not at all associated with punishment. And I really want to bring us back to that poor. And the peaceful part is intentional, for two reasons. Number one is when I think how do I want to teach my child using discipline to mean to teach, how do I want to teach? Well, I want to be peaceful about it. Bringing it back to Brain science, we know that the learning part of the brain for children as well as for adults, is only available to learn when the body feels a sense of emotional safety. As a parent, my job is to create emotional safety, so that my child can learn. And then even more importantly, the flip side of what I’m saying is it has to be perceived as peaceful by my child, because it isn’t about my intent. It’s about their perception. And so it’s a good reminder to all of us that we want our children to perceive us as being peaceful, benevolent teachers, rather than harsh, harsh punishers, or whatever other you know, methods parents commonly use, because we simply didn’t have the the research that we do now to know that this is actually a much more effective way of teaching.
Maria Ross 12:46
Well, and I imagined to especially just looking at my own parenting journey with my nine year old, it’s also about setting that model. And again, you can apply this to the workplace of, of a leader needs to set the model and set the tone for the team, so that the team feels safe, the team understands what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable. And also they feel connected enough to continue to learn to continue to ask questions, to take risks, to innovate, to do all these things. And that’s what we want for our children as well. And part of that journey is, like you said, sort of having empathy for your child, and looking at the world through from their perspective. And so why is empathy and parenting actually more important than most people realize?
Sarah R. Moore 13:37
Because empathy is really what creates that emotional safety. Everybody has this deep desire to simply feel felt, as Dr. Daniel J. Siegel calls it, he talks about do you just do get me? Do you understand me and when we will lead with empathy when we feel when we help our child children feel that we are simply curious about their perspective, we want to understand them. And they, Oh, if you want to understand me, if you care enough, to dig deeper to learn what’s going on for me, I feel emotionally safe and not with you. That number one, I’m going to tell you what’s actually going on for me, and especially older children, although little children can practice this too. And it’s not emotionally safe enough that I can run to you whenever I have a problem, rather than running away from you and hiding from you because I’m afraid of how you’ll react. And from that place of emotional safety. We can brainstorm with our kids. We can work together we can collaborate, we can find Win Win solutions to problems, where our children feel like my big person is not out to get me. They’re out to support me with no matter what comes up in life. And what a paradigm shift. This is. As I say it out loud. I feel more peaceful. My inner child feels more peaceful. Just
Maria Ross 14:53
what that well, I’m just imagining not in a work context. Like I’ve had, I’ve had managers who were Not who lead with fear who lead with punitive action. And you just didn’t never knew where you stood. And you never knew what you could contribute. And you were so worried about watching your back, that you weren’t enjoying the work, you weren’t contributing to the work because you actually weren’t focused 100% on making the work better. And so I see all these parallels now that I’m a parent of the leaders that I’ve had that have been really effective, applying a lot of the lessons you’re talking about and creating that environment that you’re talking about. But also that concept of just, I need to feel like you get me I need to feel like I am seen, heard and valued. And this is what I’m always educating teams on is that it doesn’t mean I agree with you. And it doesn’t mean that we’re going to take the course of action you want me to take, it just means we’re going to have a productive conversation and at least you’re going to feel heard. Yes, exactly. And we really are empowered to get to the root cause of any problems. We may have
Sarah R. Moore 16:02
the adult example for a second and then extrapolate it across parenting, let’s say. And by the way, this hypothetical situation may or may not come from my own corporate life, many years, it was in my you know, but when hypothetical me it was in my early 20s. And in a new sales job, I remember, I think it was my very first month in sales. I didn’t make quota. And I felt terrible about it. But I just I honestly didn’t know what I was doing yet. I didn’t know how to do it. And we had this person who was two levels higher than I was at the time. And she said, Tell you what, Sarah, I’m going to invite you and a couple of the other new trainees who didn’t make quota to have breakfast with me so we can unpack some of what’s going on. So we went to the breakfast, we showed up hungry as we would at this 6:30am breakfast, or whatever it was. And this is an incredible example of horrible management. She showed up literally, with moldy food, nothing that was edible whatsoever. And she proceeded to say, You know what, I bet you’re disappointed in your breakfast. Just like I’m disappointed in your sales. Oh, my gosh, yes, exactly. I never want to feel the way that you made me feel just like you probably never want to feel this way again, either. Again, this is like classic, what not to do. Oh, my goodness. But you know, it had she simply said, Help me understand what is it that you would like to learn? What would support you? Do you need more information about the products so that you can sell them better? Do you need some more training, you know, that would have helped me grow and thrive. But instead, all I did was say I want out of this job ASAP, I got out. So there’s that and we had the parental equivalent of, you know, go to your room, and taking all your devices, you know, Santos not going to come like all these ridiculous things that parents say sometimes that do nothing other than make the children, number one resent their parents. And number two, make them want to emotionally retreat from their name. Now, the flip side of this, of course, and I don’t need to go too detailed, because everybody can imagine. But I have also had, by the way, in the same company, many years later, I quit. And then I came back. I had one of the best bosses I have ever had. And from the get go, he would come and sit in my office with me. And number one start with things like how was your weekend? Is anything fun going on for you? How can I support you? When you mentioned your mom’s coming to town? How did that go? You know, I felt like a real person to him. I wanted so much to do well for him, because he was such a great guy and such a great leader. Parenting equivalent, of course, is the parent who says, Hey, I saw you were struggling today. What was happening, what was going on for you helped me understand I want to hear your side story. Because that emotional safety and creating a child who then says, I want to do well for my parent, right? So that I they believe that I am a whole human I’m a whole person worthy of love and empathy and respect and compassion above and beyond this one tricky thing that might have happened earlier today.
Maria Ross 19:16
I have a question about that about what is it? What do you do, whether it’s a child or an adult, but we can talk specifically about a child? When you try to open that dialogue? And you’re met with? I don’t know, nothing? It’s fine. Like what is the appropriate response of the parent or the leader in that situation? Where you’re trying to connect and you’re trying to let them tell you the information but you’re getting nothing
Sarah R. Moore 19:44
really in question. Couple of things can be going on. First of all, the younger the child, the more trouble they will have articulating what was happening because young children and I talk about this in peaceful discipline that young children are largely driven by impulses they literally do not have the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex fully developed yet, and they won’t until they’re between 20 I’m sorry, 25 and 30 years old. So it takes many, many years in most cases till they’re out of the house before that part of the brain is even fully developed. Well, what does that part of the brain do? It plans, it thinks about the consequences of actions, it considers others feelings, we can talk about the empathy piece a little bit. But it does all of these things that little kids simply are not equipped to do because they literally do not have the neural wiring there quite yet. And so our primary step, especially with little kids, is to reset our expectations, and say, they probably won’t be able to tell me because odds are pretty good, that whatever they did, they did because of a lack of developmentally normal impulse control. Instead, what I can do is, let bygones be bygones. But it doesn’t mean I need to not address it, what I can do is, let’s say there’s a child who struggles with hitting, what I can do is I can say, you know, I’m pretty sure there’s a Daniel Tiger episode that addresses hitting, let’s watch that. And here, I can be careful not to shame them or blame them or anything, but I can through the lens of empathy. Say, I’m curious if earlier today, at school, you felt kind of angry, like Daniel Tiger felt in the show. And you help the child make the connection between Oh, feelings, and actions. And over time, you can simply especially when the child is emotionally regulated, you can help prepare them. And I talk a lot in the book about how to do this proactively, you can help prepare them for when you feel angry, again, here are some things you can do, again, blaming or shaming way, but in a way that is supportive of the child because guess what, it doesn’t want to go around hitting people either nobody wakes up and think, who can I hit today, right? Shouldn’t say how old you are. So we can really help it set our children up for success. Now, let’s pretend that it’s an older child who seems to be clamming up, they just seem to not want to talk about it. And this is a little bit of a tough pill to swallow for a lot of parents, because it can stem from a couple of things. Number one, the child may not feel emotionally regulated enough to talk about it, it might be too raw, too fresh in their minds, they might just not feel safe, emotionally, to go there. So one of the things we can do is know that especially with older children, we don’t have to address things immediately, like we did when they were little we can give it a day. And we can say hey, that thing that happened yesterday, I’m curious about it. Notice my wording here too. I’m curious, that lands so much more safely in a child’s nervous system, then why on earth did you do that thing? Don’t you know, that’s wrong, all of the narratives that honestly many of us heard growing up, just because we didn’t know as much back then thing we can do is neutrally approach our child with the story of empathy. It might have nothing to do with the actual child and the actual situation at a surface level. Instead, I might come in and say, you know, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about this before. But there was a time when I was 16 years old. And I didn’t have my driver’s license yet. But my friend gave me driver driving lessons. And here’s what happened, you know, positively or negatively or whatever. But we can share something about ourselves that help our children feel like oh, they might actually understand, but not least going back to the importance of our words and our approach. Our children may be operating from a place of our history together. Instead, we might be a peaceful parent today, we might be using everything I talked about and peaceful discipline, we might have taken the courses done already, that are, you know, available on the internet these days. But if our child has a history of a lack of safety with us, they might say I am afraid to be transparent with you. It’s simply going to take time to build trust that No, once they tell you, you aren’t going to turn around and punish them or shame them or whatever and instead say, What do you want to do about this? How can we work together in the incident says of them feeling emotionally safe with you, the more likely they will be over time to divulge more that information rather than clamming up
Maria Ross 24:53
well and also this is so I mean, I just can’t help seeing the parallels because it is As a parent, you can’t just flip the switch and the child’s going to trust you the next day, just because you’ve decided to read your wonderful book, and change your ways. And it’s the same kind of thing when I’m talking to leaders, if if they’ve had negative patterns, whether intentional or unintentional, and they’re committed to leading in a different way, and leading in a more people centered way, they can’t just come into work one day and be like, right, so now I’m going to be the empathetic boss. And so, you know, hopefully, you’re all psychologically safe, my doors always open, come talk to me. And then they leave the room and everyone’s going, what just happened, right, and it never quite happens that way. But I think there is an expectation that leaders have. And so I always invite them to get vulnerable and let their teams know they’re working on this. And actually, the parallel to parenthood is I do that with my son. You know, when I’m working on my impulse control, and my you know, my yelling, and my arguing, I say, Look, honey, I’m, I’m working on this, just like, I want you to work on this, too, let’s work on this together. And at least he knows what I’m doing. And he knows and you know, we’re not going to be perfect, I’m not going to be perfect, you’re not going to be perfect. It’s a process. And it doesn’t solve every problem for us. I mean, I do not want to leave the impression that we’re, you know, 100% on the parenting thing. But it’s this idea, I think that leaders can adopt that to have, you can’t just flip a switch with a child, or with an employee, that you are going to change your ways there has to you have to build that trust with people and you and what I hear you saying is, if we acknowledge it, if we talk about it, and if we give it time, the more credits we rack up in the bank account, the more the trust will build is that kind of an accurate way of of looking at it
Sarah R. Moore 26:46
100% accurate. And we have to know from a psychology perspective as well, that people subconsciously will continue to do behavior and sometimes even amp up their behavior until they reach a familiar response. Because it’s what they know, even if it’s not optimal, even if it’s unhealthy. People say but that’s what I know. Therefore, I’m going to act out in that way. So especially with kids or with employees, they might seem like, hey, you know, you’re getting more gentle, but I don’t know this version of you. So I’m going to act out more this is happening at a subconscious level, right? You need all the more isn’t for us to throw in the towel and say, Well, nevermind is well, this fiscal discipline didn’t work, I’m going to forget about it. Instead, they need us to lean in with that exact vulnerability that you’re talking about and saying, and acknowledging, I know this is a shift, and I’m going to get it wrong sometimes. But I’m working on this, this and this. And here’s why. And here are the specifics of what I’m going to change and what it might look like for us. People have that emotional safety, of understanding the transformations that we are trying to make, whether we’re parents, whether we’re bosses or whatever, it really helps them trust us because we were willing to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a scary thing. But it’s one of the bravest and strongest things we can do.
Maria Ross 28:15
Absolutely. And I think, you know, people miss perceived vulnerability a lot in terms of it means I’m going to show up as a parent or a leader, and just completely act like I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m going to lose all respect, and no one’s going to have faith in me. But really, you have to be very strong and confident to admit, I don’t know, or I am working on this. And you can I always say you can do it, you can be confidently vulnerable. There’s a way to express that and have an exchange, where the other person doesn’t feel like you’re going off the rails or your child doesn’t feel like you’re going off the rails and you know, you’ve just given up on everything. But that you’re saying, hey, this, I’m very conscious of this. This is very intentional. And this is what I’m working on. And that’s from a place of power that’s from a place of strength. And so when people say, Well, I don’t want to be an empathetic leader, because I’ll be seen as weak. I’m like, Do you know how much strength it actually takes to be an empathetic leader or parent? Can we talk briefly about why? Because I think this is so important for both parenting and leading in an organization is from a brain science perspective. Why do so many punishments end up failing or backfiring? Is it because of what you said earlier about we go for the reaction we know or why when we think that a punishment will be a deterrent enough to change someone’s behavior. What does brain science actually tell us?
Sarah R. Moore 29:42
It tells us a couple of things harkening back to that emotional safety that I mentioned before. If we lead with punishment, the learning part of the brain shuts off. So the child might be able to go through the motions in the moment, but there’s not going to be any lasting change and child’s behavior, because they are not, they’re literally not in a place where they can assimilate new information. Instead, it’s a fear based response, they go into fight or flight, and nobody thrives and fight or flight, nor can we learn at our best, you know, you can imagine trying to learn how to, you know, God forbid, why this example come to me, you try to fly a plane under duress, you’ve never flown a plane before. That’s not a situation anybody wants to be in. And I think, look, bivalent of what we sometimes ask our children to do. And when punish them, we take an emotionally safe approach, when we lead with curiosity, nonviolent communication, empathy, all of these things, children say, number one, again, subconscious level, I want to do well for you because I feel safe with you. Number two, every human on the planet wants to be connected emotionally and in a positive place with other humans. So when we now that we can create this virtuous cycle, with other humans in our lives, and good will continue to be get good. So we create that emotional safety. And it’s going to be the antidote to the brain shutting off instead, the brain, you know, will turn on and say, how do I learn more from you, because I want more of this. In my reward centers get activated, because it feels good to be in community with somebody else, whether it’s a parent child, whether it’s organization. So that sense of community, that sense of belonging, that sense of trust, and the other Nubbins is, the learning part of the brain has to have an emotional anchor that is positive, in order to want to replicate future positive behavior. And I talk about some strategies in the book to do exactly that. But let’s say for example, I have a comic and a nine year old, because you’ve got a nine year old, a nine year old who is not wanting to go to bed at night. I don’t know if that’s your reality ever. But I noticed that a lot of parents, nine year old doesn’t want to go to bed, it’s a struggle. And we want to change this behavior because everybody needs their sleep, and so on and so forth. What we can do is we can say, Yeah, number one, I’m starting with emotional validation, it makes sense that you want to stay awake, because everybody else is awake, and it’s more fun to be awake than it is to be asleep. Not to mention, it’s a transition. And we think only little kids struggle with transitions. Well guess what, we all struggle with transitions. That’s why many of us are still scrolling our phones at 1030 at night when we should be good. So we get to validate the feelings to help the child feel like okay, emotional safety, and I want to pay attention here. Number two, we can work to create Win Win scenarios, we can have a positive negotiation, whether it’s business or child, we can have a positive negotiation where the child or the adult feels emotionally invested in the outcome. Tell me child, how can I say this in a non threatening non shaming and blaming way? How do you feel on the nights when you don’t get enough sleep? What’s that like? For you help me understand your perspective. What would make going to bed feel more peaceful to you? You know, you start asking that question to get the child to think about what would actually feel good in my body, as opposed to this into intellectual knowledge. That’s purely intellectual, of Oh, leap because they say so. Right? I create this emotional anchor of I want this thing. And I want this relationship. Therefore I am naturally drawn toward the behavior that’s going to work for everybody. And it’s much more likely to stick because then the child has a positive association with the interaction, rather than a fear based one. So good, so good.
Maria Ross 33:51
I’m selfishly soaking all this up for myself. But I know my listeners will love this as well. So as we kind of wrap up, I’d like you to address a question that you talk about, which is story teaching. What is it? And does it actually work for all ages?
Sarah R. Moore 34:06
It actually does work for all ages, as Tao street teaching is my brand, if you will, of storytelling, storytelling has been used for basically, as long as humans have existed to help teach to help create narratives in the very literal sense that we can record and pass board, historically through the generations. But honestly, we use stories all the time. Now, lest anybody get scared and think, oh, no, I’m not creative. This isn’t going to be my thing. I have very good news for you. Every single one of us has a part of our brain called the hippocampus. And it is the brain’s natural storyteller. It’s what will remind me some day that I really liked your glasses, and that’s a great color on you and you create emotional safety for me and in all of these things that my brain is recording around our conversation right now. It’s a story. It’s a simple story, but it’s a story nonetheless, my brain is recording this so that someday, six months a year from now I see your name. And I say, I like her, I want to talk to her again, this is something that every single child, adult, you know, older adult, we all have it, it does not ever expire. And I realized I’m going to be sensitive to people with memory loss. That’s not what I’m referring to. But for those of us who aren’t dealing with that this is very accessible. We can use stories, in all walks of life, we can use them for things that have happened in the past that we want to make sense of, to help release trauma to help release toxic stress, we can use them in the moment to help make sense of our stories and figure out how we want situations to go. And use them proactively to help prepare ourselves or others for things that are to come. So very quick example, let’s say I’ve got a child who’s going off to a new school for the first time, rather than simply saying, Oh, you’ll have a blast, don’t worry about it have fun, good luck, which leaves the child emotionally floundering. And yeah, you can help paint a mental picture. This is how big your class is going to be. This is where the classroom is going to be. How will you know? If you see somebody who looks like they might be a friend? How will you know when that’s going to feel emotionally safe to start a conversation with that person? And what might you say, How’s that gonna go, you start creating enough of a narrative around the situation, that you create that safety that the child is needing in this example, to say, I feel like I know what to expect. So my anxiety can go down, my worry can go down, my stress can go down, because I’ve got a plan. And like it past, present, and future, and I outlined in the book, how to how to do it, but all those scenarios, but essentially, it’s using our brain for optimal outcomes. And it’s so much more effective, particularly for behavioral change, or behavioral modification in a very broad sense, not just behavior modification in the, you know, psychological sense, so to speak, and so much more emotionally accessible, to create that safety that everybody needs to reduce the stress load, and increased resilience. And that’s why it’s so great for all ages, because we all still need it.
Maria Ross 37:20
We all need it. And it’s how it’s how we remember things. It’s how we know this is something we want to be part of. And a lot of my work that in brand strategy, for example, is about elevating the true story, not the fake story of a business or an organization so people can understand what to expect, what is the promise that you’re making? How can I feel safe, investing with you spending time with you doing all those things? That’s what we mean by the story of a business as well. So I’m loving, loving all these parallels, I am going to actually ask you one more question, which I think is a big question that’s very top of mind for parents. When is empathy in children developmentally accessible to them? Because I know, as someone who speaks about empathy all the time, there’s the stretches where I worry, you know, is my son really learning empathy? Is he is he ready to learn empathy? Or is he too self centered at this point? You know, how? How can you help advise parents listening on when to expect empathy from a child? And when you know, sort of when can they relax about you know, your child will not be a sociopath? You know, can they? Can they learn it? Do some children need to have it nurtured more than others? In terms of like nature versus nurture? Can
Sarah R. Moore 38:43
you talk a little bit about all of that? Happy to so developmentally, even newborn babies show glimmers of empathy from time to time, for example, if you have a newborn baby who starts to cry, and there are other newborn babies in the room, some of those other newborn babies will start to cry too. And that is coming from the empathy center of the brain. Right now, that being said, Nobody panic. I’m gonna give a very quick answer. Empathy doesn’t fully develop until adulthood. Period, hard stuff, we start to see it grow a little bit more in the early elementary years. Usually ages six to nine are aware we start to see it a little bit more often. This is not Sara talking. This is the research talking. A 10 has to develop faster in girls than it does in boys. So again, that’s not stereo speak and I don’t want to be jet out it but just says, is that a result of socialization or is that actually biological? From from the research biological? Yeah, when it’s biological that because from an evolutionary perspective, if you look at what boys were exposed acted to do at a young age, it was go help get the food, where empathy probably actually would have been a detriment to them if they had too much empathy when they were responsible for getting the food, whereas the little girls historically were involved in taking care of the younger siblings. So that’s where that stems from biologic t. Now, you will see another jump in empathy around the teen years. And what I’m trying to illustrate here is that it’s kind of like a stepladder. It keeps going up. It’s not like we have a child and we say, well, they’re 15. Therefore they should be fully empathetic by now. Not at all there are moments where I lack empathy, and I’m not
Maria Ross 40:43
well 100% 100%.
Sarah R. Moore 40:48
Grass to your question about do we need to help nurture some children more than others? I’m gonna say 100% of children benefit from us modeling empathy, us talking about empathy, reading books about empathy, making it a part of our daily dialogue. And I really mean that daily dialogue. This was not something we bring up. Only when there’s a crisis, or somebody’s going through something horrific. It can be we’re reading a story, what do you care about child, which character is that and why we can have it in such simple ways. So that when the bigger situations do come up, it’s already kind of built into their vernacular. So I’m gonna go with all kids all days, all the time, nobody’s gonna suffer bird having talked about empathy too much, right? Oh, I
Maria Ross 41:35
love that so much. And I think that gives hope to a lot of people, including me about the fact that, you know, your child is not a sociopath right now, just because they are very self focused as a child. In fact,
Sarah R. Moore 41:47
I want to touch on that super quickly as we hear children, again, from a historical perspective, we’re supposed to be 100%, self centered. Because back in the day, before we had walls and roofs and things like that, we were at much higher risk of attack from neighboring nations, or animals or whatever. So children had to learn to fend for themselves very, very early. Well, guess what? That stuck. And there’s nothing wrong with a child who is quote, unquote, self centered. They’re just doing what biology told them to do. And it takes time to learn the other stuff. So I wanted to address that too, and say, there’s nothing wrong with your kids. Again, not a sociopath at this point. This is developmentally normal, and in fact, healthy. Love it, love it.
Maria Ross 42:35
And you know, as I was talking about, it’s never too late to learn empathy either, because it biologically is innate in all of us as human beings. It’s just for some people, that muscle may have atrophied over time, or because of their childhood or their family or their workplace. And so the good news is, you can go back to the empathy gym at any time. But what I am very hopeful about what I mentioned at the end of the empathy edge, leaving it on a very hopeful note for the future, is that this generation of young children, they’re talking so much more about empathy, and emotional connection and mental health. And I’m just excited to see where that generation goes in terms of the impact they’re going to have on culture and society.
Sarah R. Moore 43:20
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. This is snowballing in the very best direction. It’s complete, in a great way, and it’s honestly I think, part of healing the world. Totally.
Maria Ross 43:29
I’m with you. Well, this has been such a great conversation. I could talk to you more, but we’re running out of time. So Sarah, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes. But please tell folks, where’s the best place they can learn more about you or get in touch with you? Sure. So
Sarah R. Moore 43:43
my website dandelion seeds.com. There’s a hyphen dandelion hyphen, def BA, you said you’d have it now my English is failing me, but I accept my mistakes. Dan seeds.com is where you can find my website. I’m on all the socials that you’ll have. And of course, the book is peaceful discipline by Sarah, middle initial are more if you Google, Sarah Maurya get 10 million of my closest friends. So middle initial art, you’re more likely to find me. I love
Maria Ross 44:11
it. And we will make sure we put that in the episode title for you as well. And I assume the book is available wherever books are available for people. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time and for your insights. I know this will be very beneficial for a lot of my listeners. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 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 and review and share with a colleague or friend. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. booked me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Your customer is the lifeblood of your company. We hear this over and over again. Yet, companies don’t do a great job of crafting a customer experience that actually meets our needs, values our time, and helps us achieve our goals.
Customer experience is all the rage – why do so many companies get it wrong?
Today, Aransas Savas and I discuss the myths of customer experience strategy: where companies go wrong in aligning the entire business around the customer’s experience and why those end-of-call automated surveys just give you useless data. She shares her own experiences with brands on creating shifts in how the company views customer needs. Aransas shares the concept of “Jobs to Be Done” as a useful way to segment what customers need from you, why journey mapping and Net Promoter Scores don’t give you a holistic picture of customer experience, and why it’s far more useful to consider modes instead. We discuss how measuring Time Well Spent, Time Well Invested, and Time Well Saved helps both B2C and B2B brands more effectively understand what customers perceive as valuable. Finally, she shares the important highlights from Stone Mantel’s recent 2023 Customer Experience Trends Report.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Customers are not robots – they will not likely follow the journeys you lay out in an idealized situation. You need to consider the customer every step of the way.
The wrong questions are being asked during traditional data collection – as we change the questions and how they’re being asked, you will be able to gather more valuable data to move forward in understanding your customer’s experience.
While AI can help to identify trends, it does still require a human touch to interpret the data for best use.
Having a company purpose does not mean you understand your customer’s purpose.
“There’s a functional job to be done, and there’s an emotional, social, and aspirational job. If I can understand what all four of those are, I create a much more valuable product than if my product experience is strictly based on the functional job to be done.” — Aransas Savas
About Aransas Savas, Coach & Experience Designer
Aransas Savas is a coach, an experience designer at Stone Mantel, and the co-host of the Experience Strategy Podcast. Drawing on over two decades of experience, Aransas combines behavioral science and coaching to partner with experience strategists at leading consumer brands, including Weight Watchers, Best Buy, Truist Bank, and Clayton Homes to create meaningful, and often, transformative, customer journeys.
Based in Brooklyn, she is a 20-time marathoner, a wife to a newscaster, and a mother to a 200-year-old sourdough culture, a fluffy pup, and two-spirited, creative girls.
80-page report of the latest must-know Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, a deep analysis of cultural and customer trends based on insights collected from more than 3,200 customers and over 200 experience strategists over the course of 20 months.
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. Your customer is the lifeblood of your company. We hear this over and over again. And yet, companies don’t do a great job of crafting a customer experience that actually meets our needs. Values are timed and helps us achieve our goals. Just grab a coach airplane ticket or try to get your cable fixed. And you’ll know what I mean. Yeah, customer experience is all the rage. So why do so many companies get it wrong? Today, Aransas SAVVIS coach and experienced designer with stone mantle breaks down the myths and trends of good customer experience and why empathetic research and thinking is required. She is co host of the experience strategy podcast and with more than two decades of experience combines behavioral science and coaching to partner with experienced strategists at leading consumer brands, including weightwatchers Best Buy truest bank and Clayton Homes to create meaningful and often transformative customer journeys. We discussed the myths of customer experience strategy, where companies go wrong in aligning the entire business around the customer’s experience, and why those end of call automated surveys just give you useless data. She shares her own experiences with brands such as Weight Watchers on creating shifts and how the company views customer needs. Aransas shares the concept of jobs to be done as a useful way to segment what customers need from you. Why journey mapping and net promoter scores don’t give you a holistic picture of customer experience, and why it’s far more useful to consider modes instead. Finally, we discuss how measuring time well spent, time well invested and time well saved helps both b2c and b2b brands more effectively understand what customers perceive as valuable. And finally, she shares the important highlights from stone mantle’s recent 2023 Customer Experience Trends Report. This is such an insightful episode for every marketer and marketing leader out there. Take a listen. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com and sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips and find out how you can book me as a speaker. I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at V empathy edge.com. Oh, and follow me on Instagram where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Welcome Aransas to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have this talk with you about customer experience strategy.
Aransas Savas 04:04
Thanks for having me, Maria. So happy to be here.
Maria Ross 04:08
So before we dive into our questions, tell me a little bit about how you got to this work of being a designer and a leader in customer experience.
Aransas Savas 04:17
I tell people all the time that the great joy of working in experience strategy is that you get to work with humans who like humans. And so as an experienced strategist, I have the great luxury of collaborating with people who are inherently human centric, and who have learned how to translate human experience into something that is valuable to businesses and brands. And so we talk a lot in our work about impact. And to me, impact is only valuable, if it’s sustainable and That means that it is meaningful to customers and impactful for them and their needs. And it’s impactful for businesses and brands. And so, like so many people,
05:10
I
Aransas Savas 05:12
grew into experience strategy, I talked to a lot of people who came to it as a second or third chapter in their career, because it is one of those things that you sort of find through your passions and gifts. And I think for many of us, we probably studied the arts or storytelling, or I psychology, and maybe we started in business and marketing or brand or research, and through time, just wanted to get closer and closer to the consumers who may be customers. They may be employees, but they are the people who ultimately are the end users of the
05:51
products and services. So
Maria Ross 05:55
a little curveball here, why is this such a hard It feels like it’s such a hard concept for many corporate leaders to understand. I mean, they pay lip service to the customers everything, and yet, their processes, their policies, their actual experience is horrible. From a customer point of view, like, what, where’s that disconnect?
Aransas Savas 06:19
It’s inherently complex, and organizations are bad at solving inherently complex problems. And we chase the quick ROI. And we chase the quick solves. And then time and time again, we find that it doesn’t yield any real result. And we do our work in a very collaborative fashion. And so we believe that problems are only solved by bringing organizations together around a strong customer led vision. And so oftentimes that mean, stepping on some toes, because, like you said, we all get that customers are important. This is can’t survive without customers who believe that our products and services are valued.
07:17
And yet,
Aransas Savas 07:18
that means that lots and lots of different teams, lots of different leaders, lots and lots of different visions, all have a say, and how to get that done. And so I think the biggest challenge for most organizations, especially older organizations that have a bigger bench, and have more hierarchical structures, is to integrate and unify that experience. And to see the customer at the center and set up the organizational structures.
Maria Ross 07:55
Right. And I think that’s the challenge is, how do you do that within the construct of, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got sales, you’ve got finance, you’ve got your internal processes, what what does that really mean to organize the company around the customer experience, I guess, that leads me into related is, what is the myth of customer experience strategy?
Aransas Savas 08:18
Yeah, I think these are very much related. For so long. We have mapped our customer journeys as though we were mapping them for robots, or machines. And we’ve planned these idealized journeys for them to follow, and then wondered why what our customers played back sounded so different than what we envisioned. And so much of the work that we have done with our clients that has been really successful is just to look at customer modes. And when we talk about modes, we’re talking about a mindset and a set of behaviors that a customer gets into in order to get the job done. And you think about it, and you see it in your own life, right. Apple now has done a really great job with this over the past few years at designing for modes. And so they invite you to reflect on what mindset Are you in? What job are you trying to get done? How are we going to set our tool apt to be responsive to that mode. But as humans, thanks to technology, we’re constantly shifting modes. And sometimes we’re in three or four modes at once. We did some of our early research in home with customers witnessing their mood shifting, and we watched a mom, probably not unlike you and I who was simultaneously making dinner, sending an email to work while voice texting her husband about a pickup from a soccer game. And so she is in this extraordinary hyper productivity mode, where she’s literally using every part of her body To get the
Maria Ross 10:00
neuron in there, yeah, the gods texting, thank God.
Aransas Savas 10:05
And we become superhuman sometimes thanks to technology. And so understanding what modes your customers in when they are using your product is gonna give you much more information about how to as an organization, integrate and unify your experience to meet that mode. Because if I assume that Maria or Aransas is going to behave in some predictable journey based manner, I’m probably going to find that my solutions don’t sit with her at that moment. But if I can think about it as customer modes, we’ve seen that work really well to bring marketing and sales and product teams and experienced service delivery teams together to meet a need. So you’ll hear us talk a lot about jobs to be done. And it’s a the theory that was originated by Clayton Christensen been used in many, many organizations part of disruptive innovation work, that we look at jobs to be done in a somewhat different way we break them down in to differ as sort of a hierarchy of needs. And with each one, you see customers, looking to achieve different jobs and get used different modes to accomplish those jobs successfully. And so when organizations start to align around, those start to direct their time and energy around helping their customers be successful, we see a real shift in customer satisfaction, which is to your earlier question. The other big reason that it’s hard for organizations to align around, right? Customer satisfaction and experience is because we haven’t had particularly good methods of measuring the value experience,
Maria Ross 12:02
the current methods of even the automated surveys, you got a just make me laugh. They’re constantly like, based on the last person you talked to did yourself, did your problem get solved? Yes, but I had to talk to seven people before I spoke to that person. So me just saying yes or no is not helping you understand how frustrating the process is to me as a customer. And also there’s no room for the kind of like, or the or the this person was lovely and tried to be as helpful as they could. But they were constrained by what you company enabled them to do for me in that phone call or in that chat interaction. And so I feel like, I feel like so many of them are measuring the wrong things just to make themselves feel better.
Aransas Savas 12:53
Agree. And Net Promoter Score is the biggest problem. It can be helpful for marketing, I think, as a referral. That is a piece of data to inform the rate of approval, great, but not to measure an experience to your point that is ultimately about value. And in our work, we’ve really we’ve talked to a lot of customers recently to ask them about their competence in the surveys. And time and time again, they tell us that they’re just making up responses. Yeah. And there’s a lot of paranoia about the data that we get in response to these that will somehow be used to penalize them. They’re wildly biased. In terms of the samples and respondents. There’s a lot of problems with traditional data collection. And there’s a lot of problems with the questions that we’re asking, when we start to ask people about the difference between time well spent. Time will saved time while invested and time wasted. We get a pretty good picture of where we are meeting customer needs. And so I’ve really been encouraging my clients to start to ask their customers more about the value of time. Yes, and about whether or not they’re gonna refer somebody,
14:15
right? Or if
Maria Ross 14:16
did my problem get solved? Eventually? But or maybe not ever. But I want to dig into that because you do talk a lot about Time Well Spent time well invested time well saved. How did you land on that vector of time as something that was most valuable to people in judging whether they’d had a quote unquote good experience or not? What led to that?
Aransas Savas 14:38
It actually goes back to the jobs to be done work. So when we talk about jobs to be done, we look at whether they are functional jobs to be done. Pretty self explanatory, emotional jobs to be done. So meeting some sort of emotional need social or aspirational. We use the acronym FISA. So functional, emotional on social and aspirational, now, our expectations of those jobs vary. And in a functional job, we usually want time to be saved. And so when I’m measuring the success of a functional job or a functional need for a customer, I’m really looking about whether or not I’ve saved
15:24
time for that customer.
Aransas Savas 15:26
We’ve gotten pretty great at that, as an as a as a field we are using technology has improved radically over the last decade in terms of
15:38
successfully meeting the need.
Aransas Savas 15:42
For emotional and social jobs, generally speaking, my aim is to deliver on time well spent. So with those jobs, what I’m really trying to do is to ensure that the time they gave me is time that was valuable, and was a good use
16:01
of their time.
Aransas Savas 16:04
With aspirational jobs, however, where I really want my customer to have some sort of shift. And certainly, so much of the work I did at Weight Watchers was about aspirational jobs, people were hiring this company,
16:23
to create change needs. So we say that we we were hired for hope. And that hope is fragile. And so
Aransas Savas 16:36
when I’m getting any sort of aspirational job, 10, I really want my time to be well invested. But if I give you my time, I want you to give me back something that is even greater than the time I have given you. That amplifies my investment in you. And so when we choose which measurements to use to establish the value of an experience, it really comes down to what those jobs are.
17:08
Okay, so much in there.
Maria Ross 17:10
I love it. I, you know, you did specifically mentioned some work that you did at Weight Watchers. And I think that’s, that’s something let’s dig into that sort of as a case study in JMeter. So how did how did you get the I’m sure it wasn’t a hard convincing to convince them that that was the kind of job that people were hiring weightwatchers for was an aspiration of hope. But what what were they marketing towards or leaning towards before that was impeding their success? Were they thinking that was a functional thing? Were they thinking, Oh, just to lose weight?
Aransas Savas 17:46
Yeah, from a marketing standpoint, I think we always appreciated that it was aspirational. From a product development standpoint, it’s really easy to forget that there is the vulnerable human who’s hanging their hope on your tool. And it’s really easy to get sucked into thinking that the job you have to do is a functional one. How do I so weightwatchers works on a point system, people who are following the program, log their food in the Weight Watchers app. And so if I’m logging my food and looking for the points values for this food, is time a factor? Absolutely. So I have a functional job to be done. And there’s an emotional job to be done a social job to be done, and an aspirational job to be done. And so if I can understand what all four of those are making create a much more valuable product than if my product experience is strictly based on the functional job to be done, which is find the points quickly. And at different stages of the journey I have different needs. Right? Oh, when I am learning the points, system, I am at the most vulnerable, vulnerable motivationally. And I have the least functional knowledge about how to use the tool, even and so it’s a really interesting journey based model to look at how you use that understanding about your customers needs and their mindset mental models in that moment alongside those jobs to be done.
Maria Ross 19:36
And I know you talked about that. And again, this is a very holistic view of customer experiences understanding how those insights impact not just marketing and messaging, but product design, product delivery, buying experience, post purchase, support, all of these things, was it was it how was that like working with Weight Watchers or any of your other you know, well known clients that you’ve worked with, is that a hard sell? Or do they do they quickly see based on how you’re describing, getting them into the mindset of the customer? Do they more easily see, Oh, I see how these other groups need to be part of this conversation.
20:15
I think we all see it. It’s harder still to be it.
Aransas Savas 20:22
And I’ve watched a lot of organizations struggle with it. The ones I’ve seen being the most successful with it, are the ones who bring leaders from multiple elements of the organization, multiple pieces of the organization, to get there to align on a strategy for meeting those needs. And alignment and understanding for meeting those needs. Ultimately, experienced strategists are responsible for knowing your customer. And I think in so many cases, we have sort of assigned experience over to maybe an operations team or a field service team. And in doing so we’ve empowered some aspects of the organization in some ways to meet the needs of the customer. And we’ve inspired and empowered other parts of the organization to take that leadership in different ways. And so it really does in order to integrate and unify, it takes thinking about your customers journey holistically, and creating shared ownership and that that’s a top down exercise. It simply doesn’t work. And I’ve watched organizations work so hard to do it bottom up. But I really think it has to be core to organizational mission and vision.
Maria Ross 21:47
Well, I’m sure that’s a big transformational shift for a lot of companies as well. So they’re not only trying to shift, they’re not only trying to transform what their customers are going through, they organizationally have to transform their own mindset, so that they can serve those customers and achieve the success they want to achieve. And what’s great about this is and this kind of leads me in my next question, which is sort of innovative research methods that you use to really get to understand those customers understand what are the tasks they’re trying to accomplish? What is their what mode are they in, as you said, and of course, empathy plays a huge role in that because it involves seeing the world through their eyes, as much as you can. So can you talk about some of the ways that you gather that Intel? And you you share that with clients? And are they usually are there usually opportunities they haven’t even tapped into to develop those insights? Are they doing sort of like we talked about the surveys that don’t work? The you know, the what, what are the methods they’re using that don’t work? And what are the innovative methods? You’re helping them embrace?
22:49
Yeah,
Aransas Savas 22:51
I mean, I think sending out NPS surveys, it would probably be my top not working. And I think that’s the one that I’m the one. It’s the one that Miss guides us the most and every angel investor, the first question they’re gonna ask you, if you’ve got a start up is, what’s your NPS score. And so it’s taken on
23:16
this credibility,
Aransas Savas 23:19
that unfortunately, has misled a lot company. And the work that I do is much more based in as I said, from a quant perspective is about time I talk to customers all day long, about time. And over and over again, they tell me that it is their most precious resource. And I say that with some real gravity, because I do talk to customers across the economic spectrum. And even those who have the most money, and those who have the least money, say the same thing, which to me is very telling that as a society, we have fetishized time, and we have hung our self belief and our value and our satisfaction, so strongly on the value of time. And yet, as organizations, we forget that, that’s, that’s the exchange, we think of it as a money exchange. But it really is more and more a time exchange with customers. And so, from a client perspective, most of my work focuses around the value of time. From a qual perspective, I use coaching techniques. I’ve been in coaching and behavior change for almost 20 years. And I find that so many of the assumptions we’ve made about our customers are based on assuming they know what they want.
24:49
Yes,
Maria Ross 24:51
yes. I actually had a guest on the show. Melina Palmer. I’ll do I’ll put a link to her episode in here because she is an expert in behavioral economics. And it’s all about how we think people make decisions and how people really make decisions, and mostly how people don’t know why they’re making the decision that they’re making.
Aransas Savas 25:08
No. And so I use a co creative method and have customers design this within the systems of their lives. Because the other thing we do is we assume that customers are using our products and services in a bubble. But they’re not. They’re using them within the systems of their life. And customers are very aware of their life systems, and the ways that they intersect to inform their use of a product. Can you give
Maria Ross 25:40
us an example of that, like with one of the clients that you’ve worked with?
Aransas Savas 25:44
Sure. So I work with the nation’s leading home Mac manufacturer. So when we talk about home buying with their customers, we often historically have talked to the person who signs the paper.
26:04
However,
Maria Ross 26:06
I knew there was going to be a
Aransas Savas 26:07
however, when I started to really dig deeper with those customers. That wasn’t actually the person making the purchase decision. In most cases. That decision was deeply influenced by their small group, those who have the most influence on their lives and opinion. So increasingly, in my research, I’ve seen children have more influence on major life decisions for family, certainly partners and spouses, but also friends and older family members. When I work with financial companies, I often ask young people, where are they get their financial information?
26:53
The two answers that come up most often. My dad or my uncle, and Tik Tok writing, so frightening.
Aransas Savas 27:04
Tick tock comes up daily and my Wow, across all categories. And across all age groups, people are listening to tick tock. for better and worse, yes, it has, has democratized Yeah, access to information. And it’s also meant that there’s a lot of unreliable information out there. Right. But people are, they’re making decisions, not just based on one facet or factor of their lives, right, we take a pretty holistic view of our lives. And so if I’m making a health care decision, I’m thinking about my finances, and thinking about how this impacts my purchase of a computer. And three months is my thinking about how it affects even my electricity. Right. So all these vastly different impacts are coming together in in the purchase makers mind that they make that decision, then also with the use that because our lives are increasingly interconnected. And I mean, I think you see with products that I mean, I I hesitate to mention nest because there’s Google Nast, I think there’s a lot of things they’re doing well, a lot of things are not doing well. They, I think they are almost too smart for their own good in terms of the technology and the way they use data. But they have taken a systems based approach. And so they understand that you may have a need to control your temperature from different places. And you may want to control your temperature and your home in different ways. They have unsuccessfully rolled out this, this intuitive understanding of how you use time with their product. And I say unsuccessfully because they leap to an assumption too quickly, which I see a lot of companies do vision and then I hear customers often describe frustration with the product isn’t because just because one time I wanted it 74 at 10am on a Tuesday does not mean and I always
Maria Ross 29:18
wanted that. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of like my mom, you know, once she knew we liked a cereal or thing, she’d buy it for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks until we were sick of it. Yeah. So it’s using that one data point and extrapolating it out to the customer’s entire experience, rather than really thinking and this is again, where I think empathy comes in. And this is, you know, where I feel we’re gonna we’re gonna be able to compete against AI is bringing that human element of like, is that really true in all cases? Is that really the best next step in every customer’s journey, or even in that customer’s journey every day?
Aransas Savas 29:58
That’s right. Yeah. Right. And with technology, we have the ability to answer that question for that customer on that day.
30:08
And that’s where I think AI can be helpful, right? However,
Aransas Savas 30:13
we need humans to interpret that data and to understand what those trends really mean, or where that trend is worth listening to. Right.
Maria Ross 30:23
So what are some of the other other ways that you gather those deep insights? Can you give some examples and some ideas for people of like, what? What are some ways that we can gather that very subjective data? On our customers?
Aransas Savas 30:38
Absolutely. I am a big fan of talking to people. Why, but what I know, it’s crazy. And really understanding their why. Yeah, so there is a misperception, and then amongst many companies, that it’s their job to be the hero. And to solve the problem the customer doesn’t know they have, and they’re right, the customer may not always know, the problem they have. But they often know
31:11
what they want.
Aransas Savas 31:15
And by that, I mean, not necessarily what it looks like in execution, right. But what would inspire them? What is their desired outcome? Right? What would it feel like to solve that problem? You’re like, yeah, and what might it mean for you if we solve that problem. And so when I talk about using coaching tools and techniques, to get underneath, true deep customer needs, I follow a pretty basic formula. The first thing I ask people is what they want to achieve. And then I understand what success would look like, and how they would measure success, and what gets in their way. And by understanding those four data points, I have an enormous amount of information
32:08
about how to be valuable to them.
Maria Ross 32:12
And notice none of those questions were what, what would solve this problem? Or what does that what does the solution look like to you at
Aransas Savas 32:21
my job? I knew exactly
32:22
exactly. What well, and I think that this is,
Maria Ross 32:27
you know, this is just the common problem in in corporate, America corporate, you know, not even just corporate America, but corporate life in general, is this desire to build something really cool, and then figure out how to retrofit it into people’s lives. And maybe for truly, truly innovative things that we can’t even fathom? That might be appropriate. But for the 98% of things that we’re going to buy and invest in and use every day, whether it’s b2b or b2c? It’s about an existing problem and uncovering what that existing problem is. So I’m always fascinated by it, because I am not. I do not have an entrepreneurial mind. I am not the person that’s like the futurist and envisioning things. And I’m pretty much the laggard on on a lot of advances and innovations. So I really admire people that think that way, in terms of, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to build a successful business. So instead of starting with the product, I’m gonna start with figuring out the problem I can solve. And then I’ll build the product. I’m like, it makes it just blows my mind that people think that way. Because I’m like, that sounds like a lot of work. But they’re able to those kinds of people, those kinds of innovators, I feel, and I would love to hear your perspective, I feel like their brains work a little bit differently, that they’re able to see the problems and the challenges first, and then determine what could be a good solution they focus on, you know, there 85% of their time is spent on defining the problem. And 15% is on the solution, versus what the rest of us mere mortals usually do.
34:12
I think you nailed it.
Aransas Savas 34:13
That’s exactly it. And it it. It’s alluring to come up with and sexy. Yeah, as human beings. We have a very strong righting reflex.
34:23
We want even wanting that we want to fix
Aransas Savas 34:27
it. And if we see a problem, we will jump in you probably seen it with your mother.
Maria Ross 34:33
I see it with myself with my husband. Oh, oh, you know, he’s having an issue at work. And I go into Have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have you instead of spending the time trying to understand the issue and how it makes him feel and, you know, what are some possible impacts that that challenge has?
Aransas Savas 34:53
I think any question that we think can be solved with an answer is probably better solved with a
34:57
question. Boom.
Maria Ross 35:00
My truck, stop. I love that. So. So other than the talking techniques, are there any other innovative ways or tips you can share? That are great ways to gather that subjective information from customers? Yeah, I
Aransas Savas 35:15
mean, again, I’m gonna go back to measuring for time well spent. And if you do nothing else, but ask your customer, was this a good use of your time, you have a really valuable piece of data. And again, it Weight Watchers, that was one of the early pieces of data that started to upend our understanding of our customer, and what they valued about us. And it’s a simple question, was this a good use of your time? Put it on a scale? Do whatever you want, right? There’s lots of different methods for that, right. But that question, is going to give you a great piece of comparative data to understand how valuable different moments are to customers.
36:06
I’m thinking about how this might apply b2b. Put it apply more with? Did this make your job easier? Maybe they can’t maybe they can’t parse it out in terms of time spent.
Maria Ross 36:20
But could it be it? It made my job easier? It enabled me to I guess, this would be time enabled me to work faster? It enabled me to get to an answer faster than I would have? Are those the kinds of things you get if you’re working on
Aransas Savas 36:32
functional jobs? Yeah. And we’ve, we’ve actually designed a full model for applying these questions sets to different types of jobs to be done. But for functional jobs, that are about saving time isn’t absolutely. Okay. If you’re working more long and aspirational, social, emotional jobs, your questions are going to be a little different, right? Because the job is
Maria Ross 36:56
different, right? Is that more about how they’re feeling or their perspective on the world with
Aransas Savas 37:01
or without exciting looks like, looks like actually, with aspirational jobs, especially, I like to create customized metrics for customers. And it sounds really hard when I first say, but I promise it’s a lot easier done, which is to identify what the common goals are for your customers, and how they would measure success toward those goals.
37:27
And then check in. And
Aransas Savas 37:31
we missed so much great data by not asking about felt shifts, and some of the most powerful pieces of data I’ve ever gotten from people, all right, I feel stressed versus relaxed. And to ask them when they enter an experience, what’s your stress level when they exit it?
37:51
What’s your stress level,
Aransas Savas 37:52
and it has a really powerful effect on the memory as well. And that by reflecting on those ships, in the experience, I actually have a greater appreciation of them. People who reflect who shown in our data
38:07
are significantly happier,
Aransas Savas 38:11
in all domains of their lives than those who don’t. And so I do use data to trigger reflection whenever possible.
Maria Ross 38:18
You know, I love this because it’s making me think about even things that I’ve purchased or used for a functional purpose, and how there was still like an emotional shift. In using those things. I’m thinking about different software, or different apps or different technology where it wasn’t just about me getting the task done. Like I felt empowered, I felt like I could, you know, in some cases, like even when the travel apps all hit the scene, it’s like, I can travel more, I can travel by myself, I can, you know, I’ve got this like it was it was very much it, there was an emotional aspect and an aspirational aspect tied into this seemingly very functional thing. And this is what I try to bring out with my tech clients when I’m doing brand advisory is, yeah, they’re buying it for their company. But what does it actually do for them? Like is it about helping them feel empowered in their job, helping them feel more confident, helping them be able to get their work done more quickly, to your point time well spent? So they can go be at their kids baseball game? Like these are all the things I feel like b2b companies miss this when? Yeah, what and how does it make you feel in terms of the legacy you’re building in your career? Does this decision to buy this product that is seemingly functional? What does that actually do for you in terms of being transformational within your own company or changing the game or building a legacy of like, wow, this person really is a change maker in their organization. And it could just be a productivity app. It could just be something that again, seemingly functional. But we as humans invest other things in that decision.
Aransas Savas 40:05
That’s right. And the economic value raises along that progression as well. Yes. So I’m going to spend much less money and I’m on a functional service. And as it reaches upward, social, emotional, social, aspirational, we see people more willing to invest in those as you were talking, I was looking at my pretty little rose colored MacBook Air here, and thinking about how extraordinarily well, Apple has done at meeting functional, emotional, social, aspirational. 100%. And that is their differentiation. Yeah,
Maria Ross 40:47
I mean, I’m thinking, you know, just to call out a great example, there’s a, a collaboration app called monday.com. And they’re not paying me to say this, I use it for my podcast with my podcast production company. And I remember the first time I worked with them three years ago, they said, This is what we use. And I thought, Oh, I gotta learn another app. Right? Another thing? It’s not, is it like the prettiest interface? No, is it? Is there anything super sexy about it? No. But it makes me feel like a boss. Like I am juggling all these different episodes and audio files and getting done and communicating with people through there. And it’s not clogging up my email to your time wasted time, not well spent. It it just makes me feel so empowered. And it’s a piece of software.
Aransas Savas 41:35
Yeah, that’s how I feel about Slack. Yeah. Well, how did I survive without slack?
Maria Ross 41:40
Totally. How did I survive without Waze? How did I get anywhere in any of the cities I lived in without what I had a paper map
Aransas Savas 41:48
like? So we used to print them out from Mapquest totally,
Maria Ross 41:52
oh, my gosh, I saw a meme on that of you’re dating yourself. If you can remember printing out maps from that question, I had to raise my hand. I’m that old. So as we wrap up, I want to hear something about stone mantels Trends report the 2023 Trends report in experience strategy, can you share and we’re going to have a link to the report for folks to download in the show notes. So don’t fear. Let’s dear listener, can you share a few really interesting highlights from that report that you’re seeing in terms of trends and experience strategy?
Aransas Savas 42:25
Absolutely. And I’ll tell you, I collected this data. So I started out by talking to several 100 experience strategist across a wide range of categories. Then I talked to 1000s of customers across, again, a wide range of industries. Finally, I went through about 20 years of historical data to look at customer behaviors and insights, and synthesized all of that into six key trends. And so the first of those, I call wellbeing everywhere. And
42:58
this is not a surprise.
Aransas Savas 43:02
But we have seen a rapid acceleration in the expectation of well being. And so I say to every company, if you don’t think you’re in the wellbeing industry think again, every customer is being held to task for their ability to think systemically about customers wellbeing needs.
43:23
The second one is powered by customer purpose. And it’s really
Aransas Savas 43:27
a reminder to companies that having a company purpose does not equate to understanding your customers purpose. We talked a lot about that today. Zooming in on small groups, we also covered a little bit. This is really about understanding that yes, the big picture still matters. But you have to think about who your customer spends the most time with, they are influencing them more than you think for uncertainty is certain we live in wildly destabilize times, it’s really pretty unprecedented, the number of sort of foundational fractures that we’ve experienced in the past few years. And so really encouraging companies to think about how to be more modular and more agile in their delivery so that they can use the mode based approach to meet customer needs. Hybrid is here to stay. No doubt about it. We still need humans, but I am seeing the value of human engagement slip downward pretty quickly. When I do this dip again next quarter, I suspect I’ll see something even more stark as people become increasingly rapidly. Trouble with AI. The rollout of of chat GPT kind of upended the way people think about this stuff. And then six context is king. We’ve said for years that content is king, but really place matters more than anything. So how when where why am I using this instead of
44:57
just pushing content people Hmm, I love it. Well, I
Maria Ross 45:01
hope everyone will check out the report. It’s got some great insights in it. And we again will have that link in the show notes. So our answers that has, this has been an amazing conversation, we could probably talk for another two hours about customer experience. But as we sign off, where we’ll have all your links in the show notes, but where’s one of the best places that folks listening can connect with you or find out more about your work? Yeah,
Aransas Savas 45:27
head on over to stone mantel.co. We’re unique like that, that we don’t have the M. It’s stone mantle ma n te l.co. And find me on LinkedIn. Say, Hi, I’d love to chat with folks. This is my nerd verse, though. I can I love it,
Maria Ross 45:44
then an A. And we’ll put the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. And little public service message from me if folks reach out, make sure you put a note. So she knows where you heard about her from? Yes. Yeah. Personalized, personalized, personalized. Absolutely. And can I share too about our podcast? Yes, because I’m gonna put that in the show notes too. So please share. Yes, I
Aransas Savas 46:06
co host the experience strategy podcast. So if any of this stuff is interesting to folks, that’s the perfect place to hear a lot more about
Maria Ross 46:15
it right. We’ll put the link to the main rate podcast page, but I assume that’s available on players everywhere. Anyone remember a player? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today and for all these great insights. And I really hope you’ve moved some leaders into rethinking their customer experience strategy today, because we all as consumers, b2b or b2c Consumers will benefit if companies can do a better job of making the experience less painful for people.
Aransas Savas 46:43
It’s good for all of us. Yeah, yes, it’s
Maria Ross 46:45
good for all of us. 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. Please rate and review and share it with a colleague or a friend. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be calm. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
The reports are in. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are hearing more and and more about how having an attitude of gratitude enhances our lives – and our performance. In this November Hot Take episode, Maria shares about how embracing gratitude will not only strengthen your empathy, but how it can help you to improve your life.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Despite the misinformation surrounding the Thanksgiving season, it is so valuable to step back and be thankful for what we do have.
Pausing is essential to building empathy – it allows us to see, hear, and notice them in a way we can’t when we are always rushing about.
Going fast makes us less productive and less effective – by slowing down we are able to have more of an impact than we realize.
“Steadying yourself to think about what you can be grateful for enables you to slow down enough to notice who and what is around you.” — Maria Ross
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work, to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hi, everyone. Okay, it’s Thanksgiving month here in the US November. We know Thanksgiving is fraught with a lot of baggage historically. And we’re starting to unpack that many of us are as a country, but I wanted the theme of this month’s hot take to be about gratitude. The reports are in unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re hearing more and more about how having an attitude of gratitude enhances our lives and our performance. This is not some simple hack of Pollyanna thinking. Studies show that a sustained practice of gratitude, improves heart health, increases resilience, improve sleep, provides great mental well being and even improves overall health and well being. And gratitude increases our emotional intelligence and empathy. Why? When we practice gratitude, we get out of our selfish center and notice what’s around us, including other people. I personally find gratitude grounds me, it literally causes me to slow down, lower my blood pressure, and calm my monkey mind. Pausing is essential to building empathy. In order to see things from another person’s perspective, we’ve got to be able to see them, hear them, notice their tone, body language and facial expressions. Studying yourself to think about what you can be grateful for enables you to slow down enough to notice who and what is around you. In my leadership trainings, I often talk about the need to slow down, going so fast is making us less effective and productive. And quite frankly, when we’re racing, I guess when I’m racing, I tend to do a half assed job at any one thing. You may feel this too. Now, I’ve talked about this with leaders on my podcast before that need, but more importantly, that ability to force yourself to slow down in the face of pressure, stress and chaos. Some of the most impactful interviews I’ve had about this, were with Paul Mirabella when he spoke about leading through crisis. We’re talking 911, the financial shutdown of 2008 and most recently, COVID. And with Chris L. Johnson, who speaks about how when leaders pause, they win. I highly recommend you check out these episodes, and I’ll put the links in the show notes. This month, as I said, we celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. And again, like I said, despite this holiday being fraught with misinformation and revisionist history, I believe it’s valuable that we honor the truth and take that needed step back to be thankful. Thankful for what we do have for those in our lives for any privileges we enjoy, and to take that step back to slow down and use our senses. That’s how we can gain emotional regulation and connect better with those around us. Whether coworkers or community, friends or family. Embrace gratitude wherever you can and see how it enhances your relationships with others and yourself going forward. And make sure you tell me about it. You can ping me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Or of course I’m on LinkedIn, Maria J. Ross. Until next time, I am grateful for you and all of you listeners out there who are supporting empathy as a way to achieve radical success. Until next time, remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care, be grateful and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources, book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
When we think of making big asks that will catalyze us into a new role, more funding, or higher pay, we tend to ask small for fear of hearing a dreaded NO. But today’s guest, Dia Bondi, explains the role empathy plays in making big asks – and why you actually want to reframe the value of getting a YES by actively seeking out the NO so you can achieve your goals.
Today, Dia shares her incredible journey of working with high-profile leaders and then making the decision to go to auctioneering school. She talks about the mental models of auctioneering and how they can help us reframe our asks in a way that gets us closer to our goals. We talk about her 6-step framework for building your ask, how to step into your zone of freaking out and see it as your zone of potential, why we need to “order off the menu” more, and how we make the mistake of conflating worth and worthiness. Her work has personally benefited my life and business and I know it will do the same for you.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
The ask isn’t about one person – it is something that should be mutually beneficial to both parties.
The zone between the “yes” and the guaranteed “no” is a world of possibilities. If you ask for the “no” and then work down, you might get more than you ever thought possible.
Find out if the person you’re speaking with is the decision maker – if they are not, offer support and tools that might help them advocate more easily on your behalf.
“We can ask for the thing we think will get us a ‘no’, and then negotiate down. Then you’ll know you’ve not left any money or opportunity on the table.” — Dia Bondi
About Dia Bondi, Communications Catalyst & Author, Ask Like An Auctioneer
Dia Bondi is a Communications Catalyst for high-impact people. In her private coaching and programs, she works with professional C-level leaders, VC-backed founders and ambitious professionals guiding, helping them find their voice and lead with it. Her workshops and talks are hosted by corporations including Quartz, Salesforce, Google’s X.team, and Dropbox. In global sport, she helped Rio de Janeiro secure the 2016 Summer Olympics. After attending auctioneering school for fun, she translated the techniques she learned into a program that prepares ambitious professionals and especially women, to ask for more and leave nothing on the table called Ask Like an Auctioneer. She’s been featured on CNBC Make It, Forbes and Fast Company. Her book, Ask Like an Auctioneer, will be published in 2023. Listen to her podcast Lead With Who You Are.
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. When we think of making big asks that will catalyze us into a new role, more funding or higher pay, maybe even a book or speaking engagements. We tend to ask small for fear of hearing a dreaded No, but today’s guest Deobandi explains the role empathy plays in making big asks, and why you actually want to reframe the value of getting a yes, by actively seeking out the know so you can achieve your goals. DIA is a communications catalyst for high impact people, and she’s one of my favorite people. She works with professional sea level leaders, VC backed founders and ambitious professionals helping them find their voice and lead with it. She’s done talks for the likes of ports, Salesforce, Google’s X team and Dropbox. In global sport, she helped Rio de Janeiro secure the 2016 Summer Olympics. After attending auctioneering school for fun. She translated the techniques she learned into a program that prepares ambitious professionals and especially women to ask for more and leave nothing on the table called Ask like an auctioneer. She’s been featured on CNBC make it Forbes Fast Company. She’s host of the podcast lead with who you are. And Diaz book, long awaited ask like an auctioneer how to ask for more and get it launches this week. Today dia shares her incredible journey of working with high profile leaders and then making that decision to go to auctioneering school. She talks about the mental models of auctioneering and how they can help us reframe our asks, in a way that gets us closer to our goals. We talked about her six step framework for building your ass how to step into your zone of freaking out and see it as your zone of potential. Why We Need To quote order off the menu more and how we make the mistake of conflating worth and worthiness. Her work has personally benefited my life and business and I know it will do the same for you. Take a listen. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com and sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips and find out how you can book me as a speaker. I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at V empathy edge.com. Oh, and follow me on Instagram where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Hi Deobandi. Welcome to the empathy edge podcast. I am always happy to chat with you about how to ask for more and get it. So thanks for coming and joining us today.
Dia Bondi 04:03
I feel like we’ve been chatting about it for a lot like years years.
Maria Ross 04:06
We have been talking about it for years years, you and I go way back, we met through GE Oh, yes. And worked together on brand strategy. And you supported my book, The Empathy edge when that came out. And now I’m so thrilled that the world is going to get to see as like an auctioneer.
Dia Bondi 04:23
We did. We did two events together at your book launch for empathy edge that we did that so called one on one and the one in the clock factory in the East Bay and one in San Francisco.
Maria Ross 04:31
Yep, exactly. And I am going to be emceeing you’re excited. I know look at us full circle. Okay, so let’s get into it. I want to hear I mean, I already know but I want you to share with our listeners hear your story about how you even got into this work of helping a million women asked for more and get it. So tell us a little bit about your journey.
Dia Bondi 04:52
Yeah, so I’ve been a longtime leadership communications coach working with VC backed founders and senior leaders to help them find their voice Lee with it and speak powerfully at really critical moments so they can have the kind of impact that they want in their leadership and on their teams. And I took a sabbatical a handful of years ago and on that sabbatical, as usual, when I take breaks, I want to learn something new and weird and unrelated. And so my husband reminded me that years before I had made a threat out a bucket list in a bucket list conversation at a dinner table to go to auctioneering school for fun. And he said, Hey, maybe now’s the time to do it. So I jumped on an airplane and I went to auctioneering school for 10 days, like me and 100 cowboys learning how to auctioneer everything, from, you know, livestock, to real estate to art to whatever. And you know, it wasn’t gonna make a job out of it. So I came back home to the Bay Area and started doing fundraising auctioneering as an impact hobby, particularly and specifically for women led nonprofits and nonprofits benefiting women and girls and a good 20 Auctions later, it kind of hit me that the that what I was learning in the front of the room was super useful to thinking about how we ask for more, and how we build a strategic asset, and then deliver it in our businesses, lives and careers. And so I launched a project called Ask like an auctioneer, with the goal to help a million women ask for more and get it using what I learned from and mental models and tools that I’ve learned from this impact hobby of auctioneering started out as really just programs, like keynotes and workshops, and then I learned so much I knew when it was time for it to be a book, so could reach more folks try to get to that million million Woman number.
Maria Ross 06:35
I love that. And we all of us around you have been like you need to write a book, you need to write a book. So you finally did, that’s awesome. I feel like so much of your work, whether you’ve been a communication catalyst, or this work you’re doing now is that you are this force in people’s lives at their most climactic moments. Like whether it’s their most high impact communications moment, or they’re making like a really big ask that matters to the trajectory of their career, or their business or their funding or their life. You know, whatever it is, I feel like you are already there at the like highest vibration of people’s lives. I’m curious, has that been a theme with you? I mean, you aren’t you talk fast, you think fast, you work fast? Has that always been sort of the like, that’s what you’re in it for, like the high of it, of being there for people’s high impact moments?
Dia Bondi 07:21
I don’t know, I maybe I think sort of the so I know that I’m really driven by, you know, finding and being a part of really connected experiences and also adventure. And I think what you’re pointing to has been a strong theme for me in my whole life and career for sure. And there’s something about those sort of height where to think of as like high leverage moments that require deep connection to oneself, a leader has to get really clear with like, not just what am I going to say? But how am I going to say it? And how do I combine those two things in a way that are aligned with who I actually am. And there’s some pretty critical choices that happen. So in that way, it’s like a very connected experience. And when I work with leaders at those high leverage moments, I get to be deeply connected with them, and the moment and what the moment might mean. And then it always feels like an adventure, because it’s sort of like, you never know what’s going to happen. And it has actually taken me around the world, which is really cool. I helped Rio de Janeiro win the right to host the 2016 Olympics, I’ve worked on the Turkish bid. I’ve traveled and teach communication skills classes, to leaders across domains, you know, lots of different geographies. And that’s been like, actually, my adventure. I had an I had a former or a mentor earlier in my life, say something to the degree of like, it’s nice to know if you work in layers, or if you work in leverage points. Meaning like, Are you someone who, who maybe is sort of a marathoner who layers in, you know, understanding practice programs, whatever, over time to layer in something on top of something else to build something, or you’re someone who loves to come in and, and work on like, distinct leverage points. And I think I’ve always been leveraged point person, I think and it feels like it’s strategic ask is exactly that, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Maria Ross 09:16
Because those are those moments where, you know, you have talked in the past about the being in the zone of freaking out when you’re making those strategic asks. And those are the moments where we really feel like we’ve got to dig deep. And what I love about what you’re saying and why you’re even on this podcast is because that idea of connection and that idea of empathy is so important to remember that the Ask isn’t just about you, and what you want, but making it a mutually beneficial ask. So talk to us a little bit about some of the mindsets that go into that. What what are some of the parallels between what you learned in auctioneering school and how you apply that to clients and audiences when you’re talking about making a strategic ask?
Dia Bondi 09:54
Well, for one, you know what it means to ask like an auctioneer in brief is, you know, in Our regular lives when we go to think about we’re going to ask for something budget headcount, you know, I don’t know resources, investment, engagement, somebody’s time, we always we often love the absolute very often will say, What do I think I can get? And then go for that. And then when we get a yes, we feel awesome. But what we do and I saw that I realized in auctioneering, is that we can’t do that that’s the equivalent of opening a bid. Having somebody put their paddle in the air and saying sold right away. What we have to do is instead is ask, in order to get a no, we need to know that somebody at $5,000 will not bid literally, they will shake their heads at me and say No, not 5000. And I’ll say, okay, great. 4500. And I’ll sell it, I never sell it for the same amount that I’ve asked for, it’s always underneath because I need to hit that know, in auctioneering, it’s great new that tells me Oh, I just maximize the potential of that ask, there is no one in this room who will pay me more pay for this item? For more than $5,000. It’s great. Now I know if I sell it for 45. I did, I got absolutely the most possible. And I recognize completely that folks listening, don’t. You’re not in competitive bidding situations very often. Like, you know, if you’re lucky enough to be in one, let’s say, you know, for your talent and time, you know, consider yourself like kind of fancy, it’s not happening very often. But what we can do is we can ask for the thing, we think that will get us a no, and then negotiate down and then you’ll know you’ve not left any money or opportunity on the table. But we don’t do that. Because everything between a guaranteed Yes. And that menacing word, no lives in a place. You already said it. The zone of freaking out is that place where we don’t know what kind of answer we might get. Right? And I want to flip that for folks and think of it as the zone of potential. So that’s what it means to act like an auctioneer and to your question, how do we draw on you know, some of the things I’ve learned to think about putting together a strategic ask. Number one, we have to recognize that the zone of freaking out is also the zone of potential, and we have to step into the Zoho we call it the Zoho in order to explore what else we could get, you know how much more we could get like the thing of the more is always in the Zoho? Because that’s where all the like gray area and the best potential is, okay, fine. So if it’s in the Zopo, how do we do that? The fact that you know how to know how to ask like an auctioneer go for that? No, doesn’t mean you actually can’t, we need to kind of like, unlock ourselves a little bit to go. Okay. But it’s like one thing to know how to jump off the high dive. It’s another thing to like, actually talk yourself into doing it, you know? 100%? Yes. So what are you know, you’re saying the word mindsets, and I get mindset it in the book once but, you know, the these are like ideas I think of as like ideas, lessons, I learned that help you go, Alright, I’m gonna ask for 30% more than I would, in an everyday ask. So here’s two of my favorite ideas are that people are irrational. And if you don’t like that, you can think of it like this, their rationale for what they might say yes or no to? Is not your rationale for what you might say yes or no to. Now, in some ways, maybe you could even think of that as the ultimate act of empathy. Because you’re not shopping from your own wallet. Mm hmm. You’re saying, I don’t know what they might say yes or no to, I’m going to let them decide. I’m going to ask and find out with my ears and my eyes and my heart open. That’s it,
Maria Ross 13:34
ask and find out. I think that’s the most you know, we talk about curiosity being the number one trait of empathetic people. But when we think about asks, we tend to think of it only for our own self serving, like this is about me. And actually, when you’re when you have to ask another person for something, it’s not just about you, it’s about the way that you engage and connect with that person, and what is going to be in it for them. What do they value? What are they seeking? What do they want from the exchange?
Dia Bondi 14:03
And that’s really part of the story that leads up to the Ask in my mind, I mean, when I go, you know, if I’m drawing on lessons from Aflac and auctioneer, I’m saying, Okay, I’ve got to set up the Ask I’m about to make in a way that makes it clear to the room that I see that we’re like, what we’re here to do is one thing, but what we’re really here to do is another, okay, so at an art auction for a fundraiser, like it might be like we’re here to actually yes, raise some money for this organization so they can can it continue to develop community arts programs, you know, for folks with developmental disabilities, fine. But maybe, also what we’re really here to do is to build community with people that are like minded. Maybe what we’re really here to do is to let you have the total walk away from this experience with the titillation of knowing that you’ve just started your own art collection. You are officially in our Collector now. You know, there’s so many other really here to do’s that is where I think the empathy comes in. I want to be clear, though, that when you think about your own strategic ask, that is a moment to go, what do I actually what do I want? What do I need? Where, you know, it is all about you. But it doesn’t have to only be about you.
Maria Ross 15:18
Exactly. It’s both and, and I love that in the past, I’ve heard you talk about what is the offer in your ask. And I think that’s where the empathy comes in, where it’s like, here’s what I want. And I’m going to be clear and bold about what it is I want. But I’m going to frame it in a way where I can leave room for understanding what I’m offering you at the same time, right? Yep.
Dia Bondi 15:41
And even if it’s something that they might not see, they want, you know, like something you know about or you observe or you in some way, sort of almost wish and hope that they want, you know that you can add it in there like something they hadn’t even thought of like, you know, the idea of going first, if you observe that someone that you’re about to make an ask of somebody that sort of likes to be rewarded is the opposite of suffering tall poppy syndrome, they’re happy to stand out and go first and be seen, well, maybe there’s an opportunity in, in the ask to show them how when they say yes to you, or at least are willing to negotiate after the ask that they have to say no to them participating in this conversation and getting to a yes, that works for both of you, which hopefully is more than what you thought you would ask for originally, is an opportunity for them to shine for them to be that tall, Poppy, they love being right.
Maria Ross 16:34
I love that. What do you think it is that makes people not want to go for the no, like, I think they all kind of read intellectually about understanding that when you’re auctioneering, you’re trying to get the maximum dollar amount for the bid item. Right? So what is it that stops us from that mindset in real life? What are they afraid of?
Dia Bondi 16:57
We conflate This is another big one. And I do have a whole chapter on it. And the book is one of my favorite, we conflate worth and worthiness. We conflate the answers, we take the answers we get to the asks we make as ways to shape our own value. Okay, so for example, you know, one of the ideas you can use as a strategy to talk yourself into asking for more than you think you’ll get to go ahead and challenge that assumption that like, there’s no more than, you know, than the easy yes, amount is to remember that price, or what somebody will do or, or with you or for you, is a measure and a way to see what they value and how they value it. Not a way to define your worth or worthiness. Can’t do it. I when I sell, and I tell the story a lot that I sold one night camping trip at auction for $55,000. And I sold a piece of art that was supposed to be worth $10,000 for 4200. So what are those worth? It doesn’t matter. Sometimes when I do low Bono pro bono work for nonprofits I care about I’m $0. Sometimes when I work with the organizations I collaborate with, I cheat. So what am I worth? The answer is, it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant, right? Like, if I based my worth, on every contract, I the price attached to every contract I ever got, I wouldn’t be I would be a very sad person. And very confused. Yeah, yeah. So it’s, it’s a way to see what other people value and how they value it. I tell my wife saw this and auctioneering I tell clients, they say we want this piece of art to sell for $12,000. And I’m like, I’m gonna sell it for whatever somebody else will, somebody else will pay for it. As long as it’s above the reserve, because how they value it ain’t how you value it. Right? So we can’t take those bids personally, we just have to go. They don’t really like is everybody gonna is everybody going to run out and you know, leverage their life to buy a Lambo? No, they’re not because it’s not worth it to you. It doesn’t have value to you, somebody else
19:11
maybe. Right? Right. And I love this because,
Maria Ross 19:15
you know, even as I was building my own business, and as I started to get to know you and really take in your insights and your teachings, I always had this little voice in my head. That was like, on the one hand, I was very like, what’s the worst they can do? They can say no. And then the other voice that was like, they’re gonna put all these judgments on me for asking for this crazy amount. And they’re gonna think I’m, you know, out of my mind, and or they’re gonna think Who does she think she is? Right that that whole attitude. And since being friends with you and being exposed to your work, I have become more confident in the part of me that saying what’s the worst they can do? I can say they can say no, and like you said, that isn’t for me. Shannon, and in 99.9% of cases, the image we have in our heads of the person, like throwing up their papers and slamming the door out of the room because of the ridiculousness of what we had the audacity to ask for never happens. Like it never happens. And so that is so much money and value to us that we’re leaving on the table. When we
Dia Bondi 20:21
don’t ask for that. I’m going to reframe kind of reframe something for you and a common phrase, a common phrase that folks might be hearing this idea of like, the worst thing they could say is no, actually, the worst thing they could say is yes.
20:35
Because if I asked you, for
Dia Bondi 20:40
$100 an hour for my writing services, and you say yes,
20:45
in my model, I was left some money on the table. Yeah. The best answer you could get is no.
Dia Bondi 20:55
Because that lets you know, you’ve Max, you actually touch the ceiling of what’s possible, and then have a conversation about what does work for you. And then land at $92 an hour. Mm hmm. I wrote a proposal and you’ll hear this in my TED talk. I my TEDx talk, like I wrote a proposal and shut it off massively in my Zoho. This is about a year and a half ago. It was so so foolish, I was sweating. I felt that excited, giddy, like, Who do I think I am? I’m about to get in trouble. But it’s also kind of sneaky and funny feeling. It’s like a mini coaster. Yeah, welcome to the Zoho. Okay. And, and I wasn’t even gonna send it off like that I was gonna send something off that was 30%. Beneath that, which is still 25%, above what I usually asked for. And the woman who runs operations and engagements for my small business, she was like, really do that. Is that Zoho enough? You know, we like, you know, we talked about it. Yeah. And I was like, I had so much rapport in this relationship, just in the beginning of our relationship, knowing we were gonna go into an engagement. I knew that if I sent it off, you know, and he said, We can’t do that. There was room in our relationship to have a conversation. Mm hmm. I sent it off. And he said, Sure, send me the contract. And I was like, because, yes, is the worst thing I can hear. Yeah, yeah, that lets me I’ve left something on the table. Right? If he had said, Oh, that’s outside of our budget, that’s, we can’t do that. And I could have said, Tell me about what you could have done it and landed somewhere beneath that number, right. I would have been, I’d be like, I know, I didn’t leave any money on the table. So it’s a little bit of a reframe around these things. Like, what’s the worst they could they could say, is no. Yeah. I don’t know if that’s true. In this model, you know, I love that.
22:48
I love that so much.
Maria Ross 22:49
Let’s talk a little bit about, you know, you kind of alluded to a lot of the principles, but you have this six step framework for building a strategic asset that you talk about in the book, which, you know, we’re gonna put links to the book in the show notes, I want everyone to check it out. It’s gold asked like an auctioneer. But what are some of those frameworks? Have those been some of the things you’ve been talking about thus far? Or is there something around those six steps? Because this is about building what you want to ask for? Yes.
Dia Bondi 23:19
Two things. And before we go there, I want to go backwards for just a second with folks will go with us. Because I think, you know, along the theme of sort of living and leading with empathy, you know, engaging with empathy. It’s hard for folks to step into their Sophos and go advocate, you know, and make big asks, for professionals who are living, who are listening to this podcast and living in a world in which they have to pitch their ideas, gain momentum for those ideas, put a price on those ideas in that work. Even if you’re in house, and you need, you know, you ask for budget for something you’re often for you might be like, Oh, I read this book, and I’m in my sofa. But I can send this off because I know that people are irrational. And they’re, you know, the way they say yes, is the way I would say yes. And so it’s okay, let’s just ask and find out. But not everybody has that. And when you sometimes make a request of someone, they then have to go make a request on your behalf for the resources, okay. And that can be very hard for them. So we’ve got to understand that if you’re asking a brand new director to go make a pitch to her executive team for the very first time for budget, way more than she thought she would need last, you know, when she was estimating things because things have changed last quarter, you’re putting her in a position where like she might have to go do something she’s nervous to do so while we’re nervous to make bigger asks, When we make those we sometimes are putting pressure on somebody else to go do that as well and they might be even less comfortable than you are. So I just want to bring that up that you you know, folks listening might go make pitches and go where are they why aren’t they getting back to me? What’s going on? They ghosted me or they kept saying yes. And they really meant no, I think because they never really went out and championed it. And not it might not be because they suck, is because this stuff is existential for people. Mm hmm. You know, they put in their little hearts on the line.
Maria Ross 25:16
I think that’s such a good point. And do you have any advice for people that aren’t making making those kinds of transitive asks where the ultimate decision maker is not the person that they’re making the addition? The initial ask to guess what can they do to support that person?
Dia Bondi 25:28
So one is to be I mean, this is really tactical, but like, ask that person if you know, or ask that person, if they actually have direct control over the budget, they’re going to need to go make requests. So just find that out. So you’re not you know, you’re actually checking then to find out what they need from you, or ways in which you can help them advocate for that ask, Would you like to invite me for 10 minutes to one of the meetings that were you know, this budget is gonna get discussed? Can I serve up this proposal in a different format that makes it easier for you to turn into an executive summary? Like, do you would you like me to stand up an FAQ that you can take in for when you guys have discussion about it, like, find out what tools they might need to help them advocate a little bit more easily on your behalf?
Maria Ross 26:16
One of the biggest things I’ve learned from you is also about how to strategically leverage value adds without dropping your ask. So as an example, yeah, so as an example, you coached me a few years ago on an ask for a speaking engagement for a leadership workshop. And their response was very vague of like, what can you do about the price type of response? It wasn’t we don’t have the budget. But it was really just someone in that organization wanting to appear that they had driven a hard bargain.
Dia Bondi 26:52
Yes, what I remember this route, so
Maria Ross 26:54
So you had taught and I had gone to you and said, How should I respond, right. And you had said, Don’t back down on the price if you stand by that price, but what else could be important to them. And we ended up landing on a value add component that was not have a heavy lift on my part, but kept my rate and my, my value of the package I was delivering intact. So if they were ever talking to peers or colleagues at other organizations, that was going to be the reputation of what I could deliver. Yes. And so I think that that’s so important that we forget, there’s all these other little value ads that we can use as levers without our first thing being let’s cut the price. Right? Let’s cut the ask whatever the ask is, right.
Dia Bondi 27:40
And then that person that maybe is operating inside of a frugal, you know, environment or like wants to know that you got that like there her direct report heard bosses? Don’t leave money on the table. Yeah, exactly. So you, she can say like, look, we couldn’t, we didn’t get to lower the price. But we did get a bunch of bonuses thrown in. Now she gets to meet the need of looking like, you know, she was a heart, you know, drove a hard bargain. You got your needs met, and she looks like a friggin hero because she got upgraded. Mm hmm. So I think that’s really wonderful. That’s a wonderful, I felt I had forgotten about that. And in my world, like in my world, and auctioneering, if I’m drawing on that, we’d say that is knowing your increments, and using them. So I might have all kinds of increments I can play with how much time I spend on something, how much engagement they get from me what the price is, what the bonus materials might be an opportunity for them to record the session and have access to rewatch this for one month, they might have like, for example, like these are more your little, you know, it’s not just price, or just time or just licensing the content or GC what I’m saying there. So knowing what our increments are, even if we get to make new ones and then increment with them, we can we can all kind of win. Totally.
29:01
I love it. And I think that that’s
Maria Ross 29:02
under under appreciated, have like get creative about what you can offer or what you can do besides you know watering down the initial ask.
Dia Bondi 29:13
I feel like if I can remember I can remember to Hamels 50. And my brain doesn’t work like it used to I feel like that conversation we had we also the thing that we came up with was also going to be good for you because it was an opportunity to deepen relationships with leadership outside of that sense.
Maria Ross 29:26
Yeah. 100% Yeah, it was it was extra coaching on top of it. And so like,
Dia Bondi 29:31
I do have me do this workshop, and then I’ll come and do follow up cert coaching circles or something. Exactly. Yes. Okay. So I love that. So the six step framework, yeah,
Maria Ross 29:39
talk to us a little bit about some of those steps don’t give it all away because I want people to
Dia Bondi 29:43
do the first three Oh, I there’s so much other stuff in there that you know, I give you all six and it’s totally fine. The the the idea is that you know, there are moments everybody that are pretty obvious moments to make asks right you know, performance review and you be asking for, you know, your annual increase or, you know, more RSUs or you’re going to be okay. So you make an ask because you have a big, a big proposal happening, a pitch happening, like, there’s certain moments that are like, this is a negotiation moment. And I don’t actually talk about negotiation that much in the book, because to me, I want to kind of separate there’s the ask, and then there’s the new negotiation, I really want to pinpoint on the ask.
30:22
So I, they’re there, however,
Dia Bondi 30:25
don’t we go to a restaurant and say, Oh, I’m doing whole 30 this month? Is there a you know, do you have just a chicken breast back there in the kitchen that you can do with? Okay, we asked for things that are off the menu all the time, when we go to a restaurant, maybe maybe you’re not that one. But you know, that is a common thing. Or like, Hey, I’ve got my one year old with me, can I just get some steamed broccoli, I could smash it up to give it to her, like you ask for things that are not on the menu. And sometimes you get it right. So I want people to think about asks you can make what could you ask for? That gets you closer to your goal. And then once you know what that is, you can say, How do I make sure when I make the ask? I’m not artificially low balling myself. So we want it. So the first three steps of the it’s like an Ask strategy plan is to ask yourself, Okay, what’s my goal? What do I want? I want to publish a book, I wanna, I don’t know, I want to be director in 18 months, I want to own my first home by the time I’m 30, I want to get a seed funding, yeah, whatever I want to, I want my, and for a lot of folks that come to my workshops and organizations, they’re like, 26, and they’re like, if I have my own apartment, by the end of this year, you will be a big deal, right? I mean, I got married when I was 26. But things are different now with housing market. So your housemates the rest of your life around here. So so like, what is the goal? And it’s like a concrete midterm goal, right? It’s not like I want to change the world. It needs to be like, really, you know, 1218 months, you know, when you got there. Okay. So that’s step one. Step two, then is not what could you ask for? Step two is, what is the next biggest move you need to make that gets you closer to that goal? The next move you need to make that gets you closer to that goal.
Maria Ross 32:04
I love that it’s like the next right thing.
Dia Bondi 32:07
Exactly, because there’s lots of moves you’re gonna make to get you all to that goal. So, for example, I had a woman at a tech company in San Francisco, when my workshops, she raised her hand, she’s like, my goal is to keep learning and growing. And I was like, No, it is not that is an activity. She was like, Okay, fine. And then she coughed it up. She wants to be general counsel, at a midsize pre IPO company, in, you know, in and around the tech space. She was, you know, that was not like a 12 to 18 month goal that was more like, you know, three to five year kind of goal. But fine. She’s, I was like, Okay, now, that’s a goal. Now, you know, you when you’ve arrived, you know, so I was like, what is one of the next big moves you need to make that gets you closer to that goal? And she said something like, well, one, I need to tell my boss that that’s kind of the vision I have for myself. Okay. And I was like, alright, that’s not really a move. That’s like a thing you’re gonna do. What’s the, you know, like, what, what’s the what’s the move that would really help you feel closer and be closer, just like, well, there’s this one, I need to kind of get in and around the conversations that general counsel’s have, like, I need to kind of see what those look like. Instead of being like two layers away. I want to see okay, I was like, Oh, great. So
33:26
he wants to be in the room. Be in the room? Yeah. Okay.
Dia Bondi 33:29
So once we’ve got the top what was about the gold, then we’ve got the big move, then we can ask, what might I ask for? That gets that actions, that big move that gets me closer to that goal? What might I ask for? That actions, that big move that gets closer to my goal gets me closer to my goal. And for her, it was like, there was this one, you know, monthly meeting that she could ask her boss for once you get coughed up that that’s her vision for herself. And to she’s which again, is not an ask, but it just kind of needs to happen. And to she could ask to come sit in on those meetings, she does need to be a contributor at the table. She could be like a mentee, you know, the next generation of legal minds in the technology space, understanding how legal policy is made, you know, and that was she was like, that was the ask. And then we had to ask the next question, which is, okay,
34:29
what is the Zoho version of that? Ask?
Dia Bondi 34:33
The Zoho version of that ask and it could be in her case, it could be things like well, I want to go to that meeting with my chief counsel. And then will she spend the following half hour debriefing it with me and giving me I’m just making this up on the fly because I don’t remember right. It was but debriefing and then introducing me to three other women in her network that are chief counsel that other companies so that I can start to grow my network in this space and Find to expand my mentoring network. Hmm, that takes a single ask makes it big. And she was kind of like, well, that’s a lot. And I was like, Yeah, but what is the offer inside the ask? And of course, of course, it’s going to be things like, okay, she’s gonna have a super high value person on her team, because you’re gonna learn a lot in the next 12 months through these relationships, she may end up with a deputy sort of, you know, through you getting exposure to these other, like, there’s a lot of things that you could do. So, it it
Maria Ross 35:26
could even be it could even be fulfilling her need to mentor. You don’t know, right? You know, ask if I know,
Dia Bondi 35:33
right? So those are the first four steps in the six steps of a strategic ask plan. So we want to unearth and design and ask that might help. Doesn’t have to be something on the menu. It does not have to be ordained, you know, ordained negotiation moments. And we want to start with those four questions. What’s my goal? Big Move I need to make? What might I ask for to help action that move? And then what’s the zolfo version of that? Ask? So that I don’t accidentally lowball myself.
36:00
Oh, my God, I love it. So good. So good. All right.
Maria Ross 36:04
Let’s talk about where we go from here. So you wrote this book, you did a TEDx talk?
36:10
What is your vision for this work? Ah, what is your zolfo vision for this? Yeah, I mean,
Dia Bondi 36:19
look, you know, in my business, it would be so cool someday to you know, I’m putting that together. I felt like a million women. That was a pretty good vision. Like, do we have to do more than that? I don’t know. You know, I’m like, that’s good. You know, for me, the place that I
Maria Ross 36:36
want to I just I have to interject right now, because given a statistic I just heard that has not moved since 2017. And it’s what now 2023 The fact that 2% of female founders have gotten VC funding. And I could be using for it’s gone down. No, no, it’s actually two it was 2% in 2017. Oh, it’s still 2%. Today, maybe it’s 4%. Anyway, point is the needle has not moved. So yeah, we need we need more of you to more women.
Dia Bondi 37:08
Yeah. Understanding completely that this is not woman’s fault.
Maria Ross 37:12
No, it’s not. It’s not that they’re not asking enough. Let’s,
Dia Bondi 37:15
let’s put that out there. Yeah. And, you know, I had a I was on a another in another conversation around this. And it was like, why are you focusing on women? Is it because women have a difficult time asking? I’m like, No, I mean, yes. But so does everybody and that in even if it’s true, that’s not I’m not like, you can do it ladies. Like that’s not that’s kind of not the stance I take. I’m more like, Okay, what strategically can get you where you want to go more quickly? If you’re hitting roadblocks in one place? Like, what else could you ask for? Because sometimes, maybe you need to ask, but you’ve been asking for the money and you’re getting, you’re just getting nowhere on that. Maybe we need to like what if we made more more asks around growing your influence, like this legal example I gave you grow a particular network to get into powerful rooms and build relationships that then let you make asks around money later to the right audience, because they get who you are. Do you know what I mean? More About like that than it is about, oh, they’re there, you know, because that’s not, you know, well, there’s consternation and there should be you know, there should be it’s true that there is backlash to women advocating for themselves? My answer cannot be Well, then don’t do it. I’m sorry, that can’t i can’t be around. But the whole idea here is to help women ask for more and get it and strategic creative ways. And like an auctioneer’s that don’t leave any opportunity on the table such that they can, we can put more money and resources in the hands of women so that we can sort of just changes everything for all of us. Right. So that’s where I live with this. Now. I have, you know, of course, my brain is on fire around like, okay, so this is the first book, is there one for sales teams? Is there one for you know, is there one for recent graduates? Is there yes, maybe there is? So how we get to that million? I don’t know. And maybe it’ll happen with this book. We never know.
38:55
I know. And maybe the million will be upped, as part of your Zoho move.
Dia Bondi 38:59
I don’t know. I’m kind of open. I don’t Yeah, I kind of open to see what might happen. And well, a million sounds really big and great. Like when I get one note from somebody last week, I got a note from somebody that said, I just negotiated a package I never would have imagined was possible for me. I wouldn’t have done it without this content. And I can’t even like when I hear that stuff. I’m like, let’s go. Yeah,
39:21
yeah, let’s go.
Maria Ross 39:22
We’ll do this has been awesome. I’m so excited for the book. I hope everybody will check it out. Ask like an auctioneer, how to ask for more, and get it available in all the places and we will have a link in the show notes as well. We’re also going to have a link to your wonderful podcast, leading with who you are. You’ve had some great guests on there, really including you insights. Thank you. And also, I’ll put a link to your TEDx talk as well so people can check that out. But for those on the go, who don’t have access to the show notes right now, just real quickly, where’s the best place they can connect with you or learn more about you?
Dia Bondi 39:52
Go to deobandi.com dabondi.com
39:57
Perfect. Thanks for your time today. Thanks so much.
Maria Ross 40:00
Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, rate and review, share it with a friend or a colleague. And 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.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Much of the AI you hear about these days is about large language models trained to look for commonalities and best next guesses. This causes a lot of fear around how AI will be abused – Will the bots take over? Are the inputs unbiased and accurate? Will my teenager cheat on his school essay?
But we can take a more thoughtful and opportunistic view of AI, specifically in areas where we can teach AI empathy. Yes, I said teach AI empathy. My guest today, Dr. Michelle Zhou, and I discuss how cognitive AI is different from large learning model AI, how these systems learn empathy, and how they empower both companies and individuals without the resources for expensive solutions. We discuss why empathy is actually even more necessary, not less, in the age of AI. And most importantly, we chat about why everyone needs to get involved in AI – why we need to “democratize it”, as Dr. Zhou states, in order to be more inclusive and learn how to respond to a variety of needs and people. Dr. Zhou reveals why she believes basic customer service chatbots are one of the worst uses of AI out there!
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
AI currently looks for commonalities in people and data, as it learns to be more empathetic, we need to teach it how to recognize differences, not just those similarities.
The more we all interact with AI, the more that AI is going to be smarter about understanding individual differences.
There is a time and place for canned responses by a ChatBot, but often people will respond better if there is a specific response to their unique questions and needs.
“In order for AI to be inclusive, then we need more people to be there. If there are more people participating, then you have more diversity. The more involvement from a human side, the more inclusive AI can be.” — Dr. Michelle Zhou
About Michelle Zhou, Co-Founder & CEO, Juji Inc.
Dr. Michelle Zhou is a Co-Founder and CEO of Juji, Inc., an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company located in Silicon Valley, specializing in building cognitive conversational AI technologies and solutions that enable the creation and adoption of empathic and empathetic AI agents. Prior to starting Juji, Michelle led the User Systems and Experience Research (USER) group at IBM Research – Almaden and then the IBM Watson Group. Michelle’s expertise is in the interdisciplinary area of intelligent user interaction (IUI), including conversational AI systems and personality analytics. She is an inventor of the IBM Watson Personality Insights and has led the research and development of at least a dozen products in her areas of expertise. Michelle has published over 100 peer-reviewed, refereed scientific articles and 45+ patents. Michelle is the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS) and an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST). She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University and is an ACM Distinguished Scientist.
Dr. Zhou has been featured in Axios, Fortune, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and spoke at Fortune Brainstorm Tech last year.
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. Much of the AI you hear about these days is about large language models that are trained to look for commonalities and best next guesses. This causes a lot of fear around how AI will be abused. Will the bots take over? Are the inputs unbiased and accurate? And Will my teenager cheat on his next school essay? But we can take a more thoughtful and opportunistic view of AI, specifically in areas where we can teach AI empathy? Yes, I said teach AI empathy. My guest today Dr. Michels Oh, shares why cognitive AI helps machines analyze individual differences using psychographics and psycholinguistics versus large learning model AI that doesn’t really care about individual characteristics, and how it’s being applied everywhere from education to health care. Dr. Zhou is a co founder and CEO of Juji Inc, an artificial intelligence company specializing in building cognitive conversational AI technologies and solutions that enable the creation and adoption of empathic AI agents. Prior to starting Gigi, she led the user systems and experience research group at IBM Research, Almaden and then the IBM Watson Group. Michelle’s expertise is in the interdisciplinary area of intelligent user interaction, including conversational AI systems and personality analytics. She’s an inventor of the IBM Watson personality insights, and has led the research and development of at least a dozen products in her areas of expertise. Michelle has published over 100 peer reviewed scientific articles and holds 45 Plus patents. She received a PhD in computer science from Columbia University, and her work has been featured in numerous media outlets. Today we discuss how cognitive AI is different from large learning model AI, how these systems learn empathy, and how they empower both companies and individuals without the resources or expensive solutions. We discuss why empathy is actually even more necessary, not less in the age of AI. And most importantly, we chat about why everyone you and me needs to get involved in AI, why we need to democratize it as she states in order to be more inclusive and learn how to respond to a variety of needs and people. And doctors Oh reveals why she believes basic customer service chatbots are one of the worst uses of AI out there. This was such a great conversation full of insights, take a listen. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com and sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips and find out how you can book me as a speaker. I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at V empathy edge.com Oh, and follow me on Instagram where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Welcome Dr. Michelle Zhou to the empathy edge podcast here to talk about all things empathy and AI which I know is very top of mind for a lot of people These days, welcome to the show.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 05:01
Thank you, Maria for having me.
Maria Ross 05:04
So tell us a little bit about your story and how you came to this work of working on AI and finding ways to work with it so that we don’t lose our human connection and the human elements that make those interactions with each other. So important.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 05:20
Thank you for asking this question. So my area of expertise has always been in interdisciplinary area, it’s know as human centered AI, the idea is to actually gain a deeper understanding of individuals, and then use AI to help and guide that individual. You can think about that in this kind of a process that the AI really need to understand, gain deep understanding of each individual. You probably heard about the SR ro kind of a sad 2000 years ago. If you want to persuade me, you have to feel my feelings and think my thoughts and speak my words, right? So that’s where you’re talking about empathy. If you look at, look up the dictionary, look, the word the word empathy, really meaning cities that basically the machine needs to feel needs to think what the person is thinking, feel what the person is feeling. And because of this one, but we believe the machines can better help people, especially at an individual level, because every individual, it’s very unique. It’s very different.
Maria Ross 06:32
Absolutely. And what, tell us a little bit about exactly what GG does, within this context.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 06:37
Okay, so we bought ourselves that is we enable organizations, for example, educational institutes, to healthcare organizations, to create it there. What do we call it a cognitive AI assistant? So what I mean, cognitive AI means it is those AI assistants that not only do they have more language skills, because right now, everybody understands large language models. GPT, they’re very powerful. But those are of AI agents also have this. We call the advanced the human cognitive skills, and especially the way they can read between the lines, and also rate people. That’s where empathy actually will come from.
Maria Ross 07:24
And how do we, you know, the big question I get, when I’m out speaking, is the fear that it’s only as good as the people coding the systems or the inputs going in. And, you know, we’ve we’ve seen, there’s so much opportunity with AI, but we’re also seeing some of the flaws in terms of the biases that we have it within content and within society. It’s drawing from that content base. And so it’s coming out in AI. So how do we, how do we encode that empathy and that ability to sort of think on the spot as you’re interacting with someone and being able to read someone’s tone someone’s, you know, understand someone’s experience? What are some ways that companies like yours, are dealing with that challenge?
Dr. Michelle Zhou 08:13
Thank you for asking this question. Because there’s the old phenom, or what I caught into either a misconception or a confusion about especially, as I said, like generated by large language models, and inverses, the machines the cognitive ability, right? So let me just give an example. Thinking about it, I want to take a step back as well. So in order to really to be empathetic, as I said earlier, according to the definition of the empathy, which means this you really have to understand this person, right? Understand how they think, understand their passions and interests and understand how they feel about things. Everybody even we see exactly the same situation, you and I are very different. So you may feel different than what I how I felt, right. So which means it is from a psychology point of view. They call they’re calling it the individual differences. So the current language model or the language models are the generated by AI is actually not trying to understand individual differences. They’re trying to understand the common patterns and the structures that are in the public data. So it’s the complete opposite it to buy under to the methodology the approach is to understand individuals. So what a GTA has died quite differently. So we called also computational psychology. So it’s like a psychologist. So remember what psychologists the world do. So you speak with the psychologist, the psychologist, the world observe. Were trying to analyze your behavior and trying to infer who you are really as a unique individual. So that’s why we call the cognitive AI in our term it is trying to use machines to analyze individual differences instead of a common parents, right. And then from there, we’re trying to identify the computational psychology. So given the user behavior we’re trying to infer a machine is trying to infer. So what’s the unique about this person versus another person is about a personality analytics about the psychographics analytics. Because you only need, you must get to that level, in order to let machines to feel who this person is the how this person might feel, right. So just to give a very simple example, let’s say in a very loud, crowded, parade are discussing a huge number, an introvert person will feel very anxious and very uncomfortable. But the extrovert social person may feel very excited to accomplish the kind of L, their emotional kind of very high in terms of why that is why you can see with the same situation different people may feel very differently, right. So the machines empathy really needs to come from, it’s under their understanding their deep understanding of the psychographic characteristics of each individual. At any moment, sorry, many people may not even realize that they still don’t just analyze the text that we understand, actually, there’s a line of the research, you’ve put the psycholinguistics, they show psycholinguistics shows that a people’s communication behavior indicates a lot of their characteristics, but not retrieved from a content. It’s a form those very mundane things that largely language models probably sometimes don’t even care, like how they use articles, how they use pronouns, how they use the structure, for example, passive, passive tense, the versus the very active tense, right. So it’s very different than what large language models are trying to do, which is protect it, almost opposite it. And of course, the two can come together to make an AI assistant much more powerful.
Maria Ross 12:02
So if I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re saying is that many of the models people are exposed to Now, are these models that are animal analyzing commonalities. Yes. And you are taking things a step further with, with cognitive AI, to actually train the systems to look at differences. Absolutely. That’d be a way to encapsulate that. Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating differences,
Dr. Michelle Zhou 12:26
individual differences, very individual differences. So for example, you have your own way of communicating, I have my own way of communicating. So if you use our machine to analyze your communication behavior versus my communication behavior, and you want to shows that it’s almost like your, what do you call it, it’s not your biological DNA, but rather than your psychological DNA, to show that, wow, you know, I’m Maria, maybe in the shower there, they sharing the most are very open minded, they like to listen to, they like to basically embrace new technologies, new solutions. But on the other side, they’re very different. How you handle social relationships, how I handle social relationships, how you handle life’s challenges, like a pressure, how I handle life challenge, the pressure might be very different. Right? It’s really trying to understand the individual differences, the unique characteristics in each individual, only into that level, the machines can be empathetic, otherwise, how, how could they? Right, right?
Maria Ross 13:31
And how so where’s that? Where’s that unbiased way of looking at those individual differences coming from again? Is it is it ever impacted by the people programming the machines? Or giving it the input to infer these different these differences in people? Where’s it coming from?
Dr. Michelle Zhou 13:52
Very, very, very good question. It’s a great question as well. So actually, the training, of course, we still need training data, right? That’s why this area of research, maybe hasn’t caught it so much attention as the large language models that because of the data scarce scarcity. So it needs to come from individuals. So that’s why we have to collect the data, of course, that people have to opt in, right? Individuals data, for example, let’s say, we have the interview of you with another person, then that’s your data. And then I have an interview with you as my data. But like it’s a formal interview. It’s not even a great quality of data, because I’m talking about technology, but the interview, but the conversation so let’s say with the informal, like for example, I have very oh how do you say very authentic, a very open conversation with my AI, Vine kind of data. Would it be the best that to illustrate this person’s characteristics because the adult in those moments that I’m most relaxed that I have? Yeah, Random, I’m already true to myself, right? So that’s why we spend a lot of time we collaborate with the universities to figure out what will be the great data to will collect it. And that we want to be very authentic, and won’t be very actually helpful to actually capture the real characteristics of the individuals. So as what you see is not the public data. So today, not so. So we have done so this, for example, oh, this year, a university study is the five University study led by the Auburn University, they hadn’t collected data for almost three years, and trying to figure out and basically using our machine techniques to infer the individual differences. And then they want to know, how does individual differences actually associated with the people’s real world behavior. So we’re all to be fair, including their GPA score at the real world behavior, right? Second mind reward behavior. This is the third party’s evaluation of those folks, when they have to kind of walk use this to validate it whether our inferred individual differences had an impact, because the traditional research said that individual differences do impact the reward behavior to the study results, study results were amazing. So they showed that actually, our AI chatbot, infer the personality traits that can predict it, those people’s real world behavior, either on par or better, and the traditional assessments. Because psychology says that many, many traditional assessments,
Maria Ross 16:35
yeah, and what I’m hearing from you, too, is validating something I read an article or saw somewhere where they were talking about, we need to not fear AI, because otherwise we’re only going to get a certain type of person interacting with the AI and providing the inputs. Yeah. And so it was it was in response to well, will, you know, will bad actors use AI? And it’s like, yeah, if only bad actors are involved with populating the learning that the AI needs. And so the more of us that get involved with helping to, you know, I’m maybe I’m not using the terminology the right way. But the more of us that interact with AI and populate with AI, the more that AI is going to be smarter about understanding these individual differences, versus just a certain type of person that would interact with AI.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 17:27
Actually, you said it very well. So yesterday, I was talking to a person from the university about the death. So their concerns about AI inclusion, that there they could actually help the people in the whole world, not just the certain population, right? We had this very similar conversation, it is in order for AI to be inclusive, then we need more people to be there is almost like, most most likely in the real world when you when you’re talking about like a voting, right. So if we’re the only one population voting, they weren’t voting the people in that one. But if there are more people participating, then you would have more diversity, people to have a more candidates probably represent a different population, right? This is very, very similar idea in AI as well. So like, for example, psychology, most of the time, the routine students, so then maybe in our current saints that, you know, that will be for younger people, so then two would be great. And now the worse we’ll want to work with the healthcare organizations who are actually doing elderly care, then we have more data from there than we will be AI would be trained, it would be even better to cater to the cerebral to the elderly. So you’re absolutely right. So the more you Mallmann from a human side, the more inclusive AI can be.
Maria Ross 18:47
I love that. I mean, as an author, you know, this is something a lot of authors are concerned about is like, are people going to pull our work and claim it for themselves? And a part of me reacted very viscerally to that of like, No, I don’t want my information being used and cited without me. But then there was a part of me that said, No, but my I want my information out there as part of the inputs to these algorithms, because I actually fight No, and I trust and I validated the content that I’ve created. So do I really care if someone doesn’t know that I wrote that particular paragraph? People are still gonna buy my books. But it’s sort of like the greater good type of donation.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 19:31
Yeah, good work, but uh, you did, you do kind of like also imply another side of visitable at the store, right? So we have been very careful. So first of all, our team is absolutely essential to ask people to get their consent, right. So we always ask people, okay, we’re going to we were going to list for example, in your university, they always have an IRB approval process, which means that is the Research Board has to approve with that particular human study. In this case, people know that what they’re getting into how their data will be used, that all this data can be potentially even to help them. Right. So it’s almost like what do you said it is? If the person doesn’t take voice doesn’t actually express their needs to express their characteristics, then that machines would not know. Right? So the machines would only serve the best for the people who aren’t there who showed up, right, in this case is that, of course, we want to also protect privacy, and will also protect personal data. In other cases, the most of the hours is anonymous, or anonymous, because in this case, that is why we encourage you more and more people to involved in this kind of studies, to get their opinion to get their side of story into the system. But in the meantime, is still anonymous, so we’re still not have the horse, reveal your identity reveal your equity, dark secrets, you anyway. Right. So that’s a good it’s a double edged sword. Right? I think, if people knew about that, they can potentially help them. So just very simple example, we have started working with also on financial and health care Institute’s right to thinking about it is the financial literacy. It’s very important to for people, oh, you know, especially in their probably lifetime, right. But the many people who we were even talking by myself, or sometimes we thought they were financially illiterate, we don’t know a lot about but if we just hide the data shortcoming from the machines that we will never be able to get the kind of help we want it. So we want to know what kind of financial illiteracy exists. The machines that maybe this case, the humans can inject the knowledge and to help. And having said this one, in terms of the inclusion AI, including AI, a quality side of it is also important I want to stress is that in the past, especially past that maybe 10 years, but this few years that says have been changed, and we’re trying to change that too. So AI always considered almost like a probably early days, and maybe when cars computers are jesting, we’re just the invented, owning the people who are privileged that can’t afford rights, of course, when they have the wealth, so they can enjoy the first car, the first computer, the first TV. So what we’re trying to do here it is also to democratize that technology. So they can reach as wider population as possible. And we do that. So for example, in the past that we wanted to create an AI assistant, right. So companies literally have to spend millions of dollars, them to hire companies like the big tech companies like IBM, Microsoft that to help them to build that right to customize it to their solutions, and the small businesses. And they’re the alone individuals that can’t afford any of them. So right now, while there are a lot of the really biggest efforts, that is to democratize that, so we want to make the creation of the custom AI assistant, it’s as simple as somebody can use PowerPoint, as simple as somebody can use a spreadsheet it in this case that they could have the control. Again, this is another inclusion in terms of folks. So yesterday, again, I was telling a story of a girl, I think she’s a teenager girl. And I was looking at the wife that come in, so she was writing. So she actually was very introverted. She also felt like she’s not a very great fit, and with her, like a same age, girls or students see her class. So she was able to use our technique, our platform to create herself as an AI. And so she can talk to, and that gives her so much confidence. She says, you know, AI could be also like me, but uh, you know why now I have an AI friend. So what’s the what’s very touching? So I was looking at the comments as she wrote it, is that the shelter? Oh, actually, it’s okay to be so actually she was talking to herself, right? Well, yeah, to be introverted. It’s okay to be not at the extra popular associate or something so scary. The reason she could do these lies because the two words there i she’d had a need to hire me she couldn’t possibly afford engineers to help her create her right. So that’s what we are really striving add to enabling. That’s why our company’s mission it is we want to enable the creation, the best the human AI team, and make it accessible to everyone. So that’s about it. Two people talking about inclusion, empathy. And the really the humans have been the loop book. Doesn’t matter where it’s at on the recipient side, the users of AI or the creators that designers we call the supervisors of AI, they all should have a say into it.
Maria Ross 24:56
So So what kind of companies are coming to you is it does It ranged from all kinds of offer customer service and employee engagement. And I mean, does it range across industries? What are you seeing? Who are the ones that are really pursuing it?
Dr. Michelle Zhou 25:10
Right? So let’s go back to your the topic of today’s podcast, the empathy, right. So the companies who are reaching out to so have reached out towards the organizations who dear deeply care about their audience, educational East youth, they care about their students, prospective students, as well as the existing students. Thinking about the prospects students, this is the I would say empathy, at its best use of the state right machine and present the best use, thinking about the students who have put came from a family who have never had anybody has gone to college, thinking about the students who are first generation immigrant, maybe you will have a language, language problems, language issues, they want to get a higher education, and they want to learn acquire a new skill, right? They cannot afford to hire a career counselor for 20,000 50,000 bucks, right? So they go to this university alive, they just University. So we’ll use our AI assistant sitting there 24/7. Remember, those people have to work during daytime as well right to have a full time job. But they’re thinking about advising their career. So this is the problem that universities to the world higher in this way higher, our AI assistant is sitting there to really try and understand their prospects, students and needs and wants, and even help them to find out what might be best suitable for them. That’s what I called empathy. If they don’t understand what those people’s needs and wants. How would they recommend a program? So I was looking at some of their transcripts. Some people were saying they said one day says, you know, I love my family, I really enjoy taking care of them. Right? So I’m trying to find a program to then the AI would ask them, could you tell me more about yourself, because we need a certain amount of data, make a recommendation that was looking at the recommendation made for this particular person. It’s about nursing degrees, maybe counseling job, this really matching with this person. So I have to say unique characteristics, being very compassionate, being caring to see how they’re treating their families, right. So then there are other type of people who might be very a thoughtful, maybe introverted, then they will recommend something, slightly different programs. So basically, it’s about a feta mean, education, it’s expensive. It’s not cheap. It’s a big investment for the folks who wanted to get a higher education degree or maybe a new skill. So this is what we’re talking about empathy for us for students retention, same thing. Students, do they have a full time job they had under pressure, and how can you use AI assistant to check in on them to help them right? So that’s when same thing applied to healthcare at another problem you heard about the most things about it can be empathetic to patient that you really have to understand the patient’s pain is not just a physical pain, mental, a mental absolutely pressure, mental acuity pressure as well, right? Because they are not well, and they’re thinking about how I’m going to pay for my family, and how fast I can recover for the Alliance of things there. So this and then we’re starting to see the financial company into ice is very similar. What are you maybe financial trouble? Maybe people wants to get out of financial trouble, right? Again, they cannot hire. I mean, I guess the more I spoke with the potential client or existing clients that are more I felt like it is to this world. It’s so large, it’s so different. Not everyone. It’s a privilege, right? There’s so many people actually are
Maria Ross 29:01
not most of them are not right, exactly. And I don’t hire me, including ourselves
Dr. Michelle Zhou 29:05
to write I don’t have a financial analyst. I don’t have a financial advisor to advise me, how should I save money for my retirement or something like that. So we really see this, that empathy needs to be instilled that into the machines can help the people as we have expected them to do that.
Maria Ross 29:27
And what I love about this is this goes beyond, you know, in my work as a brand strategist and creating connections with customers and with prospects, the very, you know, the image that people have of chat bots, which is oh, it has a limited amount of pre canned responses, and it’s going to give me what it thinks I need and sometimes that actually makes you as a customer, especially if you’re already upset. Getting the canned responses makes you even more upset because you know, it’s a canned response. Right. And I’ve gotten that with like email responses or chat bots where I’m like, You’re clear really a chatbot? Like you’re not listening to me. And so I love this approach of, actually, there’s a time and a place for that. But doesn’t, then there’s a time and a place to really get AI to be able to react to the specific person or situation or what they’re specifically typing or saying. And is that I guess my naive question is, obviously, that’s a lot harder to program. Right? And so, what does that time horizon look like? Is that a really long time? Is it obvious? It’s obviously something that gets better with every interaction? But what’s, what are we looking at here in terms of like, the difference between investment and timing of getting a system to be that responsive to someone?
Dr. Michelle Zhou 30:46
Actually, all the time is now so our customers have been using that already. Player one, it’s just this. So that’s why when I talk to our potential client, existing client is always about use cases, right? The most of the people think about a chatbot AI assistants always in contact with customer services. Customer service, in my opinion, it’s a wild the worst the use cases for AI assistants, you know why? Because the people are already very upset. And also they only they normally need urging her help. Right? Have you seen a person who wants to call Customer Services? Because they just want to say hello, what the gentleman wanted to do kind of a chitchat, right? Maybe they have people like that, but very few. Right, right. So that’s why what are we, our AI assistants are best to use the so far we have seen as well, right? I wouldn’t call them customer services, per se. Always the like in a situation to help people to make a very high value, high stakes decisions, like what I’m talking about in education, or maybe even healthcare, right. So let’s say education, I wanted to get a degree, I didn’t have a degree, I had a just the maybe high school degree, I found that this is very, extremely hard, difficult for me to find another job. But I have no idea because none of my family members has ever had a college degree. So I, I want to help. But because of this one, you remember, they also see from a psychology point of view, people also have access to what are called a social desirability biases, they actually may not be willing to talk to a human, a counselor because they felt like I’m inferior. I feel uncomfortable, because I’m exploring and witness exploring stage AI seriously would be the one of the best approaches, you know what, first one AI doesn’t judge, I don’t really, I don’t really care. If you had a degree, you don’t have a degree with kind of a family, you come? Does this best the trend to understand what your needs are. And to provide that kind of a how this is the where empathy also shows up very a lot, right to ask that. Say, tell me about yourself. So what what are your and what are what are your hobbies? So through this very common and informal conversation, I’d gathered data and really understand who this person it is then a made a recommendation and can make and make a suggestion. So that’s the best step, right? Similarly, in health care, let’s save somebody who wants to one who was maybe grandparents or maybe bad parents that maybe this person suspect this person has an intubated, maybe Alzheimer disease or Parkinson’s disease, not having enough evidence, because those people are not the doctors and physicians themselves. Right, but they want to just investigate a little bit in order to talk to a medical doctor. Yeah, first one is the cost the prohibited another one it is the MIDI is not ready. They’re not ready yet, right? So this case, if they go to the website of the healthcare organization, they want to get as much information as possible. In this case, the AI really should chime in, to be empathetic at this point to be be covered empathy. Asker so what are you what’s your goal? So what you’re trying to find this information, when we ever to go, the website has ever you see, they want to know about your goal, they want their goal, what is the market here to you? So I wanted the AI to serve as the interacting medium there to ask what I want, right? And I go to a website, you go to websites, especially if they say you use your author, you sell books. If I want to inquire about your book, maybe for my purpose, you never know maybe the reason for me to buy your book is because the I felt that there’s a value in your book I wanted to recommend to somebody versus that. I want to read it that certain chapters in a book they’re totally different reasons that I haven’t ever seen the static immediate like a website and do that. Because w one version, right the great thing about the interactive media like the air assistant, it can do that. Not only can it can do The understand the user school understand is one, he cannot truly deliver the information in a best possible way tailored to the person’s needs. That’s what I call empathy. Two, three are actually talking about I just published an article in the university business talking about the, the AI tutor your own learning Amiga, right? So think about it. Oh, I was talking to the t shirt, which these are funny. So when you’re talking about geometry problem, first one, math is already the hard problem. Most of the people, then we’re talking about the geometry problem using examples in construction, thinking about how many people are familiar with construction examples? Containers, the walls. So it’s just adding an extra layer of anxiety. So I was talking to the teacher who has been teaching math, he was telling me 40 years, I was asking her, Hey, wouldn’t it be interesting? Would it be using a helpful for students? Let’s say, we use examples the students are most passionate about boy or girl who are very interested in playing soccer or baseball, let’s notice my boss, they’re familiar with that. Right? wouldn’t be able to say won’t be relieved that anxiety the first like you said, Let’s talk me about them. So you hear that the problems right nowadays, the for the textbooks? For the one, it’s impossible to have billions of aversions for millions of students, that course, yeah, by now we have AI, we can really do that by understanding a person’s passions and interests that especially how they learn, and what their cognitive style it is, because some people are very emotional, some people are very example base that we can really tailor that content to the person individually. That’s why I added empathy at scale,
Maria Ross 36:47
but it is at scale. And it’s you know, like, I’m just, I’m laughing at your math example, because I have a nine year old and if they only would use examples from pokimane, that would be amazing. Like it would be undo it. Right. Right. So as we wrap up, I just want to ask you this last question. And I have a perspective, I would like to hear your perspective from the world of AI, is, do you think the need for empathy is going away? Because of AI?
Dr. Michelle Zhou 37:12
Oh, actually, it’s more than that. Not go, not only won’t go away actually needs more, because we have to teach AI more about empathy? And from a human side of it, right?
Maria Ross 37:24
Yeah, we have to, we have to figure it out ourselves before we can teach it to, to a system. And also, you know, my perspective is also when we are automating a lot of things and being able to customize that skill of empathy that we can have, from a human to human perspective is going to be even more valuable, because we will have the machines taking care of the things that sort of, quote, unquote, anyone can do at the lowest levels. But then, like you said, we also need to build our empathy so that we’re when we’re encoding these systems and teaching these systems and providing content and data for the systems we’re doing. We’re teaching what we know. In other words, one word of caution, that machine empathy, versus human empathy might be different. So this is a how so long, you know, from the empathy point of view, people often again, confuses the two concepts. One comes about is that people really feel what I feel number one is called empathy. Yeah, say content of empathy. As effective empathy. Yeah.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 38:29
So second part of empathy, maybe needs to act upon the empathy, which is very different, ran to somebody, maybe I can do what do you feel? But you know what? I’m not gonna act on it. Right. Right. That’s very different. So what I my vision is for machines, that is because machines are machines, where their electronic parts, right, maybe in the future, there may be more made it like using human tissue, I don’t know, human society, tissue, something like that. But I think what’s important for machines today is not necessarily to let them to really feel right from the material point of view. But we want them to act it as if they felt it was advantageous. You know, why this advantage you? Have you heard about it, like a first responders, the police, men, and also the nurses, health care professionals, they got burned out. They got burned out, it’s because they’re humans, they have emotions. When they feel other people feel they feel the pain, they feel the one they also have the burden we call the emotional burden on themselves. But that mighty human machine said is that we can teach them how people feel ask them ask machines to to act as you thought. They actually feel what, that’s the difference. That’s why actually we want to teach machines to act upon it to the behavior as you feel it. That’s because it’s very difficult for humans to do you know why your Cubase has this emotional burdens that they can take anymore, where she don’t have that
Maria Ross 40:00
That is such an important point, because I’ve often talked about the different types of empathy, cognitive empathy and affective or emotional empathy. But both of those are great. But if you don’t do anything with that information, it it’s kind of a wasted, in my mind, it’s a wasted connection. It’s a wasted anguish, right? Compassion is empathy and action. Now that I have the information about you, what am I going to do next? Am I going to, you know, be silent and let you talk? Am I going to communicate in a different way than I was going to before. And this is why we talk about especially in the business context, you can still be empathetic and make tough decisions. But your empathy enables you to take the action on the tough decision in maybe a different way than you would have if it was just like, oh, by the way, 500 of you, we’re laying you off today. Good luck, it’ll pick up your last checks. Right? Right. You’ll lay people off as an example. But you can do it with empathy, you can do it by understanding where they’re coming from, what do they need? How do you need to communicate the decision you’re making? And I love that is such a new little nugget for me that you just shared of the power of, of AI and making sure we do teach it quote unquote, empathy, because it’ll never quit. It sort of it won’t. It won’t suffer from empathy, fatigue, or compassion, fatigue, right? You can just keep going and be there when we as humans really need to.
Dr. Michelle Zhou 41:31
Absolutely. You said so well, about the compassion, right? So which means it is that requires the human teaching, because he or she don’t have the knowledge. That’s why I said it is that we work so hard to want the domain experts to teach machines, we don’t want to get the IP people to teach machines. That doesn’t make sense, right? Because the domain experts that you said, the counselors, the human advisors, they really knew how to act upon the empathy than actually part of it. We want them to teach machines. That’s why becomes more important than democratizing the tool. We keep saying that. So you cannot just hit OK, it people go say it up. That’s not going to happen. That’s not going to work. And we really want a domain expert in the loop of creating AI. Right? Oh, my gosh,
Maria Ross 42:23
this is so great. This is so great. Thank you, Michelle, for all of these insights. And what a wonderful conversation. Like I say with many of my guests, I could probably talk to you for another 45 minutes, but we’re gonna we’re gonna wrap up. So I will have all your links in the show notes for folks to learn more about you and learn more about Gigi. But for folks that are on the go, where’s one of the best places they can go to find out more about you and your work? Oh, gigi.io Okay, ju J i.io. i
Dr. Michelle Zhou 42:49
O right? Yeah, I know the LinkedIn to find us ug dot iOS.
Maria Ross 42:55
Perfect. Thank you, Michelle, for your time today. Thank you Maria. Bye. Yeah. And and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate or review or share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, always remember that cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and beyond. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Leaders are crunched right now. Many are valiantly trying to adopt empathetic and Compassionate Leadership models to adapt to what employees on the market demand new models of leadership that are more human, but some still struggle to balance that with making tough business decisions, setting boundaries, and achieving high-performance standards – serendipitously, the subject of my next book.
Today, Dr. Rebecca Eldredge, a licensed psychologist who supports socially conscious leaders, changemakers, and organizations shares how leaders can identify signs of overwhelm and burnout in their lives and respond to compassionate fatigue. We discussed the huge financial costs to your organization of ignoring mental health, or pushing through when others are counting on you. We also talked about why allowing emotions at work is key to psychological safety, and how leaders who might be reluctant can get more comfortable making space and time for emotions in the workplace to increase engagement, performance, and retention. Take a deep breath and take a listen.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
The more familiar you are with the state of relaxation in yourself, the easier you will recognize when burnout begins and you are not in that state of calm.
You don’t have to have days or weeks of calm to draw on, it can be even a moment of peace to recognize those calm, nervous system queues.
Being empathetic doesn’t mean you don’t do the hard things, it means you’re deliberate and thoughtful when communicating and making those hard decisions. With the skyrocketing costs of healthcare (often as a direct result of stress and burnout), we cannot afford to not take care of our mental and emotional health.
“You’re much more equipped to make solid decisions when you are connected and when you are in an empathetic and compassionate role with others – and also with yourself.”
— Dr. Rebecca Eldredge
About Dr. Rebecca Eldredge: For the past 20 years, Dr. Rebecca Eldredge has used her commitment to mental health, cultural competence, and social justice to support individuals and organizations to cultivate compassion for themselves as they bring compassion and justice to their organizations and communities. She has been honored to work with corporations, university departments, and refugee resettlement agencies as well as hundreds of diverse clients. Dr. Eldredge completed both her M.A. and her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and has taught adjunct in the University of Houston’s and Our Lady of the Lake’s graduate psychology programs. She is also a Step into Your Moxie® Certified Facilitator.
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. Leaders are crunched right now. Many are valiantly trying to adopt empathetic and Compassionate Leadership models to adapt to what employees on the market demand new models of leadership that are more human, but some still struggle to balance that with making tough business decisions, setting boundaries and achieving high performance standards. serendipitously, the subject of my next book. Today, Dr. Rebecca Eldridge, a licensed psychologist who supports social conscious leaders, changemakers and organizations shares how leaders can identify signs of overwhelm and burnout in their lives and respond to compassionate fatigue. We discussed the huge financial costs to your organization of ignoring mental health, or pushing through when others are counting on you. We also talked about why allowing emotions at work is key to psychological safety, and how leaders who might be reluctant can get more comfortable making space and time for emotions in the workplace to increase engagement, performance and retention. For the past 20 years, Dr. Eldridge has used her commitment and mental health, cultural competence and social justice to support individuals and organizations to cultivate compassion for themselves, as they bring compassion and justice to their organizations and communities. Dr. Eldridge has been honored to work with corporations, university departments, and refugee resettlement agencies, as well as hundreds of diverse clients. She’s also a speaker and facilitator, and you will love what she has to share today. Take a deep breath and take a listen. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com. And sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips and find out how you can book me as a speaker. I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at V empathy edge.com. Oh, and follow me on Instagram, where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Thank you Dr. Rebecca Eldridge, for joining us today on the empathy edge podcast to talk about leaders and leaders struggling with burnout and overwhelm and stress this could not be a more timely topic. So welcome to the show.
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 04:00
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure being here. So real quick, tell
Maria Ross 04:04
us a little bit about your story and how you got into this work supporting socially conscious leaders changemakers organizations, why this work and why that specific group? Hmm,
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 04:17
good question. Well, I I’ll start with my graduate training briefly just to say that while I was in graduate school, I was getting my doctorate in counseling psychology. And I was focusing on multicultural issues that was already an interest in the passion of mine. And I was on one of my early practicum assignments and I was working at an intensive outpatient program, which for anybody who’s listening who’s not familiar with it is just kind of full day. Lots of group work intensive for people who need not hospitalization, but are going through a really difficult time with a lot of challenges. And while most of the work was group work, occasionally We’d be meeting one on one just maybe once or twice with some of the participants. And on this occasion, I was assigned to me individually with this woman, who, when I went to invite her to come speak with me separately, made it very clear, no uncertain terms that she had no interest in meeting with me, you’re talking with me. And, you know, I was, as you might imagine, I was very nervous and uncomfortable. This was in front of the whole group, I was a trainee, I was trying to do what I had been asked and told to do and do a good job at it. I also will say, For context, I had a little bit of a glimmer of understanding of why she might not want to talk to me, because this was the sole black woman or person of color, in fact, at the time, and the entire group, participant program and staff. And for anybody who doesn’t see what I look like, I am very light skinned white light featured blonde hair, blue eyes, and at the time, very young as well. And so she really had no reason to trust me, and I at least knew enough at the time to know that. Nevertheless, I asked if she would just for a few minutes to up to the other room, just so we could talk about it. I think I asked her for five minutes of time that she didn’t have to share anything she didn’t want to, and could leave whenever she was ready. And she agreed to that. So we moved into the other room. And I don’t think we even sat down. And I asked her if she would be willing to just share a little bit about what had brought her into the program. And she told me briefly and vaguely that her work environment was kind of stressful. She was in a leadership position there. But she wasn’t really being feeling seen or heard. She gave me a couple examples of things people were saying and doing. She did not at a single time use a word bias or discrimination or prejudice. But fortunately, I was listening and could hear in between what she was saying and what she wasn’t saying. And I observed. That sounds like it could be related to identity or discrimination, how does it seem for you, and everything changed in that moment. So she continued to talk to me then for the next hour, sharing so much more about the reality of her experience there. And that really shaped for me something that had already been there in a passion and an interest in my compassion and empathy, for wanting to understand other people’s experiences. But that experience of seeing a leader in this role who wasn’t being recognized wasn’t being valued wasn’t being treated with the respect that she absolutely deserved. And seeing how much of a difference it could make to support a person in that role, by seeing them by acknowledging their experience, and by not putting all of that pressure on them to be the ones to have to describe, explain or justify their experience. So that was over 20 years ago now. And that has kind of set the trajectory that I’ve continued to be on, I’m seeking to serve and to work with people from different backgrounds, different populations, by really getting to know who they are, what their experiences are in the world. And the challenges that these leaders so often face when they’re trying to be very socially conscious and lead others, but are also often disproportionately affected by the injustice is on the systems themselves. And the toll that that takes on them to be in these environments where they’re both supporting the changes that they absolutely realize the urgency of, but also they’re carrying the weight. And so that is kind of what led me to the focus that I have now on supporting wellbeing for changemakers. I love that.
Maria Ross 09:02
And yeah, it is a special kind of burden that whether you’re a change maker that’s just trying to do the right thing and trying to do right by your people and leading with a new leadership paradigm of compassion and empathy, or your leader and trying to make change. And you’re already have so many obstacles in front of you in terms of systemic bias, systemic racism, systemic sexism, that headwinds are bigger for those leaders. And so, of course, they’re feeling burned out and pressured. And given the last few years that we’ve gone through, there’s a lot of pressure on leaders, the subject of my next book is trying to adopt these new leadership models and show up and be vulnerable and be there for their team and get to know them and the realities of the business environment and the corporate environment of the decisions they have to make right now. They can almost feel a little bit like they’re serving two masters at times. So with that, how can leaders to identify those signs of overwhelm and burnout in their lives before it’s too late, how can they understand the signs but also understand that what those signs are telling them is actually going to make them less productive, if they try to push through.
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 10:16
One of the exercises that I start training is in facilitations, with a lot is an experiential exercise where people get to connect to the state that they’re in when they feel calm, clear and connected. So the state of your nervous system where you feel relaxed, and where you can think creatively, and you can really problem solve, and you can communicate effectively. And you can actually read other people’s communication and body language more accurately, you know, and the reason why I do that is because if you know what that state is for yourself, and you know how that feels in your body, and you know, the thoughts and the stories that go along with it, and the emotions, the more familiar you are with that, the quicker and easier it is to recognize when you’re not there. And so when we talk about burnout, of course, we can talk about the common symptoms and definition that is a state of mental emotional, physical exhaustion and depletion is often accompanied by lowered motivation, decreased productivity, negative attitudes towards oneself, and others changes in eating and sleeping, decreased creativity, feeling more withdrawn, or hopeless. So there’s all the symptoms that we can recognize. But part of what can be really important is when somebody can recognize for themselves, their own nervous system cues, then they know where they’re feeling good. And when something goes off track, they can more quickly recognize it, which means they can then more quickly seek to respond and respond compassionately toward that part of themselves that is in distress, rather than with what is so much more common as the judgment or the criticism or the kind of oversee or the critique of Why am I feeling this way? I have so much to get done. I don’t have time for this random push it through. It’s
Maria Ross 12:18
almost annoying. Yeah. Have you worked with leaders who can’t recognize what that state of calm and flow and space looks like for themselves? Have they been going so hard for so many years that they don’t even connect with that question?
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 12:34
You could see not usually, because usually, even if it’s going back, you can go back as far as you want, as long as you can remember it or even encouraging that people can imagine it like, imagine a moment where you would feel this way. It doesn’t have to be something that lasted for hours or days or years. Most people can think of some moment in time. However, I will say, because your question is a really good one, that it’s important to acknowledge the role that trauma and trauma history can play in this as well. So certainly, it’s easier for some people than others, because a state of safety doesn’t feel safe for everybody. And so I do just want to at least briefly acknowledge that is a harsh reality that for some people, it’s a lot harder to get there. And it’s a lot harder to stay there.
Maria Ross 13:28
What I think that’s so important too, because it is the acknowledgement it is the self awareness of where you are right now, that’s so important to trying to get to where you want to be. And I think we tend to skip that step, we tend to look for the pill or to look for the solution or to look for the panacea that’s going to help us feel better or be more productive, or take that five hour energy drink or whatever it is to get past it rather than actually like what is going on for me right now. And that’s no longer like a woowoo question. That’s a self preservation question.
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 14:02
Absolutely 100% That when we can learn to build confidence in ourselves, about being able to tune in rather than tune out of those sensations, then those can start to provide such a compass or I think of it as a lighthouse as well, where it can guide you and show you where the rocky shore and the dangers are. We were just talking about how I’m live it we both live along water and along coasts. And there’s lots of lighthouses near me. So you know the idea of something that shines a light and it doesn’t steer for you, but it helps you to see where the greatest dangers are so that you can navigate more safely toward that harbored towards your destination. And I think that as much as we’d gotten into the habit of as you said, seeing these emotions or these sensations as a nuisance as something that gets in our way They can actually be one of our greatest strengths in finding our way forward.
Maria Ross 15:05
So there is a special kind of stress and burnout going on right now, given our economy, given the state of the business market right now, where leaders who, as I mentioned, are trying to do the right thing. They’re trying to be the empathetic bosses, they’re trying to adopt Compassionate Leadership models and get rid of the old outdated command and control models. They’re in it with their teams, they’re getting to know their teams, they are listening, they are doing all the right things. And they are also being asked to make some really tough business decisions that might include laying people off, it might include having difficult performance evaluations with people. And so they find themselves wearing those two hats of really being in it with their team and being a coach and a mentor. But then, at the end of the day, their responsibility is to the viability and health of the organization. And so are you working with leaders that are trying to to walk that tightrope? I like to say, and how are they navigating that? What are some ways that they are enabling themselves to come through that with less stress and less burnout? And hmm,
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 16:15
absolutely, yes, well, absolutely. It’s so common right now that people who feel deeply who do feel the empathy, that emotional response towards others, and that sense of connection, but along with the compassion, the desire to do something about it, and it’s easy to see kind of what you laid out as mutually exclusive, like, either I’m really being empathetic and compassionate with my team members, or I’m making the business decisions that need to be made. And I think, you know, these things are very much integrated, that you’re much more equipped to make solid decisions when you are connected. And when you are in an empathetic and compassionate role, with others, with your team members, and also with yourself. And maybe we can come back to that. But that’s one of the places where I see it really falling apart for people is that they extend so much at themselves towards that empathy and compassion for others, and at great deficit to their own needs. So the leaders that are able to look at how setting an example, modeling, even including setting limits, setting boundaries, communicating authentically things that sometimes are hard to say and hard to hear, but how much that kind of honest communication in itself can be an act of compassion, and support people’s growth and development and future opportunities, even if it’s not within your own team or your own company. And so, I really encourage and I think the leaders who are able to integrate that, and see that their compassion doesn’t end or compromise at the point of making business decisions. And I know this sounds, you’re very much in line with your work as well that these things complement each other, that they absolutely, as they go together. That’s where the magic and really how only
Maria Ross 18:24
their peanut butter and jelly, I love it or chocolate and peanut butter, whatever your preference. But I do think that that’s where that’s there’s that confusion over what empathetic leadership actually means. And it doesn’t mean you avoid conflict, it doesn’t mean you’re always being nice. And it doesn’t mean you lower standards of performance either. And I like to think of it and I’d love to know what you think of this. I like to think of it as at that point where you’re having to make difficult business decisions, and you’re having to communicate things to people that are going to really impact their lives. Or they may or even just they may not want to hear, right. It’s not that the act of doing it can is should be looked at as empathetic or not. It’s the way that you do it that can help you embed the empathy into the exchange and into the interaction. So I’ve talked many times on the show about one of my most empathetic bosses was someone who had to lay off the entire marketing team, and I was on the marketing team. But the way he did it was empathetic and kind and supportive. And he thought ahead and thought about what our questions would be and what resources we would need. He took the time to empathetically communicate a decision that none of us liked. But the way he did it will always be remembered. And there’s that famous quote that people won’t remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. But so talk to me a little bit about that. Do you work with leaders who have trouble discerning the actions and the decisions from communicating or interacting In a healthy and respectful and compassionate way,
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 20:04
yes, in fact, I work with people on this a lot, because there’s that misconception that if somebody’s not going to feel good about what you’re saying that you’re wrong or bad for saying it. And absolutely, to your point, like there’s ways to deliver very difficult information in a way that is not ego based, that’s not self serving. And that is very much in service of your care and compassion for the person that you’re talking to, even as you’re saying something hard. So your example was so great. And I was thinking, I bet they didn’t deliver that news on an email.
Maria Ross 20:44
Right? Well, and that’s the challenge of having to do things at scale. Right now, I know that I’ve talked to some leaders who were like, we didn’t want it to be done this way. But there was no other way to at the same time, communicate with 10, you know, 5000 people, 2000 people. So I don’t know what the right answer is on that. And even then, right, like, how is it crapped it?
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 21:06
Like, what is the content? How is it said, How is it conveyed? What’s the tone of the message, you know, so even when you have to make those tough decisions, to not do it in the way that you would really want to. And this is so important, because we are in such a divisive period of time right now. And so there’s very few safe topics in terms of MIDI, deep, meaningful conversations. And if the only time that we can communicate or believed that we can communicate compassionately is when we’re already in agreement with the person that we’re talking to, then we just look at this absolute, you know, chasm that’s growing wider and wider. So I think the leaders who can show up and, and I actually have a free resource on five ways to speak up and these difficult conversations, because this is such a common challenge. But leaders who can speak up in a way that allows for there to be differences allows for there to be perspectives that vary and other points of view. And even for there to be okay, I’m going to tell you some really difficult feedback right now. And I want us to talk about it together. But times where you can ask questions as well, or where you can show understanding for that person’s point of view or for how they came to that point of view, even if you absolutely vehemently disagree with the conclusions that they’ve drawn from it.
Maria Ross 22:43
I think that’s one of the biggest thieves of empathy in the workplace is just lack of time, lack of time management, there’s so many things that are such a healthier interaction for us as human to human. If we take the time, and it’s either the leaders going, I don’t have time it’s Go, go go. I don’t have time to get to know my people and what makes them individually tick. I don’t have time to sit down and listen to someone who’s having a hard time. I don’t have time. And the reality is that if we don’t make that time now, it’s going to come back and bite us anyway.
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 23:18
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a paradox, right? Because the time that we’re spending are the leaders are spending, like attending meeting after meeting after meeting and this report and that report. And you know, there’s things that are taking enormous chunks of time. But when you spend the time actually taking care of people, including yourself, then you’re that, you know, going back to the symptoms of burnout or overwhelmed, like money or moving yourself and others in a way that allows you to think calmly and clearly and compassionately and communicate effectively, that’s a time saver. The investment that you make in well being returns to you again, and again, in terms of the environment that you’re in the people that want to work with you and for you the results that you’re getting the statistics around the amount that companies spend per year. And so then sub health, for example, where it’s like, it’s like $16 billion incremental health cost per year. And that was actually a number. I think that was from 2008. So that’s, you know, that that skyrocketed since then. So you’re looking at the costs in the short term, or in the long term, as much as it feels like you can’t afford the time you really can’t afford not to. Exactly,
Maria Ross 24:42
oh my gosh, and that’s such a startling statistic. And if we look at you know, that’s a great segue to talk about, you know, what role do emotions play in mental health and connection and change making because many of us I’m in Gen Z and even us on the tail, you know, the tail end of that We were very much taught not to bring emotions into the workplace. And I can’t imagine being older and wiser now, I can’t imagine any more place where it’s more important to bring emotions in than when groups of human beings need to collaborate. So how do the leaders you work with balance, the volume of emotion, the appropriateness of emotion, all of that within the context of the workplace and getting work done, and being able to, you know, still craft a professional, yet personal and nurturing environment? As a lot of questions wrapped up in that, but start from wherever sounds good? Well,
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 25:43
the I’m gonna start the first phrase that jumped into my head, as you were asking it was psychological safety. And that when you’re in an environment, when you, when leaders are creating these environments that are safe for people to show up fully and wholly themselves, then communication can look a lot different than in an environment that’s more toxic or shut down, including, you can look at an environment where there is no emotions, right? So kind of that, like you’re talking about, like what used to be the standard have no feelings expressed at work all business, exactly. And that people are now leaving environments like that in droves because of how toxic and unhealthy it is. On the other side, if you have an environment, that psychologically safe and healthy, then you’re actually you’re still going to have emotions present, but they’re probably not going to be as intense as you fear they are. Because you’ve created an environment where people don’t need a bottle all of that up all the time, where now it’s more risk of overflowing or breaking out in a fight or flight response, or causing a shutdown response from having tried to restrict it. Now, because it’s just part of the flow of conversations and happening in an environment that supports healthy dialogue and healthy disagreement is actually less than 10. So for all know, it’s not to say that everybody agrees all the time. But now there’s a setting in which is not building up to that point of maximizing capacity. And so leaders who are in those roles, yeah, there, as you said, like, there’s still boundaries around when do we talk about this? How do we talk about this? Where are the spaces for it. And so organizations that create safe spaces, safe relationships between supervisors and their team, or between leaders and their staff spaces where they have ERGs, for example, and diversity teams and HR department is where they’re really invested and engaged, you know, where the neck kind of a separate standalone siloed department but where they’re welcomed and included and their their perspectives are really valued, then you start to create a whole different culture. And in that space, the emotions go back to being more of the lighthouse, right? What’s happening here that’s working, what’s not feeling right. And what is that pointing us toward that needs our attention?
Maria Ross 28:27
I’m going to throw you a curveball question here. Because what do you do with leaders and I empathize with this and I can’t relate, but I can empathize with it. Leaders who say I’m just not emotional, I struggle with being touchy feely, it feels fake when I asked people how they’re doing personally, you know, so they sort of cognitively know that they need to be doing this more. But maybe it’s their own trauma or their own emotional intelligence. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, just their their capacity for their understanding their own emotional intelligence that gets in the way of them being this new model of leader, how do you help coach them through that? Is it again, all about them doing the work the internal work themselves first, so that they can show up that way? What if someone is genuinely uncomfortable with those kinds of emotions or those kinds of interactions with people they work with? What do you tell them?
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 29:24
Well, there’s a few different pieces. So that actually yes, the quick answer is, of course, some of it is the internal individual work and understanding to your point like what is it that’s making this uncomfortable? Because it’s very different. If it’s the lack of experience or practice or being raised in a background that might be childhood emotional neglect, which is not to say abuse or but just not having their needs met or not having healthy examples. of how to share and profit, like
Maria Ross 30:01
if you shunts, like, if you come from a family that does bottle things up, or they don’t rock the boat, or they don’t they avoid conflict, it’s not an ill intention. It’s just that’s the environment they grew up in.
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 30:11
Exactly. But that’s different than if it comes from an aspect of neurodiversity, right, where it’s just a different way that their brain processes things. And so there’s not a cookie cutter, or a one size fits all to that. And it does come back to creating an environment that’s safe and inclusive for everybody, including the people that perhaps have more difficulty feeling and expressing their emotions. And you know, so it’s not about only creating it to that now, one other type is just a different type than before, but how do you look at, you know, can you communicate then about the fact that this isn’t natural for you that this isn’t how you connected to people, but develop other ways that you connect to people? What are the different ways that are more congruent for you to show that you care? Or that you’re invested? So yeah, so working with the person to understand a little bit more about what’s actually impacting them, can then shape what direction they go from there? And do you find any
Maria Ross 31:18
trends among the differences between gender, or the differences between generations in their ability to embrace a more personal human workplace and work environment where they’re talking about these things, where they’re openly talking about mental health and burnout, and overwhelm, and really, really seeing each other? Have you in your work with your clients? Again, every individual is different. And I hate to I hate to put empathy and an agenda box, I was tried to someone tried to force me to do that early in my research. And I said, No, it’s a gender neutral topic. But do you find that there is some sort of trend over a difference in gender or gender identity? Or potentially with different generations? What’s your perspective?
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 32:06
Yes, and yes, and yes. Yes, there are differences. You know, there are differences in how people are socialized in the United States, as men and as women, and that can be influenced by how their gender is perceived by others, is also influenced by their own gender identity. And so yes, certainly, we have these cultural norms or expectations that have been built up around the differences. And so we see that and then because across generations, that has changed that we can also see those generational differences. And all of that side, within any group, whether you’re talking about a gendered group, or ethnic group or religious group, there, we still see that there’s more diversity within a group than there is between groups. So while we can point to different kind of commonalities or trends or norms is still not going to be true for everybody within that group. And so, you know, part of that is if you have a work environment, that does tend to have more of one gender, or for example than another, then you’re probably going to see a bit of a difference there. But how do you then tree even if you had, which is impossible, right, but even if you had five people that shared most of their aspects of their identity in common, you would still be dealing with so much variety and perspective and experience and personality. And so it doesn’t end up coming down to it being about one group or another. Right. And we had done
Maria Ross 33:49
some interviews with folks that are both generational experts, and also experts in women leadership and gender based leadership. And that’s a consistent theme. And I just personally, my own sample size of me, I know that, you know, women don’t have the lock on being empathetic leaders, because two of my most toxic leaders I’ve had were women, and then two of my most empathetic leaders were men. So you know, it’s different for everyone. I was just wondering if there was any sort of trendline that you saw, um, as we wrap up, what would be your one or two actionable items you could give to leaders listening, that are feeling that crunch right now in terms of shedding the old models of leadership, trying to embrace these new empathetic human centered models of leadership and dealing with the current global environment, we’re in geopolitical environment, and mostly market environment where they are sort of dealing in the middle with a lot of things are getting crunched on all sides? What would be maybe some first one or two action steps or tips you would have for them? I
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 34:51
would say start, please pay attention to what you need for your own health and well being because I think it’s so A wonderful that we have this biological drive to be compassionate and to help others where we see suffering. But I see so many leaders, so many people in general, especially people who are carrying that heavy loads of this world, this environment where they give and give and give of themselves to others. And they’re excellent, right, they’re so good at it. And so people keep asking for more from them, and they keep wanting to deliver and the toll and the cost of that is so, so high. So my first thing is to say, please, please see taking care of yourself as an absolutely essential part of how you continue to show up effectively to take care of the people around you and make the tough decisions. If you are ignoring those cues. If you are pushing through, then ultimately, you’re not only costing yourself, but you are costing everything for the people and the causes that you care so much about. So even if it feels difficult, if it feels selfish, if it feels like a luxury that you can’t afford to really, really challenge that so that you can see that you are the tool like there is nothing else like you don’t just get a new hammer or a new saw. Like you have to keep yourself sharp in order to do this. And so if you care so deeply about others, you absolutely need to extend that same care for yourself.
Maria Ross 36:28
And I’ve seen a thread among leaders that I’m interviewing, both from my last book, but also this new book I’m working on where many of them seek support, they know when to ask for help and sort of raise the white flag. And I know that you know, for example, you do a small group collective where leaders can come together called chrysalis. But there’s lots of opportunities like that to have peer networks or friend networks or whatever kind of support you need that you don’t have to go it alone. Yeah. And that’s really
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 36:59
hard. A lot of times for leaders because it can be such an isolating position leaders that I’ve worked with brother like, yeah, it was really friends with all my co workers. And we’d get along and we’d socialize. And then I got promoted, you know, and then I was now I’m their supervisor, now I’m a leader. And now suddenly, the conversations change. It can be like the saying lonely at the top, but it can be very isolating. And so absolutely, to find the spaces and the people where you can connect, because social support makes such a tremendous effect and moderating influence on how we
Maria Ross 37:36
experience stress. Thank you so much for your insights and your time today, Rebecca, I really appreciate it. I think this is an important topic. We need to be supporting a lot of these leaders so they can support their teams. We’ll have all your links in the show notes. But where’s one place where folks can connect with you or find out more about
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 37:55
your work? My website is probably the easiest place to find an overview of my work. And there is also a contact form on there to reach out and ask any questions or learn more about any particular services. So
Maria Ross 38:08
my website is Rebecca ee phd.com. Love it. Rebecca ee phd.com For those on the go right now listening to the podcast. Thank you again for your time and for your insights.
Dr. Rebecca Eldredge 38:21
Thank you so much.
Maria Ross 38:22
It’s a pleasure. And thank you 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 and review, share it with a colleague or a friend. And don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Until next time, please remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
You may not know this, but you possess a superpower. One that helps you connect and engage with almost anyone and become a stronger leader, create a thriving culture and build business value.
And the great news is, this superpower is innate to us as humans. But sometimes, for some of us, well, the power atrophies – but it can intentionally be strengthened if you know how.
It’s called empathy. Today Maria shares how she discovered this superpower not only to make our world better, but how it drives organizational success – and why we are called to embrace empathetic leadership right NOW in order to move forward and solve our world’s complex problems together.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Binary thinking in leadership is hindering our success – it is BOTH/AND with empathy and ambition.
Empathy has been named the most crucial leadership success skill for the 21st century to solve our complex problems together. And those who don’t get it, will be left behind.
Empathy is not just a soft skill, it is the key to greater impact (both in the world and to your bottom line) and requires great strength to practice.
We have to be able to collaborate, to understand, to hear diverse opinions and points of view – without fear or anger. We have to let everyone have a seat at the table because we cannot solve these problems with our old ways of thinking.
We all need to work on our empathy muscles – where better than at work, where we spend the bulk of our time?
“We cannot park our humanity at the office door. We are complex, emotional beings – and when we’re seen, heard, and valued for who we are, we thrive. And so do our organizations.”
— Maria Ross
Episode References:
Check out my course! Brand Story Breakthrough Thought Leader
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. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com. And sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips, and find out how you can book me as a speaker, I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at the empathy edge.com. Oh, and follow me on Instagram, where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Welcome to the October heartache. This is Maria Ross, your host. And these heartaches are my opportunity to talk with you one on one about all facets of empathy, and really give you an update on what’s going on in my world as well. Many of you know I’m working on my next book, the empathy dilemma, how successful leaders balance performance, people and personal boundaries. And that’s going to be coming out in the fall of 2024, I could not be more excited to be partnering with page two, my beloved publisher who also published the empathy edge a few years ago. The great news is that in the last two weeks, I turned in my first draft manuscript to the editors at page two, and I can’t wait to see what they come back with. I actually love the feedback from the editing process. It really helps me hone my style, hone my writing, hone the content, so that I can provide something that is really valuable and useful to you. So if you’re not already signed up for my email list, please sign up, because there’s going to be a treasure trove of launch goodies coming in the months leading up to the launch. And I want to make sure that you’re invited and you have an opportunity to partake of all the goodness that will be part of the launch. Secondly, today I wanted to share with you something big that I did. And that was that I presented a pitch at something called Pitch day through an organization called thought leader, thought leader are the people that helped me land my TEDx talk a few years ago, and they were offering a program to really work on pitching your topic to speakers, planners, media, all the places, all the people. And I was able to create a pitch of three minutes on the essence of the work that I do, and what I can offer. And it was a really humble exercise in cutting the fat from everything that I talk about, and getting down to really what is it that I want to share with people. So I thought there was no better thing to share with you all today, then that pitch, and help you understand a little bit more about what motivates me and drives me to do this work. You may not know this, but you possess a superpower. One that helps you connect and engage with almost anyone and become a stronger leader create a thriving culture and build business value. And the great news is this superpower is innate to us as humans. But sometimes for some of us well, the power atrophies, but it can intentionally be strengthened if you know how. It’s called empathy. And let me share how I discovered the magic of this superpower for business. Several years ago, my son was two and a half at the time and I was reading him books about empathy and compassion and sharing. And yet when I looked up at the headlines, I saw horrible examples of leadership. I’m sure you did too. So what good were all these lessons I was teaching my little boy, if these were his role models, if this was The world he was getting himself into. It not only broke my heart, it pissed me off, and I couldn’t let it stand. There had to be leaders out there who understood that empathy is a strategic advantage. Being a brand strategist for decades, I examined my own successful clients and then spent three years digging into the research. And I was delighted to find countless examples, proving that empathy boosts Innovation, performance, engagement, retention, collaboration, customer loyalty, and revenue. So as many of you know, I wrote a book to convince skeptics of the business case for empathy. And to show them that empathy is not merely being nice, it’s not caving into crazy demands. It’s not even agreeing with someone. It’s a method of information gathering, of seeing things from their perspective, even if you have to make a tough decision. And the book took off. So now I have devoted my work, my keynotes, my leadership trainings, my books that this podcast, even my TEDx talk, to help the C suite, team leaders, HR, and folks at all levels really embrace empathy as their strategic advantage. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that we cannot park our humanity at the Office Store. We’re complex emotional beings. And when we’re seen heard and valued for who we are, we thrive, and so to our organizations. Now, you may be thinking empathy is just a soft skill, or it makes you look weak. And as you know, faithful listeners, I love to bust these myths and show how empathy impacts the bottom line, and actually requires great strength. We can balance ambition and compassion. It’s both and not either, or, and I love showing people how we’ve got to stop this binary thinking it’s BS, and it’s holding us back from our full potential. Look, I am not always the most empathetic person, just ask my husband, we all need to intentionally work this innate muscle. And if we can practice in the place where we spend the bulk of our time at work, it spills over into our personal relationships with our partners, our kids, our community. And that helps us be more effective at work. It’s actually a beautiful cycle. This is the new model of leadership. Empathy has been named the most crucial leadership success skill for the 21st century to solve our complex problems together. And those of us who don’t get it will be left behind. And that my friends, was the hopefully impactful pitch that I shared at pitch day, to a wide variety of meeting planners, leadership, training organizers, conference, planners, media, all the things. And I hope it’s given you a little bit more insight into why I do the work that I do. Not all of you have been with me on this podcast from the very beginning, and sort of heard the story about the evolution of how this work came to be. And in the past year, why I’ve pivoted my business and my work to focus on helping people embrace empathy as their superpower, we truly have a lot of problems to solve in the world. And we have to be able to do it together, we have to be able to collaborate, to understand to be able to hear diverse opinions and points of view. Without fear or without anger, we have to be able to let everyone have a seat at the table because we cannot solve these problems with our old ways of thinking. And if you or your organization wants to do a training, want to do a workshop, if your conference wants to bring me in, I would love to share the data to share the habits and practices that I’ve learned over the last few years dedicating my work to this topic. As I said in my pitch, I am not perfect. I am constantly learning. And sometimes we write and research about the things we need to learn more in our own lives. And I can tell you being a parent, that that is one of the biggest teachable experiences I’ve had to work on my empathy and to be where someone else is and sometimes not have the right answer, but just be able to sit with them in their discomfort or their pain. And that is what we need to do at work. We need to help our people thrive. We need to create an environment where everyone wants to collaborate and wants to bring their true self to the table. Because as I said in this pitch, when we’re seen heard and valued for who we are, we thrive Live, and so do our organizations. So that’s this month’s hot take. I would love to know what you think as always, please contact me on Instagram red slice Maria. I’m now on threads as well and I can get messages there. And please make sure you’re signed up for the newsletter. 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.
