Truthbomb: A collection of people working in the same department, function, or even office are not necessarily a team. And if you want high performance, you need to know the difference.
Today, Pam Fox Rollin shares the important difference between groups and teams – if you don’t understand this, you may be consistently beating your head against a wall! – and the factors that help you turn your collection of people into a truly high-performing team. We talk about how empathy drives team performance and the transformation she has seen when leaders learn to bring empathy to their work. Pam introduces the concept of Conversations for Relationship and why understanding that those exist, even when you can’t hear them, impacts performance. eWe discuss the intersection of teams and communities, and how to build a “team brand” that helps you succeed within your organization. Finally, Pam shares real-life examples from her clients on how to develop empathy and use it wisely while avoiding the pitfalls.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- There are four essential conversations teams must have: Conversation for Possibility, Conversation for Decision, Conversation for Action, and Conversation for Relationship.
- If there is low trust, there will be slow change. If you want your organization to change faster, you must build that trust.
- Take a stand, put a stake in the ground, and give people accurate information about what you’re about and what your purpose is.
“They needed something more, and that something more is fundamentally two things: one, a shared promise, and two…a commitment to coordinate to fulfill that promise.” — Pam Fox Rollin
Episode References:
- Right to Be: https://righttobe.org/
- The Empathy Edge podcast: Carrie Melissa Jones: Building Successful Communities
From Our Partner:
SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.
Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.
About Pam Fox Rollin, Executive Team Coach, and Co-Author, Growing Groups Into Teams
Pam Fox Rollin coaches senior executives and C-suite teams in Silicon Valley and globally. Pam guides tech, biotech, and healthcare organizations to succeed in strategic transformation, executive development, and culture initiatives. With her Altus Growth Partners team, she is co-author of the new book Growing Groups into Teams. Her MBA is from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where she later served as a Guest Fellow in Leadership and Master Coach. Pam is known as an impactful speaker and valuable thought partner to leaders navigating complex change.
Connect with Pam:
Altus Growth Partners: altusgrowth.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pamfoxrollin
Book: Growing Groups into Teams: Real-Life Stories of People Who Get Results and Thrive Together: growinggroupsintoteams.com
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books
Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Truth bomb, a collection of people working in the same department, function or even office, are not necessarily a team, and if you want high performance, you need to know the difference. My guest today is Pam Fox Rollin, who coaches senior executives in C suite teams in Silicon Valley and around the world. Pam guides tech, biotech and healthcare organizations to succeed in strategic transformation executive development and culture initiatives with her Altus Growth Partners team, she is co author of the fabulous new book Growing groups into teams. She got her MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where she later served as a guest fellow in leadership and a master coach. Today, Pam shares the important difference between groups and teams, and if you don’t understand this, you may be consistently beating your head against a wall and the factors that help you turn your collection of people into a true high performing team. We talk about how empathy drives team performance, and the transformation she has seen when leaders learn to bring empathy to their work. Pam introduces the concept of conversations for relationship and why understanding that those exist even when you can’t hear them, impacts performance. We discuss the intersection of teams and communities and how to build a team brand that helps you succeed within your organization. And she shares real life examples from her clients in how to develop empathy and use it wisely while avoiding the pitfalls. This was such a great conversation. I absolutely loved this book, so take a listen. Hello, Pam, welcome to the empathy edge podcast. We finally made this happen. I’m so excited to
Pam Fox Rollin 02:32
have you today. Likewise, I’m so happy to be here, Maria,
Maria Ross 02:35
it’s so good to have you here, and I am so excited for folks to check out the book, growing groups into teams. There were several aha moments for me in the book, and we’re gonna get to those in a second. But you know, in your work as an executive team coach, as an author and as a speaker, can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this work and why you’re so passionate about empowering leaders. So I’ve been fascinated,
Pam Fox Rollin 03:01
I mean, ever since I was a little kid, how organizations run, and especially whether the people there, like, you know, growing up at the pizza restaurant and the bank, why they looked really unhappy in some places and looked really happy in some places, why policies make sense. And then I would try to figure out, like, Is this place making any money? And the people are working there, like, are they doing okay? And so the social science side of business is always really, really appealed to me. Yeah, I got to write the organization studies major at UC Davis, and then go get an MBA. And I just love to be where leaders are thinking about, how do I make great strategic decisions, and do it work with the organization in a way that has everyone able to make good on the strategy and, yeah, to thrive while
Maria Ross 04:00
they’re doing it. Yeah, I love that. It’s so funny. How many of my guests their story often starts with as a little kid, I was always curious about x. I love this because, you know, there’s people that excel at the actual work and the actual industry, and then there’s people like us that can’t commit to one industry or one type of thing, but we’re just fascinated with how leaders lead and how, for me also, it’s also how, how brands and leaders connect with their employees or connect with their customers and clients. I kind of don’t care what business they’re in, but it’s the actual, the business of the business that I’m kind of fascinated by. So I love to hear that. And as your book, very pointedly, talks about, is doing and leading are different things, and we’ve fallen into this thing where we promote the people who’ve been doing the work the best, rather than the people that can do the work of leading. So I would like to start us off with the big aha I had with the book, which was. There’s a difference between a group or a department or a function and a team. Can you explain to us the difference? Absolutely, and you’re not the only one who is like, wait a minute, two by four to the head. I’ve been noticing this for a long time, but I didn’t have the words to create the difference. So a group are people who are connected in some way, and often in the workplace, because they all report to the same
Pam Fox Rollin 05:26
quote boss, or maybe, as you say, a function. And often they’ll call themselves the team, and that doesn’t make them a team at all. Yeah, yeah. I worked with one executive team that series B, amazing startup. They’re doing so well. They’re growing like crazy, wonderful people. And they said, you know, we haven’t really properly operated as an executive team. We’ve now got some executives and let’s operate as a team. And their act of declaring the team was creating a Monday meeting and opening a Google Doc, and they’re like, Okay, we’re a team now we have a Google Doc that a few months in, what they realized is they needed something more, and those something more are fundamentally two things, one, a shared promise, active making a promise together that creates the team. I love that so the team exists to fulfill something. If they succeed and fulfill it, then they say, Huh, what’s our next challenge? Or are we no longer a team? And we go off and we do other things. The second thing it takes is a commitment to coordinate, well, to fulfill that promise. If you don’t have that, then you’re sort of, you’re a bunch of people who all have the same dream, yeah, maybe you’re a bunch of contractors who kind of operate in a hub and spoke way with the central leader person. But you’re not a team. You’re a group of disconnected people in your silos because you’re not coordinating as you need to fulfill
Maria Ross 07:15
I love that, and you’re making me think back to a prior guest I have. I’ll put a link in the show notes. Carrie Melissa Jones, she is a community and online community expert. She wrote a book called building brand communities, and in her interview, we talked a lot about that concept of people think just bringing their users together makes it a community, or just putting everybody on a group on social media makes them a community. But to your point, I think they have like seven checkpoints of what makes it an actual community. And one of them, which I never thought about before, but it’s kind of linked to your act of creating a promise and commitment to coordination, is they have to have mutual care. There has to be a reason that they actually care about the success of each other. So she consults with a lot of big companies, and they’re trying to turn their user groups into communities, but it doesn’t make them a community to just all be users of the same product, which it sounds like is similar to the premise in the book and to your work, is that just because you’re in all in the same function, reporting with the same boss doesn’t make you same. Yeah,
Pam Fox Rollin 08:19
I’m excited to go listen to that podcast, because one of the things I’m fascinated with is where teams and communities intersect and where they’re actually different. And to me, one of the things that is absolutely fundamental about community is that they commit to be in relationship with each other or be in that care and teams are also in a common care. It is a care to accomplish them. Now often teams are also community. Yes,
Maria Ross 08:53
yeah, if you if you’re lucky, if you have a great team, it feels like a community. And, you know, I’ve talked often on this show about the fact that, you know, when we many of my best friends, I met at work, my I met my husband at work, right like and these are people I’ve had lifelong friendships win with. And it doesn’t mean you have to, you know, we’re both familiar with the work of Shasta Nelson and the business of friendship, and how having a friend at work increases engagement and performance and reduces absenteeism and turnover and all that good stuff. But I guess you know what a great follow up question to that would be is, so what do we do? How do we create that team that has that mutual respect, that mutual promise and that mutual care, and I’m not going to give away the entire book, but what are some of the ways that you’ve seen work, and what are some of the pitfalls that people think they’re building a team, but they’re not, absolutely
Pam Fox Rollin 09:44
so you had said, you know, if by luck, you have that sort of group, and sometimes it happens by luck that you have a group that becomes a team, that becomes a community where you care about each other, but if you don’t want to wait for luck, whatever, so. With the things, right? So this is where your work is just front and center. You bring empathy, because how are you possibly going to build a community that cares about accomplishing a promise and cares about each other without actually being interested in and asking about and observing and looking for, what does each person on the team light up about? Where do they connect with the mission of our organization, with the promise of this team? How are they wired? What makes it a great day for them? And so bringing that kind of noticing and empathy is I love
Maria Ross 10:41
that. What makes it a great day for them. I think just right there, if any of my folks listening can start with asking themselves that question for their team members, I think that would go a long way, because that will drive your decisions, and that will drive your actions on where to go next to make it a place where they feel like they belong and that they’re contributing to the common cause, right? You talk about conversations for relationship.
Pam Fox Rollin 11:06
Can you tell us what those are, and how do they show up at work? Yeah, so we see that there are four absolutely essential kinds of conversations that teams must have. One is a conversation for possibility. And I don’t mean once, I mean many times along the way. What could we do? How could this work? Second is a conversation for decision. Third is the conversation for action. Now you and I have probably both seen lots of teams that rush into action before they’ve had decisions or even considered all the possibility, right? Like you look around and they’ve all scattered to go act and it’s like, did we decision
Maria Ross 11:44
together? What are we doing again? Yeah, exactly. Then
Pam Fox Rollin 11:47
we say, underneath all that, is a conversation for relationship, even if it’s not happening out loud, there is always a conversation going, am I respected here? Do people value what I bring to the team. Do they value who I am as a person? Will people have my back and some grace? You and I have talked about grace with each other as we navigate, you know, being moms and sandwich generation and writers and consultants and singers and all of that, that sometimes we have to have grace with ourselves and each other. So Will somebody on this team have grace with me? And one of the most powerful things that we’ve seen in turning teams around is to point out often to the leaders in the organization that conversation relationship is always happening. You just don’t know what they’re saying, and you’re not in the conversation, so you can’t influence it. Yeah, and then people really get, Oh, right. They’re human. They’re going to be asking, do I matter here? They’re going to be asking all of those questions. And so what if I actually made the time to go for a walk with them, to have coffee over zoom or in person to show that I’ve got some grace while I keep standards. And here’s where your book on empathy dilemma really, really shines. Maria is it’s not a choice between standards and compassion. Both reach. I love it. Are those
Maria Ross 13:20
conversations happening in our own heads? Is that the point?
Pam Fox Rollin 13:24
Often they do, and the conversations for relationship, because we have this mythology that we can’t maybe be humans at work, they are the ones that go most inward. Now, sometimes conversations for decisions also happen in people’s head. People decide things, and we asked, well, when was that decided? I don’t know. I just I decided, I decided, and then I might have forgotten to tell the rest of the team. Oh, yeah, no surprise. We’re rather misaligned right now. So all of these things happen in our heads. Conversations for possibilities happen in our head too. We think through what could we do? I remember one conversation that just really grabbed me, and I wrote about it in the growing groups into teams, in the chapter on executive teams and working with this the top team of a public company, and they had so few conversations with each other, I mean, other than polite and superficial and all of that, and Sometimes not polite, but definitely not deep about their relationships, that they didn’t know that each other wanted exactly the same thing that they wanted. Oh, my goodness, and it took elevating one of them to CEO. I interviewed all the members of the team and came back and said, I think you guys are going to be amazed, but you all said these seven things, and they’re like, No
Maria Ross 14:46
way. Well, we’re so busy running and we’re so busy in the busyness that we don’t take time to work on the business, right? And this is true when I’ve done brand workshops the past, and I what I do with my teams when I do brand engagements is. And brand story engagements is I have each of the folks participating in the workshop fill out a pre work questionnaire, and they’re not allowed to help each other. They’re not allowed to see each other, because I want to see where each of them are coming from, because I have a cross functional team, not just marketing. And it’s so interesting to me where it’s like, okay, all of you described the business you’re in as a company in a different way. Most of you disagreed on who your ideal customer is. They seem like duh decisions that we should have been all talking about, but we’re so busy running at 100 miles an hour that we actually didn’t stop to see if we were aligned. That’s half my value right there, before I’ve even delivered anything just to get them to talk about it in a room, and have, you know, four to six hours where they’re forced to actually have those conversations with each other.
Pam Fox Rollin 15:49
And I love that you put, you know, brand and leadership and strategy together. And for teams, you know your brand is your promise. What is your team’s promise? What are you going to deliver to your organization or your customer, and how are you going to do it? And I love when teams are thoughtful about their brand in the organization. We need the team that we’re masters at connecting other teams in the organization with each other, which is great, because we used to have to do all the stuff because they weren’t talking to each other. But what if we could get them actually connected with each other? Yeah, and so I’ve seen teams have some really distinctive brands that made a difference. There was an organization I worked with where I love these people, but they were sort of the key brains inside this organization, they all had PhDs. They were from different countries. They had different backgrounds, absolutely brilliant humans. I sometimes call them the seven grumpy PhDs, and one of them said nothing in my background has ever prepared me to coordinate with other people. And we were on it, and it just a 15% 20% change in their willingness to coordinate with each other. And think about, how do we want the rest of the organization to understand us? Do we want them to understand us as seven disconnected individuals who just argue with each other and can’t give us a clear answer. Do we want them to understand us as well? Seven amazing individuals who have great backgrounds that combine to form a solution for the organization that’s amazing.
Maria Ross 17:33
So you know what in your experience? And you know, please feel free to share any stories, what becomes possible when the executive leaders that you work with learn to bring empathy to their work. Is that where the team, quote, unquote, starts, or how have you seen it manifest? I have seen
Pam Fox Rollin 17:53
teams start just as the team, even though the executive team has no concept of team. In fact, sometimes they’re the last ones to get on board, because, as you say, they’re cross functional. They’re used to leading in their feed stems, and then they discovered that they’re each playing very, very different games that do not add up to running the organization. For sure, if we waited for all the executive teams to get on board, we might not have amazing teams in the organization, which is why I work mostly with executive teams. So this is going to so shortcut things for your organization. So I think there’s a couple of benefits. One is the rest of the organization gets to see how to function as a team. It’s a model, yeah, and they learn it really fast when their leaders are practicing that and saying, You know what? That impacts, what finance does. Let me just co coordinate with the CFO. I’ll get right back to you. And then they do. It wasn’t some they go have a conversation and say, yep, we’re totally aligned on this. We can move forward. And that’s all. What many people deeper in an organization want is that they can move forward knowing that they’re not wasting their time if they work really hard on something, it’s something that the organization can actually use and move forward. So that’s part of the other thing, and this has never been more important, is the organization can change. You know, we have a saying in organizational development, low trust, slow change. So you want your organization change faster right now? Everybody does. You’ve got to build that trust. And one of the things that that rests on is, and you might have run into the trust chapter in the book, where we lay out a whole bunch of factors that intrude, that add up to trust. One of those things is intentions. Do I understand why you’re here? What it is you’re intending to accomplish, and also your motivations for doing that? Is it because you want to build a legacy in this industry? Is it because you love broken things? Is it because. Because you think we can make so much money doing this? Is it because you think that we are going to make customers so delighted they will never go anywhere else? Right? It can be many things, but if I don’t know what you’re about and why you’re here and what you’re motivated by, if I can’t trust that, it’s going to be really hard for me to say yes to your change initiative, which is inevitably going to make me what change does is takes competent people and makes them incompetent, and then keep cycling through that cycle, because I used to be great at what we did, and now we’re doing something different, and I have to figure it out. Figure out who to talk to get in the groove of how to do it. And so I need to know what’s important to you. And also I need to know that you respect your relationship with me, that we’re in a respectful relationship. Because there are times I’m going to look super awkward. There are times I’m going to do something that it turns out it didn’t work. And I don’t know how we ever create change, do new things and expect it to be perfect. Life isn’t like that. So if we want people to change rapidly, willingly, with a spirit of experimentation, then we need to make sure that the leaders have some empathy and are building trust with folks and people will know have their back. You will come have a conversation that says it looks like that thing isn’t working out. What shall we do now? And how do we make sure that you are, you know, resourced in the best way we can, which may be suboptimal, but in the best way we can to move this forward. Well, it’s just so funny,
Maria Ross 21:52
because I’ve never thought of it that way. And this is why I love hosting a podcast, because my guests are constantly like, oh, truth bombs. We know this in our personal lives, right? You meet a stranger in the park and they say, come here. I want to show you something. You want to know what their intention is, what their motivation is, and who this person is, or you’re not taking a step in that direction Exactly. So why would we think it’s any different when we’re in a workplace is, do we think it’s different because we allegedly know each other, quote, unquote, but if there’s no empathy, then I don’t feel like you really know me, and you don’t feel like I really know you, because neither of us are trying to see each other’s point of view. So it’s another one of those, like schoolyard lessons that applies to the workplace, other than be respectful, be kind, be empathetic and collaborative. It’s you cannot trust someone to take a step or unless they’ve earned that trust. And to your point, I think that is something that we say all the time, but what does that mean? You’re giving us something very actionable, which is communicate and be clear about your intentions and your motivations, be vulnerable and let them know so they can trust you and be willing to take that step. And there’s so many leaders that just think they’re going to take that step, because I’m going to tell them they have to take that step. And some might, you might get some compliance, but it’s short term engagement, and really, how much are they going to adopt the change, and how quickly will they adopt the change with that mindset? However, if you can encourage them to trust you and willingly take that step forward on their own accord, so that’s where I’m really seeing the empathy coming in. Because it’s not only about the clarity pillar of my book, The Empathy dilemma, but it’s also this idea of I need to understand you and your fears and your values so that I can frame this in the right way to make you want to take a step
Pam Fox Rollin 23:55
towards the change. And as you point out in your books, it goes both ways. It’s multi directional, yes, so I need to know, if I’m working for you, that you understand what I’m about and where I connect with the promise that we’re making, and I need to understand what you’re about. And what’s fascinated me as I’ve been doing this for 25 years, what’s fascinated me is that there’s not, like, one right answer or a there’s a few wrong answers, wrong answers. I’m here to screw you all over, sell the company and not fulfill my promises on the back end, right? That’s, I’ve seen it, yeah, wrong answer,
Maria Ross 24:36
yeah. And I’m willing to run over any of you to get there, any
Pam Fox Rollin 24:39
of you to get there. But I, you know, have worked with some leaders who are unapologetically Queen operated, and they’re just like, we are here to maximize my bonus, and along the way, I’m going to make sure we maximize your bonus too. So if you’re ever wondering why I made a certain decision, think what will be my. A bonus at the end of the year. And people follow this person. It’s not like, right? Has to be some, you know, soft,
Maria Ross 25:08
noble, yeah, exactly. This is the thing. It’s just like, brand, take a stand, put a stake in the ground and say, This is what we’re about. You’re either on board or you’re not, but at least you give people the accurate information to make a decision. I have said that even about companies that have done some really awful things with their employees, with their structures, but I’ve always said, well, at least now you know what you’re getting into. They have taken a stand on this. This is who they are. Now you have agency to decide if you are going to sign on for that or if you’re going to not. And so, you know, and for some people, that might resonate for them and say, Yes, I want that too. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be noble. It doesn’t have to be, you know, solving world problems. Hopefully it is. Hopefully businesses are doing something in some way, shape or form. But to your point, it’s about honesty, and it’s about very clearly laying that out. Where do you see, I know what I talk about on this show all the time and in my books, but where do you see with the leaders you work with empathy go wrong or get misused as people lead? What have you seen?
Pam Fox Rollin 26:17
Yeah, mostly the number one ways that gets misused is it doesn’t get turned
Maria Ross 26:23
on at all. It doesn’t get used, right? It
Pam Fox Rollin 26:26
doesn’t get used and it’s not everyone. I mean, I know the best CEOs I’ve worked with are highly empathetic, and everybody in their organization thinks we got the lucky we got the empathetic CEO. But then I’m like, Well, yeah, over there, there’s one too. Over there, there’s one too, but then sometimes notably, there’s not right. The second thing is, people think they’re being empathetic. So I was with a team yesterday in another state, a team of leaders I’ve been working with for a year, and they’re taking on a bunch of change. And we know that design is how you start change, and design starts with that. So our first question is, Who are you designing for? And also, can you design with them, rather than just for them, right? And say what would like, what’s important to them about this? And so the got, you know, one of the leaders was happy to speak up about this, and he said, Well, this this, and this is, is important. And I suppose that important too. Like, yeah, these folks. And I didn’t even have to say there was somebody else in the room who said, actually, what’s important to you? I’m a little closer to these people we’re designing for. And here’s what I think they say. And people were like, Wow, that’s good. That’s really interesting. I never have thought of that. They’re being empathetic, yeah, but not but that’s fine. I have seen this fellow make so many wonderful advancements over the last year that I’m sure he’s going to get there on this too. And this was probably a pretty big wake up call. So sometimes people think they’re being empathetic. They’re not. Then, well, they’re
Maria Ross 28:07
making assumptions, yeah, they’re that’s where I see that’s always Yeah, that’s always the caveat with cognitive empathy, because cognitive empathy is imagining what it might be like for someone else, which is a useful starting point, but you have to vet that, because you’re actually envisioning it from your own experience and your own bias. So you don’t actually know unless you ask.
Pam Fox Rollin 28:29
There was a keynote that I used to give maybe 10 years ago or so, and I was talking about the difference in cognitive empathy, and I found a picture of engineer from I think it was Ford, but I might have the auto company wrong, wearing one of those pregnancy bellies, like those foam bellies, yeah, and seeing that he could fit into the car, and he had a big thumbs up. And I’m thinking, this does not mean he knows what it feels like to be pregnant. Like he’s crying. He’s trying, yeah, I appreciate the effort.
Maria Ross 29:03
But yeah, I’m like, that’s a step beyond. I actually, you know, we need to applaud that, yeah,
Pam Fox Rollin 29:08
but he still might want to connect with actual pregnant people, right when we’re going into the car and seeing if they can reach all the stuff
Maria Ross 29:15
completely, yeah, that, you know, that’s just like, another example of when we talk about, what’s finally getting talked about is that so much of medical research has been done on men and on one or two specific groups of people, and then we expect those medications and those treatments to work on everybody, but we really need to be more inclusive in the medical research area so that we actually understand what the impact is For this group of people versus that group of people could be very, very different. So it kind of reminds me of that, of like, well, we had a proxy for that group of the guy with the pregnancy belly on, which is actually really cute. I’m sorry, that’s actually really funny,
Pam Fox Rollin 29:54
yeah, but I’m thinking, Are there any actual women or
Maria Ross 29:59
any anybody. Spouses, who might be pregnant, who might be willing to just come in and sit in the prototype and just tell us what they think. Yeah, have you ever, you know, just this is a total tangent, but, you know, that’s the thing. I always think when I use a product, or I’m, I’m the recipient of a service, and I and something goes really wrong, and I’m like, did anyone test this? Like, did anyone actually do any consumer testing or user testing on what this experience was going to be like? Because I can’t imagine somebody would do this to somebody else. I find myself thinking that all the time. I don’t know if that’s my my marketing brain or whatever. Well,
Pam Fox Rollin 30:35
and then healthcare two, and you and I do a lot of thinking about healthcare, about half my client base. Oh my gosh, yes, health systems and biotech, yes. And the difference between and I see this a lot now that my mom is 87 she’s doing pretty well, but she says braille, and the things she’s expected to be able to open, even the doors to get into the clinic, are not ones that, yeah,
Maria Ross 31:01
yeah, they’re too heavy. I think about that now, like, in my 50s, I’m like, I can’t even read. I give it to my 10 and a half year old son to read a medicine bottle because I can’t read the directions on it, right? I’m like, What am I going to do when I’m 80?
Pam Fox Rollin 31:12
Like, who put this on here? That is my biggest motivation, yeah, to lift weights and work out.
Maria Ross 31:19
I know Me too. Me too. Yeah, completely. I know we went on a little tangent there, but it’s so true. It’s about, ultimately, it’s about seeing things from other people’s perspective, and not just your users and your customers, but your employees as well, so and your leaders. So I you know, obviously my work is all about helping leaders strengthen their empathy, but I want to get your perspective in the trenches working with executives. What are a few tips or examples you can give us of things that you’ve done with your clients to help them tap into that empathy and to strengthen that muscle?
Pam Fox Rollin 31:52
Yeah. So quite some years ago, I did research with tune of Sharon, Richmond. You might she’s part of our community here. Anyway. She’s been in our Silicon Valley kind of consulting community for a while, and we’ve joined up together with Altus and I did research on 265 leaders to find out how they developed their emotional intelligence. And these were all leaders who knew their Myers, Briggs, and then we correlated them up, and it was hilarious. And the point I’m getting to is not everybody develops empathy in the same way. So just as we’re asking leaders to understand the individuals on their team, when I support an exec team, I want to understand them as individuals. And for some of them, what they really want is to look watch people who are very effective. Sometimes I hook them up with somebody you know, in a different function, a level or two below, who is a rock star at leading empathy in the way that they need to learn and say, could they go to your meetings? Could they like I, what are they? What are they doing? Yeah, what are they doing? Because some people learn really well from watching others. Other people love to learn from feedback, where they say to your team, you know, I’m aiming to get better at asking enough questions so I understand instead of always deciding things for my frame of reference. So if I forget to do that, will you help me? Will you give me some feedback on how I’m doing? Because I know I will be better if I get your perspectives. I hired a smart team. I want to hear what you say, and I just forget that I need to ask I love that other people. It’s from one on one coaching other people. It’s from sometimes even watching movies or reading, yes, novels, explore with your imagination, from the empathy edge book that was one of my tips to help leaders strengthen their empathy. It’s about reading and consuming art and media and documentaries and movies about people who are not like you, and being able to flex that muscle of wondering what things might be like for them, but also seeing a different life experience, right? Yeah, I love that. So that’s worked for all your folks. Too. Different people want different things, and so it’s helpful to have we find a menu of ways that they can grow themselves. And there’s also, as you talk about different there’s different sorts of things you can do. One way to express empathy is to learn a formal design process. Another way to express empathy is just to go to a walk with someone or say, Hey, how you doing? And really mean it, yeah. And really listen to the answer, yeah. Really listen. So we ask everybody to set their own goals for the leadership edges that they’re working and then come up with some individual things that they can do. And then we’re. Things that we set as a team. So there’s a process we often do. We’ve done with our team, and we often do with other leadership teams, where we look at 25 factors that really make a difference in teams and say, How are we doing on these and which ones we want to come up with? Just a few, which ones that, if we actually work it hard, focus on it together, would really make a difference for the team. What are
Maria Ross 35:28
some of those factors that we need to look at as teams to create teams? Yeah,
Pam Fox Rollin 35:33
one that’s so powerful in the research and so experientially powerful too, is how well do we represent the views of people who aren’t present? If I can trust the CTO, I’m the Chief Product Officer, the CTO is at the meeting. Are they going to fairly represent my views? Will they say something like, you know, here’s what I see. I just want to be open that Pam, the chief product officer, mentioned to me her concern about this and this, and I think that’s a fair concern to address, is that the kind of relationship that we have and so that requires listening to people. It requires valuing their perspective, and it requires really living into that second element of being a team, I will collaborate well to produce the
Maria Ross 36:31
problem. Yeah, what are a few other of those factors? Those are fascinating.
Pam Fox Rollin 36:36
So one is we communicate in a coordinated way to drive clarity across the organization. More teams need that. That’s a frequent low one. Yeah, another one is we admit and learn from weaknesses and mistakes. Oh, that gets
Maria Ross 36:53
all to self awareness and just understanding how we show up and being honest with ourselves, yeah, about how we show up so that we can improve, we can have a growth mindset around it. Yeah, I love that. All right, give us one more. Oh,
Pam Fox Rollin 37:08
we go directly to the person when we’ve got
Maria Ross 37:11
we got an issue. Yeah, it’s so frequent, and we spend a lot of time talking about people and less time talking to them. And this happens not just with teams that have a bit of a hard edge. This happens with the nicest Midwest team, and they think that I just I can’t say it directly the person. So what they learn is they can say it directly to the person. Yeah, and there is an enormous amount of respect that I’m showing you by saying I’m concerned that this behavior I’m seeing can get in the way of you fulfilling the potential that you have, and so I don’t claim that I’m right, but I just I’m seeing something, and I would love to share it, yeah, well, and that’s empathetic, that’s actually helping somebody be their best and giving them the opportunity to improve. Yeah, and you know what we often do, and this is, you know, I’m sure you’ve met these leaders who, in the name of empathy, delay those conversations or delay those decisions because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, right? But it ends up not only being detrimental to that employee or that co worker, but it’s detrimental to the whole team, because the whole team is suffering because of that person’s actions, whether those actions are subconscious or conscious. And so it’s actually not empathetic to avoid and I, you know, I hate the way we talk about it in terms of we always use the term conflict avoidant, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a conflict just because you’re going to share feedback with somebody, why do we assume it’s automatically going to be a conflict when we share feedback, we can do it in a way, and even those of us I have to share, even those of us who kind of can come across a certain way, that’s always the hesitancy is like, well, they’re going to be offended. They’re going to get upset with me. It’s going to sound really harsh. I you know, this is where the self awareness comes in. I know that. You know, I’m originally from the East Coast. I’m an Italian like I know sometimes even when I’m being direct, even if I’m trying to say it in my kindest voice, it can sound very harsh. And so what I’ve learned is, if I am going to bring something to someone’s attention, I try to be very transparent about that, about like, hey, this might sound harsh, just because the way that I talk and please know it’s actually done with love and it’s done with kindness and collaboration. But I know when my words come out of my mouth, it might sound a little off to you, and I try to address it up front so that, or even after, if I say, and I’m like, and I know that sounds really harsh, I’m just really direct sometimes, so I apologize if that sounds really harsh. I don’t mean it to be right. So, you know, we can be this is that’s another example of vulnerability, other than you know, vulnerability means we just lose it. Well, we. Spread all our emotions on the floor. We can be vulnerable by just admitting we understand how we come across, yes, and
Pam Fox Rollin 40:06
if we lose it, we can come back and say, I was such a mess an hour ago. I imagine that was really unpleasant and hard to hear, and I’m unskillful of me. I’m going to learn to do better. Yeah. None of these things you, I mean, to a point, are fatal. It’s just that when we don’t have those conversations, I’m sure you and your clients think a lot about, how do we build cultures of safety where people feel like, like they can do that basic okay to have that kind of conversation? Yeah, yeah,
Maria Ross 40:39
and feel it’s okay, you know, what are you modeling as a leader for your team? About making mistakes, about owning failures, about apologizing, about you know? So how are you modeling the missteps you make in a way so your team knows it’s safe to make some missteps and be able to repair them?
Pam Fox Rollin 41:00
Yeah, one of my mentors a long time ago said there are two ways to delight your client, this was when I was in strategy consulting, or two times to delight your client before you screw up and after you screw up. I love that. That’s so great. Well, as we wrap up, I mean, we could probably talk for another three hours here. What’s sort of a final gem you want to share with us? That’s, again, we don’t want to give away all the ahas from the book, but what’s a great gem or insight you can share with us about how you go from taking a group and to making them a team? What can leaders take away? Yeah, so I would just start with the team promise Maria, because so many groups are unclear on what it is they are aiming to accomplish. And that doesn’t mean that you actually know all the details of what it is you’re going to deliver, but you’re pointed enough in the same direction that you can all log on every morning and go, yeah, that yes is the cool thing that we are aiming to accomplish. I love
Maria Ross 42:03
this because this goes beyond the company’s mission and the company’s purpose. Your team needs to have a micro culture of a mission and purpose that fits in to that larger mission and purpose. And so, you know, we might know that our larger purpose is x, but our particular team is responsible for why, and
Pam Fox Rollin 42:23
we see that team promise makes more difference to performance than their connection with the overall mission. Yes, we want to have that that is, yeah, it’s too big. It’s too grand, but yeah, I know our team is designing our support engineering function, and six months from now, we are going to have a support engineering function, and we didn’t have it before. Yes, I
Maria Ross 42:47
did a lot of that work when I worked in management consulting, of like, putting in an organization, putting in a function within the organization that didn’t exist before. Yeah. So how do you integrate that? How do you help people understand how they’re supposed to interact with that. This is making me, I know we’re wrapping but this is making me think about a previous job that I had. It had its warts and it had its bright spot, and it’s great opportunities, which was awesome, but the marketing leader, I remember, used to say, our one goal as a marketing team, as a global marketing team is we are here to make sales easier. That’s the team. That is our mission, that is our goal. And if you’re doing something that makes sales harder, you’re not on the same mission. So everything you do has to be designed with that are you answering that question? Is this making sales easier? That’s made by a team promise, exactly, and that’s never left me from that role, as I went into my own, you know, independent consulting. It’s what can you do no matter what aspect of marketing is? It’s event marketing, it’s brand marketing, it’s lead gen, whatever. What is it doing for the ultimate goal of driving sales? And how did
Pam Fox Rollin 43:59
we know we’re succeeding, yeah, and it helps to avoid a lot of red herrings as well. It does, if I may, share one other thing, because it’s personally really meaningful to me. I’ve joined the board of an organization called right to be and what they do is work on creating safety in it started with streets and then online, and then workplaces, and then healthcare settings. Create safety by energizing everyone, by activating everyone. Some call it bystander intervention, but what it really is us noticing that there’s things that we can do that move things forward. So if we see somebody who isn’t being treated as we would want to see treated, but it also, once you know those skills, you can see opportunities. And those are the eyes. And one of the reasons I’m so excited about right to be is those are the eyes that we’re. Cultivating in organizations. Whenever we do culture work, we are saying we want everyone coming in with eyes open other and for what it is we’re aiming to accomplish, rather than I’m just here to do this task, and somebody will tell me if I did it right? And what the next? Yeah, so powerful. Well, we will put a
Maria Ross 45:25
link to that organization for sure in your show notes. I would love to do that, but we’re out of time, so let’s wrap up. We are going to put all your links in the show notes, and we are so grateful to you for being here today, but for folks that are on the go, maybe exercising while they’re listening to us. Where’s the one good place that they can connect with you or find out more about your work.
Pam Fox Rollin 45:44
LinkedIn. I am the only Pam Bucha Rollin, R, O, L, L, I N on LinkedIn, and I would be so glad to connect with any listeners.
Maria Ross 45:55
I love it, and I always do my PSA for LinkedIn is put a note that you heard her on the podcast, don’t just reach out and connect. Actually personalize your note. Thank you so much. Pam, I’m so glad this was well worth waiting for to have you on the show, and I look forward to hearing more. I hope folks will check out the book Growing groups into teams, real life stories of people who get results and thrive
Pam Fox Rollin 46:19
together. Thank you again for being here such a pleasure. Thank you Maria and thank you
Maria Ross 46:25
everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate, review and share with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events, please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
