Empathetic leadership drives engagement, performance, and innovation. It’s a fact. Yet post-pandemic, leaders are struggling to balance the needs of their people with the demands of the business and their own mental health. This livestream session with empathy expert, speaker, author, and podcast host of The Empathy Edge, Maria Ross, will enable leaders from the Director to C-suite to build high-performing teams, align their work with their values, and find success in the new world of work.
The audience will gain:
- DEFINE what empathy means in a work context and clarify confusing terminology. Bust common empathy myths that hold leaders back.
- DISCOVER how empathy helps you do good while doing well financially: Empathy is not just good for the world, but it can be a competitive advantage. We’ll walk through the financial & organizational benefits of acting with empathy, and how you can persuade others in the organization to do the right thing.
- EXPLORE what empathy is – and more importantly, what it is NOT.
- DISCOVER the Five Pillars of Effective and Empathetic Leadership to better balance the needs of the business with the needs of your people.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Empathy requires great strength to be able to take on someone else’s point of view without fear or defensiveness.
- We can access empathy through two angles – cognitive and affective (or emotional) empathy.
- Why managers need to create a human connection with their teams.
- In today’s digital world, connection is more important than ever. It is a key to experiencing empathy.
“You need to be very firmly grounded in who you are, what you believe, and your own self-confidence to open yourself up to other points of view. Empathy is anything but weak; it’s a strength.” — Maria Ross
Episode References:
- Sign Up Here for PeopleFoward Network: https://bit.ly/pfncommunity
- The Empathy Edge Podcast:
Daina Middleton: How to do Layoffs with Humanity, Inclusion, and Compassion
Dr. Michelle Zhou: Empathic AI is Real and It’s Here – But We Need Everyone Involved!
Dr. Cori Lathan: Benevolent Cyborgs and a Techno-Optimist’s View on Technology
About PeopleForward Network: We exist to help all people experience meaningful work.
We imagine a world where leadership and people-first leadership are synonymous.
PeopleForward Network provides innovative podcasting, communications, and partnership services for people-first leaders to impact meaningful work.
From podcast production and distribution to creative services and growth consulting, PeopleForward Network’s mission is to share resources and insights with its global community of leaders, connectors, and creators to inspire and build workplaces where people thrive.
Connect with Jason Cochran & PeopleForward Network:
Website: https://peopleforwardnetwork.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Jason.Cochran
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-d-cochran/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasondcochran/
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. Hey everyone, Maria here with a very unique and special episode for you this month, instead of my normal hot take, I am offering you a live stream podcast that I did earlier this month with the fantastic folks at the people forward network or PFN, I was in conversation with Jason Cochran from PFN, and this community is a vibrant home base for people, first, leaders like me, like you, who want to connect with other like minded professionals, deepen their insights and build authentic relationships to drive both personal and professional growth. It’s designed for executives, for HR leaders, for talent strategists, there’s consultants, there’s founders who all believe, like you and I do, that business growth and people first culture go hand in hand, serving as both a relationship accelerator and a discovery launchpad for deeper engagement opportunities. You can check out this community for yourself, and I highly recommend you join me over there. The URL will be in the show notes, but for those of you listening, it’s bit.ly/p like people, F, like forward. N like network community, that’s PFN community. And in this discussion, Jason and I delved into the empathy dilemma, the push pull, all the stuff that we talk about every week on this podcast. It was such a dynamic and unique conversation because we took questions from the audience while we were recording, and we got some really interesting ones. You won’t be able to hear them speak, but you’ll hear us read their questions from the chat. So enjoy today’s unique episode. It’s just a refreshing take on how we do things here, and I would love to know what you think about it. Have fun. Take a listen.
Jason Cochran 02:46
All right, hello, everybody in the PFN community. We have got an incredible member led event that we’re doing with the fabulous Maria Ross today, I’m going to do a quick intro for her here in just a minute. But as a reminder, we’re doing this live in the PFN community, so that means we got a live audience with us, and so that means there could be some cool questions that come up along the way that we address. But we wanted to let our podcast listeners know that whenever you hear the produced episode, that there may be some other voices that you hear along the way, which is really cool. So today’s topic the empathy dilemma, how successful leaders balance performance people and personal boundaries. I love this topic, and so let me share with you our featured expert on this today, and then we’re going to get the show started. So a little bit about Maria bras. She’s a speaker, facilitator, author, strategist and empathy advocate who believes cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive, and she has spent decades helping forward thinking leaders and teams connect and engage through empathy to accelerate growth and impact. She’s authored a lot of books, and her most recent one is titled The Empathy dilemma, how successful leaders balance performance people and personal boundaries. And she also hosts the top rated incredible podcast called The Empathy edge. And by the way, she’s kind of a big deal because she’s been on a lot of prominent media outlets. Here listen to some of these, MSNBC, NPR wisdom from the top with Guy Razon NPR, ABC News, entrepreneur and thrive global. She’s also spoken to audiences ranging from TEDx to the New York Times to Salesforce, to the 3% conference, and her thought leadership and writing has appeared in multiple publications, including entrepreneur.com Newsweek and Huffington Post, and currently she’s a Forbes contributor. First off, Maria, how do you have time for all that? And secondly, welcome, thank you
Maria Ross 04:39
for having me. And no, I don’t have time for all of that. That’s the problem.
Jason Cochran 04:43
That was a lot of good stuff, but I’m like, it’s alive. Thank you.
Maria Ross 04:46
Luckily, I’m not doing all of that at the same time. So
Jason Cochran 04:49
that’s right, that’s right. You compartment wise, a little bit today, yeah, well, just a little. I’m really excited about this discussion, because, let’s be honest, we need a lot more empathy in the world. But it seems to be something that. That is tremendously misunderstood, especially when it comes to our workplaces and leadership. So let’s start this conversation. By the way, those who are in the audience along the way, if you have questions, drop them in the chat, and we will address those. But to kick things off today, Maria, let’s talk a little bit about it. Is a word we hear a lot empathy, especially in leadership circles, but it’s often misunderstood. How do you define empathy in the work that
Maria Ross 05:25
you do? I love this question because Jason, this is the crux of my work, is helping people understand what empathy is and what it isn’t. Because we have a lot of false narratives out there in this kind of culture war saying that empathy and compassion is not appropriate in business, that it’s weak, that it there’s no place for it, and there’s a lot of different definitions of empathy, even over time, the definition has changed. But the definition that I do my work through the lens through which I do my work is that empathy is the ability to see, understand and where appropriate, feel another person’s perspective and to use that information to act with compassion. So couple things there. One is that we can think of empathy as a method of information gathering. I’m trying to see your point of view, and I’m trying to understand why you think, the way you think, and what your context is, and that information, if you want to be more of a detective about it, that information is going to help me figure out a right step forward with you, with a strategic decision, with something I need to clarify or communicate. And that’s really a good thing. That’s really what compassion is. Compassion is actually empathy in action. You can practice empathy and try to see someone’s point of view, but if you don’t use that information to take a next right step with that person, it doesn’t really do you any good right in terms of moving the relationship or the decision forward. So what is it not? And this is where I really like to bust the myths of empathy. It’s not being nice, right? We can be nice, but it doesn’t mean we see each other’s point of view. It doesn’t mean that I cave into unreasonable demands, which I think is the big one that prevents leaders from embracing it. If you are an empathetic leader, it doesn’t mean you’re just doing what everybody else wants you to do. That’s not empathy, that’s submission, that’s acquiescence. And lastly, empathy is not even agreeing with someone. So you can have an empathetic conversation to try to understand why someone sees a situation they do, why they want to go with this strategic direction instead of that strategic direction, why they think the budget should be spent here or there. It doesn’t mean you’re going to end up agreeing with them. It just means, again, you’re gathering information, you’re getting curious, you’re asking questions, and you’re trying to find out where they’re coming from so you can take a next right step through finding common ground together. And also, you know, the whole narrative around empathy being weak is actually really funny to me after researching it for so long, because it actually requires great strength to be able to take on someone else’s point of view without fear or defensiveness. You actually need to be very firmly grounded in who you are and what you believe and your own self confidence to be able to open yourself up to other people’s points of view. So it’s anything but weak. It’s a strength. Oh, you’re muted.
Jason Cochran 08:30
I put myself on mute. How about that? I didn’t want to hear myself talk.
Maria Ross 08:35
No, I was like, you’re saying something brilliant, and I can’t hear you. Yeah. Oh, you’re too
Jason Cochran 08:38
kind. It’s not going to be very brilliant. But what you said there spark for me is like, I find myself. I’m going to filter it through my lens. When it comes to empathy, you talked about kind of the two polar ends of it, of like, where either there’s a complete lack of empathy, and it’s like, just, just a decision we’re making, you just got to deal with it kind of stuff. Or you go to the other end, where you can be a pushover and you’re just overly kind, you’re not really addressing the issue in a way that’s helpful, right? And finding that middle ground, I love the word you used strength, because I would think I don’t have any research. You’re the expert. So tell me if I’m off base here. But I would think a natural reaction for us as human beings would be to go to one of the other opposite ends of like, either I’m going to the end of like, no empathy, because it’s just easier for me if I don’t have to, you know, find a middle ground here, or go to the other end and just be like, everything’s unicorn and rainbows, and I’m just going to be kind all the time, and people are just going to love me, and we don’t have to have any difficult conversations kind of stuff, right? But, but the strength is finding that middle and and I can just speak for myself personally, that sometimes I think, at least for me, and I think my wife would probably agree with this, is a lot of times my my strength finder number two is positivity behind strategic and sometimes I may go a little bit too much on the positive end and avoid sometimes important information or important details, important comments. Organizations that can be crucial or challenging, still need to have those and do those with empathy, and not just be like, Oh, everything’s just going to work out. Just be positive all the time. It’s like, no, sometimes you gotta, you gotta deal with reality, and you gotta do it in an empathic way. Is that
Maria Ross 10:15
right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the data and research show us that empathy boosts performance, engagement, it boosts innovation, it boosts retention, it boosts customer loyalty. There’s a ton of stats around what customers expect from the brands they do business with in terms of an empathetic customer experience. It doesn’t necessarily mean their problem is solved, per se, but they will rate a company and their loyalty to a brand based on how that brand is making them feel. So if they really feel seen, heard and valued, and I think that’s the point here is that we can make tough business decisions and still do it with empathy. We can do layoffs with empathy. We can make a strategic decision that might you might not like, but I can factor in your perspective and your input, and I can communicate that back to you in a way which is not lowering the bar, but how do I raise you up to the level I need you to perform at? And that requires empathy, that requires me to understand your point of view, understand where you are. What are your fears? What are your hopes? What are your career aspirations? And I need to keep the bar where it is in terms of performance, but now it’s a different conversation. It’s now we need to figure out how to get you there, and that’s where the empathy comes in. So what you’re talking about here is what I always talk about in terms of both and leadership, the command and control and the acquiescence are on both ends of the spectrum, as you said, and there’s this happy medium where, and I just want to say you’re precisely hitting the nail on the head, which is that sometimes it seems easier to just make the decision be a dictator and move on. But what you lose, what you risk in that is you lose innovative thought from your team, you lose engagement from your team, you lose loyalty, you you you lose their motivation and drive. Because if they don’t have a stay, we don’t have autonomy in our workplace environment, and we need that as human beings. That’s part of what makes us happy is having some sort of sense of control and autonomy over our environment. Now it doesn’t mean your employees get to dictate everything that you do, but it’s about understanding their point of view when you make those decisions. I often talk about one of my most empathetic leaders, way back several decades ago, was someone who had to lay off the entire marketing team, but the way that he did it was with empathy. Clearly, that was not a decision any of us wanted. They were doing it in advance of a merger, but the way he did it in terms of what might they be thinking and feeling, what might they need from me in this moment, how can I support them, and how can I connect with them? He was sad for us, right? He was sad that our team, our band, was breaking up, right? But it was the way that he prepared and intentionally made decisions on how to communicate and how to support that showed the empathy. And I just want to bring up one more point in this and that. You know, I work with a lot of leaders in terms of helping them understand that empathy doesn’t just mean crying on the floor with your employees. So we can access empathy for from two different angles. We can access empathy through cognitive empathy, which is using our head to imagine what something might be like for someone, or we can access empathy through what they call affective or emotional empathy. I’m starting to feel the emotions that you’re feeling right you’re upset. You come barging into my office over some conflict that you’re having, and you’re raving, and all of a sudden my heart starts beating faster. My palms start sweating. I can relate. I’ve been that frustrated as well at times. But you don’t have to access the compassion part, the part where you put something into action and you take a next right step through one or the other. You can access it through one or the other. So for people that are more left brain, analytical, data driven, they can engage in more cognitive empathy to get them there, to determine what is the person’s context and what is our next right step together. And there’s I was just on a call yesterday where I was talking about empathy is so many different, hundreds of decisions that we make as leaders in the workplace that aren’t the touchy feely, mushy. We’re crying on the floor, right? For example, career progression maps. When you clearly lay out someone’s journey and how they can get to their next levels, that’s actually empathy in action. You are telling them what to expect, because that’s what they want to know when you put certain. Benefits in place, like paid family leave or mental health benefits, that is an empathetic action. So there’s lots of different ways to operationalize empathy that don’t require you to be necessarily touchy feely, if that’s not who you are as a leader, but it’s about again, it’s any decision you’re making based on trying to see someone else’s point of view. And by the way, we need that diversity of thought in the 21st Century, because our problems are really complex, we need to be open enough to see other perspectives and and honor other life experiences, because that’s going to help us mitigate risk and take advantage of opportunity
Jason Cochran 15:39
that is so good we’re going to go in on a lot of those things. I got to share a quick psychologist story that ties into this. What you’re talking about that there’s many pathways here in terms of the cognitive the emotional. When I was in training to become a psychologist, I’ll never forget one of my major professors. We’re talking about the difference between Rational Emotive behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Yes, and, and here’s the funny part, so Rational Emotive behavior therapy was Albert Ellis’s, if anyone follows psychologists, I’m talking like these psychologists, like, like, they’re Michael Jordan, right? Like, in my world, I was, like, if there were trading cards of psychologists, I would have had them in
Maria Ross 16:15
grad school. Like, what was his jersey number? Yeah, exactly 23
Jason Cochran 16:18
Albert Ellis was the one for Rational Emotive behavior therapy? Yeah, Aaron Beck was the one who did cognitive behavioral therapy. It was hilarious, because our professor showed us, like different types of writings that they did. They would go back and forth talking about how their models were different, but they were really just kind of like the on either side of the same coin. They were doing the same thing. It was just a different modality of were you tapping more into the rational side of the brain for the people that want to tap into it that way? Or Are you tapping more into the, you know, the emotive parts of the brain, the affective parts of the brain instead for the people who prefer to go that route? And so all that to say, there’s so much history there in the research that you’re sharing, yeah, back for a long time and understanding that when it comes to understanding these emotions, that there are different pathways that work for different people and to not use a cookie cutter method. Now I want to go back. You shared your leader. I thought this was a beautiful story you shared about your leader that had to go through the marketing riff of the department. And I want to go through this in a little bit more detail, because Maria, I think most people who probably are watching now or listening with the economy the way that it is. It seems like almost every week we’re seeing that there’s a tremendous number of layoffs. It’s happening more and more for whatever reasons, whether it be the state of the economy, potential, AI, displacement, there’s just a lot more uncertainty it feels like in the economy and that these layoffs are happening. Can you share a little bit more the specifics in terms of what that leader did that communicated the empathy, because we probably have some leaders today, yeah, who are on either end of that, either they’re hearing the message and maybe can provide some feedback to their leader if they’re about to go through that, or they’re a leader themselves who may be about to have these types of conversations where understanding some of those specifics could be helpful.
Maria Ross 18:04
Yeah. I mean, I think the the overarching thing is, when you are communicating, even if you’re not necessarily factoring in input from other people, but when you are getting ready to communicate, are you intentionally preparing for that. And I think we’ve all seen examples of businesses who got it wrong right, mass layoffs by email or by zoom call. And sometimes, you know, I have some empathy for those organizations too. They’re really large organizations, and legally, they kind of have to give everybody notice at the same time. So there’s there’s those factors. But you know, when you’ve got organizations that are like we are telling our managers not to accept any phone calls or respond to any texts from people on their team for a period of time to cover ourselves legally, that’s not necessarily a very empathetic way to go about it, right? We have to remember that a human being and their family is being impacted in that situation. So to give you some examples of what this leader specifically did and other leaders that I heard of, I did a whole podcast episode about how to do layoffs with compassion if folks want to go back to the empathy edge and do a search on the site. But one of the things he did was prepare. Right? Prepare. What are going to be their questions and their concerns? How will they be feeling? And it was different for everyone on the team, because we were all in a different life phase. Right at the time, I was single, I didn’t have any kids. That was not true for some other people on the team. So number two, he took us individually out, and we had a small enough team that he could do that, and he took us out for coffee and broke the news away from the office in a very conversational sort of personal way, right? And we saw the emotion reflected in his eyes. We saw that this was. Impacting him just as much as it was impacting us. Not that he hijacked the narrative about this is so hard for me, right? We’ve seen leaders do that as well, but just that that he recognized the impact. The other thing he did was prepare himself to answer the questions that he thought we’d have. So any question that we had, he had an answer prepared, and if he didn’t, he was like, I will get back to you on that right away. But he wasn’t winging it, I guess is what I’m saying, right? It was an intentional conversation. And also he thought about what resources we would need moving forward. So here are some contacts for you that you should go to and that I will provide references for if you need a reference for an interview. Here’s how you get a hold of me. Here’s what you need to know in terms of getting your last paycheck and unwinding things. So I guess the theme here is about intention and respect for the individual that you’re impacting. And again, I know it gets hard when it’s at scale, right? If you’ve got hundreds of employees impacted on a larger team, it can be harder, but all of those employees have immediate managers that have smaller teams, so you really need to empower those managers to create a human connection with the people that they’re they’re talking to. Those were just some of the things right? Other organizations, they continue to, you know, very operationally, they continue to provide benefits for them for a certain period of time after the employment has ended. For others, they provide some career or job training, resume sprucing up, things like that, maybe do some tutorials for them on job hunting if they haven’t had to hunt for a job for a while, I’ve seen all these different flavors of support, but they all start with it’s not about us. What do these people need? And the other the other thing I want to point out that’s really interesting is it happened to be the same leader who I profiled in my latest book the empathy dilemma. Later on, he was in another environment. Their company got bought. Either his company got bought or they were changing strategic direction, and they were basically getting rid of a whole business unit. And what they did was, as an executive team, they decided to buck the trend and give their people six months notice that this was going to be happening. Wow, not six months severance. Like they still had their job. They were still in their roles for four to six months before this went down and it was done to give them runway, to give them an opportunity to process and prepare and again, once again, they provided all sorts of resources and support to these people. But what he said to me that was really important to share, is that we knew, not only did we need to treat these people who were great workers with respect, but the people that were left the survivors. They’re called survivors for a reason, and they saw that their friends and colleagues were treated with the ultimate respect, and it increased their buy in, because those were the people they needed to move forward, and they had increased their buy in and loyalty so everyone didn’t bail, right? And that, I just think there’s such a lesson in there about understanding that your ability to be empathetic with certain groups of people is a model for the groups you’re also working with and that you have left. So we’re talking about a riff in this situation. But it could be anything. It could be a poor performance review. It could be, you know, someone having a really big failure on the job. How you treat that person? People are watching. It’s just like parenting, right? They’re always watching and how they feel. They’re going to be treated if something were to happen to them, is just as important as how you choose to deal with that person, and that also includes, if you know you said earlier, this idea of delaying or ignoring conflict. So one other big challenge I have with leaders who are overly empathetic is they want to make everybody happy, and they’re avoiding difficult conversations. They’re letting issues fester because they feel like that’s you know, they just don’t want to hurt their feelings right now. Again, your team is watching, so you are actually being less empathetic to the rest of the team, if you let a poor performer slide and slide and slide, if you don’t have the courage to have the conversation or make the different difficult decisions that you need to make, you’re actually unempathetic to the rest of your team.
Jason Cochran 24:35
That’s so good and all that. You just came up with a new acronym that, if you haven’t used it yet, Maria, it’s yours. You just came up with CPR when it comes to empathy. As a leader, you said, connect. And then what was the P is prepare, and then the R was respect. Connect, prepare and respect. When you think about the empathy, some. CPR, make sure when you’re in the Yeah, I like actions, that you’re being an empathetic first responder, really quickly on the connecting. And I love that you brought this into being a parent, too. Because I’m sure a lot of the folks who are listening not just workplace. We’re talking about this really is a skill set that’s important in all aspects of your life, including a friend, being a spouse, being a parent, whatever
Maria Ross 25:21
film my son, my son is my biggest empathy teacher and practice partner, because it requires a lot to be empathetic to your children. It
Jason Cochran 25:31
sure does. Quick story on that for us. So we’ve got a family of four boys, all of them underneath the age of 11. So it’s kind of a circus around here. The youngest ones are twins that just turned five. Well, when we go out to a restaurant, you can imagine how chaotic and what a circus it is. Yeah, couple weeks ago, we went out to dinner and there were three elderly people, older people, who was were seated in a booth behind us. Our boys were being their typical selves. We we don’t let them have tablets or anything. It’s like, Hey, we’re going to play games, we’re going to talk to each other, we’re going to use this time to connect right? Well, it gets pretty messy compared to other families that have the young kids, and they may be on devices and it’s awfully quiet and stuff. And my wife and I were just like, we gotta be driving these people behind us absolutely crazy when when they wrapped up dinner, they came over to our table and looked at Rachel, it’s my wife and me, and said we loved sitting behind you and watching you all as a family, and that they weren’t on screens that that blew us away, because we’re thinking like we’re being way too noisy. You know that the kid, they’re probably driving everyone crazy around here that just wants to have a quiet, peaceful meal? Yeah, and it was a great moment for us to remember that connection is so important and that it’s becoming, seems like it’s becoming more challenging, yeah, to do that in a digital world, to do it in meaningful ways, where you can see the emotion in someone’s eyes, yeah, you can feel it, and it feels like that’s a pathway that’s an important part of feeling and experiencing empathy is if it’s just digital, if it’s just analog, and you don’t have those emotions in it, where you’re looking and you’re feeling those things, it just doesn’t deliver the same type of experience. I think
Maria Ross 27:26
it doesn’t, and that’s why, you know, empathy is actually a competitive edge now, especially in the age of AI. So we can’t deny AI is going to be part of what’s happening, but the human skills of that connection, of that empathy, of that ability to collaborate and innovate together is actually going to be more important, because what I tell leaders is, if you are a poor people leader, and you hide in your office and you just don’t want to deal with people, and you just want them to get their work done, you know what AI is going to do, all the tasks that you’re hiding behind right now, all the doing that you’re hiding behind as a leader, because you don’t want to deal with your people AI is going to take that from you. What’s going to be left your people skills. So if you are not a leader that’s investing in your people skills right now, you are at a disadvantage, because we’re going to be able to get the doing from Ai. What we can’t get from leaders through AI is that connection, that motivation, that helped me understand what drives you, help me understand why, why performance is slipping, what’s going on for you. We need those human skills more now than ever. And so I, you know, I joke, but I don’t joke that. Hey, leaders, if you’re hiding from your people, you’re gonna have nowhere to hide anymore. If you’re hiding behind your ability to get the work done and and do your tasks at your computer by yourself and not talk to people, you’re gonna be done
Jason Cochran 28:55
so to your laying out the business case for empathy of how important it is who typically is that the champion that helps to champion this inside an organization? Is it usually the HR leader? Is it someone else who needs to lead that charge of saying this is going to be an important part of how we do work around here and how we work together?
Maria Ross 29:16
I think, from a culture and a operational perspective, it has to be folks in leadership. It has to be people setting the tone. But, but there’s a flip to this question in that it’s not just one person or one group’s responsibility. And what I tell groups that I talk to, especially if they’re like this all sounds great. I’m committed to being being a people centered leader, but our C suite isn’t like our culture at large is not a very empathetic or understanding or willing to see other points of view culture. And I always say you don’t have to wait for this to come down from on high. You can create a micro culture as a leader within your own group, even if you don’t have the title. And what I mean by that is, if you decide as a team, you. Even as an individual, that this is the way I’m going to operate. I’m going to practice curiosity and active listening. I’m going to try to see other points of view. I’m going to shore up my own capacity so that I can see someone else’s perspective without defensiveness or fear. And I know we’re going to get into the five pillars in a little bit. I’m going to choose how I show up and how I operate. It doesn’t mean I have to change other people who are not empathetic, if I show up in the interaction as empathetic, if I’m listening, if I’m, you know, being collaborative, if I’m trying to find common ground, even if that person doesn’t realize it, you’ve set the tone for that interaction. They may not just say to you, Wow, you’re really setting the tone. I’m going to rethink how I communicate with people, but you are setting a tone for how how your interaction should go. So if you can create that micro culture, and you start to get results that all the data show that you get when you lead with empathy, right? The the innovation, the engagement, the performance, the all of it, the retention, customer satisfaction, people are going to start to wonder, What’s going on over there. You create a model for your team within a larger organization, saying, Why are they so collaborative? Why are they crushing their numbers every quarter? Why does everybody why does that team have the lowest attrition rate of any team in our organization, and you start to become that model, whether it’s proclaimed on high or put on a pretty poster on a wall that empathy is one of our values, right? So that’s what I’m trying to help companies and leaders create, are these bright lights? Yes, ideally, you create an entire culture that has operationalized empathy through its policies, its practices, its rituals, its rewards, its hiring, its communication, all of those, those hundreds decision of decisions I was mentioning earlier. But if you can’t get that, get that for your team and set the tone for your team. I have actually been a part of teams that were highly performing and highly empathetic within a non empathetic culture, and we crushed it. We crushed it and and outside of the organization, we made, we made the whole company look good, but also it was like, wow. Why is that team so happy? Like, not even happy, just why do they seem so fulfilled? Why are they able to sort of have camaraderie and have each other’s backs and get so much done? And it was because we had that environment set, the tone, set by our VP that this was the way our team was going to operate. It doesn’t matter how the other teams are operating. So we don’t have to relinquish control just because of where we sit within the organization. And even if you’re an individual contributor, you know, how can you show up with empathy, like I said, and and set the tone for the interactions that you have and how you get your work done? You become that bright light. You become that model.
Jason Cochran 32:58
I love that, and it’s a good reminder, we’re all leaders, right? We can show up and we can still do that absolutely, even though there may be sometimes accountable for overseeing those things, everyone contributes to it, and everyone’s leading themselves and sometimes others as well, in that regard, around those things. You know, it made me think of really quickly, and then we’re going to get to your five pillars, because we need to talk about, wow, how do we make this magic happen? Yeah, if you ever watched the basketball playoffs, the NBA basketball playoffs, TNT had a lot of those games over the summer. I live in Indianapolis, being a pacer fan, so of course, is watching for a long time. And of course, I know we’ve got Indiana roots too. Maria, watching the Pacers, what was always so cool was to see the camaraderie and how that TNT crew does. Charles Barkley, Shaq Kenny Smith, Eddie, I think his name was, who was kind of like the anchor of it, but you could tell they all had empathy with each other. They would disagree with with each other at times. Of course, they love being together behind the scenes. TNT was kind of a mess, but them, when they showed up as a team, they were a shining light, and they had an incredible experience that other people associated the brand with, and really wanted to be a part of that.
Maria Ross 34:09
Yeah, I just want to add to that. You know, I close the latest book with sort of a deep dive into the story of Steve Kerr and he is a championship coach. He was a championship NBA player, and one of his core values as a coach is empathy. It’s coaching to the person in front of him, and fostering respect, fostering empathy, without trying to make everybody the same, right? How do we actually accept other points of view and other ways of looking at things and other differences, and he talks about that as the driving force for how he is able to coach teams to multiple championships. And if we’re talking about such a binary industry, you know, as sports, elite sports, where you either win or lose, right? And it’s super competitive. Competitive if they can find a place for empathy as a winning edge, then no company has any excuse. Whether you’re an accounting firm or software firm or an HR consultancy or manufacturer, there’s no excuse to not embrace empathy as a competitive advantage if in one of the most competitive industries, those leaders who win are embracing empathy as key to their strength.
Jason Cochran 35:25
That is so true, and it’s so important. And you hear coaches, the really good ones that achieve those levels, talk about that. We’ve got a lot of incredible questions that are coming in here. I can’t see them, so yeah, well, let’s do this first, Maria, we’re going to come back so Brandon, Jen Stephen, in particular, I see you guys now. Sorry, yeah, lots of great questions coming in. We are going to get to those in a few minutes, but let’s first talk about your five pillars when it comes to empathy and leadership. And then we’re going to come over and we’re going to start going through some of those questions with our audience. So walk us through this framework, this understanding of how we go about developing empathetic cultures, empathetic leadership.
Maria Ross 36:05
Yeah, absolutely. So when I wrote my first book, The Empathy edge, that was the book for the skeptics, I was making the business case for empathy by showing them the data and saying, Okay, if the moral imperative to be empathetic is not enough, here’s here’s how it impacts your bottom line. So I wrote that book for the skeptics, and then the pandemic hit, and then all of a sudden, people understood what I was trying to say about empathy, having a place in the workplace. And then as I started to do those keynotes and those leadership development sessions, what I was hearing from people was, yes, I get it, Maria, I’m on board. I want to be a people centered leader, but especially post pandemic, here’s where it gets hard. Here’s the reality of why that gets hard. And so after hundreds of interviews through my podcast, years of research, what I tried to do was deconstruct the recipe for who were these unicorn leaders that were both empathetic and effective at the same time, like who were the Steve KERS? What were they doing? And through talking with them and researching them, I unpacked or deconstructed this recipe, and I found these five pillars that were common threads across all of these people. And so I created a framework called the Five Pillars of empathetic and effective leadership. And it’s not meant to necessarily be linear like a checklist. It’s meant to just be when things are going wonky or things are getting tough, you can look to these pillars to say which one seems weak right now, which one’s actually which one needs strengthening, because that might be where we’re off balance. So those five pillars are self awareness, self care, clarity, decisiveness and joy. And so I just want to briefly talk about them. The first two you’ll notice are about yourself, not other people, which you might think, how is that empathetic? But if you don’t have your own house in order, you have no space in your brain to take on someone else’s point of view without defensiveness or fear. So you got to work on yourself. It’s got to start at home, self awareness. Do I understand my strengths, my challenges, my perception gaps and my emotional triggers? Do I actually really know myself and what happens to me and how I’m triggered by different people in different situations, and also, do I know my own boundaries. Do I know? Do I know what lights me up? Do I know? Do I know how I operate? Because that is the first step, right? Self awareness. The second one is self care and not I always joke with my my workshops that I do, it’s not about mannies and pedis and massages. It’s about what recharges your body, mind and soul for your body, mind and heart, right? What helps you refill your capacity, refill your tank, so that you can show up with empathy, again, without defensiveness and fear? Because you’re a parent. Jason, obviously four kids. I’ve got one boy, so God bless you with four. But are you a good parent when you’re tired and hungry, no, right? So you have to have a full tank, right? We’re horrible to our kids, yes, yes. Horrible to anybody when I’m tired and hungry.
Jason Cochran 39:09
In fact, most of the stuff I tell them not to do, like you’re not supposed to say those things, that’s usually the stuff coming out of my mouth when I’m
Maria Ross 39:16
tired, exactly, exactly. So we have to have a full tank, right? I was just on a workshop yesterday where I was talking about, you know, we invest in in our in our machinery, we invest in our capital expenditures to make sure that they’re running at full capacity. Yet for ourselves, we let ourselves get down to fumes and expect us to be optimized in terms of performance. It can’t happen. So what are you doing to sort of take a break, recharge, you know, take that paid time off, and remember, you’re being a model for your team as well. So if you just say, go ahead and rest and recharge and take your time off. I’m going to be over here working 80 hours a week. I’m never going to go home. You’re, you’re, they’re. Going to be scared to take any time off. You’ve got to be the model for stewarding your own mental health for your team. The third one is clarity. Like we talk about Brene Brown talks about clarity is kind. It’s also empathetic, because you cannot hold someone accountable to an expectation that you haven’t clearly set. So again, through their perspective. Do they understand the assignment? Do they know what they’re being graded on? Do they know what we expect of them, and I’m talking about beyond the job description, are we clear about our cultural norms? Are we clear about our values and our mission, and do we make them actionable, not just again, those pretty posters on the wall, but what does it look like? Be crystal clear, even if you’re saying things that you assume all people understand. Don’t assume we have too many generations in the workplace to make assumptions that we’re all on the same page, right? So clarity, decisiveness, and this doesn’t mean you’re a dictator, like we talked about earlier. But when you let decisions fester because you are trying to find a decision that pleases everybody, you’re going to be on a fool’s errand, because there’s no such decision that’s going to make all of your people happy, right? What the art of it is is to be able to synthesize multiple points of view and get input, take that input, make a decision, and then communicate that to decision out to the team in a way where they can see the transparency of how that decision was made. Right? Are you transparent in the information gathering process, and are you transparent in the decision making process so that even if they don’t love it, they can do what I call disagree, but commit. That’s what we want. Not everybody’s going to get what they want. And if you can communicate those decisions back in a way that’s inclusive and in a way that’s transparent, you can say, you know, Jason, actually, we really loved your idea about X, and it really sparked a discussion for us that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Here’s why we weren’t able to go with that. But keep those ideas coming, because it enriched the conversation. So you didn’t get what you want, Jason, but you know your input was valued. You know your input was discussed as a factor of the decision. So now maybe you can have more buy in, into the final decision, and then the last one is actually my favorite one. It’s joy. It was the missing piece in in the pillars. When I first went through this, I had four initially, and I was like, something’s missing. And it was joy. It was being able not to be the funniest workplace. You don’t have to be a comedian, but are you creating an environment where there’s levity in the work, even when the work is hard, right? There’s work we all don’t want to have to do, but we have to do it. We have to do time sheets, we have to do spreadsheets. We have to do some people like that, but not me, right? But is there an element of joy? Do we, can we relax with each other? Do we know we have each other’s backs? Can we? Can we get to know each other personally as much as we’re comfortable, right? Or is it all business all the time when your brain, you know this from your psychology background, when our brains are under fear, anxiety and stress, we don’t access all of our executive skills, great, right? So you’re dealing with people that are operating with half their brains. I don’t think that’s a smart business decision, quite frankly. So the more you can create levity and camaraderie in your team, and if you’re not naturally like that, you don’t have to invent it all yourself. Look to your team to come up with ideas. Maybe there’s someone on your team that’s really funny, maybe there’s someone on your team that’s a party planner. Maybe there’s someone on your team that knows how to crack a joke at just the right time to ease the tension, let them create the groups and the, you know, the fun Slack channels and all the things, and leave space for that. I have this great quote. I’m gonna totally butcher it, but it’s from John Jacobs, who was the co founder and chief, I think he calls himself chief optimist at Life is good at the outdoor brand. Yep, who said those things are not again, I’m totally butchering this, but those things are not a waste of time. It’s the leaders who make space for connection and even the occasional nonsense that are building a more resilient team. And I love that quote, I really should memorize it, but, you know, those are the pillars. And I’ve even used this framework. When I’ve had a tough interaction or a tough day, I look to the pillars and I go, what was a debrief? Right? What was missing? Oh, clarity and self care. I didn’t get a good night’s sleep that night, and also, our expectations weren’t clearly set, and that’s why we had this conflict. That’s why I just couldn’t accept this person’s point of view, and why I just wanted to blame them for everything. So you can look to the pillars for yourself and for your team as. Hole saying, what’s what are we weak on? What are we missing?
Jason Cochran 45:04
I love that. That is a perfect score card to be it’s a scorecard, exactly. Thank you. But like, where are we? Where are we in these different areas? And I’ll tell you one of the things, the epiphanies I’ve had, and you just leaned into it when it comes to clarity. One of the epiphanies I’ve had recently to Maria is, I don’t think we have communication problems. There seems to be a lot of communication. I think what we often have is a shared understanding problem. It’s a clarity problem, yeah, as well the clarity exactly, but like, there’s a lot of talking, or there might be a lot of writing, like, there’s, there’s tons of communication, probably more communication, more information ever that’s coming at us and from us, but it’s are we coming away with clarity? Are we coming away with that shared understanding of like we got it? We good, we good. Here, we know we’re talking about right?
Maria Ross 45:50
That that’s why reflective listening is so important. It’s being able to say, Okay, so let me pause for a second, Jason, what I heard you say was x, y and z, is that accurate? Before we move on. And you can say no, that was completely not what I said. We’re having a different conversation. Or you can say yes, and then, you know, I’m listening to you. So either way, you get goodness out of it,
Jason Cochran 46:15
I love it. That’s another great, helpful tip. Let’s, let’s pivot over here. We’ve had a great time. In fact, the time, yeah, I know there’s between the two of us. It’s like, let’s get to some of our questions from the audience. They’re like, Come on, we got some questions too. So let’s start with this one. Brandon. He’s got an interesting question here, has HR truly lost the seat at the table when it comes to AI? He says, I feel that that is happening, but it reminds me of when I helped school libraries move from a three ring binder to CDs to internet in the past, same thing, same understanding of empathy, understanding the fears. So some perspective on that. Maria has HR, have they started losing a seat at the table when it comes to some of the changes going about with AI?
Maria Ross 46:54
I’m not quite sure I understand the question. So I don’t know if there’s an opportunity for Brandon to unmute and say more about that feels more comfortable.
Jason Cochran 47:09
Spotlighted that let me see if I can give him the ability to speak. Doesn’t look like I can do that, but what we can do is Brandon, if you want to put additional explanation, yeah,
Maria Ross 47:23
I can start with what I what I think he’s trying to say, which is that maybe there’s organizations that are ramming AI through without any regard for the human impact or for HR. And if that’s true, yes, for some organizations, there are savvy organizations of all different sizes that are understanding the human impact and where their teams need to upskill or be trained differently. We’re gonna we’re gonna have a different leadership problem moving forward. And Marc Benioff from Salesforce communicated this a month or so ago, where he said, basically, we’re the last, we may be the last generation of leaders that have only humans on our teams. That’s right, which was very scary and also very probably true, right? So there’s an amount of change management that has to happen with AI, and that’s where we can look to HR. But HR also has to upskill themselves on what that looks like, because we’re in, we’re in new territory, right? We’ve got all these we’ve got all these experts out there, and it was kind of like when the internet first came out, or digital digital marketing and digital advertising. It’s like no one really knows what they’re talking about, right? So it’s just, you know, does this person know slightly more than I know? Then that’s, you know, that’s the expert. But, but it’s, it’s looking at the holistic picture of like, how is AI impacting our workforce? How is it impacting our how is it impacting individuals and their jobs? Because for some people, it’s going to have more of an impact on their job than it is for others. So it’s, how do we continue to upskill those people and help them adjust the change management part to the different role without losing sight of the fact, like I mentioned earlier, we still have to continue developing those people skills with our people. AI is not going to give us a license to just, you know, forget it and you know, we no longer have to invest in communication training or, you know, empathy training or anything like that. We’re still going to need that, because we’re going to need to be able to create those environments of psychological safety and trust so that the new, adapted roles, can perform, can produce. I will say that I don’t know if all HR leaders are stepping into that the way they should, and basically demanding a seat at the table to say, hey, this isn’t it’s it’s just like way back in the 90s, I was actually. Actually a change management consultant for one of the big six management consultancies for Accenture. And the whole reason our team existed was because the way they had been doing it was they were just throwing new systems into companies and flipping a switch and going, good luck, right? And then they realized, oh no, to make this successful, we actually have to bring people along, even though this is automating a lot of their jobs. So they created a change management function to specifically work on communication, skills, gaps, training, you know, and even just, you know, giving people a voice to say, I’m scared of this new change. We’ve got to do the same thing with AI. And I think that’s where HR leaders, if they can upskill themselves to be better prepared to have those conversations and make the case. You know, again, one of the things I love HR leaders, I work with them all the time, but one of the things that some of them are not good at is tying what they want to do to business objectives. Yes. So if they can make a cogent ROI case for why we need to put in place some of these new programs if we’re going to invest in AI, here’s exponentially what our return is going to be. That’s that’s the strategic conversation they need to have so they don’t lose their seat.
Jason Cochran 51:20
Yes, I totally agree with all that. And the other thing that I’m hearing and seeing also Matt burns, the CEO of Atlas copilot, which is an AI company, brought this up, and that is, we’re starting to see more HR leaders working collaboratively with the technology IT leaders inside companies. And here’s why, as we will be moving from human capital to human and agents that will be working together in teams, it’s going to be really important that we make sure we’re programming the agents with the values, with the empathy of how to comport themselves and how to collaborate with team members, just like we do with the humans we bring onto a team, in terms of the culture. And I know that that for some people listening may be like what that sounds like. So sci fi it is. It is coming, just like you referenced Marc Benioff saying, but that’s another step for the evolution of HR and specifically around empathy and values and a lot of the things you’re talking about that we’re still going to need to have these things wrapped up in agents that are team members as well, just like our human teammates
Maria Ross 52:32
well. And I want to just add something real quick to this, because one of the interviews I did on my podcast was with the founder and CEO of Juji, which is an empathic AI company, Michelle and she had a really great perspective, because their solutions are meant. They’re not necessarily just large language models that look at patterns to predict behavior. Empathic AI is looking for anomalies so that it can adapt. It’s slightly different, right? And her point was, there’s always going to need to be a place for domain experts around empathy, around communication, around human to human connection, because we’re the ones populating the models and the the instinct for some people, kind of, like I was saying before, is like, Oh, great, Ai, is here I can outsource empathy. I don’t have to get good at it, but if we don’t have the domain expertise to populate the models in ways that work for people and that do more help than harm, we’re always going to need to be sharpening that saw and and sharpening that skill so that we’re making accurate decisions and we can spot biases. We can spot errors in you know, especially if we’re giving maybe life saving healthcare advice or career advice or anything like that. Yes, there’s a lot we can do with AI and we can, but we have to continue to populate and one of the things that stuck out for me from interviewing her and interviewing some other AI experts, including a really great episode I did with a woman named Corey Lathan, who’s done work with the military. She’s done work with autistic children. She’s done a lot of work with like leveraging AI, and she calls herself a techno optimist, and she made the same point about, you know, we have to continue to be involved and bring our human skills to the table. But you know, one of the things all of these folks point out to me is, if we ignore it, if we decide to say, Oh no, we’ll just let AI figure it out, then we’re leaving room for the bad actors to be, the ones to be populating the models. So true, right? The ones with agendas, the ones with biases, the ones with inaccuracies, and so we’ve got to stay vigilant. So for as much as some people want to just forget AI is coming, we have to stay involved if we want to make sure that it’s accurate and responsible and providing what we need it to provide.
Jason Cochran 54:54
And we have governance that, to your point, is making sure that it’s being done in an ethical way. With that. Yes, interest in heart and isn’t just accelerating the top right right and creating a bigger Matthew effect between the haves and the have nots. It needs to benefit everyone in society. I love that. We got another question here that came in. This is a really good one from Jeff Maria, any advice on how to influence higher level leaders in our organizations to be more empathetic, and how to get more leeway for being empathetic leaders ourselves. I feel not valued by my leadership because I’m more people driven and less numbers driven. Any advice there for
Maria Ross 55:28
Jeff, yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think that’s what I tried to do with my first book. Was really, again, make the business case, and that is something that you know, as you hear these stories, as you see the articles, as you read the books and you’re able to sort of build the business case for your organization that is going to be that’s going to go a long way to actually, you know, not just the goal is not just to convince them that they think empathy is a good idea. Like, what is it? What is the action you want those leaders to take? Is it to invest in more professional development around empathy. Give them give them an action to take other than just the mindset shift you want them to make, right? Give them something actionable. And then that’s where you can present the case of here’s why this is important. And here’s some examples of some other companies that are putting empathy to work, other leaders that are making this happen and really driving home to them the other the other big thing you can do, as I kind of, as I said earlier, is be the model, right? If you’re the bright light and your team is over performing, bring it to the attention of senior leadership that the reason this is happening because is because of how you’ve built the micro culture around empathy so you can be that own case study within your organization, and to get more leeway for being an empathetic leader. Again, if you’re continuing to produce results, make sure you’re pointing out to people how you’re doing it, if you’re doing it with empathy, if you’re leading with empathy, just don’t just hope they’re connecting the dots, present to them, be vocal about it, say because we are a team that leads by this. Because I’m taking these actions, this is the result I’m getting from my team. This is proof positive that being an empathetic leader means more than just crying on the floor with your employees, because that’s it’s the emotion, the overly emotional part of it, that’s what we’re fighting against. And again, it’s the more you can expose them to the fact that empathy is a strength, and here’s the data behind it, and expose them to the results you get as an empathetic leader, the more they’re going to be willing to maybe make investments, but, but I just caution. I caution a little bit against, like, make sure you have an ask, what is, what is the ask of upper management? So I get this question a lot of like, how do I influence them? So to me, I think very practically, what’s the what’s the conversation? So I’m meeting with the CEO, and my purpose for this meeting is to convince you that empathy is good for our business. They’re not going to spend time on that, but if I have a proposal around an action I want to be taken right maybe? How we embed, how we embed looking at empathy as part of the performance review, how we look at changing our corporate values and making sure that we’re acting on empathy, how we look at investing in more professional development around empathy, have kind of a hard ask to go along with that, so they have somewhere to go other than. I just want to meet with you to convince you that this is a good idea.
Jason Cochran 58:35
It’s great advice. Maria, so Jeff, thank you for asking that question. Wonderful advice to Maria. And believe it or not, I knew this was going to happen. This went by this went by so quickly. This was incredible, Marie. As we get ready to wrap up, want to make sure that everyone who’s live but also those who are going to be listening to the podcast episode know how to get in touch with you and learn more about empathy and how to bring it into their workplaces. So what’s the best way for people to connect with
Maria Ross 58:59
you? Sure, so I put a URL in the comments. The empathy edge.com is actually a page on my website. My business is called Red slice, so don’t get confused, but that is my podcast page, and that will take you to my website, where you will see all the menu options for my social media handles, my services, my keynotes and speaking, but that’s basically how I engage with people these days, is that I’m doing keynotes, I’m doing leadership development sessions and workshops, and also partnering with with companies. And I spelled empathy wrong, didn’t I? No, I didn’t just partnering with companies who are people forward and finding success and making sure I shine a light on them through my podcast. I love that. And one of the other things connect with me on social too. I’m on LinkedIn and at Red slice. Maria on Instagram,
Jason Cochran 59:51
perfect. And for those who are in the PFN community as well, which are many in our audience, you can connect with her also directly here in. The PFN community as well, but she is the empathy expert. And now you know why? You know why I went on and on at the very beginning, but always working on it, because we’re human, and no one’s perfect at it every moment of every day. So I love that. Stay committed to I love you got you got to stay committed to it. It’s hard stay committed to it, but it’s but it’s worth it, but it’s worth it, the payoff is huge. Yeah, Maria, thank you so much. This has been extremely insightful, and can’t wait for this as a podcast episode to come out too. We’ll have to do it again sometime. Thanks so much. I would love to Thanks for having me, Jason. We’ll see you next time. Bye, everybody bye.
Maria Ross 1:00:37
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. You.
