Your culture is shaped by models, expectations, and accountability. It’s not enough to have pretty values statements up on the wall if they are not a part of everyday interactions internally and externally. But simply telling your people to “be nice” can be its own risk. What does nice actually mean? How is it different from the skill of empathy or the impact of kindness? You may be surprised to learn why simply being nice can be risky and why empathy and kindness are more practical values to model and reward.
My guest today is Mikaela Kiner, founder, CEO, and executive coach. We discuss the risk of being nice and how it can hamper connection and results. Why and how to expect kindness from everyone you work with – from colleagues to partners to clients. How clarity is kind – and leads to better results. Mikaela shares tips on making more space to practice listening and empathy and the tradeoff you make when you claim you “don’t have time” to build those connections with your employees. And Mikaela shares why two big-empathy, high EQ execs from two of the largest tech giants in the world are her all-time favorite clients.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Helping people figure out if they’re in the right role is empathetic. Forcing someone to stay in a role because it’s “nice” isn’t empathetic.
- People tend to think short-term, but we need to consider long-term investment. Putting time into your team will help with retention, which will save time in recruiting and training later.
- Schedule less in your day. Then, when a team member reaches out or an emergency happens, things will feel less frantic and frustrating, which leads to greater empathy.
- Think of tactics as a team that will help your organization feel less busy and less frantic by scheduling in buffer time.
“Something that so many people forget is that you can have really healthy, non-adversarial conflict. We can disagree, we can speak our minds, we can hash things out in a way that isn’t nasty or argumentative.” — Mikaela Kiner
Episode References:
- The Empathy Edge Podcast: Justin Jones-Fosu: How to Respectfully Disagree – and Not in a Passive-Aggressive Way
- I Respectfully Disagree by Justin Jones Fosu
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 Mikaela Kiner, Founder & CEO, Reverb
Mikaela Kiner is a founder, CEO, and executive coach. Her company Reverb helps organizations create healthy, inclusive cultures. Prior to Reverb, Mikaela held HR leadership roles at Northwest companies including Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon. She enjoys coaching leaders at all levels and working with mission-driven organizations. Mikaela is the author of Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace. Her young adult children are good at challenging the status quo and are a constant source of learning and laughter.
Connect with Mikaela:
Reverb: reverbpeople.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mikaelakiner
Instagram: instagram.com/mikaela_firebrand
Book: Female Firebrands
Online Training: Practical Skills for Great People Leaders: reverbpeople.com/services/leadership-development/on-demand-management-training
Connect with Maria:
Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com
Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
X: @redslice
Facebook: Red Slice
Threads: @redslicemaria
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. Your culture is shaped by models, expectations and accountability. It’s not enough to have pretty value statements up on the wall if they’re not a part of everyday interactions, internally and externally, but simply telling your people to be nice can be its own risk. What does nice actually mean? How is it different from the skill of empathy or the impact of kindness? You may be surprised to learn why simply being nice can be risky, and why empathy and kindness are more practical values to model and reward. My guest today is Mikaela Kiner, Founder, CEO and executive coach. Her company, reverb helps organizations create healthy, inclusive cultures. Prior to reverb, Mikaela held HR leadership roles including Microsoft, Starbucks and Amazon. She enjoys coaching leaders at all levels and working with mission driven organizations. Mikaela is the author of female fire, brands, stories and techniques to ignite change, take control and succeed in the workplace. Today, we discuss the risk of being nice and how it can hamper connection and results. Why and How to expect kindness instead from everyone you work with, from colleagues to partners to clients, how clarity is kind and leads to better results. Mikaela shares tips on making more space to practice listening and empathy and the trade off you make when you claim you don’t have time to build those connections with your employees. And Mikaela shares why two big empathy high EQ execs from two of the largest tech giants in the world are her all time favorite clients, great insights today. Take a listen. Welcome Mikaela Kiner to the empathy edge podcast. So happy to have you here.
02:34
It’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me, and
Maria Ross 02:38
we are going to talk about healthy, inclusive cultures and leadership and all the things that you do in your work at reverb, but tell us a little bit first we heard your bio. Tell us a little bit about your story, and how did you get to this work and into starting reverb?
Mikaela Kiner 02:55
Yeah, I feel like it predates to my childhood. So both of my parents happen to be employment attorneys, and they’re on the plaintiff side. And if anyone doesn’t know, the plaintiffs side are the ones who sue companies when they’ve been mistreated or experienced harassment or discrimination. So that was what I lived through at the dinner table as a child, and I can remember back to early years thinking, There’s got to be a better way to do this, where these horrible things aren’t happening in the workplace, and, you know, people don’t have to seek the help of an attorney. So it was not a linear path from there, by any means. But I will say, after college, I was working for a startup Coffee Company in New York City. This will really date me, but they were in New York before there was a single Starbucks in New York, and they had decided to expand rapidly into 30 stores in three states. And after working there for a bit, they pulled me out of the store management and asked me to do all of the hiring and training. So I did that for a while, and I had a real passion for it. And then I thought, well, if I’m going to do this, I should probably learn to do it well. And so I went back to graduate school and got my master’s in HR management.
Maria Ross 04:15
Wow. And then how did reverb come about? Yeah. So
Mikaela Kiner 04:19
I spent about 15 years in corporate HR. I started big, so I spent the bulk of that time at Microsoft and Amazon, and then I feel like in a big and growing companies like that, the challenge you’re almost always dealing with is scale, and I really wanted a different set of challenges, and so I went and worked as head of HR for two different startups, and at the same time as I started my last job, which was the head of HR at Redfin, I also got certified as an executive coach, and I had a real pull to do coaching. And Redfin was fabulous. They let me moonlight. But what I realized was I had no time, and I was down to one client, and I had to. Meter at seven in the morning before we both went off to work. And I had, like a good coach, I had set my goal out loud, which was, whenever I leave this job at Redfin, I am going to give it a try on my own and go into coaching and consulting. And so that’s what I did. That’s
Maria Ross 05:16
great. Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. So let’s talk about this issue, that I think a lot of leaders and cultures feel like they’re solving problems, but they’re not solving them in the accurate way, meaning they confuse empathy with niceness, or, you know, even a little bit of kindness, but kindness is closer to empathy than niceness. So can you talk a little bit about how you help people? I always talk about it in terms of they’re trying to hire their way to an empathetic culture by hiring a bunch of really nice people. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can accept different viewpoints or see things from other perspectives, or listen and get curious. They may just be really nice. They may just bake really good cookies and bring them to work, right? So how do you work with clients that think they’ve got it covered and they’re like, We don’t understand why we’re having retention problems or engagement problems. We’re all such nice people. We really promote being nice in the workplace. That’s
Mikaela Kiner 06:17
such a great question. And juxtaposition of those different terms between niceness, kindness and empathy. You know, the risks with nice are often not saying things that are direct or clear or not saying it to the individual, right? Because I might think, well, if I have feedback for you that’s not nice, that might not feel good when I deliver that feedback, but I’m going to go tell this other person over here, because I have to get it off my chest. And so now we have this culture where there is venting, there’s triangulation, there’s a lack of feedback and nice also often means conflict avoidance. And I think something that so many people forget is that you can have really healthy, non adversarial conflict, like we can disagree, we can speak our minds, we can hash things out in a way that isn’t nasty or argumentative. And that kind of healthy collaborative conflict always leads to better outcomes, because we get participation by the end of that you know, people are on the board with whatever the decision is. And I think in these I’m doing air quotes nice cultures. That doesn’t happen because disagreement of any kind can also be seen as not nice. So I to me, that’s the difference we at reverb. We actually have kindness as a value, and something that we often repeat is one of the many sayings by Brene Brown, but which is that clear is kind and, yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard that one, clarity.
Maria Ross 07:51
Yeah, clarity is one of my five pillars of being an empathetic and effective leader at the same time. And it’s to your point. It’s exactly that. It’s that conflict avoidance or that softening, that people try to do that is actually really unkind, because people are confused, or they don’t know what to do next, they don’t know what next step to take, and that causes them stress and anxiety. And so we end up creating all these other problems when we’re in our attempts to be nice
Mikaela Kiner 08:20
Exactly. Yeah. I love that you have that as a value. And so, you know, how do we use clear as kind? For example, I’ve had colleagues review, you know, maybe there’s a hard message that they have to deliver, you know, some tough feedback that has to be done by email because of either time zone or remote workers. And that would literally show it to me and say, Is this clear and kind, right? And so that’s our it’s great because we’re able to use it as a shorthand for ourselves in conversation, in delivery feedback, whether it’s written or verbal, and it helps us stay honest, right? And to your point, what better way to grow than getting honest feedback? And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting. Sometimes it does. You know, we’re all, I don’t really believe people when they say, Oh, I have a thick skin. I’m like, I don’t know I have. Most people I have met do not have a thick skin, right, right? And I know, you know, I’ve gotten feedback, uh, early in my career, in particular, that, yeah, it stung a little bit, but I remember it to this day, like things that were really pivotal and helped me grow as a professional that, um, you know, we can’t all have 100% self awareness all the time, and Right, right? Really need to give and receive that feedback, right?
Maria Ross 09:39
And I think, you know, there’s a way of doing it that’s empathetic and kind and clear, and it doesn’t mean you sort of tiptoe around it to the point that you’re not actually communicating what you’re trying to communicate. But you can do it with grace. You can do it with respect. You can you know you don’t have to shame someone or blame someone. You can do it in a way where they know it might sting. Thing, but they feel like you’re on their side in terms of, well, what can I do about that, right? How can I improve that? How can I work on that behavior? That’s often for me, when I was in corporate for decades, sometimes what was missing was the Okay, so what action can I take? Because I actually love getting feedback, even when it stings, right? Because you can’t grow, as you said, without it. So I think there’s an art to how we can give feedback as leaders and do it in a way that moves things forward for people. So when you I would love to just dig into this, and I know you might not be prepared for this question, but when you talk about colleagues reviewing things to see if it’s clear and kind. Can you give me and our listeners? What are some of the markers you look at to determine if something is clear and kind? Yeah,
Mikaela Kiner 10:51
great question. So I think clarity comes with what is that message that you’re giving to the individual that says, I wish you had done this differently or better, or you did or said x in this situation, y would have been more appropriate. So it to your point, not withholding that kind of here’s what I saw or experienced, and here’s what I’d like you to do differently in the future. I think that constructive piece, like you’re talking about that, that I’m on your side piece, right? So we’re not beating people up. We’re not using value laden language like that was so messy, or you’re always late, right? Like we’re not using these kind of hurtful terms or generalizations. And I think that piece that you mentioned about making it actionable is so key. If it isn’t obvious, I mean, sometimes it’s just sort of obvious, like you said this thing in this meeting. You know, please don’t say that next time it’s not clear. Or if it’s something that requires skill building, or maybe you don’t know, well, does the person have the capability to do this in the way I’m asking, I think making an offer that could be, does this make sense to you? It could be. Do you have any questions? It could even be, do you need support, right in order to do what I’m asking you to do? So I think the other piece that’s often missing from feedback, it is the support or resources that could be, tools, mentorship, training, shadowing, providing an example, because sometimes it genuinely is a skill gap, you know, sometimes it’s just an unchecked behavior, right? But sometimes it’s a skill and it’s not. I use this example. I took piano lessons for five years as a child. I was awful. I am not a musical person. Even more humility. I can’t believe you stuck with it for five years. My parents stuck with it for five years. And as an adult, when I said, you know, I was awful, they agreed with me. And then I was like, You made me do this for five years. The feedback, you know, would have been like, You’re a really bad piano player, but that wouldn’t have made me better. I mean, maybe nothing would have made me better, but, you know, it might have been a different teacher or more practice. Or do you actually enjoy this? So there is a difference between the feedback piece and sometimes the growth or development piece, which might require more of you as the leader or as the manager.
Maria Ross 13:20
Yeah, and I talk about this a lot, that you know, at a certain point when leaders are giving that difficult feedback, or they’re dealing with someone who’s not performing at level, it’s not empathetic to lower your standards, like that’s sometimes the misconception I hear, right? It is empathetic to say, here’s how I can support you and what we can do and a plan we can make to get you to that level. But at a certain point, like you said, they might not be right for the role, and then in that situation, the empathetic thing to do is to help them out of it and to tell them that, you know, look, I know you don’t want to show up and fail every day, like, that’s, you know, it’s like, right now, I’m dealing with this. My son has joined a baseball league in our new home. He hasn’t played baseball in several years. He signed up for a team that’s like, above, like, they’re serious, right? It’s the Masters team, and he only signed up because a bunch of kids he knew were in it. He had his first practice this week, and I told the coach, let me know if this is not the right fit. And he’s like, I don’t think it’s the right not because he’s a horrible person or he can’t eventually be a good baseball player. And so he said, You know, I would love to see him step down so that he feels good and he can actually make progress. And you know, I think that’s the that’s the kind of I can’t think of a better word than benevolence that we need from our leaders to recognize if someone is actually in the wrong role, no matter what you try to do, and their skills and their talents could lie elsewhere. And so our job is to. To help them figure out, are they in the right role? If they’re not, what can we do to support them, whether it’s internally or externally? But it’s not empathetic to try to counsel someone out if we’re seeing that there’s an issue.
Mikaela Kiner 15:16
Absolutely. I mean, I spent my career in HR, so I dealt with a lot of these situations, with the managers and the employees. And one thing I remind managers is often work is hard, even if you’re doing, you know, even if you’re a really strong employee and doing your best, especially at some of you know, the companies where I’ve worked in the past. And so then imagine trying to do that job. If you’re really not skilled for it, you’re struggling, you’re on an improvement plan. It has to be incredibly stressful, and so, you know, I don’t want to be paternalistic about it, but it can be a relief to have that kind person who supports you say, let me help you. You know, we should think and talk about what might be better for you. And I say managers help individuals, help them identify their strengths, help them think about what is the right role, and even make outside connections another when you use the word benevolence, it did remind me of a situation long back at Microsoft, where there was just a great individual. They were struggling in their role. It was a little bit of a change from what they had done earlier, and so they got one of those low performance ratings. But the manager recognized that this person was just talented and in the wrong position. They actually funded that person’s salary for six months to move to a different team and show that they could be successful. And I thought, you know, it’s not coming out of their market, but it’s coming out of their budget. And so, yeah, way of saying, I know you’re in the wrong job, but I believe in you. Not only I believe in you as a person, I believe in you as a Microsoft employee. We just need to find you the right fit. And I mean, that’s really going out of your way, I think, in being extremely empathetic and also smart about you know, I’m going to help the person find this right thing that’s good for them and for the company completely,
Maria Ross 17:10
because you’ve got that talent that can be unlocked somewhere within the organization to help the organization achieve its goals. So I want to kind of add on to this, because I’m sure folks listening might have this question, and I get this all the time in terms of, I want to be a more empathetic leader, but it just takes so much time. So what do you say to your clients that you work with where the obstacle or the objection to being more human focused is that they’re stressed and that they don’t feel like they have time. How do you approach that with
Mikaela Kiner 17:46
them? Yeah, I think often, because of the pace of work, you know that we see happening today, many people are they’re thinking very short term, when they’re thinking about time, when they’re thinking about productivity, when they’re thinking about results, right? So they might be looking at this employee and thinking, oh my gosh, if they can’t do the job I need them to do today, tomorrow, this week. That’s putting me in a deficit. But they’re not thinking ahead to what is going to happen when this person leaves. And now I have nobody in this job, and now my team and I have to put time and effort into hiring, recruiting, training, you know, etc, the next person. And so I, I really believe in this, you know, when it’s the right situation, it is an investment that’s actually very good for the long term, both for the individuals and for the organization. So I really encourage people to think ahead. But the other thing I sometimes hear from leaders that I find interesting is they’ll say, Well, I ended up, you know, I scheduled 30 minutes with this person, and I ended up talking to them for two hours, and I’m thinking, well, there’s a boundary you failed to set there number one, or you did set the boundary by scheduling a 30 minute meeting, but you made the choice yourself not to enforce that, and so sometimes I think we’re almost spending inordinate or unnecessary amount of time just because we don’t have good boundaries. And it’s, you know, the 30 minute meeting was probably sufficient for whatever you needed to do in that moment to support that person, and you didn’t need to go two hours. Maybe they the other individual wanted to you didn’t have to do it, and you’re not necessarily doing them a favor, especially if now you’re regretting it and saying, Oh, I’m pouring all this time into the situation. Totally
Maria Ross 19:34
I mean, you, you could have taken control of that situation and said, It sounds like we have more to talk about. Let’s schedule another time, which is also good. I mean, I think that’s where you know it intellectually, it makes sense to us to think about the long term investment, but I also have great empathy for those that are just completely overworked and stressed. It’s a challenging market right now. You know job security? Security is a little shaky to actually do it, to actually go I’ve got nine things I have to do today that I won’t even be able to get done if nobody disturbs me. So I have so much empathy for the like, where am I going to find the time and so do you have any tips or best practices you can share on how somebody can make that burden a little easier for themselves? Yeah, I think one is,
Mikaela Kiner 20:23
I mean, hopefully we all have some degree of control over our own schedules, and so leaving buffer times blocking, knowing, especially in a management role, things are going to come up that are unexpected and that are urgent, time sensitive, so building in some buffers into your day or week. It’s funny, we we went on a walk together with a team and some colleagues, and one of my colleagues, who also owns a business, was saying that she’s been really working hard to schedule less in her day so that when a team member reaches out, she’s not feeling frantic, and she’s just like, I’ve got you let’s, you know, let’s talk this through. Let me help you with what you need. So I, again, I I’m cautious about talking about how much control we have over our schedules. I know there are things that are going to be there, there are things we have to get done, but to the degree that you have some power over that and the ability to make some of your own decisions, I’m a big believer in buffers. I same block time my calendar. I’d schedule a 90 minute lunch that I don’t usually take the whole lunch, but it gives me some, you know, flex time to catch up on things, or, yeah, all that comes out of the blue. Or, if not, and I really have the time, I can eat lunch, damn, take a walk or listen to a podcast. So you know, that’s my best suggestion for those cases. I know it’s not easy. I think also planning for it before the moment it happens. Right in the moment. It’s going to feel frantic, you feel busy. It’s hard to think on your feet. But if we can plan ahead, as we look at our day or our week and just know, here are the buffers. Here’s the time I’ve set aside and remind ourselves, like, especially as a leader, yeah, this is what I’m here for. I mean, helping my team is going to give me exponentially more time and capability to get things done than just me filling up my schedule totally.
Maria Ross 22:16
And that, you know that, quite honestly, that is the job of leading. So it’s almost like maybe you need to look at what’s on your plate to determine why is there so much doing and not so much interacting or relationship building or supporting that which actually is the job of a leader. We have to get beyond this, this notion of a manager versus a leader, right? And we manage tasks, but we lead people. And so if you really do see yourself as a leader, if you’ve got a team, it’s, I know it’s hard, because, I mean, I’m that type of person, too, where it’s like, oh, it’s just easier for me to do it myself, right? So I get it, but we just, we have to do that, and it’s so schedule. I should do a whole episode with some time management expert on schedule wrangling, because I know how hard it is for me, like just, you know, moving to a new place and having commitments that I didn’t have when I initially set all these things in my calendar for the next couple of months. You have to kind of get ahead of it and just go, You know what? I’m going to block out the time from now knowing that I already, you know, maybe it’s a day for me. I have, like, a day that I try to take that’s like, I block for space. I actually have it in my calendar. But before I did that, I already had things booked, but I just went ahead and made the commitment to put it in my calendar so that at some point it would get clear, at some point that Wednesday would be open, you know, but if you don’t take the action now, moving forward, it never will, right? There’ll never be that perfect time. So it’s
Mikaela Kiner 23:49
so true. I mean, I’m a real fan. We do meeting free Fridays, and of course, you know, everyone’s an adult. I mean, if they need to have a meeting, but we don’t schedule meetings internally, and we strongly encourage people to take the meeting free. I even know when someone you know, sometimes it is a new client, and that’s the only time to meet. Or maybe it’s like tomorrow, I’m just going for a walk with a colleague, so there will be a little work in there. You know, it’s not real work, but if my day had been jammed, there’s no way I could go for a walk tomorrow morning. So I’m a huge fan of picking a meeting free day. The other tip I heard that I really liked, I can’t remember the company, but they block their Monday mornings because I know I’ve done this all my career, where I just want to do that little extra bit of catch up on Sunday night, because I don’t want to start my week behind. I want to know what I’m getting. Know what I’m getting myself into. But they’re smarter than me. They do it Monday morning, and so we have a meeting free, and they all have a few hours to just settle back into the work week. And I think some of those tactics, and especially if you’re doing it as a team or a company, because then everyone’s on the same page, right? So it’s not like I can have meeting free Friday, but if I’m in a big company, no one else does, and they’re constantly inviting me to meetings. I mean, that’s gonna be a little bit trickier, right? If you can establish some of these healthy norms around creating time and space, then I just think it makes everybody’s week so much easier, and it’s
Maria Ross 25:19
very empathetic, actually. Speaking of which, I want to hear your story about how two high empathy, high EQ executives became some of your all time favorite clients. Can you tell us that story and tell us a little bit about what they did and what you know if there was a transformation there for them, like, what happened? Tell us that story.
Mikaela Kiner 25:42
Yeah, well, and I’ll name them, because I always love to name people who do great things. So the first He’s now retired, but he was my client in really, my first HR job back at Microsoft, and rose to become the CMO. So it’s a lovely leader named Chris capicella, and he was just kind. He was humane. I’ll never forget, you know, I was in early one morning. I was doing some work. I was rubbing my head, you know, I was probably stressed about something I was looking at. And Chris rode the bus to and from work every day. And so he, you know, Kevin, this entrance, is walking down the hall past my office to get to his office. He saw me doing this gesture, and he actually stopped and came into my office to ask if I was okay. And I, you know, for a senior, busy senior leader to a very junior HR person at the crack of dawn, I just thought, what a kindness that was and, yeah, just so humane. I think it really stood out to me, especially early in my career. The other thing Chris would do that I’ve always admired this behavior. So if anyone brought up something that was confusing or a new idea, or, you know, whatever, something that required explanation. He would get this really great, relaxed body language, and he would sit back in his chair, and he would say, Tell me more. Mm, hmm. And it was that openness and that invitation, and so I mean, as the HR person, sometimes there were some outlandish things that were said or suggested or posed, and he was just so neutral about so welcoming to make sure he was hearing and understanding before passing any kind of judgment. Well and so
Maria Ross 27:29
curious. Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. And tell me more is always the magic three words I tell people when they’re in any whether they’re in a conflict or a conversation, is get the other person talking so that you can understand where they’re coming from, you can understand their context, you can see what they’re seeing. And so I that’s just my best strategy, especially if you’re first I mean, not in that situation where someone’s just explaining something to him, but if you’re in a contentious situation, and your instinct is just to go, No, I’m just going to tell you why I’m right and you’re wrong. First stop, take a beat and ask them to tell you more, and then let them talk, and then ask them again, and then maybe ask them a third time. And it will just lower that temperature in the room, but it will also enable that they’re being heard and that you’re actually having the same conversation, if you can reflect back what they’re saying. So those three words are highly underutilized, and they are like magic words in any conversation. I love that. Okay, so who’s your second
Mikaela Kiner 28:32
my second one was an Amazon client named Jerry hunter. He used to be in charge of corporate, it and then infrastructure back at Amazon, he’s now, I believe it’s the COO at snap or Snapchat, such high empathy. You know, I just found he was kind. So again, he did not withhold, you know, the feedback. He didn’t hold back on challenging people, I feel like whether it was if you’re making an assumption or if people possibly weren’t doing their best. So he really challenged people. He really had a high bar, but he was kind, he was respectful, and as his HR partner, I loved working with him, and he invited me in to do, at times, some, you know, really challenging work together on the organization and on, do we have the right roles and the right people in the roles? And I learned so much from that, you know, as an as an HR person, when I was in organizations, what I loved were the leaders who were so far ahead of the curve that I could learn from what they were doing, and then kind of recommended plant seeds with my other clients. And so he definitely enabled that. And I remember a particular like a difficult employee relations situation that had required me to do. An investigation. And he just, he challenged me, very respectfully, to say, Are you sure we’ve looked at everything? Are you sure we’ve talked to the right people involved? Like, are you sure? I mean, do you have a good feeling that what these people are telling you, that they’re being honest, right? Because this was, you know, stakes are high in situations like that, and I so I didn’t feel dismissed. I didn’t feel like he was, you know, questioning my capability. What I knew was that his goal was to make sure that we did this correctly and that we were thorough, so that we could be as sure as as humanly possible, that the right outcome was there, both for the person who had raised the concern and the person that they raised the concern about. And I think that that ability to respectfully challenge, yeah, it can be rare. Yeah,
Maria Ross 30:56
there’s a great book, as someone I interviewed on the podcast, Justin Jones Fauci wrote a book called I respectfully disagree, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, but it’s really all about his subtitles, how to have difficult conversations in a divided world. But he is all about looking at disagreement differently, that it’s not necessarily something to be avoided, it’s inherently it’s not bad. It’s how we disagree that causes the challenges, right? So I just love that, because that’s about being able to disagree and build bridges, rather than everyone thinking in a homogenous way, because that’s not going to help our organizations either. We’re going to miss opportunities. We’re going to miss risks if we all think the same way. So learning that art and that science of how to respectfully disagree. I mean, these are the things that we should be investing in, in professional development, right? It’s strengthening empathy, it’s how to respectfully disagree, it’s how to communicate, have hard conversations like that’s the stuff I remember. I was promoted to a management position when I was like, 23 at a major at, you know, at a consultancy, at a management consultancy, and I was so unprepared for how to actually manage someone. There was no, I mean, there was tons of training that we got in other areas, like effective communications and how to do presentations and but not the stuff that mattered in terms of our day to day and how we were going to interact with people. And I remember just being terrified of the person that I one person in particular that I managed, because everything was a confrontation, and I’m sure I contributed to that, but I was just, I was scared to give her feedback, because and then when I did, it was met with a backlash, like, there was just, there was no common ground we could have. And when you’re that young and you’re trying to manage people, when you can barely manage yourself, it’s just, we’re just setting we’re setting people up for failure, and we’re setting our organization up for failure, and that’s why it I know the companies have to go through cost cutting exercises, but man, don’t cut the professional development. Don’t cut these things that are so important to how the people that you actually have in house are going to effectively, whether they’re going to effectively and function at their optimal level. And I almost feel like organizations, I’m getting on my soapbox here, and I know you’re I’m preaching to the choir. But like this idea that, like, we’re gonna cut costs by cutting the support and the Lifeline and the learning and the growth of the people we still have in our four, you know, metaphorical four walls, just doesn’t make any sense to me, when the reality is, they should be shoring up and optimizing, especially if they’ve gone through a major layoff, they should be spending money optimizing the people they have left so that they can perform in an organization that’s just been, you know, decimated. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.
Mikaela Kiner 33:59
It’s so true, you are preaching to the choir, but I think it’s interesting, you know, I mean, last check, I did something like 69% of new managers never receive any training whatsoever. So I mean, you’re talking about some really poor skills around, you know, building trust and communicating and managing conflict. I mean, there are so many people who just they don’t, they don’t get anything, which is frightening. And then when you juxtapose that with the statistics around you know what percent of people leave because of their manager? And there was a great article I saw in the last year or so that the manager has as much or more impact on employees well being often as they’re the therapist, the spouse, etc. So we should never underestimate the role a manager plays. And if you you know anyone who’s ever had a manager, which is most of us, it makes complete sense. I mean, that is the person that you’re interacting. With the most frequently you’re receiving feedback. They have that power over your performance, rating, your compensation, your opportunity to take on new and challenging projects, to get promoted. They are your experience of the company to a really high degree. And I think we just we do ourselves such a disservice when we under invest in managers, because for most people, they represent the organization well.
Maria Ross 35:29
And the managers really are the linchpins. They’re the ones that are going to create change. They’re the ones that are going to make sure work gets done. And so if you’re looking at it purely from an a bottom line level, it just makes no sense to take, you know, to not support your most valuable assets in a way that you would, you know, make sure that all your printers are working and your computers are working and your networks are working. It just doesn’t make any sense. And I think it’s just, you know, the change in the way work gets done over the last few decades, over the last, you know, it’s still, no matter how much AI or technology we have, it’s still about our people.
Mikaela Kiner 36:07
So, very much, very much. Yeah, I love last thing I would go, last thing I would say about that is when companies under invest, and especially if it’s in, you know, short term increments, it’s due to the economy, or it’s due to earnings, revenue, whatnot, they pay for it, and then they have to also make up for it. And so they just end up doing all this remedial work, but all of the impacts have already happened. I mean, you can’t sort of go backwards and make it as if every person that you know received better management. So, yeah, it’s another one of those short term there’s no real savings there. No,
Maria Ross 36:46
there’s not all right. Well, this has been such a great conversation. I love where this led us, and I’m so happy to amplify you and your work at reverb. We’ll have all your links in the show notes, but just tell folks that are on the go where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work.
Mikaela Kiner 37:01
Yeah, the very easiest is LinkedIn, and I am a frequent poster, so who knows what you might see
Maria Ross 37:09
out there? Great. And we’ll have that LinkedIn link in the show notes as well. And then the company is reverb people.com Yes, correct. Awesome. Well. Mikaela, thank you so much for this great conversation and sharing your insights with us. It’s been I could probably talk to you another hour, I say that of all my guests, but I know I gotta let you go. So thank you so much for being here today. Likewise, Maria, it
Mikaela Kiner 37:31
was really great to be here and just yeah, thank you for bringing this topic forward so important.
Maria Ross 37:37
And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please follow 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. You.