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David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW: The Unshaming Way

There’s a powerful psychological state that can paralyze us, interfere with effective relationships, block our empathy, and cause us to inflict harm. It’s called shame.
Today, David Bedrick shares what shame is, how it’s created, and its connection to trauma. Some say shame keeps us humble, but David shares why we don’t need shame because it’s not the same as embarrassment or regret. We unpack why shame is not a feeling but a psychological state that can leave you numb – and how you can instead create a space of safety and security within yourself. David shares how we can snap out of a shame spiral in the moment and also gives insights as to why some people may feel a need to shame others. David makes us think about our need to “solve,” or pathologize as he puts it, shame, anger, depression, and the like rather than process root causes to make meaning. He offers an intriguing thought experiment to try to break yourself of this tendency! Lastly, we touch on how to unashame conflict and dialogue through conflict in a more productive way.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • Shame is different from embarrassment or humiliation. Shame is a psychological state that may have feelings associated with it. 
  • Negative feelings are not bad – they can even be helpful for understanding our behavior and lead us to making an action toward repair. 
  • Say the criticisms in your head aloud from the perspective of the negatives – it gives you a chance to respond and advocate for yourself. 

“If shame enters my system, the only thing I care about is removing the bad experience I have in myself. I don’t care about you. I care about being low. In the fully shame psyche, you don’t exist as a person that matters to me at all.” —  David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW

Episode References:

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About David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW Founder, The Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies and Author of The Unshaming Way

David is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was adjunct faculty at the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland. He is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies, where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of therapists, coaches, and healers and workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. He is a writer for Psychology Today and the author of four books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology; Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change; and You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption. His recent book, The Unshaming Way, has been endorsed by Gabor Mate. 

Connect with David:

Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies: davidbedrick.com 

Facebook: facebook.com/david.bedrick.9 

Instagram: instagram.com/david.bedrick 

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria, 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. There’s a powerful psychological state that can paralyze us, interfere with effective relationships, block our empathy and cause us to inflict harm. It’s called shame. Today, we’re going to unpack what shame is and how it’s not only harmful to your soul, but prevents you from tapping into empathy for others. My guest is David belder, founder of the Santa Fe Institute For shame based studies, where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of therapists, coaches and healers, as well as workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. He’s a writer for Psychology Today, and the author of four books, including his latest, the unshaming way today, David shares what shame is, how it’s created, and its connection to trauma. Some say shame keeps us humble, but David shares why we don’t need shame, because it’s not the same as embarrassment or regret. We’ll unpack why shame is not a feeling but a psychological state that can leave you numb, and how you can instead create a space of safety and security within yourself. David shares how we can snap out of a shame spiral in the moment, and also gives insights as to why some people may feel a need to shame others. David makes us think about our need to solve or pathologize, as he puts it, shame, anger, depression and the like, rather than process root causes to make meaning. And he offers an intriguing thought experiment to try to break yourself of this tendency. Lastly, we touch on how to unshame conflict instead and dialog through conflict in a more productive way. There were so many gems in this episode. Take a listen. David, welcome to the empathy edge podcast to help us unpack all things shame, which is a little bit of a scary topic, I know for some people, but it’s so important in being able to name it and claim it and recognize it so that we can leave room to embrace our empathy. So

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  02:44

welcome to the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here with you.

Maria Ross  02:47

So my first question, as it is for all my guests, just briefly tell us how you got to this work. How did you get to this work in shame? Oh,

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  02:56

well, the first thing is that is a story like for many of us, the gifts that we have, I call it the genius, but on meaning the genius, the spirit of our gifts, is usually woven into our story, the wounded healer. We can call it that. And I grew up in a family of a father who used fists and belts to express his rage. We can call that abuse. That would be the right word, violence. Those would be the right words, traumatizing. That would be the right word. So that’s a real thing, a big deal. And I had a mother who was relatively disempowered. I’m 69 so that was a generation, not that everybody’s empowered today. And being disempowered for her meant I have to act like this is not happening. I have to act like I’m not in a family house, house, sorry, family house with violence in it. I have to deny it and dismiss it. That wouldn’t happen. Your father would never do that. I’m making the sounds of it right, bleeding that she had. I’m not putting her down. That was how she coped. I said, Mom, look what’s happening. He would never do that, even if she was watching the violence. He would say the next day that didn’t happen, you’re getting so upset. Why do you get so angry about things? So in that story, you have two parts. You have a perpetrator of a kind of a violence, a story for someone else, could be a parent or a teacher or a culture or a police officer or a hospital that says you’re a person of color, we don’t think that you have pain. The perpetrating energy could be a system or person, and there’s a mother figure, it wouldn’t have to be a mother. I’m not blaming mothers that says that’s not really happening. Why are you thinking those things? Maybe you’re making things up. Maybe you have an emotional problem, not a violence problem. So when I take in her, that mother, I then deny my experience, dismiss my experience, and I end up with two beliefs that get entered into my body and psyche. What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why am I angry? How come I do it? Why am I said? Said, if maybe I need someone to heal me and make me a better person, a forgiving person, a good person, a not angry person. Or I guess maybe I don’t matter that much because there’s a lot of difficulties, but no one’s taking them seriously. So then I think, well, maybe my views, my opinions, my experiences, don’t matter so much. So when a person walks around with a What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Maybe I don’t matter that much. Maybe I should withdraw and not bring myself out so much. I call that experience, that belief shame. Think of this word. It’s like self annihilating you as you are, and your experience and your hurts and your feelings and your opinions make them go away.

Maria Ross  05:41

Yeah. Well, so that’s such a profound story. And I think what I’m hearing from that is where shame exists is there’s sort of a perpetrator and a denier, and sometimes the denier is external, but it’s sometimes the denier internal as well.

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  05:56

Absolutely, if you they go together. So let’s say you as a woman, identify person. I think you know, right? So let’s say you say I went and I spoke my mind the other day, and then afterwards, I’m thinking of a client, a woman client. Afterwards, she said, Oh my gosh, I probably said too much last night. Why did I say so much? Why did I listen to what’s going on inside the head? What did I do? I really don’t try to do that. I should have listened more. I mean, I think those exact words I may took up too much space. So in that case, she has an internalized oppression, something that says you as a woman should not take up too much space. And if you do, because you had a couple of glasses of wine, you’re going to have to suffer the criticism you should feel really bad about that. Make Yourself Smaller, shrink yourself. Be a nice I’m there for other people, listening. Person, again, lives in her head. So in that case, it’s an outer situation, a social condition, many women have internalized, not all. I’m not trying to generalize well with but I’ve read enough and studied enough to know that that’s true. And then when she goes out and says, Wait a second, Maria, I have my opinion. David, wait a second. I don’t think you’re right. Let me tell you what. Listen and I have some authority. I’m going to speak with some authority and power. She might get shame entered. I’m too talkative, I’m too loud, I’m too much. I shouldn’t be so sensitive to things that point. I’m too much. I’m too sensitive that shame something’s wrong with I’m not just a woman coming into her power, a woman who has every right to speak. I’m a person who’s doing something wrong. I should go get healing. So I’m quote, unquote around that, so I’m less like that. Wow,

Maria Ross  07:32

yeah, there’s so much there. And I think that’s a really great definition, because it’s with that viewpoint of shame. It’s very different from embarrassment and humiliation. There’s just there’s an element of almost these two opposing forces, each trying to get heard within your own head and also externally to you, and you’re trying to navigate those and the feeling you’re left with is shame. Would you actually call shame a feeling or psychological state?

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  08:00

I would call it a psychological state. There are feelings associated with it. But here’s the problem, most people who think about shame and who’ve done great been able to have done great work on that, describe shame as this incredibly painful feeling, but most shame goes with no feeling at all. For instance, let’s go back to that story of that imaginary woman, not only right? And let’s say she says I was so good tonight. I really listened to people, and I didn’t cut anybody off, and I really didn’t push my own point of view. I feel good. So now listen, what’s opera inside something’s operating saying you could feel good about yourself if you shrink, make yourself smaller. Don’t write about intelligence. She’s not talking about saying I had the most painful experience tonight. Your shame is in powerfully operating on whether she’s herself, how she feels it, how she connects with people, how she influences people, whether her intelligence is going to get seen, whether she’s going to feel be invited into people’s workplaces, all kinds of things, but she doesn’t have any apparent negative feelings. Wow, there’s almost that most shame is like that. Most like, oh my gosh, there are oh my gosh, you humiliated me on the podcast. And I’m like, Oh my gosh. But most shame was not like that. Yeah,

Maria Ross  09:16

it almost seems very numbing and paralyzing versus feeling. So thank you for that. You know, as we’re here on the empathy edge, how do you feel that shame impedes or hinders our ability to access our empathy for other people in what ways? How does that manifest? I got almost

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  09:36

fury when you asked me, that’s funny. I didn’t wasn’t expecting that, because it’s such an important question, because there’s an idea that some people have been taught, you need a certain amount of shame, because I should feel ashamed if I do something gross to you, right, right, to a child or to a bunch of people, right? Shouldn’t I feel bad,

Maria Ross  09:59

right? Otherwise, I’m. Sociopath, right? That’s the thing we tell ourselves, yeah, you need shame.

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  10:03

And I think that’s, I understand what they’re saying. I do need some feeling that’s not so pleasant inside of myself, but that’s not shame. That’s like, oh my gosh, embarrassment, or oh my gosh, I feel guilty, or I really care, oh my gosh, Maria, I don’t even know you. When I did that, I feel really bad remorse. How can I I’m accountable? I maybe have to I write a letter into your audience and say that that was me. What can I do to repair those are all appropriate. Oh, David, that was I feel terrible. David, why did you do that? Oh, shit, that was a mistake. That’s not shame, right? That’s appropriate feelings that lead me to make changes, right? Shame. If shame enters my system, let’s say I do something gross to you here, right? If shame enters my system, the only thing I care about is removing the bad experience I have in myself. I don’t care about you. I care about I’m low. I’m glued to my shame

Maria Ross  11:02

existent for me, right? You’re in self preservation at that,

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  11:05

in my feelings. And what do I need to do? Should I lie? Should I change? Should I steal? Should I make something up? Should I make a persona around this genuine empathy for what you went through and that I actually hurt you and it matters to me? There’s no such thing in this, in the fully shame psyche. You don’t exist as a person that matters to me at all. I think

Maria Ross  11:25

that’s so important for us to understand, because we do tend to lump all those things together, and it’s okay to have regret, it’s okay to make a mistake and feel bad about it, yeah. But I think the difference I’m seeing is that when you feel those other things, you can make an action towards repair, versus if you’re in the shame mode, like we said, You’re so much into self preservation, you’re not even thinking about the perspective or the viewpoint of the other person.

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  11:49

Yeah, no, people don’t exist. In a sense, the shame is self annihilating. So I’m not really here. I can’t really, I can’t, for instance, I won’t be able to think and explore. So, David, you said this rough thing with Maria. By the way, everybody, I have nothing rough to say.

Maria Ross  12:05

These are all scenarios. We also know.

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  12:09

What was in you, David, when you wanted to say that? Well, it was a bad thing. I was a terrible thing. I I know. But what was in you Was there an energy that you felt held back about Was there some way that you need to express something? Maybe then you’ve only belonged to Maria. Let’s get to know something about what you did not like you should be punished. I mean, let’s get to know maybe you did something. Sometimes I give my wife, married for 20 years, Lisa, sometimes I give her a little I’m calling it a jab, not a physical jab, a couple of sarcastic jokes, right? I do that more than two times. He says, So, David, what’s going on? That was the third little

Maria Ross  12:45

the third little nudge, yeah. He says to me, are

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  12:49

you taking me on a guild trip? Should we? Should I pack my bags? He says, I give her a little guilt, right? So, yeah, I’m full of shame. I’m just like, I didn’t do that, or she’s invisible. But then I can actually say, Huh, what did I do? I did the bad thing. I’m a bad person, I know, but what’d you do? Right? Something had happened the other day. I never talked to her about that’s really been upsetting me. So now I’m actually doing a deeper repair. I see what’s going on, but I have ability to reflect and think maybe there’s something in me that I needed to deal with, yeah, with her, not by making her feel guilty and giving her indirect jabs, right? Supporting that, but I’m like, maybe there’s a reason. Maybe there was something in me, huh? Maybe I should get to know myself deeper, not trying to figure out how to censor myself and impress myself, right? You get to know myself well, that’s,

Maria Ross  13:35

I mean, that’s also like we talk about that a lot on the show as well, is like that sense of emotional regulation, where you can sort of look objectively at your behavior and have the presence to say, Hmm, what’s the root cause of that? That’s why do I feel this way? I do this a lot. You know, I have a 10 and a half year old son, and we don’t, I don’t always have the best interactions with him, and when I don’t, I kind of think back, like, what contributed to that? Was it just that he was being mouthy, or did I just get off a really difficult client call? Yeah, and I’m feeling bad about myself, right? And that’s coming out as aggression. It’s coming out as disappointment, it’s coming out as whatever negative emotion that is. But you know, I’m not a saint, and I’m not able to do that all the time. Sometimes you’re in that frame of mind where you can’t get objective about the root cause. So I love what you’re saying here, that even when we’re in, you know, a lot of people call it the shame spiral. But if we can catch ourselves somehow and be able to have that objectivity to say what’s actually really going on for me, what do you find works well to help someone sort of, you know, if there was, like, a magic wand or a magic snap you could do to get someone out of that shame spiral in the moment? What kind of techniques work in

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  14:47

the moment? In the moment, the person needs what I call it, unshaming Witness. Now, what is that? And they may not have that inside, because sometimes I’m just filled with my negative feelings and I don’t they take over, yeah, even though I’ve worked with the. About 35 years, there are moments I don’t have it. I’m don’t know myself in certain spots. So But if a person could get inside or outside, or even a I look at James Baldwin picture a dead author or a tree or a spirit or a goddess or a friend or something inside them, if a person can ask themselves, whatever I’m feeling and wrestling with. What’s it like in my body? That means, stop the cursive, the thoughts, the patterns that what should I do? What should I do? What’s it feel like in my body, even for four minutes when my stomach is tense, in my energy, and if you could move a little bit with that energy, let your arms swing. Curl up. You leave the ideas about what you did and didn’t do wrong and what’s wrong with you, and you enter what I call like a pure experience. This is what’s going on for me. I just want to curl up and hide. Go ahead, curl up and hide. A minute of that helps, because you’re outside of shames idea. You’re just having your own experience that’s really deep and not easy. It’s not easy for people only because we don’t do it. It’s not hard. It’s just that, right? We’re out in practice, yeah? When I’m up and I’m upset about something, I should just go feel in my body, I’m thinking, I’m trying to figure myself out for six hours. You know? Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t help. The other thing that many people need, but not all, is if there is some kind of inner criticism going on, oh, I really screwed up. I can’t believe the way I did it, that with that podcast. Oh, why didn’t you do that? That’s like a bunch of right? Somebody’s beating me up. You could say, right? I’m not just thinking I could have done that better. I’m thinking, Oh, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do that. I should have done this. How come I didn’t do this? I don’t look look in the mirror. I don’t like this about myself. If that kind of criticism is going on, if a person can say those criticisms out loud as if they are the critical person, they would really screwed up. What are you doing? This was not the right shirt to wear. I just had noticed my eyes were seen it. This is not the right shirt to wear. What is this on video? If you can say it out loud with the energy of it, and you didn’t do this, right? And you should suffer if you can say those things out loud so your own ears can hear it. Writing it down is not sufficient, right? Need to hear like, oh, that’s going on inside of me. Yeah, yeah, you could respond to advocate for yourself, even if that was two minutes and two minutes, really helps people a lot. But isn’t that,

Maria Ross  17:25

you know, we talk about how we talk to ourselves, Is that helpful to say that out loud to ourselves and be the narrative that we’re continuing to listen to

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  17:35

as long as you’re saying it from this place, I’m gonna now say what that critical voice is saying, got it? I’m not saying I’m a screw up. I’m a screw up. I’m a screw up. That would be good. But David, you’re a screwed up. I’m talking as if I’m talking to him. Yeah, they grew up. You did this wrong. And why didn’t you get more sleep last night? You knew you’re going to be tired, yeah, and then I’m going to be like, because something is going to start noticing that figure, that orientation, that Father, that that mother system, that’s mother, that police system, that racial system, that talks to people about how with their beauty that lives inside of me, that awakens people to the level of violence that’s actually happening. And the level of violence is enormous. It’s not minor. It’s not like, why could I add a nicer hair today? It’s much more brutal, you know, listen to those and say those things. So I want to

Maria Ross  18:25

ask you about, you know, kind of thinking about this, also from a professional context and a work context. What do you think is behind the need for some leaders who embrace really dictatorial approaches to leadership? What is it about those people, especially those leaders, and I’ve experienced some of them, where they have a need to shame others. What’s going on there? Like it’s not even about correcting their performance, it’s not about supporting them. It’s something much more intentional, about embarrassing them, shaming them, calling them out relentlessly on an email that’s copied to everyone in the department. That type of behavior, what do you think is behind that need to shame others? Is it shame internal and they’re just trying to direct it externally, like what’s going on there?

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  19:16

It’s a really deep question. I’m just taking a second and feeling because I have ideas, which I’m happy to say, but it’s a deep question. It’s like, it’s part it’s one of the questions of our world, because of the cycles of violence and the denial of the violence. Well, let’s do this to these people, and then it’s justified. I don’t know, justified or not, but whatever, there’s so much denial dismissal. When I said my mother was doing about the level of violence in the world, that makes it difficult to have empathy, regardless of what my position is, about Middle East, about Russia, have some empathy about the level of violence that’s actually happening, right? Coral Reef, or maybe that’s for what’s happening. Bring to the forest, whatever it is, the capacity to have that, to see that. So I don’t have the answer, but I know certain things that are true enough because I see them enough, right? The cycle of vengeance is incredible, in part, because of unprocessed trauma. I’m not saying everything is unprocessed trauma, but if you look through the lens of understanding trauma, it will help you understand what’s happening. So if I’m a person who’s been really hurt by, let’s say my father, just as that example, and there’s no processing that I haven’t processing mean I haven’t felt how painful it is. I haven’t told the story a little bit. I haven’t, maybe found some of the anger I have that I can now use in my life, that I need to publish a book I don’t know anything about, that it’s all inside of me. When a person is traumatized, they get locked into an experience of themselves. The experience is I’m a smaller person, relatively powerless, less less powerful up against bigger forces. There is David. He’s seven, and he’s got a father who’s 200 pounds and angry. I’m a little person relative to that power. When that happens, I am out of touch with the power I have. Now I enter an experience with somebody who criticizes me if I don’t know anything about that, or unprocessed that, David experienced himself as a seven year old with a big power. Not I’m a 60 year, nine year old man who’s published books, who is a lawyer, who’s test students. I’m not only that, I’m not putting it down right. I’m not only that, that little one wants to feel powerful because he doesn’t and he ought to feel more powerful, right? And say, No, people will listen to me. I can cry and it matters. My sensitivity matters. I’m I can do something about that now, that little one in me, if he’s dominant, takes over the scene. I’m not saying he’s been he needs all the help I can give him, right? He might put you in a place where you feel smaller and down, and that is somewhat satisfying. I’m not saying it’s deeply resolution and satisfied, but it’s somewhat satisfying because I feel bigger and I want to feel bigger and I ought to feel bigger, and, yeah, I need to feel bigger. This is not the way to do it, right,

Maria Ross  22:18

but it’s retaliatory. It feels good in the moment to kind of express your power, even if it’s in a negative way. And it’s really interesting, because I’ve been doing this work for several years now, specifically on empathy, but for a long time, was in corporate environments. I have my own business, and I think back to leaders and bosses I had who were not empathetic, who were and I’ve said this before on the show, and I don’t use the term lightly, psychologically abusive, and I wish I knew then what I know now. And I might have gone into their office and been like, are you okay, right? Like, what just happened back there? Yeah. Are you okay? And just to see the reaction, just to see what would happen if you stopped giving them something to push against, yeah, how the response would go?

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  23:10

So many people would get moved by that. And then there’s going to be some percent. I don’t know what the percentage? I don’t have statistics, right, right, right, like 1015, I don’t know. I’m making up numbers. The people thought this is not based on research, but some percent of people will not be satisfied by anything other than I want to feel this way bigger than other people lord it over them for a period of time. And groups do that, will do that. And how do we interrupt that cycle? As a Jewish person. You know, I’ve studied Jewish history, German history. When a country gets crushed, World War One, Germany had such a disempowered, crushing kind of experience, it should be shocking to any psychological minded person that something could rise up that feels really big and powerful. I’m not putting that down. People do that and all over the place, right? So here are the the Nazis are the example. These examples in five me at times. And

Maria Ross  24:07

yeah, sadly, we have lots of examples we could we could point to. Then

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  24:11

something rises up. What’s going to happen with that? How do we bear witness to that? Do we want to crush them again? I want to stop it. That’s for sure. Let’s stop it. That boss, if they can’t wake up, let’s police them. If someone’s going to hurt some child, let’s police child, let’s police them. Let’s block them up. But what does it look like to make a longer term systemic change? How do we look at those things in a way that brings some kind of healing? That stuff has shifted? Now, I’m powerful. You think you’re powerful? Now I want to be the one who’s powerful. That’s good. I want to feel powerful, but the cycle, yeah, is not sustainable. Yeah.

Maria Ross  24:41

So I want to get to, you know, your book The unshaming way. And I know, oh my gosh, wrote a book. Hey, I want to talk a little bit about, I want to talk a little bit about that method. And maybe we don’t, I mean, we don’t have a lot of time left, but I just want to give people the high points, because I want them to check out the book. Mm. But what are some of the foundational pillars of the unshaming way that you can share with us today?

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  25:04

The foundational pillar, given what I’m saying, is inside of people, most people, there’s something I call a shaming witness, that means something happens, and you think, what should I do? What did I do wrong? How do I correct that? I call that pathologizing. I look at myself as having a an illness may be too strong. I’m depressed. How I can go away? I’m angry. Go away. I’m a procrastinator. How do I make my procrastinate? I’m eating too much ice cream. How do I stop eating so much ice cream? Whatever that thing is, we quickly say, How do I not do this? How do I change that experience? That’s the way almost everybody thinks. And for good reason I want to, I don’t sleep as much well as I would like to. I would somebody could help me sleep more. I want to do that. How do I solve it? Sounds great. So, and we live in a world that’s like that. And healing, what people think of as healing, is like that. But what that doesn’t do is say, Oh, you’re depressed. What’s your depression like? Oh, you’re angry. Show me some of your anger on the way you might need that. Oh, you don’t sleep. What do you if I wrote on social media, I don’t sleep a lot, I would get lots of suggestions. Empathy. Oh, David, I’m sorry. I get lots of suggestions. Have you tried this? Have you tried this? Tea? Have you tried Have you exercised more? We

Maria Ross  26:16

go into advice giving mode because we want to take your pain away. And I talk about this, when we talk about empathy hijacking, where someone shares an experience with you and you say, Oh, I know exactly how you feel, because the same thing happened to me. And here’s what I did, and you should do this and this and this, and all of a sudden it’s not about you anymore. It’s about me. I’ve decentered the narrative. And so that sounds like

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  26:39

I love that. Sorry. I’m interrupting my knees. Yeah,

Maria Ross  26:43

no, I mean, sounds very similar, that we almost empathy hijack ourselves at times where we don’t want to let ourselves feel the feeling or deal with the issue, where we instantly jump into problem solving mode, and you’re calling that path pathology, apologizing, apologizing. Thank you. I apologize.

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  27:02

Something’s wrong with me, yeah? Like, what? How do I fix it? Right? That’s so brilliant. I love what you said, empathy, hijack. I never heard that term. That’s what. And then self, with your calling, self, hijacking, empathy hijacking, that’s, I call that shame, yeah, okay, not saying that. I’m not the right word. I’m saying no, I like it language that’s well, let me say this self empathy hijacking is a shaming act, because it this is me from my own experience. It’s not interested in my own experience. So then unshaming would have to say, let’s go back to the example of me being up at night. Elm would say, almost nobody ever what’s it like when you’re up at night? What like is that something very fundamental, like, if you want that empathy, you have to know what your empathize. What’s it like? Are you nervous? Are you enjoying yourself because no one’s because you’re in the dark and no one’s Are you finally get to play? Are you Instagram and just looking for videos that interest you, and you don’t get to do that in day because you’re working really hard? Yeah, going, are you all the pains and traumas coming up that you didn’t get? Like, what’s actually happening there? We don’t know.

Maria Ross  28:08

Yeah, I love I want to give all my listeners a little an invitation, a little thought experiment around this, in that the next time someone’s sharing something like this, whether they’re expressing a problem that they’re having, or an emotion, you know, frustration, anger, fear, shame, stop, take a pause, take a breath and ask them what it’s like, you know, especially in the advice giving mode we’re always in. So someone’s talking about, I don’t feel I feel like I’m losing touch with my child. I feel like they’re distancing themselves with me, instead of jumping into all the assessments of what’s happening, what what’s that like? What does that feel like? What does that look like? So that’s a little thought experiment for everyone that’s listening to us today, just to practice that that’s amazing. What do you find is the reaction to that? Where does that lead? Does that lead to the person then actually processing what’s going on for them because they’re being asked that question,

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  29:03

yeah, they begin to process and find, I’m calling intelligence, something meaningful inside. But here’s the thing that I know, most people don’t know how to answer that question in a deep way, because, not because we’re not psychologically minded and developed, because no one ever said, Oh, you, you’re six years old. You said, Daddy, I have a headache. Oh, is it a pounding headache? Or is it sharp? Or it’s like a pressure on your head? Is it making you dizzy? You want to close your eyes and you’re nauseous? That like, that would be like, more like a migraine. Or is it like piercing in your eye, like no one’s if if people don’t, oh, you’re sad. What’s your sadness like? Oh, is it like this in your body? Are you feeling heavy? Do you want to scream? Like, those are different, right? One sadness is like, one of the moment wants to scream and yell, the other part wants to fall down on the floor, like, and because, in that you could do that with a child, you don’t have to have, like, a psychological degree. Yeah, do that. But. We’re not used to being asked that, so we don’t have that equipment. So most of the time, when I say that, the people I have to slow down, what’s it like? And they still say, Well, you know, it’s anger is bad, and I’m angry. And I’m like, I know. And then where is the anger in your body at the moment? Just, is it in your throat? Is it in your fingers that are curled up underneath you. Put your awareness on that body part and just hang out and feel that, not as a was a word, just entering the body, the soma, somatic experience. I use that term, the Levine he uses that term. What I mean by is the experience of the body takes us out of that pathologizing so many people need to be led into. What’s it like to have a feeling in my body? I don’t know. I have a bunch of words.

Maria Ross  30:51

Yeah, this is the thing you know we talk about again, kind of going back to being a parent. These tools I’ve learned apply to leadership teams as well as parenting, but this idea of as my son, when he was very young, was helping him build his vocabulary of what the emotions were, what the words were, and helping him understand, are you know, are you sad or depressed, or are you angry? Are you bored? Like helping him figure out when he has a feeling, how do I name that feeling and the shades of gray that exist in all of those different feelings that you can have, right? You can not feel good, but is it because you’re sad, you’re angry, you’re frustrated, you’re hopeless, like, what are those things? And it was so important to give him that language. But you know, we’re raising kids in a different time, and when you and I were younger, nobody talked about that. I mean, you just felt what you felt, and no one explained it to you, and you didn’t dissect it, and you just moved on. You know, since you

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  31:49

got sent to a medical doctor, or you got sent to a medical doctor, know what to do.

Maria Ross  31:53

I want to ask this question as we kind of wrap up, which is really, really important one, and it was intriguing one that you had brought up with me, but

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  32:02

level your questions, by the way, and your insights. So thank you. But go ahead. How do we

Maria Ross  32:06

Yeah, how do we unshame conflict? Because, as we know, the workplace teams that are brought together, very diverse teams that are brought together depending on your family. You and I are both New Yorkers. We don’t shy away from conflict. Not everybody is raised that way. So how do we how can we unshame conflict? Because we need a healthy amount of conflict in order to make sure that we’re hearing and getting different perspectives. And conflict doesn’t have to mean anger. Conflict can just mean disagreement. How do we unshame that? Yeah,

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  32:40

unshaming anything means to allow the thing to show itself in a form that people are going to be uncomfortable with, right? I want to show you my depression. I want to show you my anxiety, etc. So what do we have to how do you unchain conflict? You have to create a space. Somebody has to witness it. Maybe it’s me doing it in with my in conflict with you right here, if I can be in conflict and also keep an eye on the two of us. If not, then we need another person. That other person’s job is not to be on a side or advocate for upside it’s to witness the conflict. How do you do that? Then you say, if you and I are in a conflict, and then somebody should say, David, can you hold on a second? What’s happened? What’s coming out of you. Sorry, we’re gonna get to know that. Maria, if you could say the thing that is bothering you upsetting you as strongly as you can. Now, if it’s in your business, that would have to different places are gonna have to be different, yeah, of course you could say all the way, don’t hold it back. Be as direct as you can, as sharp as you can, as clear as you can. David, I know that’s not gonna be pleasant, but we’re gonna get to you. Please bring it out, even if it doesn’t seem only right to you, yeah, bring it out. And then you kind of go, right, yeah. And then kind of go, and then I help them that with that facilitator helps you do it. Is it this? Are you? Would you want to say this? Also, I want to help you feel like I really said something. And then we have to say to David, what would you come out of you? You have a position of sidedness or whatever? Yeah, let’s make sure that comes up. Now that’s not solving the conflict. Now we have two sides, but now at least we know they are we’re laying them bare. Yeah, I’m not just kind of like, poke you afterwards and I hate you after we’re done. And then we have to learn, like, your word empathy. How do I now, if I’m still some level of satisfaction, that what I what’s in me is out somebody heard it. Maybe it’s not you, maybe it was somebody else who’s here. How can I consider your side, not by trying to be nice to you, but have a little bit of that in me? Can I can I see why someone would even think that around me feel that way? If I can get some connection with a little empathy? Yeah, and you could they. That would be great, but both of those come in. What do you think?

Maria Ross  35:02

Yeah, this reminds me of and I’ll put a link in the show notes. MY CONVERSATION WITH Edwin rush, who ones runs the Center for building a culture of empathy. He’s one of the founding members, and they do a technique called empathy circles that I’ve been trained in that facilitation. He trains people. They train people all over the world for free in this technique, and it’s a really powerful, and I will say painful exercise in active listening, so that people feel heard. And it’s very tightly constructed, and there’s a lot of guardrails around it, but it has enabled him to have these conversations at very, very divisive political rallies in our country over the last few decades. And the goal is not conversion, it’s connection. And so to kind of take this up a level, what I’m hearing you say also is that there doesn’t need to be shame and conflict. It’s just how we’re dealing with the conflict and how we’re navigating our way through the conflict that is making us feel so bad about it. Maybe is that kind of what I hear you saying? I

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  36:01

think it’s exactly true. Okay, we need people who can hold strong things, right? I was involved in a helping facilitate a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. So somebody has to be able to hold how violent I feel how much I want to, like, smash you because of what I’ve gone through. If we try to tamp that down, we should expect it to blow up when I’m not there. But we also don’t want to, but we also want to say, go ahead, kill somebody. I’m not put the gun away. Use your voice anyway. So that holding the heavy conflict is a big deal. I see you’re giving me a little signal of, like, wrapping up and I’m enjoying our conversation. No,

Maria Ross  36:42

I really am, too. And I think these are really important points and that we have to be we have to be cognizant of shame and the role that it plays and how it impacts our ability to connect with each other and to connect, I guess, to connect with ourselves too, both, right, right? Well, we could talk way longer. I know maybe we’ll have you back on have a part two, but so I want to make sure everyone knows about the book The unshaming way. We’re going to put a link to it in the show notes. We’ll have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone who might be on the go right now, can you share the best place that they can find out more about you and your work?

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  37:19

Yeah, Instagram, I have a lot of material there. That’s no cost that you can find there. It’s under David, and my last name is Bedrick, B, E, D, R, I, C, K, David, like bedrock with an i, David, better can if you search Instagram, you would find me. And yeah, we’ll have

Maria Ross  37:37

those links as well in the show notes, so folks can connect with you. David. Thank you so much. Like there were so many insights in this conversation and just different ways to look at this, this was a very timely conversation, I think, for all of us and for not only for our workplaces and ourselves, but for our culture as well. So thank you for the work that you’re doing. We appreciate you

David Bedrick JD, Dipl. PW  37:56

so welcome. Thanks for inviting me and asking me such good questions and and

Maria Ross  38:00

thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a colleague or a friend, 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Pam Fox Rollin: How to Grow Your Group Into a Team

Truthbomb: A collection of people working in the same department, function, or even office are not necessarily a team. And if you want high performance, you need to know the difference.

Today, Pam Fox Rollin shares the important difference between groups and teams – if you don’t understand this, you may be consistently beating your head against a wall! – and the factors that help you turn your collection of people into a truly high-performing team. We talk about how empathy drives team performance and the transformation she has seen when leaders learn to bring empathy to their work. Pam introduces the concept of Conversations for Relationship and why understanding that those exist, even when you can’t hear them, impacts performance. eWe discuss the intersection of teams and communities, and how to build a “team brand” that helps you succeed within your organization. Finally, Pam shares real-life examples from her clients on how to develop empathy and use it wisely while avoiding the pitfalls.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • There are four essential conversations teams must have: Conversation for Possibility, Conversation for Decision, Conversation for Action, and Conversation for Relationship. 
  • If there is low trust, there will be slow change. If you want your organization to change faster, you must build that trust.
  • Take a stand, put a stake in the ground, and give people accurate information about what you’re about and what your purpose is. 

“They needed something more, and that something more is fundamentally two things: one, a shared promise, and two…a commitment to coordinate to fulfill that promise.” —  Pam Fox Rollin

Episode References: 

From Our Partner:

SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.

Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.

About Pam Fox Rollin, Executive Team Coach, and Co-Author, Growing Groups Into Teams

Pam Fox Rollin coaches senior executives and C-suite teams in Silicon Valley and globally. Pam guides tech, biotech, and healthcare organizations to succeed in strategic transformation, executive development, and culture initiatives. With her Altus Growth Partners team, she is co-author of the new book Growing Groups into Teams. Her MBA is from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where she later served as a Guest Fellow in Leadership and Master Coach. Pam is known as an impactful speaker and valuable thought partner to leaders navigating complex change.

Connect with Pam:  

Altus Growth Partners: altusgrowth.com 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pamfoxrollin 

Book: Growing Groups into Teams: Real-Life Stories of People Who Get Results and Thrive Together: growinggroupsintoteams.com 

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Truth bomb, a collection of people working in the same department, function or even office, are not necessarily a team, and if you want high performance, you need to know the difference. My guest today is Pam Fox Rollin, who coaches senior executives in C suite teams in Silicon Valley and around the world. Pam guides tech, biotech and healthcare organizations to succeed in strategic transformation executive development and culture initiatives with her Altus Growth Partners team, she is co author of the fabulous new book Growing groups into teams. She got her MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where she later served as a guest fellow in leadership and a master coach. Today, Pam shares the important difference between groups and teams, and if you don’t understand this, you may be consistently beating your head against a wall and the factors that help you turn your collection of people into a true high performing team. We talk about how empathy drives team performance, and the transformation she has seen when leaders learn to bring empathy to their work. Pam introduces the concept of conversations for relationship and why understanding that those exist even when you can’t hear them, impacts performance. We discuss the intersection of teams and communities and how to build a team brand that helps you succeed within your organization. And she shares real life examples from her clients in how to develop empathy and use it wisely while avoiding the pitfalls. This was such a great conversation. I absolutely loved this book, so take a listen. Hello, Pam, welcome to the empathy edge podcast. We finally made this happen. I’m so excited to

Pam Fox Rollin  02:32

have you today. Likewise, I’m so happy to be here, Maria,

Maria Ross  02:35

it’s so good to have you here, and I am so excited for folks to check out the book, growing groups into teams. There were several aha moments for me in the book, and we’re gonna get to those in a second. But you know, in your work as an executive team coach, as an author and as a speaker, can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this work and why you’re so passionate about empowering leaders. So I’ve been fascinated,

Pam Fox Rollin  03:01

I mean, ever since I was a little kid, how organizations run, and especially whether the people there, like, you know, growing up at the pizza restaurant and the bank, why they looked really unhappy in some places and looked really happy in some places, why policies make sense. And then I would try to figure out, like, Is this place making any money? And the people are working there, like, are they doing okay? And so the social science side of business is always really, really appealed to me. Yeah, I got to write the organization studies major at UC Davis, and then go get an MBA. And I just love to be where leaders are thinking about, how do I make great strategic decisions, and do it work with the organization in a way that has everyone able to make good on the strategy and, yeah, to thrive while

Maria Ross  04:00

they’re doing it. Yeah, I love that. It’s so funny. How many of my guests their story often starts with as a little kid, I was always curious about x. I love this because, you know, there’s people that excel at the actual work and the actual industry, and then there’s people like us that can’t commit to one industry or one type of thing, but we’re just fascinated with how leaders lead and how, for me also, it’s also how, how brands and leaders connect with their employees or connect with their customers and clients. I kind of don’t care what business they’re in, but it’s the actual, the business of the business that I’m kind of fascinated by. So I love to hear that. And as your book, very pointedly, talks about, is doing and leading are different things, and we’ve fallen into this thing where we promote the people who’ve been doing the work the best, rather than the people that can do the work of leading. So I would like to start us off with the big aha I had with the book, which was. There’s a difference between a group or a department or a function and a team. Can you explain to us the difference? Absolutely, and you’re not the only one who is like, wait a minute, two by four to the head. I’ve been noticing this for a long time, but I didn’t have the words to create the difference. So a group are people who are connected in some way, and often in the workplace, because they all report to the same

Pam Fox Rollin  05:26

quote boss, or maybe, as you say, a function. And often they’ll call themselves the team, and that doesn’t make them a team at all. Yeah, yeah. I worked with one executive team that series B, amazing startup. They’re doing so well. They’re growing like crazy, wonderful people. And they said, you know, we haven’t really properly operated as an executive team. We’ve now got some executives and let’s operate as a team. And their act of declaring the team was creating a Monday meeting and opening a Google Doc, and they’re like, Okay, we’re a team now we have a Google Doc that a few months in, what they realized is they needed something more, and those something more are fundamentally two things, one, a shared promise, active making a promise together that creates the team. I love that so the team exists to fulfill something. If they succeed and fulfill it, then they say, Huh, what’s our next challenge? Or are we no longer a team? And we go off and we do other things. The second thing it takes is a commitment to coordinate, well, to fulfill that promise. If you don’t have that, then you’re sort of, you’re a bunch of people who all have the same dream, yeah, maybe you’re a bunch of contractors who kind of operate in a hub and spoke way with the central leader person. But you’re not a team. You’re a group of disconnected people in your silos because you’re not coordinating as you need to fulfill

Maria Ross  07:15

I love that, and you’re making me think back to a prior guest I have. I’ll put a link in the show notes. Carrie Melissa Jones, she is a community and online community expert. She wrote a book called building brand communities, and in her interview, we talked a lot about that concept of people think just bringing their users together makes it a community, or just putting everybody on a group on social media makes them a community. But to your point, I think they have like seven checkpoints of what makes it an actual community. And one of them, which I never thought about before, but it’s kind of linked to your act of creating a promise and commitment to coordination, is they have to have mutual care. There has to be a reason that they actually care about the success of each other. So she consults with a lot of big companies, and they’re trying to turn their user groups into communities, but it doesn’t make them a community to just all be users of the same product, which it sounds like is similar to the premise in the book and to your work, is that just because you’re in all in the same function, reporting with the same boss doesn’t make you same. Yeah,

Pam Fox Rollin  08:19

I’m excited to go listen to that podcast, because one of the things I’m fascinated with is where teams and communities intersect and where they’re actually different. And to me, one of the things that is absolutely fundamental about community is that they commit to be in relationship with each other or be in that care and teams are also in a common care. It is a care to accomplish them. Now often teams are also community. Yes,

Maria Ross  08:53

yeah, if you if you’re lucky, if you have a great team, it feels like a community. And, you know, I’ve talked often on this show about the fact that, you know, when we many of my best friends, I met at work, my I met my husband at work, right like and these are people I’ve had lifelong friendships win with. And it doesn’t mean you have to, you know, we’re both familiar with the work of Shasta Nelson and the business of friendship, and how having a friend at work increases engagement and performance and reduces absenteeism and turnover and all that good stuff. But I guess you know what a great follow up question to that would be is, so what do we do? How do we create that team that has that mutual respect, that mutual promise and that mutual care, and I’m not going to give away the entire book, but what are some of the ways that you’ve seen work, and what are some of the pitfalls that people think they’re building a team, but they’re not, absolutely

Pam Fox Rollin  09:44

so you had said, you know, if by luck, you have that sort of group, and sometimes it happens by luck that you have a group that becomes a team, that becomes a community where you care about each other, but if you don’t want to wait for luck, whatever, so. With the things, right? So this is where your work is just front and center. You bring empathy, because how are you possibly going to build a community that cares about accomplishing a promise and cares about each other without actually being interested in and asking about and observing and looking for, what does each person on the team light up about? Where do they connect with the mission of our organization, with the promise of this team? How are they wired? What makes it a great day for them? And so bringing that kind of noticing and empathy is I love

Maria Ross  10:41

that. What makes it a great day for them. I think just right there, if any of my folks listening can start with asking themselves that question for their team members, I think that would go a long way, because that will drive your decisions, and that will drive your actions on where to go next to make it a place where they feel like they belong and that they’re contributing to the common cause, right? You talk about conversations for relationship.

Pam Fox Rollin  11:06

Can you tell us what those are, and how do they show up at work? Yeah, so we see that there are four absolutely essential kinds of conversations that teams must have. One is a conversation for possibility. And I don’t mean once, I mean many times along the way. What could we do? How could this work? Second is a conversation for decision. Third is the conversation for action. Now you and I have probably both seen lots of teams that rush into action before they’ve had decisions or even considered all the possibility, right? Like you look around and they’ve all scattered to go act and it’s like, did we decision

Maria Ross  11:44

together? What are we doing again? Yeah, exactly. Then

Pam Fox Rollin  11:47

we say, underneath all that, is a conversation for relationship, even if it’s not happening out loud, there is always a conversation going, am I respected here? Do people value what I bring to the team. Do they value who I am as a person? Will people have my back and some grace? You and I have talked about grace with each other as we navigate, you know, being moms and sandwich generation and writers and consultants and singers and all of that, that sometimes we have to have grace with ourselves and each other. So Will somebody on this team have grace with me? And one of the most powerful things that we’ve seen in turning teams around is to point out often to the leaders in the organization that conversation relationship is always happening. You just don’t know what they’re saying, and you’re not in the conversation, so you can’t influence it. Yeah, and then people really get, Oh, right. They’re human. They’re going to be asking, do I matter here? They’re going to be asking all of those questions. And so what if I actually made the time to go for a walk with them, to have coffee over zoom or in person to show that I’ve got some grace while I keep standards. And here’s where your book on empathy dilemma really, really shines. Maria is it’s not a choice between standards and compassion. Both reach. I love it. Are those

Maria Ross  13:20

conversations happening in our own heads? Is that the point?

Pam Fox Rollin  13:24

Often they do, and the conversations for relationship, because we have this mythology that we can’t maybe be humans at work, they are the ones that go most inward. Now, sometimes conversations for decisions also happen in people’s head. People decide things, and we asked, well, when was that decided? I don’t know. I just I decided, I decided, and then I might have forgotten to tell the rest of the team. Oh, yeah, no surprise. We’re rather misaligned right now. So all of these things happen in our heads. Conversations for possibilities happen in our head too. We think through what could we do? I remember one conversation that just really grabbed me, and I wrote about it in the growing groups into teams, in the chapter on executive teams and working with this the top team of a public company, and they had so few conversations with each other, I mean, other than polite and superficial and all of that, and Sometimes not polite, but definitely not deep about their relationships, that they didn’t know that each other wanted exactly the same thing that they wanted. Oh, my goodness, and it took elevating one of them to CEO. I interviewed all the members of the team and came back and said, I think you guys are going to be amazed, but you all said these seven things, and they’re like, No

Maria Ross  14:46

way. Well, we’re so busy running and we’re so busy in the busyness that we don’t take time to work on the business, right? And this is true when I’ve done brand workshops the past, and I what I do with my teams when I do brand engagements is. And brand story engagements is I have each of the folks participating in the workshop fill out a pre work questionnaire, and they’re not allowed to help each other. They’re not allowed to see each other, because I want to see where each of them are coming from, because I have a cross functional team, not just marketing. And it’s so interesting to me where it’s like, okay, all of you described the business you’re in as a company in a different way. Most of you disagreed on who your ideal customer is. They seem like duh decisions that we should have been all talking about, but we’re so busy running at 100 miles an hour that we actually didn’t stop to see if we were aligned. That’s half my value right there, before I’ve even delivered anything just to get them to talk about it in a room, and have, you know, four to six hours where they’re forced to actually have those conversations with each other.

Pam Fox Rollin  15:49

And I love that you put, you know, brand and leadership and strategy together. And for teams, you know your brand is your promise. What is your team’s promise? What are you going to deliver to your organization or your customer, and how are you going to do it? And I love when teams are thoughtful about their brand in the organization. We need the team that we’re masters at connecting other teams in the organization with each other, which is great, because we used to have to do all the stuff because they weren’t talking to each other. But what if we could get them actually connected with each other? Yeah, and so I’ve seen teams have some really distinctive brands that made a difference. There was an organization I worked with where I love these people, but they were sort of the key brains inside this organization, they all had PhDs. They were from different countries. They had different backgrounds, absolutely brilliant humans. I sometimes call them the seven grumpy PhDs, and one of them said nothing in my background has ever prepared me to coordinate with other people. And we were on it, and it just a 15% 20% change in their willingness to coordinate with each other. And think about, how do we want the rest of the organization to understand us? Do we want them to understand us as seven disconnected individuals who just argue with each other and can’t give us a clear answer. Do we want them to understand us as well? Seven amazing individuals who have great backgrounds that combine to form a solution for the organization that’s amazing.

Maria Ross  17:33

So you know what in your experience? And you know, please feel free to share any stories, what becomes possible when the executive leaders that you work with learn to bring empathy to their work. Is that where the team, quote, unquote, starts, or how have you seen it manifest? I have seen

Pam Fox Rollin  17:53

teams start just as the team, even though the executive team has no concept of team. In fact, sometimes they’re the last ones to get on board, because, as you say, they’re cross functional. They’re used to leading in their feed stems, and then they discovered that they’re each playing very, very different games that do not add up to running the organization. For sure, if we waited for all the executive teams to get on board, we might not have amazing teams in the organization, which is why I work mostly with executive teams. So this is going to so shortcut things for your organization. So I think there’s a couple of benefits. One is the rest of the organization gets to see how to function as a team. It’s a model, yeah, and they learn it really fast when their leaders are practicing that and saying, You know what? That impacts, what finance does. Let me just co coordinate with the CFO. I’ll get right back to you. And then they do. It wasn’t some they go have a conversation and say, yep, we’re totally aligned on this. We can move forward. And that’s all. What many people deeper in an organization want is that they can move forward knowing that they’re not wasting their time if they work really hard on something, it’s something that the organization can actually use and move forward. So that’s part of the other thing, and this has never been more important, is the organization can change. You know, we have a saying in organizational development, low trust, slow change. So you want your organization change faster right now? Everybody does. You’ve got to build that trust. And one of the things that that rests on is, and you might have run into the trust chapter in the book, where we lay out a whole bunch of factors that intrude, that add up to trust. One of those things is intentions. Do I understand why you’re here? What it is you’re intending to accomplish, and also your motivations for doing that? Is it because you want to build a legacy in this industry? Is it because you love broken things? Is it because. Because you think we can make so much money doing this? Is it because you think that we are going to make customers so delighted they will never go anywhere else? Right? It can be many things, but if I don’t know what you’re about and why you’re here and what you’re motivated by, if I can’t trust that, it’s going to be really hard for me to say yes to your change initiative, which is inevitably going to make me what change does is takes competent people and makes them incompetent, and then keep cycling through that cycle, because I used to be great at what we did, and now we’re doing something different, and I have to figure it out. Figure out who to talk to get in the groove of how to do it. And so I need to know what’s important to you. And also I need to know that you respect your relationship with me, that we’re in a respectful relationship. Because there are times I’m going to look super awkward. There are times I’m going to do something that it turns out it didn’t work. And I don’t know how we ever create change, do new things and expect it to be perfect. Life isn’t like that. So if we want people to change rapidly, willingly, with a spirit of experimentation, then we need to make sure that the leaders have some empathy and are building trust with folks and people will know have their back. You will come have a conversation that says it looks like that thing isn’t working out. What shall we do now? And how do we make sure that you are, you know, resourced in the best way we can, which may be suboptimal, but in the best way we can to move this forward. Well, it’s just so funny,

Maria Ross  21:52

because I’ve never thought of it that way. And this is why I love hosting a podcast, because my guests are constantly like, oh, truth bombs. We know this in our personal lives, right? You meet a stranger in the park and they say, come here. I want to show you something. You want to know what their intention is, what their motivation is, and who this person is, or you’re not taking a step in that direction Exactly. So why would we think it’s any different when we’re in a workplace is, do we think it’s different because we allegedly know each other, quote, unquote, but if there’s no empathy, then I don’t feel like you really know me, and you don’t feel like I really know you, because neither of us are trying to see each other’s point of view. So it’s another one of those, like schoolyard lessons that applies to the workplace, other than be respectful, be kind, be empathetic and collaborative. It’s you cannot trust someone to take a step or unless they’ve earned that trust. And to your point, I think that is something that we say all the time, but what does that mean? You’re giving us something very actionable, which is communicate and be clear about your intentions and your motivations, be vulnerable and let them know so they can trust you and be willing to take that step. And there’s so many leaders that just think they’re going to take that step, because I’m going to tell them they have to take that step. And some might, you might get some compliance, but it’s short term engagement, and really, how much are they going to adopt the change, and how quickly will they adopt the change with that mindset? However, if you can encourage them to trust you and willingly take that step forward on their own accord, so that’s where I’m really seeing the empathy coming in. Because it’s not only about the clarity pillar of my book, The Empathy dilemma, but it’s also this idea of I need to understand you and your fears and your values so that I can frame this in the right way to make you want to take a step

Pam Fox Rollin  23:55

towards the change. And as you point out in your books, it goes both ways. It’s multi directional, yes, so I need to know, if I’m working for you, that you understand what I’m about and where I connect with the promise that we’re making, and I need to understand what you’re about. And what’s fascinated me as I’ve been doing this for 25 years, what’s fascinated me is that there’s not, like, one right answer or a there’s a few wrong answers, wrong answers. I’m here to screw you all over, sell the company and not fulfill my promises on the back end, right? That’s, I’ve seen it, yeah, wrong answer,

Maria Ross  24:36

yeah. And I’m willing to run over any of you to get there, any

Pam Fox Rollin  24:39

of you to get there. But I, you know, have worked with some leaders who are unapologetically Queen operated, and they’re just like, we are here to maximize my bonus, and along the way, I’m going to make sure we maximize your bonus too. So if you’re ever wondering why I made a certain decision, think what will be my. A bonus at the end of the year. And people follow this person. It’s not like, right? Has to be some, you know, soft,

Maria Ross  25:08

noble, yeah, exactly. This is the thing. It’s just like, brand, take a stand, put a stake in the ground and say, This is what we’re about. You’re either on board or you’re not, but at least you give people the accurate information to make a decision. I have said that even about companies that have done some really awful things with their employees, with their structures, but I’ve always said, well, at least now you know what you’re getting into. They have taken a stand on this. This is who they are. Now you have agency to decide if you are going to sign on for that or if you’re going to not. And so, you know, and for some people, that might resonate for them and say, Yes, I want that too. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be noble. It doesn’t have to be, you know, solving world problems. Hopefully it is. Hopefully businesses are doing something in some way, shape or form. But to your point, it’s about honesty, and it’s about very clearly laying that out. Where do you see, I know what I talk about on this show all the time and in my books, but where do you see with the leaders you work with empathy go wrong or get misused as people lead? What have you seen?

Pam Fox Rollin  26:17

Yeah, mostly the number one ways that gets misused is it doesn’t get turned

Maria Ross  26:23

on at all. It doesn’t get used, right? It

Pam Fox Rollin  26:26

doesn’t get used and it’s not everyone. I mean, I know the best CEOs I’ve worked with are highly empathetic, and everybody in their organization thinks we got the lucky we got the empathetic CEO. But then I’m like, Well, yeah, over there, there’s one too. Over there, there’s one too, but then sometimes notably, there’s not right. The second thing is, people think they’re being empathetic. So I was with a team yesterday in another state, a team of leaders I’ve been working with for a year, and they’re taking on a bunch of change. And we know that design is how you start change, and design starts with that. So our first question is, Who are you designing for? And also, can you design with them, rather than just for them, right? And say what would like, what’s important to them about this? And so the got, you know, one of the leaders was happy to speak up about this, and he said, Well, this this, and this is, is important. And I suppose that important too. Like, yeah, these folks. And I didn’t even have to say there was somebody else in the room who said, actually, what’s important to you? I’m a little closer to these people we’re designing for. And here’s what I think they say. And people were like, Wow, that’s good. That’s really interesting. I never have thought of that. They’re being empathetic, yeah, but not but that’s fine. I have seen this fellow make so many wonderful advancements over the last year that I’m sure he’s going to get there on this too. And this was probably a pretty big wake up call. So sometimes people think they’re being empathetic. They’re not. Then, well, they’re

Maria Ross  28:07

making assumptions, yeah, they’re that’s where I see that’s always Yeah, that’s always the caveat with cognitive empathy, because cognitive empathy is imagining what it might be like for someone else, which is a useful starting point, but you have to vet that, because you’re actually envisioning it from your own experience and your own bias. So you don’t actually know unless you ask.

Pam Fox Rollin  28:29

There was a keynote that I used to give maybe 10 years ago or so, and I was talking about the difference in cognitive empathy, and I found a picture of engineer from I think it was Ford, but I might have the auto company wrong, wearing one of those pregnancy bellies, like those foam bellies, yeah, and seeing that he could fit into the car, and he had a big thumbs up. And I’m thinking, this does not mean he knows what it feels like to be pregnant. Like he’s crying. He’s trying, yeah, I appreciate the effort.

Maria Ross  29:03

But yeah, I’m like, that’s a step beyond. I actually, you know, we need to applaud that, yeah,

Pam Fox Rollin  29:08

but he still might want to connect with actual pregnant people, right when we’re going into the car and seeing if they can reach all the stuff

Maria Ross  29:15

completely, yeah, that, you know, that’s just like, another example of when we talk about, what’s finally getting talked about is that so much of medical research has been done on men and on one or two specific groups of people, and then we expect those medications and those treatments to work on everybody, but we really need to be more inclusive in the medical research area so that we actually understand what the impact is For this group of people versus that group of people could be very, very different. So it kind of reminds me of that, of like, well, we had a proxy for that group of the guy with the pregnancy belly on, which is actually really cute. I’m sorry, that’s actually really funny,

Pam Fox Rollin  29:54

yeah, but I’m thinking, Are there any actual women or

Maria Ross  29:59

any anybody. Spouses, who might be pregnant, who might be willing to just come in and sit in the prototype and just tell us what they think. Yeah, have you ever, you know, just this is a total tangent, but, you know, that’s the thing. I always think when I use a product, or I’m, I’m the recipient of a service, and I and something goes really wrong, and I’m like, did anyone test this? Like, did anyone actually do any consumer testing or user testing on what this experience was going to be like? Because I can’t imagine somebody would do this to somebody else. I find myself thinking that all the time. I don’t know if that’s my my marketing brain or whatever. Well,

Pam Fox Rollin  30:35

and then healthcare two, and you and I do a lot of thinking about healthcare, about half my client base. Oh my gosh, yes, health systems and biotech, yes. And the difference between and I see this a lot now that my mom is 87 she’s doing pretty well, but she says braille, and the things she’s expected to be able to open, even the doors to get into the clinic, are not ones that, yeah,

Maria Ross  31:01

yeah, they’re too heavy. I think about that now, like, in my 50s, I’m like, I can’t even read. I give it to my 10 and a half year old son to read a medicine bottle because I can’t read the directions on it, right? I’m like, What am I going to do when I’m 80?

Pam Fox Rollin  31:12

Like, who put this on here? That is my biggest motivation, yeah, to lift weights and work out.

Maria Ross  31:19

I know Me too. Me too. Yeah, completely. I know we went on a little tangent there, but it’s so true. It’s about, ultimately, it’s about seeing things from other people’s perspective, and not just your users and your customers, but your employees as well, so and your leaders. So I you know, obviously my work is all about helping leaders strengthen their empathy, but I want to get your perspective in the trenches working with executives. What are a few tips or examples you can give us of things that you’ve done with your clients to help them tap into that empathy and to strengthen that muscle?

Pam Fox Rollin  31:52

Yeah. So quite some years ago, I did research with tune of Sharon, Richmond. You might she’s part of our community here. Anyway. She’s been in our Silicon Valley kind of consulting community for a while, and we’ve joined up together with Altus and I did research on 265 leaders to find out how they developed their emotional intelligence. And these were all leaders who knew their Myers, Briggs, and then we correlated them up, and it was hilarious. And the point I’m getting to is not everybody develops empathy in the same way. So just as we’re asking leaders to understand the individuals on their team, when I support an exec team, I want to understand them as individuals. And for some of them, what they really want is to look watch people who are very effective. Sometimes I hook them up with somebody you know, in a different function, a level or two below, who is a rock star at leading empathy in the way that they need to learn and say, could they go to your meetings? Could they like I, what are they? What are they doing? Yeah, what are they doing? Because some people learn really well from watching others. Other people love to learn from feedback, where they say to your team, you know, I’m aiming to get better at asking enough questions so I understand instead of always deciding things for my frame of reference. So if I forget to do that, will you help me? Will you give me some feedback on how I’m doing? Because I know I will be better if I get your perspectives. I hired a smart team. I want to hear what you say, and I just forget that I need to ask I love that other people. It’s from one on one coaching other people. It’s from sometimes even watching movies or reading, yes, novels, explore with your imagination, from the empathy edge book that was one of my tips to help leaders strengthen their empathy. It’s about reading and consuming art and media and documentaries and movies about people who are not like you, and being able to flex that muscle of wondering what things might be like for them, but also seeing a different life experience, right? Yeah, I love that. So that’s worked for all your folks. Too. Different people want different things, and so it’s helpful to have we find a menu of ways that they can grow themselves. And there’s also, as you talk about different there’s different sorts of things you can do. One way to express empathy is to learn a formal design process. Another way to express empathy is just to go to a walk with someone or say, Hey, how you doing? And really mean it, yeah. And really listen to the answer, yeah. Really listen. So we ask everybody to set their own goals for the leadership edges that they’re working and then come up with some individual things that they can do. And then we’re. Things that we set as a team. So there’s a process we often do. We’ve done with our team, and we often do with other leadership teams, where we look at 25 factors that really make a difference in teams and say, How are we doing on these and which ones we want to come up with? Just a few, which ones that, if we actually work it hard, focus on it together, would really make a difference for the team. What are

Maria Ross  35:28

some of those factors that we need to look at as teams to create teams? Yeah,

Pam Fox Rollin  35:33

one that’s so powerful in the research and so experientially powerful too, is how well do we represent the views of people who aren’t present? If I can trust the CTO, I’m the Chief Product Officer, the CTO is at the meeting. Are they going to fairly represent my views? Will they say something like, you know, here’s what I see. I just want to be open that Pam, the chief product officer, mentioned to me her concern about this and this, and I think that’s a fair concern to address, is that the kind of relationship that we have and so that requires listening to people. It requires valuing their perspective, and it requires really living into that second element of being a team, I will collaborate well to produce the

Maria Ross  36:31

problem. Yeah, what are a few other of those factors? Those are fascinating.

Pam Fox Rollin  36:36

So one is we communicate in a coordinated way to drive clarity across the organization. More teams need that. That’s a frequent low one. Yeah, another one is we admit and learn from weaknesses and mistakes. Oh, that gets

Maria Ross  36:53

all to self awareness and just understanding how we show up and being honest with ourselves, yeah, about how we show up so that we can improve, we can have a growth mindset around it. Yeah, I love that. All right, give us one more. Oh,

Pam Fox Rollin  37:08

we go directly to the person when we’ve got

Maria Ross  37:11

we got an issue. Yeah, it’s so frequent, and we spend a lot of time talking about people and less time talking to them. And this happens not just with teams that have a bit of a hard edge. This happens with the nicest Midwest team, and they think that I just I can’t say it directly the person. So what they learn is they can say it directly to the person. Yeah, and there is an enormous amount of respect that I’m showing you by saying I’m concerned that this behavior I’m seeing can get in the way of you fulfilling the potential that you have, and so I don’t claim that I’m right, but I just I’m seeing something, and I would love to share it, yeah, well, and that’s empathetic, that’s actually helping somebody be their best and giving them the opportunity to improve. Yeah, and you know what we often do, and this is, you know, I’m sure you’ve met these leaders who, in the name of empathy, delay those conversations or delay those decisions because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, right? But it ends up not only being detrimental to that employee or that co worker, but it’s detrimental to the whole team, because the whole team is suffering because of that person’s actions, whether those actions are subconscious or conscious. And so it’s actually not empathetic to avoid and I, you know, I hate the way we talk about it in terms of we always use the term conflict avoidant, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a conflict just because you’re going to share feedback with somebody, why do we assume it’s automatically going to be a conflict when we share feedback, we can do it in a way, and even those of us I have to share, even those of us who kind of can come across a certain way, that’s always the hesitancy is like, well, they’re going to be offended. They’re going to get upset with me. It’s going to sound really harsh. I you know, this is where the self awareness comes in. I know that. You know, I’m originally from the East Coast. I’m an Italian like I know sometimes even when I’m being direct, even if I’m trying to say it in my kindest voice, it can sound very harsh. And so what I’ve learned is, if I am going to bring something to someone’s attention, I try to be very transparent about that, about like, hey, this might sound harsh, just because the way that I talk and please know it’s actually done with love and it’s done with kindness and collaboration. But I know when my words come out of my mouth, it might sound a little off to you, and I try to address it up front so that, or even after, if I say, and I’m like, and I know that sounds really harsh, I’m just really direct sometimes, so I apologize if that sounds really harsh. I don’t mean it to be right. So, you know, we can be this is that’s another example of vulnerability, other than you know, vulnerability means we just lose it. Well, we. Spread all our emotions on the floor. We can be vulnerable by just admitting we understand how we come across, yes, and

Pam Fox Rollin  40:06

if we lose it, we can come back and say, I was such a mess an hour ago. I imagine that was really unpleasant and hard to hear, and I’m unskillful of me. I’m going to learn to do better. Yeah. None of these things you, I mean, to a point, are fatal. It’s just that when we don’t have those conversations, I’m sure you and your clients think a lot about, how do we build cultures of safety where people feel like, like they can do that basic okay to have that kind of conversation? Yeah, yeah,

Maria Ross  40:39

and feel it’s okay, you know, what are you modeling as a leader for your team? About making mistakes, about owning failures, about apologizing, about you know? So how are you modeling the missteps you make in a way so your team knows it’s safe to make some missteps and be able to repair them?

Pam Fox Rollin  41:00

Yeah, one of my mentors a long time ago said there are two ways to delight your client, this was when I was in strategy consulting, or two times to delight your client before you screw up and after you screw up. I love that. That’s so great. Well, as we wrap up, I mean, we could probably talk for another three hours here. What’s sort of a final gem you want to share with us? That’s, again, we don’t want to give away all the ahas from the book, but what’s a great gem or insight you can share with us about how you go from taking a group and to making them a team? What can leaders take away? Yeah, so I would just start with the team promise Maria, because so many groups are unclear on what it is they are aiming to accomplish. And that doesn’t mean that you actually know all the details of what it is you’re going to deliver, but you’re pointed enough in the same direction that you can all log on every morning and go, yeah, that yes is the cool thing that we are aiming to accomplish. I love

Maria Ross  42:03

this because this goes beyond the company’s mission and the company’s purpose. Your team needs to have a micro culture of a mission and purpose that fits in to that larger mission and purpose. And so, you know, we might know that our larger purpose is x, but our particular team is responsible for why, and

Pam Fox Rollin  42:23

we see that team promise makes more difference to performance than their connection with the overall mission. Yes, we want to have that that is, yeah, it’s too big. It’s too grand, but yeah, I know our team is designing our support engineering function, and six months from now, we are going to have a support engineering function, and we didn’t have it before. Yes, I

Maria Ross  42:47

did a lot of that work when I worked in management consulting, of like, putting in an organization, putting in a function within the organization that didn’t exist before. Yeah. So how do you integrate that? How do you help people understand how they’re supposed to interact with that. This is making me, I know we’re wrapping but this is making me think about a previous job that I had. It had its warts and it had its bright spot, and it’s great opportunities, which was awesome, but the marketing leader, I remember, used to say, our one goal as a marketing team, as a global marketing team is we are here to make sales easier. That’s the team. That is our mission, that is our goal. And if you’re doing something that makes sales harder, you’re not on the same mission. So everything you do has to be designed with that are you answering that question? Is this making sales easier? That’s made by a team promise, exactly, and that’s never left me from that role, as I went into my own, you know, independent consulting. It’s what can you do no matter what aspect of marketing is? It’s event marketing, it’s brand marketing, it’s lead gen, whatever. What is it doing for the ultimate goal of driving sales? And how did

Pam Fox Rollin  43:59

we know we’re succeeding, yeah, and it helps to avoid a lot of red herrings as well. It does, if I may, share one other thing, because it’s personally really meaningful to me. I’ve joined the board of an organization called right to be and what they do is work on creating safety in it started with streets and then online, and then workplaces, and then healthcare settings. Create safety by energizing everyone, by activating everyone. Some call it bystander intervention, but what it really is us noticing that there’s things that we can do that move things forward. So if we see somebody who isn’t being treated as we would want to see treated, but it also, once you know those skills, you can see opportunities. And those are the eyes. And one of the reasons I’m so excited about right to be is those are the eyes that we’re. Cultivating in organizations. Whenever we do culture work, we are saying we want everyone coming in with eyes open other and for what it is we’re aiming to accomplish, rather than I’m just here to do this task, and somebody will tell me if I did it right? And what the next? Yeah, so powerful. Well, we will put a

Maria Ross  45:25

link to that organization for sure in your show notes. I would love to do that, but we’re out of time, so let’s wrap up. We are going to put all your links in the show notes, and we are so grateful to you for being here today, but for folks that are on the go, maybe exercising while they’re listening to us. Where’s the one good place that they can connect with you or find out more about your work.

Pam Fox Rollin  45:44

LinkedIn. I am the only Pam Bucha Rollin, R, O, L, L, I N on LinkedIn, and I would be so glad to connect with any listeners.

Maria Ross  45:55

I love it, and I always do my PSA for LinkedIn is put a note that you heard her on the podcast, don’t just reach out and connect. Actually personalize your note. Thank you so much. Pam, I’m so glad this was well worth waiting for to have you on the show, and I look forward to hearing more. I hope folks will check out the book Growing groups into teams, real life stories of people who get results and thrive

Pam Fox Rollin  46:19

together. Thank you again for being here such a pleasure. Thank you Maria and thank you

Maria Ross  46:25

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

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Courage to Advance: Leading Gen Z with Dr. Meisha Rouser

Welcome to Courage to Advance, hosted by Kim Bohr and brought to you by SparkEffect, in partnership with The Empathy Edge.

Tune in to our subseries every 3rd Thursday, right here on The Empathy Edge! Or check us out at CourageToAdvancePodcast.com.

Traditional Management Models Are Failing (And What Actually Works)

What if Gen Z’s approach to work isn’t just different, but better? Join Kim Bohr and Dr. Meisha Rouser as they challenge “kids these days” stereotypes and explore why traditional management is failing this generation.

Discover why questions about pay transparency and work-life boundaries signal evolution, not entitlement. Learn how leaders can adapt by understanding economic realities, setting clear expectations, and transforming feedback approaches.

Dr. Rouser shares practical leadership strategies to create meaningful growth opportunities that retain Gen Z talent while building more adaptive, high-performing teams.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • Why the “pay your dues” mentality is driving away top talent
  • How to transform feedback and development approaches for maximum impact
  • The importance of clear expectations and boundaries
  • Understanding the economic realities shaping Gen Z workplace needs
  • Why challenging workplace norms isn’t entitlement but evolution

“This generation isn’t just challenging workplace norms – they’re showing us a better way forward. When they ask ‘why do we work this way?’ they’re not being difficult, they’re pushing us to create workplaces that actually work for everyone.”

– Dr. Meisha Rouser, PCC

About Dr. Meisha Rouser, PCC

Meisha is a recognized expert in organizational development, leadership, and change management with over 20 years of experience. She specializes in cultural transformation, executive coaching, and building high-performing leadership teams.  

As an organizational psychologist, her research on Gen Z in the workplace provides groundbreaking insights for creating productive and meaningful work environments. She skillfully navigates organizational culture to ensure lasting impact and strategic success. 

Meisha holds a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University, a Master’s in Organizational Development, and an Executive Leadership Certificate from MIT Sloan School of Business. She has worked with clients including HP, FujiFilms, Intel, Jackson Laboratories, and the U.S. Navy.

About SparkEffect

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.

Connect with Dr. Meisha Rouser:  

Website: https://meisharouser.com/ 

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

Connect with Kim Bohr and SparkEffect

SparkEffect: sparkeffect.com

Courage to Advance recording and resources:

sparkeffect.com/courage-to-advance-podcast

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/sparkeffect

LinkedIn for Kim Bohr: linkedin.com/in/kimbohr

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:

Kim Bohr  01:27

What if Gen Z’s approach to work isn’t just different, but better? What if their insistence on work life, boundaries, and transparent communication is exactly what our organizations need to thrive in this modern era? Welcome everybody. I’m Kim Bohr, president and COO of Spark effect and the host of courage to advance podcast today, I am talking with Dr Misha Rauser, a recognized expert in organizational development, leadership and change management with over 20 years of experience and as an organizational behavioral scientist, her research on Gen Z in the workplace provides groundbreaking insights for creative, productive and meaningful work environments that we all can benefit from. Welcome Misha to the courage to advance podcast.

Dr. Meisha Rouser  02:16

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate this. So

Kim Bohr  02:21

I am so excited. You’re here with us, given your PhD, your expertise in organizational development, leadership, change management, I couldn’t think of a better person to have this conversation about Gen Z in our workplace and what it means for everybody. So you and I did some talking beforehand. We talked about, like, what are some of these? You know, way to to think about Gen Z coming in, and one of the things you and I really, definitely saw was like, this isn’t just one of these, you know, oh, the kids these days, you know, that’s that there’s kind of, there’s just enough phase they’re going through, or it’s really more transformational than that. And I want to really have our audience start off with you talking about how those old paradigms aren’t serving us well. And you know, really some of that generational theory that you’ve really put a lot of work into through your PhD and the studies you’ve done, so please dive in. Yeah. So

Dr. Meisha Rouser  03:14

it’s interesting, because everybody always talks about the new generation. Doesn’t matter. I mean, it could have been 20 years ago, right? And always saying, Oh, well, you know, they’re just being special, or we all had to go through the same thing. Yes, that is true. However, it is interesting that with Gen Z, especially, I am noticing, and I think there is a more of a difference. And so part of it, to put into context, a lot of people don’t quite understand when we talk about generational theory. So just really quick. I’m not going to go deep into it, but just really quickly, generational theory is about when we were being raised, when we were kids, and going through our young you know, even the kind of the Young Life of high school and such, what was going on in the world, what was going on, some significant things that impacted us, that it affects us and our beliefs and our behaviors, that will carry on. And so each generation, that’s why you’ll find too like the dates on generations, they kind of nebulous, in a sense, because it depends. So if you think about that, then with Gen Z, so one of the big things about Gen Z, but having to get to COVID yet, but the so the financial crisis. So when the financial crisis hit, a lot of them, you know, right around 2008 2009 and then that lingering effect a lot of them saw, if not their direct family members, friends, being impacted by that, losing homes, losing jobs, not being able to find work. So because of that, really influenced them. And then when we get into COVID, and that lot of them joined the workforce that also had an impact on them. So that’s what we’re going to be diving in today. Then is a little bit of, okay, yeah, what do they bring that’s unique, but also, as leaders, what can we be doing to help them in this transition?

Kim Bohr  04:55

So when you talk about those ranges that are a little bit nebula. Because I know my son is 18. He’s a freshman in college, so he’s in that generation Z. But what is roughly that range that we know is concurrently that people are experiencing in the workforce?

Dr. Meisha Rouser  05:12

Yeah, so I would say right around 1995 is when Gen Z starts. Now the next generation we will see. But I think they’re talking about, right about, probably around 2012 I think is what they’re talking because that’s going to be interesting too, to see the effects of that generation. But anyway, we’re just talking about Gen Z for today. But yeah, so right around 1995 and usually so I would say right now it’s about the 29 year old, 29 roughly, okay,

Kim Bohr  05:44

okay. So that’s a really significant for several, you know, for many people, they’ve could have been in the workforce for six to eight years already, in the post, maybe college type of experience. So that is, that’s a lot of there’s a lot of established workers already, potentially in this generation. So, you know, when we think about the what they’ve experienced, I mean, yes, you talked about, you know, the housing and things you talk about COVID, I think we should talk a little bit more about COVID, because even though we’re past it, you know, those were formative years for this generation, in a way that uplifted everything. And I’m curious what some of your the research you did were elevating some of those experiences of that generation, yeah, and because that was, um,

Dr. Meisha Rouser  06:31

it was really insightful for me, it gave me a lot of ahas in my research. And so one of the biggest things was the ones who, because my kids are they were just starting to enter the workforce when I did this research. And it was interesting than talking to those individuals who had been in started right out of college, and boom, now it’s COVID, and they’re working remotely, because, at least if you were in college, then you know, you got to adapt right where it’s like, oh, we’re changing now. We’re doing everything online. We’re now. Some of these folks were just thrown in and they’re like, Okay, I have no idea what I’m doing. I have I don’t even know what the proper, appropriate etiquette is to reach out to somebody, because that’s another big one that I realized was when all of us go into when we transition from either high school or what our college, whatever, into the workplace, that’s really where you learn professionalism. That’s really where you learn work ethic, right? And we all went through our times there, and that was something that a lot of these kids did not get. And so they’re struggling even to the point too, which I thought was interesting. I had this so my type of research wasn’t just a survey that went out fill out these generic things. My research was in depth conversation with a variety of Gen Zs, because I wanted to ask them not just okay, like, why is work life balance important to you? But why is that okay? So, going back to COVID, it was interesting. How many of them said it’s like, I feel like I’m behind, because they assume that, yeah, now, even though I’ve been in the workplace for two or three years, that I should know all this stuff, like, you know, getting insurance. What does HSA mean? How do I invest? You know? So it’s, it’s interesting. How much they’re still trying to catch up. Yes,

Kim Bohr  08:21

I could totally relate to that with my son, who you know was this happened in his I think it was last year of junior high into the first year of high school. And boy, did that just throw those key years of social interaction learning, you know, the social aspects of those awkward years, just in a complete, you know, upside down nature. And I know that a lot of the families that have had kids in the same age that we’ve talked about, it was the same thing where it’s been to your point, there has been some catch up to do with this generation to try to have them understand some of these nuances that they just didn’t get in those first couple of years. And of course, it varies from state to state where people live, which is in some ways kind of a challenge, right? Because it’s not, since it wasn’t uniform. In that way, we do have this even bigger gap of experience in this generation. So I’m really curious, too. You know, when you think about, you know, the technology, and this generation’s come up with technology in ways that generations previously haven’t. What is some of that that you’re seeing as the you know, that kind of came through the research as opportunity, or maybe some of the challenges with this generation too, from the contextual standpoint,

Dr. Meisha Rouser  09:34

yeah, it’s interesting, because where I want to go with that is more so that, like a lot of people, for example, with a technology has impacted how we communicate with them. It was interesting in my research, not really, they really. They love doing text messaging right, and especially if they’re busy and they’re in the middle of something, but they do want those person to person conversations if it’s something important, if. Something. They do want that connection. It felt like that was somewhat similar. What I did find was interesting, when we think about technology, was more so social media’s impact. So that one what was interesting, and that I actually my daughter kind of helped me piece that together. Because there was, I’m looking at this research, I’m thinking, some still not looking, and I was like, especially because it came to like, that work life balance, where on one side this generation is just, they really, at least the ones that I talk to are just ambitious. They want a chance to prove themselves. They want a chance to be successful. They want all of that, but yet at the same time they’re saying, Yeah, well, but I don’t want to have to work. I mean, you know, I’m not going to work 80 hours a week. And part of me is like, but where’s that disconnected? My daughter was the one. She’s like, Well, Mom, it’s social media. We are watching influencers from all over the world and that are doing all these things. And we’re like, well, I want to do that too. I was like, Oh, now that is where, I think is the big difference, too, where technology plays in. That’s a really important piece,

Kim Bohr  11:07

because we talk about the pros and cons, right, of that whole digital world we’re all now a part of. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of debate that’s probably for another conversation yet, in this world of expectation setting and breaking what previous generations have been thought about the norms to be. It really is, there’s it’s moving us in a whole different direction. So when we think about the some of the key differentiators, what are some of those things that have stood out that you found in your research, but also in the experience you have in organizations?

Dr. Meisha Rouser  11:39

Yeah. So the key ones, the one I like to address always up front is a little bit of, I still hear people saying kind of the entitlement thing with this generation, yeah. And here’s what I’ve learned with this with through the research, is, let’s just talk about pay, for example. So their loyalty to a company is not the same for them. This was consistent, too, is and especially now, I do gotta say that the people I talk to, most of them, went to college, so keeping that in mind, they’ve spent all this time, it was kind of like they’ve born and raised saying, You do all these check marks all through high school, and then you’re gonna do all these check marks when you get into college, and then you’re going to have this, you know, everything’s going to work out great. Okay, so we saw how that went, and then they’re stumbling their way in. But they also do feel like, though they have busted their butt to get to where they’re at. And so the entitlement is more of they want to feel like they’re making a difference. They want to feel like they’re growing. They want to feel like the company appreciates them and values them, and if they’re not getting that, then they’ll go someplace else. So I had, like a great example was, and this one gentleman, he did such a great job of explaining it. He goes, if I had a company that was going to offer me $10 more, he goes, now, yeah, is it worth going through all the hassles to change employers, all this stuff? And he goes probably not. But would I do it? Yeah? Because it tells me that that other employer values me more

Kim Bohr  13:10

interesting. Wow. Well, and I think let’s talk about that a little bit more, because what you know, what you and I have been talking about, what I’m experiencing with my son as a freshman in college is the prices are high. They trying to figure out how they can live. They’re so concerned, you know, my son is going to college in Montana, and he was so frustrated because he’s not a resident at the time, and he said, You know, I my vote can’t count on trying to bring forward more affordable housing, and this idea of not wanting to be reliant on us beyond what the bare minimum is as a driving factor for him, and yet he’s coming up against these realities that it’s like, how is he going to how do you bridge that gap? So the idea of higher pay starts to go into some basic survival needs, it seems Yes.

Dr. Meisha Rouser  14:02

And that was a really good point of a couple of things. There is that one, that thing where they do not want to have to rely on us. Every single one I talked to success to them was, I am doing this on my own. I thought that was interesting. That is very interesting. Even one of them who did end up was still living with his parents. His parents. But he’s like, Yeah, because if I want to be able to buy a house, okay, one that’s just out of the realm for most Gen Z’s right now. And he goes, I have to save up the money, and this is the only way I’m going to be able to do that. So yeah, the thing that, with the higher prices, the cost of living. It is hard on this generation, Yep, yeah. And

Kim Bohr  14:45

I think there’s, you know, the the generations before, of a mentality like you start off by saying, like, Hey, you you put in the hours, you put your head down, you do the work, you climb through. And that is such a disconnect from not only how this generation, you know, is understand. And how they’ve kind of come into this world, yet it’s also a disconnect of reality of like that. The numbers don’t add up. It just does not make sense. And so I think it’s a really great point to reframe for all of us around this. Isn’t that we shouldn’t be thinking of this as entitlement. We should think about this as them, literally trying to look out for themselves in a way of survival, basic needs, not having to be repelled, relying on their families needed beyond a reasonable amount of time. And so what I also thought was interesting was that where the loyalties come into play. And so I think what do you feel like you know the difference between some of the compensation that comes up with people and some of the needs? Were there some other things that came out in your research that feels like it kind of helps give some clarity to listeners or those in organizations who are leading Gen Z right now before we kind of start to dive into maybe, what are some of the things organizations need to be thinking about? Yeah, so let me mention a couple others. And you when you talked about loyalty, too, I thought that was interesting, so they may not have loyalty to the organization, per se, but they will have loyalty like I managers are a big deal to them. They, you know, if that manager is connecting with them, I was listening to some Gen Z podcast, and they’re even using the word empathetic management. Oh, I thought that was interesting too, because I had like, one woman who she’s, like, she was able to quit, and she was going on to get her master’s, and she had like, six or seven months, and she was but I couldn’t do it because I didn’t want to leave my manager. So there is that loyalty and that and so the influence of their relationship with their manager was definitely a make or break. The other thing that they really are needing is understanding what are my expectations? Because so many of them would say, Okay, well, here I have you know was doing sales. This one gentleman doing sales. He’s like so I had figured out. I knew what my quota was and what I needed to do. He goes. I figured out how to get there to the most efficient way, because I want to go mountain biking, I want to go skiing, I want to go to these other things, but instead of being rewarded, he goes. I’m given more work. I don’t get a raise. I don’t

Dr. Meisha Rouser  17:10

so they’re just like, What the heck? What are these expectations? How do I advance? What is expected of me? And then how am I going to grow? Because again, they also realize, like we were saying earlier, they need to keep making money. So how am I learning? What am I? How am I growing? What am I being exposed to? Those were also really big. I think

Kim Bohr  17:31

the the loyalties piece is so interesting when you think about all the research that you know, the Gallup research, and all the other organizations I’ve done research around, you know, people leave for their managers, and to see that is so important with this generation who’s asking for development, they’re asking for clear expectation setting, which isn’t always the sweet spot of leaders at times, especially, you know, perhaps earlier tenured leaders in roles managers. And I think that you know that is also really interesting to hear the, you know, if I can make it happen, it’s like, Why are you moving the goal post on me? That’s not what we agreed to. And that could create a lot of, yeah, a lot of tension and disconnect. So, you know, coming from your, you know, your background, and then and having this research behind you. You know, I think there’s you, and I have been talking about, what are there’s a lot that organizations can do, and it shouldn’t really be the cookie cutter approach to perhaps how it’s worked with generations prior. And so I’d love for us to dive a little bit into that and talk about, what are some of these things that organizations should really be thinking about. And I think one of the pieces that jumps out immediately is really like, what are the generational differences that managers and leaders need to be trained on? What are some things that have popped out to you that from kind of that worldly experience you have? Yeah, I would

Dr. Meisha Rouser  18:52

say with, like, with the coaching that I do with leaders, especially around the struggles they’re having with Gen Z, I’ve been finding it’s really helpful if, as leaders, any type of understanding that they can have around behavioral differences, communication styles, you know, so for example, like a disc or, you know, a Myers, Briggs, even, or even something of understanding learning styles. Are they visual, auditory, kinesthetic? A great example of that would be, for example, one woman I was working with, oh, she was just the sweetest thing and very empathetic, but was still having such a difficult time connecting with her employee, who was Gen Z, and we did a DISC assessment. I had them both do it, and that totally opened up. She goes, Oh my gosh. So when I thought what you needed to hear for clarity on expectations. I was giving it to you the way she was wanting it, not the way the other woman was. And so she was like, oh, as soon as I realized, oh, okay, let me explain it a different way, huge difference. And so they were able to make that connection. So that one’s also a big. One with feedback, because they want feedback, they want it timely. They want to learn. They want to know, you know, how can I grow and so forth. So also, how to give them feedback? Yes, understand who they are, because everybody wants it different. Yeah, I think that’s such a great point that I want to go a little bit deeper on. You know, when you talk about the assessments, one of the ones that I’m a huge fan of is the Harrison assessment, because it looks at it from a behavioral standpoint, right? And it pairs so nicely with understanding, even like when you think about the disc and some of these others,

Kim Bohr  20:30

it there’s a lot of complimentary nature to having that level of depth and understanding. And one of the things about feedback is I think sometimes we’ve construed feedback for being constructive, when really it’s both. And it think what, you know, I’ve heard from you and experience with my own son, is that they’re looking for more tangible feedback. That is both, you know, what should I be doing more of and what is more constructive, but not just a good, you know, attaboy, that’s really not that that feels hollow to them, and they sense it, and they don’t. That’s not what they’re looking

Dr. Meisha Rouser  20:59

for. Yeah, that’s a really good point. And that reminds me too, one of the other big ones. I one, and this is one of the things I love about this generation, and you mentioned it briefly in the beginning of the old paradigms, they love to ask why? And again, yes, I love that because it’s like, why, just because my manager is working 80 hours a week, totally neglecting his family. Why do I have to do that to be promoted? And they’re they’re asking valid questions that a lot of us have been like, Yeah, but we just kind of sucked it up and we’re just doing it because we were told to do it yes. And I really think this generation is finally like, okay, I get it. You all don’t want to do this. Well, let’s change it then, you know, I love how, like they’re bringing up 30 hour work weeks. We’re actually starting to do research into that. It works, yeah. So they’re getting us to think differently, to think of things in it from a different paradigm.

Kim Bohr  21:53

Yes. And I think that’s so important, because that is very, that is a very different trait from generations prior, and that, you know, many of us were taught you don’t question authority, you don’t quit, right? And that’s so counterproductive in adult life, in most work instances, perhaps, except the military, you know, but there’s, it’s really, it’s very challenging when you now have somebody who’s like, but I’m going to keep asking why, because I want to, you know, they need to have the it needs to make sense for them. And it so ties into the loyalty and the, you know, the engagement and all these other really important factors. So I think when we talk about some of the training, you know, understanding that feedback, what are some of the, you know, some just, it’s a skill set. And I think if managers don’t have it, organizations need to be investing in them with that skill set. You know, there’s other things too that you brought up, but I thought was so important around just some of the basic necessities, things that you know, you found through some of your own experiences that they’re just not they’re looking for and not getting in just some of that stuff to help them be more self sufficient love for you to expand on some of that too. Yeah.

Dr. Meisha Rouser  23:03

I mean, I would say it would be some of the, literally, the basic financial planning, you know, how to start saving up for a house if they even can, how to invest this one. This one’s a personal one, but, like, even my my son, so I was making sure. I’m like, okay, so you’re doing the 401 K that your employer offers. He’s like, Oh yeah. And then I was talking to him about something differently, and I realized are, you, did you go into that, whatever portal it is that your money’s in and invest it, make sure they’re investing it for you? And he’s like, No, it’s just going in there. Like, oh yeah, honey. You can invest that money. It can make money for you, little things like that. You know, again, benefits, work, life balance is a big one to help them how to do, you know, they knew how to do time management in college, but it’s different now. It’s different, yeah, so there’s those types of things and even. And here’s the other thing too, that, and it kind of goes back to the what with them always asking, Why is turn it around too? Remember, as leaders, we don’t have to have all the answers. That’s where our coaching comes in. Ask them, What do you think? How would you do this? What is it that you’re needing some help with? You know what it how would you do it differently with work life balance? Yes, I know you want to have your skiing vacations while also working. So how are you managing those? How can we do it so you can do both of those? Yeah, so just engaging them in those

Kim Bohr  24:29

Absolutely. So I think one of the things that also stands out to you, and maybe some listeners are thinking about this, is like, where’s the fine line between providing things that perhaps they should have gained, versus being in this work world and and I think, you know, I think you and I have a very, you know, probably a very similar perspective, like the work world has evolved to whole person, and yet, is there something there that you would be advising people to from that paradigm shift that’s needed?

Dr. Meisha Rouser  24:59

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that’s I love it too, because we’re not saying, you know, just roll over and just let them, you know, be them, right? They love structure. Because, again, think about it, they’ve received a checklist their entire life. All I got to do is check this off. So provide that checklist. Here are your expectations. This is what I’m expecting of you. You can do it down to anything from the hours you’re expecting of them to how often you know that you want to be meeting with them. It could be everything from also how to get that promotion, because they want to know they they want to move towards it. The one thing I’ve seen that’s challenging though, that leaders have, and this goes back to understanding them and their own you know, way of how they learn, how they grow, how they communicate. You do need to communicate that in a way that resonates with them. So even though you’re giving, you know, the the templates, I like, I call it creating boundaries, and then total freedom within those boundaries. But they need to really understand what those boundaries are.

Kim Bohr  25:56

I really agree with that. I think the boundaries are huge, and I think there’s so much assumption in our day to day business world, where we think we hire very skilled people, and we think that they can figure it all out for themselves, and we do a disservice when we don’t actually create the boundaries. And sometimes I think leaders are uncomfortable with boundaries themselves, and so they don’t think about bringing them forward and the benefits of them. And so there’s some, certainly some reframing there. That’s opportunity. I think another thing that really, you know, stands out to me when we think about the paradigm shift is there’s all these edge cases that we hear about, you know, somebody’s mother went with them to an interview. And I think that we want to really caution people to not stereotype that into this generation. Because I know nobody in my, you know, network of this generation who’ve have that kind of approach, and so I would say, Please don’t bring that into what you’re thinking about, and saying that the whole generation is really of this nature, since we know it’s not, it’s really not so when we think about, you know, this idea of like, okay, so what can people do if they have, if they have, you know, people on their team right now, or they know that they’re hiring a workforce that this generation is very much, you know, filled with, you know, how do we think about giving leaders the ability to have greater capacity in their level of empathy, you know, understanding curiosity? What are some things that you know that come to mind? I know we started to talk a little about, about feedback. Is there some more things specifically that you’re thinking of from your own experiences too? Yeah. And thinking about, when

Dr. Meisha Rouser  27:31

I think of all the different types, is, remember that you know, so people are people. We are going to be different. We’re all wired differently. We’re all going to be taking information in differently. I think still, that is probably the biggest difficulty for leaders is, how do I do for example, some Gen Z, like all people are going to be more introverted, they’re not going to ask as many questions, and so forth. So again, coaching skills are huge, to be able to understand and to meet them where they’re at coaching. I mean, just the Grow coaching model is such a simple one to be able to help with that. Check ins giving feedback. How do they want feedback? I can’t tell you, there was a number. At least two of them say, okay, they think they’re giving me feedback by calling me out and saying how great of a job I did in front of the entire team, that just mortified them, and they were just Yes, you know? So it’s little things like that that you need to be able to ask them, not just like, how do you want feedback? Because some of them may not know. I’ve always found it easier to say, hey, when you’ve received feedback in the past that you felt like you did a really good job. Why did you feel that way? Right? Was it that you that your manager did?

Kim Bohr  28:40

Yes, and I think it’s what you just said, too. Is such an important nuance of recognition. People have varying degrees on that continuum of what recognition means. There’s the people who absolutely want to be on the stage, and some people are maybe just a simple thank you, and some people are just don’t even want that. They just want to be recognized through pay or through, you know, their ability to promote things like that, right? So I think it’s so important to actually ask, versus just assume that it’s going to be well received by everybody. I think you also talked about the regular check ins. I think that’s so important. And I in a, I do know, in the work, you know, we do from the coaching lens and the teamwork lens it is that’s often not as highly prioritized as a regular opportunity. And the other thing I’ve noticed is that oftentimes managers come in with their own agenda, and then they miss what is actually the most important thing that they should be talking about with their people. And so I think that’s something that for those listening and thinking about what is that regular agenda cadence, what should be included, so that it’s not just at them, but it’s truly a collaborative conversation. And you know, what are some other things that you know you mentioned, some of the clear, you kind of clear expectation setting. Is there anything else in that area you would want to make sure listeners are kind of

Dr. Meisha Rouser  29:56

keeping top of mind? Yeah. And you made me remember another. Big one that I’ll usually get asked a lot is, do they want to work collaboratively or not? And that one is, yes, both. And so they do like working collaboratively, and they do want to be an individual contributor, in the sense that they don’t want to be held back, also sometimes from working just in a group. So there’s a balance there too, of making sure that you can give them both space in both of those so

Kim Bohr  30:24

that kind of leads us into the reality of a hybrid environment that most organizations are still in. I know some are moving more towards in person, yet I think the majority are still going to be in this mixed kind of, you know, mixed media type of a space. So what are some of the recommendations you think listeners could really take in consideration when we have that kind of environment, because I would, I think you and I would agree that not all managers are effective in managing in remote environments, as they would be maybe if they were in person environment,

Dr. Meisha Rouser  30:54

yeah, oh gosh, okay, there’s one. They’re very comfortable with that, I think they are. They do like the in person when they can get it, but they do lean towards a hybrid environment or a remote environment, just so they could have better work life balance as some things. I did think, though that was very interesting, and this came back. So Gallup has always said, you know, like, what are those things that engage employees? And one is to have a best friend at work. Now, here’s what’s different for them. For Gen Z is it appears to be more of because they are online. They’re they’re communicating with their best friends. They’re there, right? So they have that already, but they do want that personal connection again. There was a few times they’re like, I want to know that these aren’t just, you know, I want to know who this person is, yeah, so to also create time, and that’s something that I think if managers could do more of that, especially if they’re in a remote environment of creating time where it’s not just all we jump on a call, it’s just all work, and we jump off, you know, to find all the different ways of how to connect as people as well. Yes,

Kim Bohr  32:03

and that’s challenging for I think I, for most organizations I think are still with that have a hybrid or fully virtual environment. I think that is a challenge to figure out. How do we bring that in authentically, especially when change is so constant, as you and I have talked about. So how do you is there anything in particular you would call out for people to think about creating that psychological safety in these more hybrid or virtual environments that you know maybe shifts at all for this generation? I

Dr. Meisha Rouser  32:33

mean, I think we’ve covered a lot of it already. You know, of understanding who they are, understanding the team being, knowing that you’re there for them, creating the space to hear, you know, what is it that they have to contribute to giving them, you know, the ability to chime in, asking their opinions when giving feedback with feedback, you want to also always make sure that it’s about the behavior or whatever it is they’re Doing, good or bad? Yeah, it’s not about the person, right? So that’s one thing. Always. Want to separate the two and give, you know, you want to give good feedback, in addition to opportunities for growth. You know, it’s all those things. If they feel like that you have their bat and that you’re trying, they pick up on that. I think that’s the biggest thing. And then anything you can do to help them out, just to kind of take them under their wing, you know, when they’re doing something, don’t assume that they know all these adult things,

Kim Bohr  33:28

yeah, and don’t take for granted that they don’t bring value. I think that was the other thing, you know, we think about managing those multi generational teams. I have heard of some organizations trying to be, although I don’t think this is mainstream yet, but trying to be more collaborative with this Gen Z and other generations to help knowledge transfer in different ways, knowing that the digital no man land that they are, they’ve come from, has a tremendous value. And so trying to not, you know, say, like, well, you don’t get it on either party’s part, but really trying to figure out, how does that look like that we could have more cross functional generationally learning and try to leverage one another in a more productive way there too,

Dr. Meisha Rouser  34:12

yes, because that was something too that they really, and this was consistent with everybody as well, is they value learning from as much as they can. And so some like so many of them, said, Yeah, I’m trying to meet with this one guy before he retires, because he just has this wealth of knowledge. And so that kind of goes back to a little bit also, what’s a little different, though, is that I don’t care if it’s their leader, their manager, a co worker, you’ve got to earn their respect if they’re going to really, you know, be respectful back. But so that’s one element of that that you just can’t like, you know, people were trying. And so many times it’s like, okay, we’re going to connect him and mentor, you know, a younger one with the old. Well, if they don’t receive. Respect that person is going to go out the door. And so you may even want to have that conversation of, you know, hey, I would love to get you connected with the mentor in the organization, help them to connect with that older generation. And then it’s great for the older generation, because they love it. Yes, they love sharing their information with others, and that’s

Kim Bohr  35:17

really and so it’s got to have that intentionality is really, key. So I think, you know, as we kind of start to wrap up the conversation, I think there’s we haven’t, we’ve maybe touched a little bit, but I think I’d like to be more intentional around let’s dive into some of the pitfalls that organizations need to and managers need to be thinking about so that they don’t, you know, have, say, have more undoing of behaviors than they, you know, want to have. So I know one thing that you know we’ve talked about is that, you know, over trying to not over focus on these ideas of perks, but that for things to be very meaningful and also to balance that growth opportunity for Gen Z in ways that that also can help them see where what they’re going to gain from it. So really trying to be more intentional and maybe more not just for it to be more again, well, meaningful, right? Yeah, what are some of the other things that you’ve maybe would kind of caution listeners around, yeah. So

Dr. Meisha Rouser  36:13

the perks, I think, are good in the sense of, recognize what the perks are really for. You know, like some people would mention pizza parties. They’re like, Okay, if the pizza party party was a reward because we worked all this overtime, no, but if the pizza party is an opportunity for all of us to get together and, you know, and get away from work and just that’s different, such

Kim Bohr  36:34

a good example. Oh, my goodness, that is in the intention, right? It’s the intent behind that is so big. I love that. I know, you know, another one is, you know that you mentioned it right, that clear structure and expectation saying, so really put the effort in which it does take more time, and yet it’s the return is going to be there. It’s going to be there for everybody. How would you say, you know, we talked about the economic challenges that you know Gen Z is facing. How could organizations, you know, we talked about some of the learning stuff, but is there anything else that they could do to kind of avoid that pitfall that’s going to have, maybe that generation turning over more and more, yeah,

Dr. Meisha Rouser  37:11

and so that one too, because a lot of times, yeah, the economic side of things, it’s out of a lot of our managers hands, right? It’s just, it is what it is. There are so many other things that have value for Gen Z that you could also add in there. You know, get them with a mentor they want to grow, you know, give them some training. Sit down with them and even mentor them. Give them a special project, ask them what else, you know, maybe even cross training. Maybe they’d be curious to do something. I mean, there’s so many ways that there’s value that you could bring to them, you know, maybe they want to work one of the days out, you know, instead of coming into the office three days a week, they want another there’s so many ways to so much value, yeah, that will help them stay in the organization. I love that. And I think

Kim Bohr  37:56

one of the last ones that you’ve really hit home too, is just the human connection part. So being authentic and finding those those ways for them to connect, not just with each other, but with others, you know, across the organization, is really key. So thought,

Dr. Meisha Rouser  38:09

I just thought of one more too. Yeah. Also remember, everybody’s wired differently, but knowing that they’re making a difference can also be really key for the majority of them, you know, so what is the impact of what they’re doing? And so if it’s just making somebody’s day, they’re like, Okay, there was meaning behind that. That’s yeah, remember too.

Kim Bohr  38:32

That’s so important, not just for this generation. But I think we do make assumptions that everybody knows, like, Hey, you come to work, and then here’s our values and mission on the wall, and like, you make the connecting points. And obviously that’s a big disconnect for some. And I think just being able for people to say, like, why my work matters is really important, and for this generation, it’s even more significant. Yes, well, Misha, as we wrap up, the conversation, is there anything you want else you want to to share with the listeners that helps them kind of think, rethink and reframe around this Gen Z.

Dr. Meisha Rouser  39:04

You know, the only thing I would say is, I still, like I said, I am so excited about what this generation is going to bring, what they’re going to be changing. There’s just so they’re just going to be they’re so creative, they’re so imaginative, they’re so collaborative in so many ways, you know, so kind of our job, if we can help foster that, yeah, it’s gonna be amazing.

Kim Bohr  39:29

I agree, and it’s about shaping and not discounting, right? We really have to accept that there’s a tremendous value in this generation, and we need to not delay in bringing them into the fold and learning from them. Well, Misha, thank you so much for the time today, for sharing your insights from your work. I hope our listeners have been able to take some nuggets away for all of those who are listening. We always have our free resources relevant to the conversation today that you can download. Download by visiting courage to advance podcast.com and that will take you to our spark effect podcast page, where you can get the not only the resources from today, but even if you want to check out some of our past episodes. And so again, thank you so much for your insights. I really am also grateful to the empathy edge for hosting our podcast sub series and to our listeners for tuning in to our episode of courage to advance where Transformative Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about having the courage to find them. Thank you so much. Talk soon

Maria Ross  40:29

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. 

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Sanela Lukanovic: Daring to Be an Empathetic Leader

Courageous empathy. Yep – it takes courage and strength to break existing leadership paradigms and embrace empathy in our world today.  We don’t acknowledge that often enough. Embracing empathy as a leader is as much a self-development exercise as it is a leadership style! Today I speak with Sanela Lukanovic about courageous empathy, how the identity of empathy gets in the way of embracing it at the top, how it can be used against you, and how to practice empathy while avoiding burnout by starting with self-compassion.  

Sanela shares how her knack for coaching difficult people without blocking change can enable you to deal with the person rather than the problem. And why we sometimes swing too far between polar opposite paradigms of cold dictatorship and submissive chaos before we can land on what works right for us.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • Be brave enough to be the type of leader that is required in our workplaces and our world.
  • You must set boundaries around empathy. If you don’t, you are risking burnout, people-pleasing, and submission in your leadership. You don’t want to wall yourself off, but you don’t want to be walked all over either.
  • Boundaries allow you to see and allow a back and forth (like over a fence). Barriers impede progress. 

“It takes a lot of courage to sit across from somebody and be open and willing to hear their perspective.” —  Sanela Lukanovic

Episode References: 

The Empathy Edge podcast episodes: 

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 Sanela Lukanovic: Transformational Coach and Daring Way™ Facilitator

Sanela Lukanovic is a Transformational Coach and founder of Selfdom. With over two decades of experience, Sanela empowers individuals to lead with authenticity, purpose, and courage. She is a public speaker, thought leader, and expert in coaching women leaders to overcome unique challenges and create value-aligned change.

Using somatic and neuroscience tools, Sanela helps clients achieve holistic personal growth. Her impactful talks and group programs focus on building courage, empathy as a shame resilience tool, perfectionism, boundaries, and self-compassion. 

Her background in management consulting and cross-sector experience in leadership development enrich her coaching approach.

Connect with Sanela:

Selfdom: selfdom.life 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sanela-lukanovic-682927 

Instagram: instagram.com/selfdom_life 

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. Courageous empathy. Yep, it takes courage and strength to break existing leadership paradigms and embrace empathy in our world today, we don’t acknowledge that often enough, embracing empathy as a leader is as much a self development exercise as it is, a leadership style. Today, I speak with Sanela Lukanovic about courageous empathy, how the identity of empathy gets in the way of embracing it at the top, how it can be used against you, and how to practice empathy while avoiding burnout by starting with self compassion. Sunela is a transformational coach and founder of self done with over two decades of experience. Sanela empowers individuals to lead with authenticity, purpose and courage. She’s a public speaker, thought leader and expert in coaching women leaders to overcome unique challenges and create value aligned change using somatic and neuroscience tools. She helps clients achieve holistic personal growth. Her impactful talks and group programs focus on building courage, empathy as a shame, resilience tool, perfectionism, boundaries and self compassion. Her background in management consulting and cross sector experience in leadership development enrich her coaching approach. And today, she shares it with us. She shares how her knack for coaching difficult people without blocking change can enable you to deal with the person rather than the problem, and why we sometimes swing too far between polar opposite paradigms of cold dictatorship or submissive chaos before we can land on a leadership style that works right for us. This was a really interesting conversation. Take a listen. Welcome Sanela to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you here to talk about leading with authenticity and purpose. So welcome to the show.

Sanela Lukanovic  02:36

Thank you so much for having me. So tell

Maria Ross  02:39

us a little bit about you and how you got into this work of being a transformational coach and helping leaders tap into their authenticity and overcome challenges.

Sanela Lukanovic  02:52

I came into it via my first career was in consulting, in management consulting, in people transformation. But I think I knew when I was 15 that my real passion and my curiosity was always about people and people transformation and what makes people tick, and why people around me were behaving in strange and fabulous ways that I couldn’t understand, I think. But I took a scenic route to get into coaching, because my parents were keen to for me to do economics and have a proper job other than do psychology. And, you know, do what I’m doing now, I guess. So, yeah, but kind of transition slowly from doing people and people change within big transformational project. I had a knack for dealing with difficult people and kind of getting people to embrace change and understanding what actually blocks that change within the bigger systems. And then when I back in 2004 I discovered that there is this thing as coaching. And then I jumped a bit. That was my chance to kind of get back on a train, or catch the train. That was more, you know, to who I am and what I want to do, but I came into courage work, which is what I’m currently doing and what I’m passionate about through by being stuck myself in sort of that feeling that I wasn’t daring enough in my life and not daring enough in my business. And then I came across Brene work, Brene Brown on vulnerability and shame and resilience. And I was like, Yes, I want more of that, and that’s how I, you know, started my personal development through that, and now that forms the majority of my work. So

Maria Ross  04:49

I’m so curious, what kinds of people do you work with, and what are the challenges they’re bringing to you? How are they articulating what the problem is, or what the challenge?

Sanela Lukanovic  05:01

Challenges. So I work mostly with leaders within the organizations and also entrepreneurs. So the type of challenges that, because I’m a transformational coach, which is essentially means that I deal with the person, but then the problem so I get people who already feel that what has got them and got them, the success that they’ve achieved at to that point in their lives is no longer working. So they would, I mean, they present in very different ways, but most of the time is, you know, I want to be more daring. I want to I want more confidence. I want more peace in my head. There is something about being more present to and kind of not feeling torn and constantly plagued by doubt and self criticism I get. I work a lot with perfectionism, which is one of the biggest blockers to courage, as you know. So, yeah, you know, people want to be connected with their teams. They want to lead with authenticity. They want to be better leaders to maybe leaders that they’ve had and experienced. So those are the kind of people I love working but the key for me is the person feels that, that push, that what I’ve done so far, I no longer want, you know, that kind of coping strategy. I no longer want that, you know, I want to step into myself, into my most authentic self. I love what

Maria Ross  06:38

you’re saying, because what I’m getting from this also, is this way of looking at empathy that I hadn’t thought about before, that it is an act of bravery. It’s an act of daring to be an empathetic leader. And I know this, and this is why I write my books and I do my talks and I do my leadership trainings, but I don’t think I’ve ever articulated it that way in terms of sometimes I have of be brave enough to be the type of leader that’s required right now in our world and in our workplaces, but it is an act of daring to be more people centric than you have been, and this is where I actually have empathy for those in my generation and older who sort of came up with different rules to get to success, And now we’re telling them a bunch of different roles. We’re saying, you know, way back when it was command and control, it was don’t ever admit you don’t know, it was don’t get work is work and personal is personal. And now we’re saying, No, get to know everybody. Care about people. Be vulnerable, be transparent. And I have empathy for those leaders who are like, wait what? Like I thought for 30 years, I’ve been doing it this way, and that sounds great, but that sounds scary at the same time. So how can you talk a little bit more about especially as it relates to empathy, as it relates to and I always like to say empathy is not crying on the floor with your employees. It’s just trying to see someone else’s point of view, right? So what Given that, what do you feel gets in the way of leaders at the top embracing empathy? Is it the myths that I talk about? Is it something within themselves? What do you see as some of the biggest barriers for them? I

Sanela Lukanovic  08:20

love, absolutely love how you’re connecting empathy and bearing, because it takes a lot of courage to sit across to somebody and be open and willing to hear that perspective. Yep, because there’s a lot of risk, there is a lot of uncertainty, there’s lots of emotions, you know, to handle your emotions, to handle the other person’s emotions, to connect with something in you that knows something about the struggle that they are in, and also to keep yourself out and focus on the other person. So that takes a lot of courage. So I love that brain. Yeah, you’ve just done that. That is that really resonates with me. I talk

Maria Ross  09:01

about it in terms of, you know, empathy is actually a strength, because it requires strength to be able to take on someone else’s point of view without defensiveness or fear. So I love it. It’s all about daring. Yeah. So what do you think gets in their way? What do you hear from your top performing leaders?

Sanela Lukanovic  09:18

So what gets in a way? I think both things, what you’ve just mentioned, the external perception about empathy that we have to reframe. And I mean people, what I love about your work, that you are actually speaking to, that your books, you’re actually educating and reframing this concept that, well, empathy is a weakness, or the empathy is soft. So there is that perception, outside perception and expectations or associations around empathy, but there is also inside their skills and level of self awareness and level of self presence that is required to. Actually do empathy effectively. So I kind of see them on both, you know, both are required, and that’s where my work comes in, and that’s where, you know, education also is is invaluable, because it’s going to take some time for those myths to be addressed. So from the outside, like if I look at the you know, empathy is a weakness. As you know what you’re talking in your books, it’s so much easier. This is the kind of the paradox. It is so much easier to do command and control. And often time when we talk about empathy, people will say, well, it’s going to take a lot of time. It takes so much time, exactly, yeah, so much time. And, or, you know, it’s kind of also like, when we talk about it, people kind of get this sense that you are, you’re kind of constantly embracing every single conversation from that place of empathy. And I have to kind of say, well, you know, no, it’s like, you don’t do anything. 24/7, it’s a, I see empathy is something that you allow yourself to develop. It’s one of the tools, a very, very, very valuable tool that you deploy and tap into and access when you need it. So, yeah, so it’s that sense of that. It is a weakness. It’s not it takes a lot of courage to be in a difficult conversation where I have to hear your point of view, or I have to communicate something that is hard for me to tell you, maybe I need to lay you off, maybe I need to give you a performance feedback. And what scares people in those conversation, what I find, and I think sometimes we just hide between, you know, behind this, you know, it’s a weakness. What really scares people is, oftentimes it’s like, how you’re going to react to this, how am I going to hold this space? How am I going to be able to manage myself, and then, what is the outcome? How am I going to control the outcome? And I think we get bogged down in that noise and forgetting that actually empathy is all about connection. Is about coming from that place of kindness and connection and holding, also the, you know, being very clear about the outcomes that you need to achieve from whatever situation. So the book I often find having to explain to people that actually, they’re not binary. It’s not like, you know, you’re either empathetic or you achieve results I often have this

Maria Ross  12:37

is, this is my mantra, yeah, this is the whole thing about my work, is that it’s not binary decision. It’s not either or leadership. It’s empathy and high performance, empathy and ambition, empathy and accountability. And I 100% agree with you the work that I’m doing is that we have more of us have to be out there, reframing and educating on what empathy actually is at work, and that it’s not just emotional empathy, it’s cognitive empathy, it’s the way you have conversations, it’s the benefits you offer, it’s how you do a difficult performance review. It’s not just changing your mind to make other people happy, and I think that’s what so many of them get caught in that trap about empathy. You know being about people pleasing, they fall into submission, which I wanted to get into that with you is what advice or habits do you have to offer around people who struggle with setting the boundaries around empathy, because we know it leads to burnout. It leads to something that isn’t empathy. It leads to people pleasing or submission. So do you have any advice or tips that you can share that have worked for your clients, and maybe some stories to share about how you get past that and how you can set those boundaries? So you’re not completely walling yourself off, but you’re being very clear about your boundaries. Yeah, beautiful.

Sanela Lukanovic  14:05

The metaphor that I’m seeing about walling yourself off versus having boundaries, and I had a conversation with my client today about that same thing. So often time people who embrace so, people who already embrace empathy, then it’s very hard to I find that there needs to be a transition where empathy is not the only thing. So I find it the it’s most difficult for people to set boundaries, who identify, who kind of have an idea of who they are that is linked to empathy. So I’m empathic, empathetic or empathic leader, and that means absence of something else. That means absence of ability to say no. It means absence of having to hold somebody. Accountable. It means it kind of that whole idea, the ideal identity around that gets so it really so that’s one of the thing. First thing that I would do is really under Help them understand what does that mean in to kind of try to uncover what are the beliefs and expectations that have sneaked in there that are preventing them from actually being kind and being considered, being understanding, but at the same time having boundaries. So that’s the first thing that I would look at, that kind of ideal leader that they want to do. And in there, a lot of thing can be cleared out and sort of just it can be brought to their awareness, and they can say, well, that doesn’t really make sense. The other thing is, I think people boundaries is something that people generally have kind of visceral kind of reaction to them, and it goes oftentime, it goes back to their experience of boundaries as a child, or experience of boundaries in general. So there is, I often try to identify if people are moving away so like that, contrary to, like, you know, I had strong, you know, a boss who was, you know, so boundary that, like, you know, that it made their life really difficult. And, or they had a parent who was like that, and they’re trying to be the opposite of that. So we are trying to get the first thing is to kind of try to define that for yourself, a clear those things that no longer those perceptions that no longer serve you. So instead of having, you know, it’s a wall, how about is a fence around the garden that you populate with your values and that you have do’s and don’ts about like, you know, when you enter my garden, when you enter my place, these are the ways to behave in this space, so that both of you, both of us, can feel safe and good in this space. And that is what boundaries about. So really reframing how we see boundaries and then practicing really taking the small steps. So today’s for example conversation. The whole conversation was about, can I be, you know, when I’m kind and generous and when I’m empathetic and really putting myself out and for my clients, I am valued, I’m respected. People love, you know, love what I do, and that is what gives me, you know, fills my cup. And if I stop doing, if I put boundaries, that means that I’m going to put boundaries and not allow for that to come into my life. So unpacking that is super, super important that actually you can be, you can have that, but you also need to learn how to show up in a way when you feel that somebody is misusing your generosity, right? So those are the kind of, I don’t know if there are tips, but that’s the kind of work, the approaches, yeah, the approach that needs to happen, but it is really around reframing and letting go of whatever experiences you’ve had with boundaries that are keeping you stuck in kind of one dimensional way of being or behaving in a given context.

Maria Ross  18:17

This is so great because it’s making me think of a couple of episodes that I’ll put links to in the show notes. I did an episode on how to do layoffs with compassion, and also another episode on how to have honest conversations. And this comes up over and over again, and I usually love citing my sources, but I can’t remember who or where I heard this in recent weeks. It may have been a conference I attended last week, but it was understanding the notion between boundaries and barriers, and that boundaries allow me to see and allow me allow a back and forth, like you said your fence metaphor, barriers don’t allow any progress that impedes progress. And so looking at, are you really setting a boundary, or are you putting up a barrier, and if you’re putting up a barrier, why is it out of fear? Is it out of I don’t want to show my vulnerability. I don’t want to show that I don’t have all the answers. Or are you creating a boundary that is just something you want to clearly communicate? I talk about in the new book The Empathy dilemma. I talk about boundaries, setting boundaries, articulating your boundaries, is actually an act of self care, but it’s also an act of clarity. It’s in the clarity pillar too, because I want to be very clear and so what, what I have found helpful is giving people some example scripts. So one of them is an example of you have an employee who is coming into your office at 10 till four in the afternoon on the Tuesdays that you always leave early to go to your son’s soccer game and they are upset about something. They’re angry about something, they want to talk about an interpersonal issue they’re having with another person on the team. You have two choices. You can lose your boundary and just sit and listen. Which is, is might be appropriate, depending on where the person is. But you can also kindly acknowledge the person with empathy and say this is clearly really important to you, which means it’s important to me. But as you know, I have to leave early on Tuesdays for my son. So what I would like to do is I’m going to clear some time tomorrow morning. Let’s talk tomorrow morning. You’ll have some time to digest. You can send me an email in advance of that conversation if you want to, but I’m going to clear an hour for you tomorrow morning so we can actually talk about it. That is an empathetic way to keep your boundary but still acknowledge someone else’s pain or suffering or frustration or anger and see and value them that you’re going to make time for them tomorrow, like no one’s going to die tonight, right? So yes, I think that that’s like, when people hear that, they go, Oh, wow, I can communicate in that way, yeah. And they don’t realize that that’s actually empathy, right? So I really find that giving people those scripts and reminding myself of those scripts, quite honestly, of like this, is really important. I’ve done this when I’ve had to move meetings or and I just go, hey, you know what? I this is really important to me, and I’m all over the place this afternoon. I know we were going to meet and talk about X, but I really want to focus on what you have to say. So can we schedule a different time? Absolutely, you’re honoring them. You’re honoring you like and that’s where I feel like we get that boundaries don’t have to be a wall. Boundaries can just mean like, I loved your metaphor of the garden. I can still see the garden. I can still appreciate the garden. Lets me talk over the fence with you, but

Sanela Lukanovic  21:41

and I can invite you in, this is the thing like, you know, I invite you in. There’s just rules of do’s and don’ts, you know, this is how I want you to treat me. This is how I treat I’m treating you. These are the values that I cannot step over, etcetera. So there is something about Clari I really appreciate you making and it’s really clear that communicating with empathy, it’s CLA it’s communicating with clarity. Often times, what gets in the way I find is that when we we think that we are empathetic or empathic with somebody, by trying to dilute the message that yes, that we actually want to say yes. You know those kind of situations where we tiptoe around it, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we’ll be kind of buried in the middle of we start a meeting. And here I am to tell you some you know about, you know, meeting that went wrong. And I talk about, you know, five minutes about your work that you’ve done, like, you know, last week, and then you’re a very valued employee, and, you know, I really appreciate you. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And all the time you are waiting you know that something is coming, but a I am kind of freaking you out, and I am losing courage to actually speak clearly about what needs to be spoken about. So there is something about where we are trying to be kind, where I would say being nice for this kind of thinking, that is this in service of empathy. But actually that is not that Absolutely. It just kills trust. It makes people, people’s nervous systems go on guard, and it really and I think we often do that, not for the sake of the other person, for our own comfort. We do that for our own comfort. So going back to your question about what is the thing that really stops or prevents people tapping into sympathy is our own self awareness and our own ability to our awareness and connection to our own emotions and our emotional literacy, our ability to regulate our emotions in those moments of, you know, when we are vulnerable. Yeah, and this is, you know, telling you something that kind of might upset you, feels vulnerable to me, right? It’s vulnerable to you. So it’s really, really, one of the I kind of feel that both needs to be together, like, yes, empathy, boundaries, emotional resilience, or emotional regulation, regulation and understanding, being present to that in yourself at all times. Yeah, yeah,

Maria Ross  24:18

sorry. Well, and that’s, that’s why, you know The first pillar in the new book is self awareness. What are my strengths? What are my emotional triggers? What am I bringing to the interaction that could get in the way of a positive interaction with this person, or new ideas or new innovations? We are not many of us are walking through life blind to what we bring to the table, whether it’s bad habits or whether it’s energy we bring, or even just how we can leverage our strengths in certain situations, right? So I think that’s so important, because that’s where you know, when I was hearing a lot and doing a lot of research around people burning out as. Especially post pandemic, because of everything they’d done, they bent over backwards for their employees during the pandemic, which was great, and we don’t want to go back, you know, we created a different paradigm for workplace culture, and it already was starting. It’s just the pandemic accelerated. It we don’t want to lose the progress we’ve made and the momentum we’ve made however. We do need to go back a little bit to Okay. We need to help set people’s expectations about there was a time when everything was 100% flexible. We’re not in that time anymore, and I know that’s really hard, but we need to pull back on certain things. You know, for our particular company, we might need to come back to the office two days a week or three days a week. I have other opinions about return to office, but the point is, you’ve got to make whatever business decisions for your business that you’re going to make, and then clearly communicate that, but recognize that it might be hard for people, and even just in that delivery of I know this might not be what you want. I know that this might be hard for you. We’re doing it. So what? How can we support you through this thing that is going to happen, whether you’re happy about it or not? Yeah, yeah. So I think that’s so important, and at that to your point, that’s so hard, where we tiptoe around those things. And I am one of those people that I get really impatient when someone’s not clear, and I will actually go, Well, so what is it? What’s your point? What’s your What are you trying to say?

Sanela Lukanovic  26:29

Just get me out of my misery. Now. You

Maria Ross  26:33

don’t want them to come out. Like, okay, come into my office. So you’re being fired today. I mean, you don’t want, I love the term, like, radical candor is great, but I heard the term from an executive at VaynerMedia that said we actually call it kind candor, because we don’t get an excuse to be a jerk just because we’re telling Oh yes, right, yes.

Sanela Lukanovic  26:51

People go, Well, I’m just being honest, right? Yeah, oh gosh, that’s the yeah

Maria Ross  26:56

and so yeah, I think to your point, and I’m trying not to talk so much over you, but this idea of where sometimes the advice, depending on the person, can swing the pendulum too far the other way, right? So you give that advice of, like, we need to be direct, we need to be, you know, confident. We need to be. And then with a certain type of person, it falls into, I’m being a total jerk in this conversation. How do you help your leaders balance that? How do you help them balance like, Nope, there’s a nuance to that. There’s a nuance to this. How do you help them through that? Is it trial and error, or is it just preparing them from a self awareness standpoint, I think when

Sanela Lukanovic  27:39

we are embrace my experience when we’re embracing a new skill. If somebody has come from a place of lot of control, perfectionism, really disconnected with their own emotional experience of things, so it’s very hard to connect with other people. They haven’t done it. I always say you’re going to swing, you know, to do something, to learn something, you you have to kind of swing and maybe push through on the other end to to find your own way of doing things. And empathy is one of those things that you know, we can’t do perfectly all the time. And that’s another that’s one permission that I give myself. It is not about, you know, saying the right things. People often worry about saying the right things, you know, reacting the right way, not messing it up. And my advice is, you’re going to mess it up. You’re not going to say the right thing. Just accept that, because we are humans, and empathy something that goes two ways, like, you know, empathy, essentially, is connection. I think, you know, if we, if you forget about, you know, how we call these things, you know, am I in connection, human to human? Can I hold that? Can I open myself to that and then have a conversation with you. So I think that really helps to people too. I love that, you know, you know, I say, like, you know, my job is to listen with empathy, and I can sometimes, you know, that’s my job. Like, you know, and I teach that, and I get it wrong, yeah. Like, you know, sometimes, you know, my kids will say something, and my mama bear comes first, you know, whether it’s to save or to say something that you know, to kind of lift the mood by saying, well, it’s not that bad, like, you know something. And then I hear myself saying, I was like, Yeah, take it back. Take it back. Take it back.

Maria Ross  29:36

It’s sort of like when you teach someone just basic business skills as an example, right? And we’ve all seen the comedic moment of you tell someone to have a firm handshake, and then they shake someone’s hands so hard, it’s like they go overboard, because they’re someone told them this was the skill to build. And so I love that idea of, like, preparing people that you might swing the. Pendulum a little too far and so, but hopefully you get back, you get some feedback, and you are able to adjust it to a place that benefits both of you and moves the conversation closer to your goals. But I love that idea of giving permission, and you know, I often talk about this in terms of the empathy gym, and strengthening that muscle is that, first of all, you can’t just build it and stop it will atrophy again. But also, you know, if it’s new for you, if it’s new for you to ask questions, for example, you know, we advise about curiosity, if it’s new for you to ask your team members or your colleagues questions and get curious. It’s gonna feel you’re gonna feel sore, just like you would in a new workout routine. It’s gonna feel awkward. Your muscle memory is not really working. But I also talk to them about, when we talk about vulnerability, it’s not just about, you know, being a puddle on the floor and letting it all hang out. You can be like we talked about vulnerably confident, and say, Hey, this is something I’m working on. And so it might, you know, if you’re looking at me funny, why? Why? I’m actually asking everybody how their weekend went? I’m actually working on my empathy, because I understand that empathy will help our team drive better performance and engagement. So I’m working on it, and I’m not going to get it right. Yes, I would love your feedback on that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely,

Sanela Lukanovic  31:28

absolutely. And kind of getting engaging other people into that and being transparent. That’s really huge moment of vulnerability and transparency. Yeah, so that you know, people can help you out you’re mentioning about this muscle, empathy muscle. I believe that managing and practicing self compassion, which is the empathy towards ourselves, self empathy, self empathy, yeah, is I find what. That’s where I would start clients and select this, you can always work on this uh huh, because and the more you work on self compassion and exercising that muscle, then it’s going to be easier for you to connect with other people as well, right? Because what I find people who are extremely self critical, whilst they can be empathized with people who are not directly linked to their work or themselves, they can kind of they have understanding that somebody in purchasing has made, made a mistake, or something like blah, blah, blah, however, when that person comes to their team and Now their work is direct representation of them that lack of self compassion, if they’re very, you know, have a lot tolerance for mistakes and failures of any description, they’re gonna struggle to empathize with and be allowing for that to happen with that person. So I always say, like if you are practicing empathy also practice self compassion. Because what Yes, the more you have of one, the more you have of

Maria Ross  33:07

the other. I think that’s so valuable, because you also hold other people to the standard you hold yourself. And I know the things that really irk me about other actions are the ones that I get mad at myself at the most, like if I’m late, or if I misspell something, or I’m very critical, and I find that it’s that lens that I use when other people are making those same mistakes, right? I make all kinds of judgments. I make all kinds of assumptions. And when you learn to sort of let it go a little bit for yourself, it’s easier for you to understand, wow, that happens to other people too.

Sanela Lukanovic  33:50

Yes, yeah, yes, absolutely, and the moment. So in that exam, I would just add that we are we need to acknowledge that actually making that mistake, like, you know, I really care. I really care not to make a spelling mistake. I really care, you know, this is important to me. So when that happens, there is a moment of compassion that says, Wow, I really know how hard you know how much you care for this. And this really bugs you. There is a moment of, I see you, yeah, that we can do it for ourselves. So then when a colleague does that, yeah, we can kind of say, Yes, I see you. I, you know, yes, made a mistake. And then once you because that is the moment of connection to self. And then I can, I acknowledge that, and then I can go into, alright, so what, what can I learn from this? You know, did I Was that too fast? Was I, you know, do I maybe need somebody to proofread after me? Like, you know, I can problem solve after that, but I go to that after I have a moment of what I call I see. Moment, it’s okay, I see you. Yeah, I don’t need to kind of convince myself that I don’t care about it. This is what my clients struggle with. Like, you know, there’s something when we start being empathetic to other people or compassionate to ourselves, we get into this. I don’t know. I really, honestly don’t know why it happens, but there is a sense of, oh, I have to forgive myself everything, and I have to be accepting of everything, and therefore I have to be understanding and accepting of other people’s action. But empathy is not about, you know, I unconditionally accept your behavior, right? I unconditionally I accept that you’re underperforming. Yeah, exactly, yeah. No, it definitely not. So there is something around, you know, part of my work often kind of comes to that place of, okay, now, how do you do that? How can you just bring another team member? I often talk about this. You just need. You have this empathetic person who, and, you know, who comes and connect and understands, and then you have this other person who can talk about accountability. So yeah. So we need to understand that we are multi dimensional and multi multi, multi skilled, really, yeah,

Maria Ross  36:10

absolutely, yeah. So as we wrap up any final words of wisdom around what courageous empathy looks like, what we can do to achieve it? Oh, I love that courageous empathy.

Sanela Lukanovic  36:31

I would say the most courageous thing that we can do when being in any relationship with another person is to be congruent, to be constantly present to what is true for us. Because when we have certain emotions and certain things happening in our body and we are not 100% aligned, it doesn’t really matter what we say, and this is where we kind of do the right things we you know, quote unquote, yeah, quote unquote. We do the right things, we say the right thing, but we feel that disconnection. Why do we feel that? Because we we are, we are not aligned within so my biggest advice or courageous work is to be in touch with that and be truthful to yourself, so that you can be clear then and talk from that place, rather than kind of doing performative empathy. I love

Maria Ross  37:40

it, and you have a program to help leaders dare greatly. So we will put the link to that in the show notes, based on the work of Dr Brene Brown. We’ll also put all your links in the show notes. This has been so wonderful and so many great insights, and I know people listening are going to want to learn more about you and more about your work. And as I said, I’ll put all the links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s on the go right now or exercising, where’s the best place that they can find out more about you?

Sanela Lukanovic  38:09

Self, Dom dot, life, self, Dom dot, life, life, self, life, correct? So that’s yeah, they can find me there. Wonderful, All

Maria Ross  38:20

right, wonderful. Well, Sanela, thank you so much for your time and your insights today. It was wonderful to connect. Thank you so much for having me and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Sara Taylor: Thinking at the Speed of Bias

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become polarizing terms in our world and that is likely because they are greatly misunderstood. Part of that misunderstanding comes from our unconscious filters – how we see the world, how we take in information, and how we assume we are “the norm” but others are different when the reality is we are ALL different.

Today, Sara Taylor illuminates us by sharing what unconscious filters are and the three purposes they serve for us humans – even though they can get in the way of effective relationships. We discuss why diversity initiatives have become so polarized despite the data on how diversity and inclusion enrich organizations and the bottom line, and what we can do to better communicate those benefits by dealing with emotions and unconscious filters more than facts and figures. Sara also shares how intent and impact look different from both sides of the relationship, how to pause to check ourselves, and why leaders set the bar and build the culture so your DEIB initiatives will get traction.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • We are inputting 11 million bits of information every second across all our senses, but we can only process and are only consciously aware of 40 of those.
  • Assume positive intent on behalf of others. Also, assume your impact isn’t positive. When you take that accountability, we can communicate more effectively when we face obstacles.
  • It is not your responsibility to make others behave empathetically. It is your responsibility to model the appropriate empathetic behavior.
  • You can’t make empathy HR’s problem. It requires self-awareness and consciously slowing down to understand your own biases. 

“Where are we missing the mark when we know that everyone benefits from an inclusive workplace? Why is there resistance? How do we need to approach folks in our organization that are resistant in a different way for them to see what’s in their self-interest as well?” —  Sara Taylor. Author, Thinking at the Speed of Bias

Episode References: 

The Empathy Edge podcast episodes related to DEIB:

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About Sara Taylor, President, deepSEE Consulting, Author, Thinking at the Speed of Bias

Nationally recognized speaker, author, and consultant, Sara is a thought leader in the field of DEI and Cultural Competence. Numerous individuals and organizations use her bestselling book, Filter Shift, and new release book Thinking at the Speed of Bias to increase success and create greater effectiveness in interactions across differences. Sara’s company, deepSEE Consulting works with local, national, and global clients to take their Diversity and Inclusion work to the next level.

Connect with Sara:

Book: Thinking at the Speed of Bias

deepSEE Consulting: deepseeconsulting.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarajanetaylor

Facebook: facebook.com/deepsee.consulting

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books

Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com

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LinkedIn: Maria Ross

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Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross  00:04

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. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have become polarizing terms in our world, and that’s likely because they are greatly misunderstood. Part of that misunderstanding comes from our unconscious filters, how we see the world, how we take in information, and how we assume we are the norm, but others are different, when the reality is we’re all different. My guest today is Sarah Taylor. She’s a nationally recognized speaker, author and consultant and a thought leader in the area of dei and cultural competence. Numerous individuals and organizations use her best selling book, filter shift and now her newest release thinking at the speed of bias to increase success and create greater effectiveness in interactions across differences. Sarah’s company, deep sea consulting works with local, national and global clients to take their diversity and inclusion work to the next level. Today, Sarah illuminates us by sharing what unconscious filters are, why we have them, and the three purposes they serve for us humans, even though they can get in the way of effective relationships, we discuss why diversity initiatives have become so polarized, despite the data on how diversity and inclusion enrich organizations and the bottom line and what we can do to better communicate those benefits by dealing with emotions and unconscious filters more than facts and figures. Sarah also shares how intent and impact look different from both sides of the relationship, how to pause to check ourselves, and why leaders set the bar and build the culture so your deib initiatives will get traction. So many gems in this one. I loved this conversation. Take a listen big. Welcome Sarah Taylor to the empathy edge podcast to talk to us about thinking at the speed of bias. Welcome to the

Sara Taylor  02:34

show. Thank you so much, Maria, so glad to be here. Yeah. So you

Maria Ross  02:38

are not new to this author rodeo, you had another best selling book called filter shift, and tell us a little bit about we heard your bio. Tell us a little bit about how you got to this work and what makes you so passionate about it, before we dive into the content of this podcast today. Yeah,

Sara Taylor  02:55

absolutely. Well, that’s kind of a there’s two parts to that question. And for those that are listening and don’t see me, I’m a white woman, and you might think, what the heck is a white woman doing as a diversity, equity and inclusion practitioner of 35 years and surprisingly, even though I grew up on a farm outside of a teeny tiny town, I actually have been doing this work since I’ve been in middle school. I was giving presentations and doing research about bias and stereotype. We didn’t call it bias then, but stereotypes and how to be able to see each other more holistically. So honestly, that young, it’s just kind of always been a passion of mine.

Maria Ross  03:49

Yeah, I love it. And so while 35 years so you have a really good perspective, you know, I’ve seen the changes over the last decades as well. I’m curious this. I wasn’t planning to ask you this, but I gonna throw it out there. What is your perspective on the backlash to dei be in our world today, and do you think it’s short lived? Do you think it’s just a matter of maybe changing the words we use and still embracing the concepts like, what’s your take on that?

Sara Taylor  04:18

Yeah, well, you know, overall, I would say that in some ways, it is a natural reaction, because we’re starting to get some traction, and folks are a little nervous, starting to feel as though they’re going to lose out. And also, there’s a real lack of understanding of what the work actually is, exactly. And so if folks think it is, this is just activity to replace me and mine, then lots of reason to become polarized against that. Absolutely. I think that one thing that’s obviously very, very different about what we see, a couple of things. First, the. Resistance that we see today is amplified in social media, and obviously that wasn’t the case 35 years ago, exactly. And we also know that incidents of actual violence have been on the increase, and that couples with this work in organizations, because folks become more afraid of the work, the more there is violence in our society, violence against particularly marginalized groups. So that is all very, very different. You also in that question, though, said, What do I think is this going to last? And I think in some ways resistance in general, yes, may last. We may completely change the words that we use, but I don’t think the work itself will stop, because there are significant measurable research based reasons, evidence, economic evidence for doing this work in organizations. And so when organizations can make money or save money by doing something, they’re gonna be doing it

Maria Ross  06:17

for sure. That’s actually my optimistic take as well is, you know, folks saying that this is, you know, on the decline, or kind of stay away from it when you’re talking about empathy. The remarkable thing that you see is that organizations that recognize the benefits they’re achieving by investing in diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, all the things they’re not going to be willing to let go of that, because there’s a bottom line benefit to them, and there’s a benefit too overall, in terms of their ability to attract the right talent, their ability to stay innovative and compete, their ability to make good business decisions. So it’s not just this, like fancy veneer they’re putting on their business. It’s actually helping the business or the organization succeed. And so that’s actually my, you know, my hopeful star that I look to all the time to say, you know, if it’s kind of crass, but it’s also like, well, if they’re continuing to see the benefits and they’re continuing to make money, they’re going to continue to support it, no matter what anyone says, no matter what the so

Sara Taylor  07:19

I’m hoping absolutely well. And you know, the other piece about that, we can always look externally and say, How are folks talking about us? Are they going to, you know, what’s going to all of that? And I think it is also an opportunity for introspection as a practice. So if we know so clearly that there are benefit yet folks aren’t seeing it. How are we not communicating about this work in a way that we could be? Where are we missing the mark when we know that really everyone benefits from an inclusive workplace? Then why is there resistance? How do we need to approach folks in our organization that are resistant in a different way for them to be able to see what’s in their self interest as well.

Maria Ross  08:09

Absolutely, and I think you know what you said earlier about the misunderstanding, I get this with empathy all the time, of the misunderstanding of empathy and leadership, the more we can educate that’s actually helping us get over the change management hump of this, which is really psychological. It’s not data driven, so being able to explain, no, this is what it is, and this is what it isn’t. And here’s the role you get to play in this, and here’s how it doesn’t threaten you. It actually enhances what you do. It enables you to do your job better all of these things. It’s a psychological exercise, as much as it is. You know us, we really want to throw the data at people, but it’s really about their emotions at that point. So So talk to us about unconscious filters. What are they? How do we recognize them, and what is the damage that they do

Sara Taylor  09:01

absolutely unconscious filters are automatic mechanisms that operate in our unconscious, and they dictate for us, our thought, our decisions and eventually, Our actions. So one way to better understand them is by understanding what their functions are. So just like my elbow has been designed to bend my arm and it has evolved to do that, my filters have been designed to do three things. First, actually, the first one to get at it. I’m going to ask a question, how many pieces of information do you think our brains take in in one second?

Maria Ross  09:49

Oh, how much are they exposed to? Or how much do they take

Sara Taylor  09:53

in? Well, actually taking in? Yeah, okay, and I mean, one second,

Maria Ross  09:58

I feel like it. In the hundreds of 1000s, just all the data points across our senses. Yeah, 11

Sara Taylor  10:05

million. And you’re right. It’s across all of our senses, 11 million. And the reason why that’s difficult to imagine is because of the second part of the question, how many of those 11 million are we conscious of? Only 40. So

Maria Ross  10:19

40 million or 4040, per second. Okay, got it

Sara Taylor  10:25

so the rest of those 10,999,960 it’s our filters that are taking them in, Yeah, completely outside of our conscious awareness. How many seconds have I been awake today? I don’t know, not a savant to be able to figure that out. But multiply that by that number, that’s how much information I don’t even have conscious access to that. I’ve taken it the second. So that’s the first function. They’re designed to take in that information without our conscious ever being aware of it, because it’s too much for our conscious to it’s protective, in a way. It’s protective. Yeah, our conscious just literally isn’t able to do that, right? So, yep, we need the information. Then the second piece is, second function is our filters go through all of that information, and they use it in every situation to explain and evaluate what’s going on around us. So that explanation and evaluation is coming only from my past experiences. And then the third function I’ll get at also with a question, and I’ll ask you to pause and just see if the listeners can think about it for a second too. Can you tell me right now what your next thought will be? And we can’t, because that thought is created in our unconscious by our unconscious filters. So you start to see putting all three of these together, just how very powerful they are, taking in more information than we’re conscious of, then using that information to create our thoughts, which in turn create our decisions and our actions. Which means every single one of my actions today, whether they were inclusive or not, whether they were equitable or not, whether they were effective or not. They originated with an unconscious filter. And if I don’t have the ability to check and challenge those filters, then my filters are 100% in control.

Maria Ross  12:38

My gosh, so good. Well. And also, you know, where we link that up with how we end up treating other people is that we’re constantly creating, it sounds like we’re constantly creating all those shortcuts. It sounds like kahnemans work around the brain and the two areas of our brain of the conscious and the unconscious, and our brain only letting in so much into our conscious, just from again, from a defensive, a protective like we can only handle so much, but then that impacts not only the decisions we make, but how we treat other people. And so I’d love if you would talk about what is the impact on our empathy of those unconscious filters,

Sara Taylor  13:19

absolutely, if the behavior of another person. So let’s think about that. Our filters create our thought, which create our behaviors, right? And that’s the same with the people that I’m interacting with, but if I’m not thinking about their filters, I’m only focused on their behaviors. And so I see the behavior and I say, Oh, that was rude. Well, that was unprofessional. And I might even expand that value judgment to them as on as an individual, not just their behavior, but they were rude. They were unprofessional versus thinking about that behavior was created by a filter for them as well. And then, if I overlay that with another piece that, if we really think about, I’ve asked this question to, I don’t know, 10s of 1000s of people in presentations and and I say, you know, how many folks, how many of you enter the workplace every day, or enter into your relationships with positive intent? Everyone raises their hand. I mean, honestly, who shows up in the workplace and says, Today, I really want to be an ogre, like I want the biggest jerk? Yeah, yeah. So if we all have positive intent, then why is there any misunderstanding? Why am I not able to see then how my action landed differently for someone else? Mm. Hmm, I’m focused on my positive intent and not the impact I have on the other person. And I’m also not thinking about their positive intent. That’s really the empathy gap. So I’m focused on I’m respectful, because I don’t want to be an ogre, right? I’m respectful, I’m professional, but yet there’s this disconnect here, so then that means they’re the ones that are disrespectful, and I don’t have the empathy to see where that behavior came from. And so instead of seeing that end behavior as something that came from their filters. My I’m letting my filters judge them, yes. So let’s take just a real quick, really easy example. Let’s say two folks, and one like small talk in the in a meeting, and the other one doesn’t. And you can imagine the kind of conflicts, right? So Well, you could extrapolate

Maria Ross  16:06

this across introversion versus extroversion, yes, people that are more open and vulnerable than other people, like, yeah, all the differences that we bring to the workplace, for sure of

Sara Taylor  16:16

those, and if I’m only focused on well that person was rude because they didn’t have the small talk. And I like small talk. I’m not exhibiting the empathy to know what were they really intending. What really did that behavior mean for them? Can I really see that from their perspective, not from my perspective, because if I’m only looking from my perspective and leaning into my filters that are judging them as rude, then I don’t have that room for empathy to see that’s not at all what they intended.

Maria Ross  16:58

So what I’m hearing, which is an interesting tie in of our work. Why you’re here is that in order to get to first acknowledge our unconscious filters that we have them, but also to leverage empathy as a way for us to get beyond both of our unconscious filters in an interaction. And that’s where you know why I believe that trait of curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. Because I’m not going to make assumptions. I’m going to ask. I had a situation several months ago with a new person that I met. I’m a hugger. I meet people and I hug them, and I was sensing that this woman was like bristling when I was hugging her, and I was making an assumption that as another woman, she was a hugger too. And so what I did was I just said, Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m actually a hugger. Are you not a hugger? And she didn’t quite answer the question, but at least I could ascertain that it wasn’t comfortable for her to hug me yet. Yeah. And so I could have made all kinds of judgments about this person. Absolutely it was cold, or she didn’t like me or whatever, when it’s really, she’s just not a hugger. And so it was just, you know, being able to just put that out there. And I think she was taken aback that I even called it out, but she was also relieved at the same time, yeah, that, you know, her actions weren’t, her impact wasn’t going to be misinterpreted either. And so I really feel like when we are more present, and we’re kind of getting people’s cues, but also asking them those questions, we can help them recognize their unconscious filters as well, absolutely.

Sara Taylor  18:33

And what we the way I talk about it, is very first understanding your own and you started there. Yeah, I’m a hugger, right? So then you know when you’re in those situations, and that’s a rub. But the same is true for things that aren’t as visible, like you mentioned. I’m an extrovert, how does that show up in my behaviors then? I’m a direct communicator. How does that show up in my behaviors then? Or I’m crystal clear about how I’m different, yeah, different from for you, not everybody in this world is a hugger, right? And so if we assume difference a starting with ourselves, that what I do is not the norm. Mm, hmm, what I do is my difference. My filters are my difference. How am I different? How are my filters dictating how I see the world, and then not holding judgment when you come across the difference. And you did that in your example, two things that I’ll just it

Maria Ross  19:32

only took me to my 50s to get that, but

Sara Taylor  19:37

I know when we’re all it’s

Maria Ross  19:39

a long time I just I’m laughing at what you’re saying, not because I’m laughing at you. You’re reminding me of this whole thing of like you’re different because you’re not me versus me, saying, Well, I’m different from you. It reminds me of when I moved to Ohio from New York, from Long Island, from Queens, when I was going into sixth grade. Yeah. And I purposely lost my New York accent because I was treated so badly, yeah, that the kids were saying, Well, you have a funny accent. And I was saying, but you have a funny accent, and they’re like, No, we don’t. We talk like the people on the news. So we don’t have an accent. You do. And it’s was such a great example of No, but to me, you have an accent. I don’t, right, so it’s just that was such a like, blatant example of us. We don’t we think our behaviors and our norms are the norms are the norm. Anyone who’s not that is different,

Sara Taylor  20:36

yes. And then when we don’t start with ourselves and say, I’m the different, then what can happen is we can more easily sit with judgment with others. So if I’m the norm, then, yeah, that’s why your behavior isn’t right, isn’t professional, right? So it’s a whole lot easier to release that judgment if we start with, I’m the different. And it’s also helps us to lean into assuming that there’s different, yeah, and just automatically there’s going to be a difference. Might there be some cases it’s kind of like, I think about the criminal justice mantra, right, innocent, until proven guilty. I say different until proven similar. You might still find that there’s a similarity, but if I start with it’s different, then I’m gonna ask, you know, like in this well, I’ll actually take, uh, what I just did just the other day, there was a holiday that was that’s coming up. And I said, So do you celebrate that holiday? And they said, Yeah, okay, well, then happy this holiday, right? So I’m assuming that difference is there, and the same could be like with that example of a hugger. So I’m a hugger. What do you think? Are we hugging? Are we shaking hands or Yeah, kind of a thing, yeah, just assuming that difference is going to be there.

Maria Ross  22:06

You know, what’s interesting as I’ve gotten older through my career, one of the biggest ones that I’ve become more cognizant of is that whole extroversion, introversion thing. For years, I’ve taken multiple Myers, Briggs, from the time I was like 15 in, like, a leadership camp to, you know, 20 years ago, within a work team that we had and my four letters have kind of remained the same for my entire life. But one of the biggest things I realized about difference at work, when we talk about diversity, we’re not just talking about ethnicity or race or gender. There’s a lot of different facts. And really taking the time to understand that if someone is not speaking up in a meeting or brainstorming session. It’s not because they don’t have anything to offer. It’s because I process in the moment, out loud they do not. They need time to marinate and think about and, you know, discover for themselves. And I was always very judgy early in my career, in my 20s of people like that, until I realized and now I accommodate that in meetings, when I do workshops for teams, when I do brand strategy engagements, I try to give people different modalities to tap into their ideas, so that when we do come to the workshop, understanding that there might be someone who doesn’t say a word for that entire four hours. But have I given them some sort of an outlet, or some sort of a forum, or some preparation they can do in advance? But that was a long time to realize that, and I think it’s because we didn’t have people talking to us like we do today, about difference and about inclusion and just, you know, everybody is not built like us, and this is why you know in my recent book in the empathy dilemma, why the first pillar of being empathetic and effective as a leader is self awareness, yes, understanding where you are and what your strengths and your challenges and your blind spots and your emotional triggers are because they’re different than someone else’s so absolutely little diatribe there. But well,

Sara Taylor  24:03

it’s not because it it completely connects in our process of developing this ability to check and challenge our filters, our ability to be more effective, that’s where we start, too, and we talk about it as see self. I need to see my own filters, see my own differences before I see others, yes, and see their filters and their differences before I see approach and think about how I’m going to operate differently. And when it just to be clear, when I say, see, we’re not talking about just ocular vision there. We’re talking about all of the ways that we’re taken in, yeah, which is, like you said, you know, the feelings, the sense I’m getting about folks, but what we often do is we want to go straight to that end. Okay, what am I supposed to do in this situation?

Maria Ross  24:53

What am I supposed the action? Yeah,

Sara Taylor  24:57

when we actually have to develop. Through those I can’t do that do if I can’t take those other first steps first

Maria Ross  25:06

so I wanted to ask you about that, because we always do like to leave people with some practical things they can practice or take away from this. And so if you’re in that moment, whether it’s it’s you as a leader with your team, what would you advise people to what could be a next step they can take. Is it just they have a broad relationship? Is it that they, you know, what do you advise in that moment where it’s like, okay, I realize there is difference now. Now, where do I go from here? Who accommodates who as an example?

Sara Taylor  25:34

Oh my gosh. Okay, just in all of that, I’m like, Okay, I’ll say this, and I’ll say that it’s

Maria Ross  25:41

just based on the picture. Sorry, say it all. Say

Sara Taylor  25:43

it all. Let me actually start with where you ended, which was, I do get this a lot. You know, folks will say, you know, but it’s a two way street. It’s a two way street. So why do I have to be the one that shifts my behavior? And I use in my first book the analogy of, let’s just pretend it actually is a street, and we’re headed towards each other, and I see the obstacles that will make us crash, and you don’t. Would I say, Well, hey, this is a two way street. I’m not gonna I’m head straight to those obstacles, because you are too. I mean, no, we wouldn’t do that. We wouldn’t cause a crash intentionally. We wouldn’t cause that flash of our personalities, of our ways of being, that ineffectiveness. So first of all, that accountability. If I’m going to wait for others, well, then I’m going to get it sucked into an effective interaction, when I might be able to pull that up to a more effective place. The other piece is just some real quick things we talked about it a little bit earlier, and that is really thinking about intent impact. So instead of focusing on my intent, which my filters are always going to say, you’re right, Sarah, you’re respectful, you’re professional, you’re this, it was them. Instead, I’m going to flip that around, and I’m going to assume positive intent on their behalf, and then I’m also going to assume that the impact I had on them wasn’t positive. So when I do that, it gives me the other piece, which is accountability. I need to take accountability for what’s going to happen in this interaction. Again, it’s kind of like I was saying earlier. Who wants to raise their hand and say, Yay, I really want to be ineffective. No, none of us. So let’s take accountability for being as effective as we can in those situations, assume positive intent on the other part and focus on our own impact. That’s one quick strategy.

Maria Ross  27:55

I love that because, and first of all, I love the analogy of the two cars going at it because it’s like, okay, so what do you want to do? You want to be right, or you want to be right, or you want to be dead, like, exactly. But I love that analogy, and I also love your point about, you know, and I think, I hope, at least for me, it’s been true again, as you get older, you start to think more about what role you play in the interaction I talk to when I’m doing leadership trainings or keynotes. I talk about this fact of understanding what you bring to the interaction, yes, and where you know it’s that old phrase of like, well, I’ve had all these bad relationships with all these people at work. Well, what’s the common denominator? It’s you, right. So thinking about, well, what actually am I bringing that? Maybe it may be, it might not be the truth, but maybe that person is reacting to yes or responding to So really being thoughtful and reflective about the bad situations. I do this a lot. When I have arguments with my husband, I think back of like, oh, I probably could have said that in a better way, or I could have, you know, it doesn’t avoid the argument, but you know, it’s being able to reflect on it after and not just assume it’s all the other person’s fault or the other person needs to do all the changing. And what I always tell people, and this sounds similar, is that when I get the question of, well, what do I do if I’m in an interaction with someone who’s not empathetic, like no matter what I do, they’re not being empathetic to me, and I always say, well, that’s kind of not your responsibility. All you can do is model how you want the interaction to go and hope it stays with them, and it may not impact them in that conversation, but maybe when they go away, they’ll realize that you were acting in a certain way with them, and you were getting curious, and you were trying to reach out, and maybe you’ve impacted them for the next interaction or the interaction with someone else. And so it’s you can’t make someone be inclusive in your world or equitable. We can’t make someone be empathetic. All we can do is be the model and show up absolutely that we can and hope that people sort of get the hint. Yes, absolutely, to dumb it down, right?

Sara Taylor  30:01

Absolutely, you know, you’re reminding me of, I remember eons ago in a parenting class. You know, our youngest daughter was probably, you know, three or four, and the instruct parenting instructor saying, okay, you know, we hear you all want your kids to be empathetic. How do you teach that? And we all sat there scratching our heads, how do you teach empathy? How do you teach empathy? And it was that be empathetic yourself. It is that same piece, so also from my line of work, if I want to set up my children in my life for being an inclusive and effective when they’re adults, I need to model that now with them, right, whatever the children are in my life or the staff that I have on my team, I need to model it myself.

Maria Ross  30:55

For sure, your actions speak way louder than your words, and so talk to us a little bit about what is your intent with the new book. With, first of all, I want to know what you mean by thinking at the speed of bias. But also, what do you hope leaders will do after reading the book? What do you hope they take away from it? So kind of two questions in there as we wrap up.

Sara Taylor  31:15

Yeah, absolutely. Thinking at the speed of bias. If you think about those three functions of our filters, our filters go boom. They’ve created my thought, which lots of times I don’t even have the thought. I just go straight to the action, and it’s happens in a millisecond. So in order to catch up with ourselves, we’ve got to slow down, and we’ve got to have a more active, conscious process. So instead of our filters just dictating our our actions or our behaviors, we do a check and a challenge. Wait, what was that? Well, you know, where is that coming from? And in my book, I give a lot of tools of how to do that. Again, you know, one that I mentioned be real clear about my biggest filters, that’s one of the easiest ways to see when those are in juxtaposition to someone who’s different, and also know understanding the different types of filters and so forth. So that piece of how do you think at the speed of bias? It’s impossible to think that fast. So we have to actually counter intuitively, slow down. We have to slow down and slow down our conscious process in order to do that check in challenge. So when it comes to organizations, what I hope that leaders will do is just like we started off before saying the work starts with ourselves. That’s true in organizations as well. Leaders have to do their own work first. This is not work that we can delegate. We are taught as leaders to delegate, but this is not work you can delegate. Hey, will you go to get some of that self awareness for me? We can you have that by next Friday? I

Maria Ross  32:59

actually say that about empathetic culture, about, you know, you as a leader, can’t make it hrs problem.

Sara Taylor  33:05

Yeah, absolutely.

Maria Ross  33:07

Go. Make us an empathetic culture like, no, you’ve got to do some of the work for your team, and that’s why, you know, the first two pillars in the empathy dilemma are about self, not about others, because you have to have your own house in order. Yes, and you won’t succeed every day. You’re going to have different levels of capacity on different days. And I’m sure it’s the same in the work that you do as well.

Sara Taylor  33:28

Absolutely. And the other piece is that we actually measure this competence. There’s a an assessment out there called the IDI that measures it, and what we have seen in 1000s of groups and organizations, is that when we look at the overall effectiveness of an organization, it is never more effective or more developed than its leaders. So what does that mean? Not that our leaders are somehow better or smarter. It means that our leaders set the bar and create the culture, so if our leaders haven’t done their own work to develop, they cannot expect their organization to develop and be more effective. It also means that any kind of dei work you’re doing without that development is just going to be hamster wheel, spinning the wheels 100% transactionless attraction list transactions. So that development piece has to come first, starting with leaders cascading down in the organization, and then they’ll have the ability to really take a look at where inclusion or exclusion, equity or inequity is built into the system. I love it. Well, I could

Maria Ross  34:48

talk to you for another hour about this. This is great, but we gotta go. I’m gonna put a link to the IDI assessment you mentioned in the show notes, and I’m also gonna give listeners a few episodes they may want to. To take in that are related to this topic, from allies and inclusion experts like Karen Catlin and some of the names are escaping me. Cynthia, oh young, I will put some links to those past episodes as well, because this touches on so much so. Sarah, thank you so much for your time and your insights today. And where can we’ll have all your links in the show notes, but where can folks that are on the go learn more about you and your work?

Sara Taylor  35:26

Yeah, LinkedIn is good spot. So Sarah Taylor also my company, which is deep sea consulting, and that’s se deep sea consulting, that’s another good spot, of course, wherever you get your books, and particularly Amazon. I’ve got an author bio there, and you can get the books there as well. Yes,

Maria Ross  35:45

the new book is called thinking at the speed of bias, and your past best seller is called filter shift. So everyone, please check those out. Thank you again, Sarah,

Sara Taylor  35:53

thank you, Maria. This has been a delight. And thank you everyone

Maria Ross  35:57

for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate review, 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Jason Silver: How to Enjoy Your Work More

Work can be one of the biggest drivers of positivity in your life, but no one ever really explains how to be successful without sacrificing everything outside of the office. When you enjoy your work, you’re more successful and any joy you feel on the job spills over into the rest of your life as well. Kind of like practicing empathy at work and bringing that skill home with you!
My guest today is Jason Silver, author of Your Grass is Greener: Use What You Have, Get What You Want. At Work and in Life. We discuss why leaning into values matters, what he learned about people-centric leadership at AirBnB, and how he carried that into his other successful endeavors. He shares 9 of the most common workplace challenges, why the term “best practice” is dangerous, and the difference between intention and purpose.   He shares powerful habits to find more enjoyment at work – which he says is not the fluff but the fuel  – and he tells you exactly how to ask your boss to allow you to do your work in ways you enjoy more! Finally, we discuss why it’s easy for leaders to attribute cost but less easy to attribute exponential benefits when you focus on enjoyment and people first.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • Take care of your people first and they will take care of any problem your business runs into. 
  • The earlier you start, the more you can bake the values of the organization into the company and team members, which makes it easier to make every decision based on those values. 
  • It is not a waste of time to reflect and learn from our weeks. If we don’t know where we were unintentionally pulled sideways or intentionally set other things aside, we won’t know what we need to focus on going forward. 
  • You are not going to find every aspect of your job fun or enjoyable, but it doesn’t have to be constant fun for you to find overall enjoyment in your career.

“Enjoyment isn’t the fluff. Enjoyment is the fuel. The more you’re enjoying your work, the more likely it is that you accomplish bigger and bigger things.” —  Jason Silver

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 Jason Silver, Founder and author of Your Grass is Greener

Jason Silver is a multi-time founder of kids and a multi-time founder of companies. He gets his biggest thrill helping modern employees and their teams unlock a better way to work—surfing is a close second. He was an early employee at Airbnb and helped build an AI company from the ground up back before AI was the cool thing to do. Today, he as a self-professed “Startup Personal Trainer”, advises a startup portfolio valued in the billions on how to build great, lasting companies that people actually enjoy working for. He’s a sought-after public speaker, instructor, and advisor on how to transform work into one of the biggest drivers of positivity in your life. When he’s not busy helping people solve their hardest workplace challenges, Jason’s kids are busy reminding him just how much of a work in progress he still is too.

Connect with Jason Silver:

Website: thejasonsilver.com

Book: Your Grass is Greener: Use What You Have. Get What You Want. At Work and In Life

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/silverjay

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. Work can be one of the biggest drivers of positivity in your life, but no one ever really explains how to be successful without sacrificing everything outside of the office. When you enjoy your work, you’re more successful, and any joy you feel on the job spills over into the rest of your life as well, kind of like practicing empathy at work and bringing that skill home with you. Jason silver, author of your grass is greener, use what you have, get what you want at work and in life, is a multi time founder of kids and a multi time founder of companies. He gets his biggest thrill helping modern employees and their teams unlock a better way to work. Surfing is a close second for him. He was an early employee at Airbnb and helped build an AI company from the ground up, back before AI was the cool thing to do today, he’s a self professed startup personal trainer. Advises a startup portfolio valued in the billions on how to build great, lasting companies that people actually enjoy working for. Today, Jason and I discuss why leaning into values matters, what he learned about people centric leadership at Airbnb and how he carried that into his other successful endeavors. He shares nine of the most common workplace challenges, why the term best practice is dangerous and the difference between intention and purpose. He also shares powerful habits to find more enjoyment at work, which he says is not the fluff, but the fuel. And he tells you exactly how to ask your boss to allow you to do your work in ways you enjoy more. Finally, we discuss why it’s easy for leaders to attribute cost, but less easy to attribute exponential benefits when you focus on enjoyment and people first. This was a great one. Take a listen. Welcome Jason silver to the empathy edge podcast. We’re here to talk about all things empathy, all things values and all things about loving the job that you have. Welcome to the show.

Jason Silver  02:46

Thank you, Todd for having me, Maria, excited to chat. So before we

Maria Ross  02:49

get started, I want to ask you. What I ask all my guests is, what is your story, what got you to this place and the work that you’re doing, and especially to writing this book, your grass is always greener. Great title, by the way.

Jason Silver  03:00

Thank you. It’s a bit of a circuitous journey that, like, makes sense when you look back and was is still always frightening while I’m my way through it. But, you know, long story short, I never intended to write a book. You know, people will be like, oh, there’s, you know, the author of the book. And I’m like, looking behind me, like, who are they talking about? But I was an engineer by training. Thought I would be technical work on a bunch of technology got really interested in everything that goes around the technology. How do you build a team? A great company joined my first startup in business, which was kind of the first entrepreneurial thing I did. I wanted to work in business. Didn’t want to get an MBA. Said, Hey, let me come and work here for free, for a little bit nothing on paper says I can do business, but like, let’s just see what happens. I got very lucky. It went great. CEO kind of took me under his wing and was like, You don’t talk, but you sit here and you take notes and you can sit in a bunch of different chairs. Great, great. So I learned about, you know, fundraising and partnership deals and commercialization and yada yada yada yada. The company got acquired. I had a software project on the side which was taking like 30 hours a week. It was a lot on the side. So I jumped. Started my first company hit like a double or a single. Wanted to go bigger. Founded another company, raised venture capital, built a team. Crash that company, which was always an interesting story, happy to talk about

Maria Ross  04:20

it. Oh yeah. I mean, I lived through, through both tech bus, both the night, the one in 99 and then the one in 2008 so, yeah,

Jason Silver  04:27

yeah, it was, that was an experience for sure. You know, I thought my career was done. Like, that’s it, you know, I was 20 something, and I was like, Well, I will never get hired again. Nobody will ever put money in a company again. Like, I peaked. We’re done here. That was a nice run. Let me go be a barista. Yeah, that’s right, yeah, that’s not what happened. One of my investors, whose money I almost entirely lost, thought enough of the way I handled building the company. What happened? He called me up one day and he said, Jay, there’s this team. I think you could be a great fit while you have a chat with them. And that was the folks at Airbnb back before. Airbnb. Was Airbnb, right, met them, got to, you know, experience what the the unicorn in the valley was before it was the big, cool thing to do. So, you know, I was there and we were a couple 100 people got to feel the like scale up to a couple 1000, which was, you know, crazy, lots of learnings there. Wanted to do a startup. Again, had my first kid coming, wanted to be based in the city that, you know, my family’s in. So I did the only thing that feel logical, like, jump started another company. I joined a company that had been started, but there were, like, two people and a half a pitch deck and, like, right, you know, times, and that was in artificial intelligence before artificial intelligence was the coolest thing that everybody was working on. So it was, you know, fun to be kind of early in there, you know, hit a moment in my life where I wanted to do something different and pay forward all the things I’ve been very fortunate to learn. And now I basically advise other people how to build their companies so that, you know, they love their jobs, and the people who work for the companies love their jobs and have a great experience as well, and yada yada that led to the book in a way I never would have expected. Okay,

Maria Ross  06:05

so, so many things in there. First of all, you need to play the lottery just how you fell into these tech companies that did well. Also, I love that you call yourself a startup personal trainer to really guide a startup to success and help them achieve their goals. But you made a shift in your career from numbers to people, and you say it started with your time at Airbnb. Can you talk about that? Yeah,

Jason Silver  06:28

sure. You know, I think because of my engineering upbringing, you know, everything for me was like a technical problem. I I value the education I got in engineering, like the problem solving skills and what have you, but it led me astray in a lot of leadership ways. And what I learned from airb, what I thought I knew about leadership, was, okay, we’ve got a job. We need to get done an outcome we’re trying to deliver. People are one of many inputs, but they’re interchangeable, right? What we need are humans that can do certain things, and if you get humans that can do certain things and will accomplish certain things as a result. For me, I learned that for me, that is wrong. Might work for other people, it doesn’t, you know, work for me and I don’t. It’s not what I’ve seen create the best teams, and what I learned at Airbnb, and the way I think about business now is, you know, you show me a problem. My first question is not going to be, let’s say we’re trying to double sales. Most people will start with, oh, like, what market are you in? What does the product look like? I’m like, tell me about the people who are working on this problem. What are they doing? What are they interested in? What are they motivated by? What’s going on in their in their lives? You know, really like people first. And it’s that old adage, you know, you know, you take care of your people, and they’ll take care of the problems. And so I really genuinely believe that, and Airbnb is the first place that I saw in action, to the point where, after I joined, I was, like, a month or two in, and I was just like, What the heck is this place like this? Can’t, if not for the if not for the scaling I was seeing us doing. I would not have believed somebody describing to me that these business practices would lead to these kind of outcomes. I’d be like, Oh, yeah. What you’re describing is like, you know, not the way that a type A should strive and drive and whatever right. Super long about that. Can

Maria Ross  08:18

you give a few examples of some of those,

Jason Silver  08:20

like, things that Airbnb did, or things that I kind of took that were

Maria Ross  08:24

surprising to you, of like, how can you lead your company to success operating that way?

Jason Silver  08:29

Yeah, I maybe two would kind of pop out. Airbnb, in my personal experience, is like the lead worldwide leader in off sites. You know, this was way before remote work was, like, the hottest topic and all that kind of stuff, but the amount of time that I spent flying to, like other offices to meet with their teams with very loose agendas, and I would go to these things, or people would come to, you know, where I was based, like, a lot of high horsepower individuals who are being paid a lot of money to sit In a room and talk about what’s going on inside of the business. I was just like, hey, can we stop doing this? I have work to get done. Like, we gotta go do stuff. Yeah, what I didn’t realize is there’s so much that comes out of that. If you can’t, there’s no straight line ROI for a thing like that. And it was just baked into the culture. You know, every so often we need to get together in a room. And when things are growing so quickly, you just put people in a room, and there’s some kind of cross pollination that happens, and you can’t predict the outcome. You just do the job very you know well, and the job being, put people in the room, create the right atmosphere, get the right people around the table, give them the right prompting question. And you know, more often than not, something great is going to come out of the other end. You just don’t know where or when it’s going to happen. And I think that I looked at it as a detractor, you know, this is a thing that slows us down. I think it was the opposite, in retrospect. It was something that sped us up. It was a thing that allowed us to go much more quickly. Because. As, you know, as I was kind of progressing at Airbnb, I started to work on more global stuff. And, you know, I would know the team from Japan, like personally, I know what’s going on for them. I know how they’re thinking about things. It doesn’t come up in regular meetings, you know, just doesn’t happen, yeah, but because I know them, it’s like, I could call them up. We can move a thing faster. I can put myself in their shoes better than I otherwise would have been able to. And huge, huge, huge benefit.

Maria Ross  10:25

I love that realization, because that is the crux of my work. Is that, you know, when people say it takes too long to be an empathetic leader, they make the same argument about strategy. It takes too long to sit down and do the strategy when we’ve got to get the tactics going right. That’s a very quarter to quarter mindset, very short term thinking. You’re going to pay the price for that at some point. So you might as well put the money and time in up front and accelerate faster to your point that when you take the time to build those relationships, when you take the time to get to know the people on your team, when you take the time to work, not in the business, but on the business. Like, let’s pick our heads up and look six months out, one year out. And I love what you said about putting the right people in the room, prompting them with the right questions, and then, sort of like, you know, getting your popcorn out and seeing what happens. Because people, if you’re hiring the right people, they will rise to the occasion in many circumstances, not all, but in many circumstances that the command and control model doesn’t work anymore. In today’s world, it’s moving too fast. It’s changing too much, and our problems are too complex, and it requires us to spend the time on these interpersonal relationships to actually be able to, in the end, move forward faster. And I love that you came to that realization having come from an engineering background.

Jason Silver  11:51

You know, I think there’s a good expression, like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I think that kind of always stuck with me. And, you know, pulling the thinking out of Airbnb, that the challenge that I’ve seen that similar to what you described, is, I think there’s a big attribution mismatch. The challenge is that it’s really easy to attribute the cost to something like being an empathetic leader or to doing an off site or what have you, and it’s very difficult, bordering on impossible, to attribute the benefit, right? Because I can tell you, Okay, I spend this much time traveling to the place, and I spend this much time at the off site that I could spend working on other things, and it costs us this much money to run the off site. And then you’re like, Okay, great. The cost is X amount of hours, X amount of dollars. Well, what did that get us right. You know, you’re not going to know the benefit that it is providing over the years as things are evolving and changing, because there’s no through line. And I think that would kind of take me to the second point, which we touched on a little bit before we hopped on here about values. This is one of these things that I think you have to invest in, because you believe that, you know, taken on the whole an investment in this nature will be better for the business than it will than that. And you just have to say, okay, you know what? We can’t win this attribution game, right? We’re never going to know exactly what it does. It’s baked into our core values that people matter. And here we’re going to make business decisions behind that, believing that it’s the right thing to do. Airbnb was the first place that I really saw lean into values in like an appreciable it’s not a poster on the wall. There were a lot of things we could improve, for sure, but there was such a heavy lean into values, yeah, that it stuck with me. It’s so much of what I learned there became the foundation for the next company that I was a part of building, and I’m so grateful for it, because we got to put it in from ground zero versus Exactly.

Maria Ross  13:44

Yeah. I mean, that’s why I love when I do my brand strategy engagements, which are fewer now, but it’s really great to work with companies at an earlier stage, because you can start to bake that into the DNA, and you can take the energy and the excitement and the values that they actually do bring to the table when they’re a smaller team, and figure out a way to operationalize that so as they scale, they don’t lose who they are. Yeah, versus it’s way easier. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I love what you’re saying about assessing the cost, because this is often when people say, Well, how do I measure empathy? And I used to try to do, years ago, I used to try to do a song and dance around that of like, well, you know, it depends on what your definition of empathy is, and how do you measure that, and is it about, you know, increased collaboration. Now I’ve moved completely away from that, because you shouldn’t be measuring empathy. You should be measuring your objectives and your goals, and empathy should be fueling the ability to achieve them, right? So we’re not measuring that. That’s like saying we need to measure respect in our organization, or we need to measure hierarchy, or, you know, it just, it’s not the end goal. The end goal is not to say, you know, check a bunch of boxes that, yep, we’re an empathetic organization. I mean, we tanked our quarters, but you know what? An empathetic organization, so that doesn’t really matter. So it’s lever you can pull to get to those objectives faster, more cleanly and without leaving anyone behind. And you get people excited about working there. You get people excited about coming to work every day, because they all know that they’re to achieve that mission and that objective, and that the objective is not necessarily, you know, let’s be empathetic to each other. The objective is something else, and we’re going to get there by practicing empathy with each other. I think that’s a paradigm shift for people. I

Jason Silver  15:32

think about it the same way, you know, the objective is where we’re going, and empathy, for me, is a value which describes how we get there. Yeah, exactly. You know, assuming our company had a value of empathy, we would say, Great, we can list all the ways we’re not going to accomplish this particular objective. Like, I’m not going to accomplish it by the command and control style that you mentioned, and I’m not going to accomplish it by I could list all sorts of, you know, less than stellar leadership traits. If we want to go down that particular we’ll do that in another episode. Yeah. The point is, it’s all about, you know, you’re making a bet, and you’re saying, of the of all of the possible versions of our company accomplishing these objectives, this is the one that we’re betting on. It acts in this way. It behaves in this way. And for me, that’s all about the values and whether or not they’re truly a part of the company.

Maria Ross  16:17

Well, I think, you know, my new book, clarity is one of the five pillars of effective and empathetic leadership, and part of the clarity discussion in the book is that you have to actually explain and articulate your values. Again, not just a bullet point, but when we say empathy is a value, what does that actually look like in practice? Give people tangible examples of behaviors or practices that exhibit empathy. So they have some bearing. They have some way to know how they’re getting there. And for different companies that could look different, maybe they’re not even calling it empathy. Maybe, like Airbnb, they’re calling it service, or they’re calling it something else, and it the name of it doesn’t matter as much as the if you’re going to say this is your value, you need to explain to each and every person what that actually means and what it looks like in practice. And so I’m curious, because you did have this wonderful experience with Airbnb, and then you move on, and you’re working with other companies that are, you know, a little less enlightened about looking at values and looking at people centered leadership that way. So what was there, sort of a culture shock moment for you, of like, oh, not everybody does it this way.

Jason Silver  17:28

No, you know, I think everyone, every company, is different, right? And I think it would be arrogant of me to say, Okay, this is the right way or the wrong right. Of course, it’s not right or wrong. And I think a thing I struggled with, you know, because I went from Airbnb, built the company, obviously, I didn’t define the way that company operated, but I was a part of it. And, you know, fingerprints were all over. And then I started talking to other companies, and I found that in my role, people would often, yeah, I’d be working with a CEO, and we would work on a thing, and they’re like, hey, is this right or wrong? What do you think? Right? And I struggle with that question, yeah? Because, you know, the number of times that I’ve seen a business or a product, I’m like, that is just going to absolutely crush it. This is going to be the greatest thing ever, and it Hey, or the opposite, I’m like, what this is not, yeah, ever, yeah, work. And it goes through the roof, you know? And I think I struggle with it, because I’m not really an Oracle. And so the thing that I try to do, like my work with a lot of companies, is so intentionally focused on intentionality. What I try to help them understand is, like, what is your intent? And then what I can do for you that’s hard when you’re in the weeds, is I can tell you, are you aligned or not with the intent as stated? And for me, that was the thing where I, when I see that I really try to help a company, is like, you’ve told me you want to be empathetic, you’ve told me you want to have your values in or you’ve told me that you’re, you know, trying to create upward mobility for your people. Here’s what I’m seeing, the actions feel misaligned from the intent. I’m not going to tell you whether that’s right or wrong, because maybe we need to change the intention. The market has changed. The business has changed, we change our intention and we march forward, right? But right? It’s that simple, but not easy. Yeah, if you have an intent, you’re either aligned with it or you’re not. And if you’re not, you either get aligned with it or you change a decision to be changed. That’s why. But we should always be trying to be intentional. Do

Maria Ross  19:18

you equate intent with purpose? Ah,

Jason Silver  19:23

I think in the way I interpret your question, no, you know, for me, like the conventional definition of purpose, you know, like, why are we here? Yeah, yeah, it’s like a big overarching philosophical thing. So they’re related. Maybe I would think about them as, like, first cousins or something. But like, the intent can get highly tactical. You know, you can go right down to the intent of, like, we’re trying to accomplish this objective. What’s the intention behind it? Right? Like, the intent can be, we value empathy, like, what is the intention behind that? You know, that’s the key piece. And I don’t think I’m doing the world’s perfect job of articulating the difference, but they feel. Little different in my head,

Maria Ross  20:00

I get you, I think what you’re if I can reflect back, it sounds like you’re saying purpose is, again, more of the like, it’s the mission we’re on, why we’re here, but the intent is maybe related to specific initiatives and maybe even programmatic elements or actions that you’re taking in pursuit of that purpose.

Jason Silver  20:18

Yeah, I think like purpose sits on top of the intents, like every intent should fit inside of the purpose, for sure. Yeah. But I think, you know, every objective, why do we have that objective? What’s the intention behind it? If this is a value, why is it there? What’s the intention behind it? Are we acting in accordance with our intentions? Yes or no. And that can go from, you know, everybody, from the CEO, down to like, you know, you’re working in your job, and you a common problem I talked to lots of folks about is, I get to the end of the week, I feel like I’m really busy. I’m very burned out. I did so much stuff, but I did, didn’t accomplish what I needed to accomplish. And so you don’t feel great like, Well, why did that happen? You know, was it an intentional week? Did you get pulled off of your top priorities on purpose? In which case, great, that’s probably, you know, you made an on purpose decision to move off of what you thought was the most important stuff. Or did it drift unintentionally? Right? And is that an opportunity for you to say, Great, I can have much more intent around what I’m being pulled off of how I’m being pulled off.

Maria Ross  21:16

Yeah, I think we could all do in our companies with as fast as they’re going to have that kind of reflection modeled and rewarded more that it’s not a waste of time to sit and think about, how did the week go? What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? We’re always on to the next thing, and then with that, we lose the learnings from even if something failed, we should be able to learn from that, and we can’t learn from it if we don’t take time to stop for a second and say, let’s look at this. Was this actually the way I wanted this project to go? Was this actually the way I wanted this week to go? Was this the way I wanted this meeting to go, or this interaction or this performance review? We don’t take enough reflection time and again with my book, The first pillar is self awareness, and self awareness requires that pause that let me take a look and from you know, float above myself and try to be objective about why this is going right or why this is going wrong, and how am I showing up in the interaction. So I love that idea of intentionality, and you being that sort of coach and Sherpa to get them to drift back on course, so to speak.

Jason Silver  22:25

Yeah, it’s the difference between being responsive and being reactive. Exactly. Reactive is you just, you’re flying around, doing the thing, and responsive is, my intention was x, you know, I’m moving towards y, quick check. Is that what I want to do? Yeah, it is. Okay, great. Now my intention is why, and let’s go. It doesn’t take a lot.

Maria Ross  22:43

What’s really interesting is, I worked for many startups. I did a whole startup, merry go round for a while in the early 2000s and a few of them, it was just so running, running, running, and feeling like we didn’t know where we were running towards. And it was and it was so frustrating. Yeah, yeah. It was so frustrating, because it felt like the whims of whoever the CEO talked to last would become part of what we were supposed to work on that week. Yeah. And it just leaves you, you know, from a, you know, kind of segueing into your book. It leaves you really demoralized by the work. It leaves you very like, either I’m just like, I don’t even want to start something, because I know it’s going to change in three change in three days. I don’t want to put all this work into it, or just feeling unmoored, like I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know where we’re trying to go, and if I do finally get a grasp of where we’re trying to go. And, you know, I was younger then I was like, manager level, you know, very early director level, and I didn’t even know I was supposed to know that. I didn’t even know that that was actually that I was being shown. A bad example, I guess I should say I didn’t realize. I thought that’s just the way it was. And so frustrating, because I look back on those roles and I’m like, gosh, we could have done so much more. We could, you know, and I could have done so much more if I’d known what it was supposed to look like and the questions that we should have been asking. It doesn’t mean I would have been able to impact it any differently, but I kind of internalized it as like, well, I don’t know what I’m doing, because I constantly felt like I didn’t know what I was doing in those jobs, because the strategy changed every day, depending on the last analyst the CEO talked to, or the last person they talked to, or the last peer. It was like, Nope, this week, it’s this. And then I was like, Okay, well, let’s crumple up that plan. And so I’m curious to know, you know, what is kind of your overall thought about enjoying your job? We hear that right? Like that’s something people want. They want to enjoy their job. So I want to just get strip that down and in your definition from the book, what does it mean to enjoy your job?

Jason Silver  24:51

Good question. So, you know, I think we often confuse the words enjoyment and fun in a way that’s unhelpful. So fun is always. Is enjoyable. Enjoyment is not always fun. You know? I think the best example of that is, you know, you go for a run, you’re running a marathon, you’re in the last mile, you’re probably not having fun. You may not necessarily be enjoying that particular moment, but when you finish the race, you enjoy the entirety of the race. Assuming you’re somebody who enjoys running, if you hate running, if you hate running, you’re probably not going to like that process at all. None of it will be good. Yeah, right. When I think back on some of the most enjoyable times in my career, it’s not the moment when, like, there was no stress, there was no adversity, there was nothing challenging. You know, it’s the moments where a bunch of us are in a room there’s a major problem. We don’t know if we’re going to solve it. The impact is going to be huge. We’re all jamming away on this problem. We don’t know if we’re going to get it. Figured out it figured out. You know, you play the tape board and whatever happens, happens. I’m like, that was such a professionally enjoyable moment. I was not having fun at that time in that moment, but it’s about enjoying the job overall. And I think what I struggled with earlier in my career is this idea that, like the most common pushback I get is, man, I don’t have time to enjoy stuff. I’ve got things to get done. Yeah, right? I’m busy. I’ll enjoy it later. You know, my usual, my model years ago, was, it’ll be great. I’ll enjoy it when I insert accomplishment here, sell this company, that company goes public, like, get this promotion, find some new job. What I’ve learned is like, that’s not the way our brains work. It’s not what you wind up enjoying. You know, you got to think about, in my experience, you got to think about the day to day. And there’s a lot that we have control over. A lot of times it just feels like I have no real control over this, because I have to get these things done, and because I have to get these things done, and they’re not the most fun, I can’t enjoy my job right now. There’s nothing I nothing I can, right, right? And so I wrote this book to show people that actually, you know, enjoyment isn’t the fluff. Enjoyment is the fuel of your accomplishment. The more you’re enjoying your work, the more likely it is that you accomplish bigger and bigger things. The more you accomplish, the more you enjoy, it. The more you enjoy it, the more you accomplish. And it’s a big, gigantic flywheel of greatness that just goes up and up. The problem is, you know, Google it and you know, how do I enjoy my job? You’ll get a bunch of useless platitudes. Find a job you enjoy. You’ll never work a day in your life. Yeah, great. Show me that person. Yeah, right. You know, work smarter, not harder. Like, I’m waking up every day trying to work dumb, like, what do you I don’t know if I knew it to be differently, I would do it right. And so the book is effectively nine of the most common workplace challenges with very I’ve been told, unconventional tactics that are completely within people’s control, like they can read the book, put it down, try it at work tomorrow. Doesn’t matter. You know who your boss is, or what your job is, or what your to dos are. You can try them and you know they’ll make a difference. And if they don’t, it’s a great indication, if you try all nine and nothing changes for you, then it’s a good indication that there might be something external that you need to do. Maybe it’s something maybe it’s something about your environment. Of course, there are toxic work environments. I’m not saying you can, you know, change all of those, but Right, most of the time we think it’s out of my control, or I have to change my environment. And I’ve seen the

Maria Ross  28:15

so this is so funny, because everything you’re saying keeps coming back to the book, and not to be like plugging my book either, but it’s this idea. My fifth pillar is joy, of what makes an effective, effective and empathetic leader. And I don’t mean I say it right there. It doesn’t mean you’re the funniest workplace in the world. It’s can you find moments of levity when the work is hard? Can you find things that are enjoyable when the work is hard? You know, I looked at emergency room departments. I looked at like police stations. I talked to people from different environments that even if you can create, it was one example, if you can create a sense of camaraderie and have a friend at work, that’s an indicator that you are actually going to be more engaged. You are going to perform better. In some cases, it’s going to be less absenteeism, all of these things come about when you encourage work friendships in your team or in your environment. That’s just one example, and that’s why I didn’t call that pillar fun, because it’s not really fun because, again, sometimes you do have to do budget spreadsheets. That’s not fun, unless the reason why it’s called you love accounting, right? Yeah, exactly. And I see a lot of advice going out there to people, you know, and it started with the whole follow your bliss, or, you know, live your bliss thing, that whole movement. But, you know, advice to young people of like, well, you need to have a conversation with your manager if you find that doing reports is really draining your energy. And I think this is the like, you know? I mean, it’s not always fun, 24/7 right? Yeah,

Jason Silver  29:47

well, yes. And I think there’s always going to be stuff that exists on the fringe that you accept, right? But I think on the most part, it is possible to enjoy the majority of your work, and I think you’re hitting on. A point, and I’ll give you like an example and an exercise people can try and if they have a thing to do with their teams. So you’re the point you’re hitting on that I talked about in my book, that I think is really critical is I really think that the term best practice is misused and very dangerous, and the reason why is because the best practice for me is unlikely to be the best practice for you, and it’s unlikely to be the best practice for somebody else. So the analogy, you know, I would use, is like, you open up your phone and you go to Google Maps, and you’re going to a restaurant, right? And you plug it in, it’s not just going from A to B, it’s like Google gives you options. Do you want to take public transit? Do you want to walk? Are you going to walk? Are you going to be on a bike? Do you if you’re going to drive? Do you want to take the most economical route, the most scenic route, right? We can go from A to B, the point is to get to B, but the way we get there is kind of up in the air, right? And so your boss might say to you, let’s take you and I as hypothetical examples. And I’m the person that you just described who really likes spreadsheets, and you’re the person who threads them.

Maria Ross  31:01

I’d rather poke my eye out with a sharp stick. Yeah, exactly, you know, and you want

Jason Silver  31:05

to go give a big presentation. I also love presentations, but I’m going to play the spreadsheet guy for the purposes of this conversation, as long as there are no follow up questions, okay? And we both are handed the same task, okay? And the task is, we got to give a project update at the end of the week. My version is the like analytical spreadsheet guy is, I’m going to go collect a bunch of data, I’m going to crunch it in a spreadsheet. I’m going to send around an email to the team in advance with everything I found, and say, come to the meeting with any questions. We go to the meeting. They ask their questions. I get back the answers. I updated everybody on the project. Objective accomplished. You are going to go talk to a bunch of people on the team, see what’s going on. You’re going on. You’re going to build a beautiful presentation that tells a really nice, engaging story. You’re going to stand up in front of the team, give your presentation. People are going to ask questions. The meeting will end. Both of us accomplished the same objective, yes, but we did it in two completely different ways. And if you gave me your version or vice versa, we would be miserable, right? And so the whole point of the book is, it’s about how, right? Yeah, I’m not telling you that you have to change your to do list. We still have to deliver the project update, right? But if you change the way you’re accomplishing it, you can enjoy it a heck of a lot more, especially the exercise, which is the major problem most of us. We talked about knowing yourself and self reflection stuff, most of us don’t know that much about what we enjoy doing, so I’ll give folks an exercise. They can try. You can try too. If you’d like to, you need a piece of paper and a pencil in your calendar. Pretty simple, okay, on you’re going to take the piece of paper and on the left side of the page, you’re going to write a list of activities at work that you enjoy. You know, I really like brainstorming sessions. I really like crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, whatever it is, these are things I enjoy doing, right? And if you’re like most people, your list will be more than four things, less than 15 things, you know, a handful of items. Okay, then on the right side of the piece of paper, you’re going to open up your calendar, and you’re going to look at last week, and you’re going to write down the things that you did right? I went to this meeting where we did this thing. I talked to this customer about that thing. I worked on this HR problem. And when that’s done, you’re going to draw a line from the things you enjoy on the left to any of the things that you actually did on the right. Oh, and if you’re like most people, you will have few to none, few to no, lines, right? And then you will think, Well, why don’t I enjoy my day to day job? Look at your piece of paper. It will tell you why. Yeah, right. And if you want to do one thing to make your job more enjoyable tomorrow. Look at your list when you’re given a task and find a way to accomplish it that incorporates at least one of the items on the list right, and that will result in you enjoying the process more, and it will very likely result in it being a better work product at the end of it. And so the to do list doesn’t change, no how you talk. It’s

Maria Ross  34:02

the how. So, okay, first of all, I love this idea, because best practices are really just ideas. They’re suggestions that might work, might or might not work for you, right? So I love that point, but it’s also this point that you know, I’ve done with my clients when working, you know, a lot of my clients are doing their own marketing, and I’m like, Okay, your goal is to generate leads. Your goal is to generate revenue and get customers. If your solopreneur as an example, why on earth would you engage in a marketing tactic that you hate? Because it’s going to be clear and obvious when you’re engaged in it, that you’re not nuts about it, that you’re throwing it in. So there’s lots of different ways you can actually reach your target market. Do you like podcasting? Do you like speaking? Do you like writing emails? Do you like being on Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok? Like find the intersection the then. Diagram of what will effectively reach my target audience, and what do I enjoy? Yeah, and only engage in the things in the middle. So I what I hear you saying is the same thing for your job is find a way to engage in the work you need to get done, and make the Venn diagram of the things that you enjoy doing, and try to find ways to accomplish the work that needs to get done by enjoying it, if you can. If that’s in your control,

Jason Silver  35:27

it’s the silliest thing, right? But like, if you want to enjoy your job more, do more work that you enjoy. And what that usually gets translated as is, go find a job that you enjoy overall, but Right? Or that you’re only doing things you’re you enjoy. That’s right? And that’s so rare, you know, I think you practice a job, you practice enjoyment at work. It’s not a thing that exists, right? And so, like, what you’re saying is, you know, hitting home, obviously quite a lot for me, because you’re kind of, you’re preaching the language. But the point really is just, you have to accomplish some things, and you’re looking for that overlap. But what I see a lot of teams do, and the way that I think we’re all kind of hardwired at work is we spend all of our time thinking about what needs to be accomplished, what are the goals, what’s the Gantt chart, whatever. And we think that because something like enjoyment is fluff and it doesn’t matter, you don’t carve out any time to think about it. And so what I’m suggesting is spend this 95% of your time on all the stuff you’re currently doing. What do I have to accomplish? What’s the Gantt chart? What’s the backlog? What’s the whatever structure you use? Take 5% small amount, and just have your list and say, I know what needs to be done. Now I’m going to spend a little bit of time being intentional about how I’m accomplishing it. And you mentioned, you know, if it’s in your control, if you know it is possible that you have a boss who is so micro managing that they will literally stand over your desk and tell you what keys to press on your keyboard. That’s very, very rare. You might have a boss who’s controlling and likes you to do things a certain way. Yeah, the best thing you can do in those situations, it’s not easy to go to your boss and say, I want to enjoy my job more. What can I do? But if instead, you go to your boss and you say, Hey, I know I have this project update at the end of the week, and I know it’s usually done in a presentation format, I’ve done some thinking, and I would really enjoy doing it in the way I described earlier, and ask them this question, what would need to be true for me to try it that way, and the wording of the question is very intentional. You’re not asking them if you can, you’re asking them to list the factors that would need to be true in order for you to try it that way. And that makes it a very productive conversation, because you’re giving them something very specific that they can measure the risks against. They can articulate the risks to you. Hey, I need you to make sure that you include this in whatever your email is that goes out in advance, and I need us to check in afterwards to make sure that you landed what needed to be landed. Since you’re asking you to do it anyway, great. I can do that. That means I get to try it this way. I want to do it. Let’s go from time to time. Obviously your manager is going to tell you, no, sorry, Jay, you can’t do it this way, and that’s okay. But by asking this question, you’re going to show your manager that you’re thinking about this, and maybe they don’t let you do it your way this time, but the next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, they’re going to and they’re going to start to see the result, and it will kind of build over time from there. So what would need to be true for me to try it, insert the specific approach that you have. I love

Maria Ross  38:25

that so great. Okay, let’s talk a little bit more about the book in the in the short time that we have left. You know, you’ve done a lot of research and coaching around things like imposter syndrome and also about how empathy is the key to helping folks deal with that specific brand of self confidence or anxiety, because that can actually take away a lot of our enjoyment in our jobs, because we’re dealing with imposter syndrome or self doubt, or, you know, whatever you want to call it. So what is the role of empathy in helping us deal with that kind of lack of self confidence or anxiety about our job. Yeah,

Jason Silver  39:02

so imposter syndrome is this interesting one. I think it’s poorly branded, is my opinion. And it’s kind of the question and the answer all rolled into one. So the first thought in it is, if, like, we all feel it, if I’m an imposter, you know, the stats are something like 80% of people feel imposter syndrome at some point in their lives, in their careers. If that’s true, we’re all imposters, and we can’t all be imposters. So this thing just needs, like a fundamental rebrand. And the idea is that, you know, I don’t feel like I can fit in with this group of really great people. They’re better than me. I don’t have enough or whatever, whatever it might be. And the common advice here that I see is, I think, wholly useless. Believe in yourself. You can accomplish anything, right? Like, just don’t have self doubt. It’s not a light switch, right? I’m not just like, Oh, I feel like doubting myself right now. I’m just gonna stop doubting myself, right? I. Yeah, it’s gonna go great. That doesn’t work. And I think it actually makes it worse, because you had a little bit of totally normal self doubt, then you label it as a syndrome. Now you have something wrong with you that you have to fix, right? You feel bad that you can’t fix this thing about you and you can’t get the job done. I’m like, I think it’s really corrosive. It doesn’t help Great. Rather, I think there’s a way to flip it on its head and turn it into a superpower. Lots of great research coming out of a bunch of different schools. One of the ones that I think is really interesting is some work that was done at MIT. And what they showed is they took they took doctors, and they put them into two groups, and let’s call them the the confident group and the not confident group. And then they had them go into these kind of mock physician visits, where they have to diagnose what the patient is presenting, and then they have the patients rank the doctors afterwards. Okay, so what they found is the folks who felt imposter syndrome performed equivalently in terms of their diagnostic capabilities versus the self confident ones. So they went in with self doubt, and they did just as well. So imposter syndrome isn’t hurting our ability to perform. But when they followed up with the patients afterward and asked them to rank folks, what the doctors what they found is consistently the folks in the self doubting group showed up as more other focused as they cared more. And so what’s happening is because you feel like you don’t belong, it makes you think more about how to help and show up well for others, which is in turn, making you more empathetic and you’re paying more attention to them, and you’re actually increasing the probability that you fit in, because you’re trying a bit harder. The question then is, well, what do I do about this?

Maria Ross  41:41

Because, because I’m like, I don’t want this to be the solution for how to be more empathetic in your job is to doubt yourself. Yeah,

Jason Silver  41:46

I’m not saying. What I’m saying instead is recognize the imposter syndrome as a trigger moment for something that can lead to a lot of greatness, right, right? If you go down the spiral of self doubt, and there are a lot of you know, if you have very severe imposter syndrome. It’s a very real thing. And if that’s where you’re at, I am not a psychiatrist. You should go and seek you know mental health for sure. It can be very, very effective if you’re not in that zone of debilitating it’s just it comes up for you regularly. It’s getting in your way. What can I do about I can’t make it go away. Recognize it as a trigger. I’m feeling self doubt in this moment, don’t turn it off. Instead, turn it into what will make you most belong. And there’s tons of research, mostly out of Harvard. What it shows is, if you want people to like you and you want to fit in, the number one thing you can do is ask them questions, very simple, so you don’t have to be like I’m an imposter syndrome. Let me flex with all this knowledge that I have and show them how smart I am. That is the anti solution. The better solution is I’m feeling imposter syndrome in this moment. It’s not the moment for me to show off what I know or really push myself out there. Instead, it’s an opportunity to learn. Do I actually have a knowledge gap? What is that knowledge gap? How can I go and figure that out? Okay, and so the antidote, or the thing that flips imposter syndrome from a syndrome to a superpower, is questions. The question is, what kind of questions and where? So I’ll tell people this, and they’ll say, Oh, God, I can’t ask questions in a meeting. It makes me feel very nervous. My colleagues are all around, yeah, and the research backs this up too. If you and I are in a meeting, talking a lot, and there’s five other people around listening to us. I ask you a lot of questions, you will be biased to like me more. Everybody listening will be biased to like you more. And

Maria Ross  43:29

oh, 100% curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. Because you’re take you’re focusing on someone else. They always talk about when you know you meet someone for the first time, ask them about them. Don’t talk about yourself the whole time.

Jason Silver  43:41

Yes. And the tricky thing, though, is that in a meeting of 10 people, you will think, oh, Jay’s great. He’s so engaged. He’s listening to me. Everybody else be thinking that guy, Jay’s an idiot, like he doesn’t have any answers. You know, it’s all coming out of Maria. He’s just asking questions. Nobody’s hopefully, nobody’s consciously thinking this. But right, your brain is going through this bias, right? And so the findings from this work out of Harvard is the most effective questions are in one on one situations, and they’re follow up questions, which is great, because one on ones are the least risky environments, and follow up questions are the easiest, because you don’t have to know anything to ask them. You just have to listen, right? And so if you’re feeling imposter syndrome, the whole kind of gamut of the solution, there is not a problem unless you have a, you know, severe mental health problem. And I’m not trying to belittle that, right? For the for the average person, it’s an opportunity to create something really amazing for yourself. Recognize the imposter syndrome. Don’t turn it off. Pick somebody from the team, one human, get them on their own book. A coffee meeting with them. Grab them at lunch, whatever, and ask them follow up questions. Help me understand insert thing that they said in the meeting here, right? Help me understand that thing you said about the presentation you were. Yeah, help me understand what you meant when you talked

Maria Ross  45:02

about, I’m laughing, because this is part of the whole thing about finding common ground is the three magic words of Tell me more, right? Tell me more about that. Tell me more about and also, because then I can understand your point of view, and I don’t have to guess what it is. So from a from a linking it to empathy standpoint, I love this. So how does this relate to

Jason Silver  45:21

enjoying your work more? So imposter syndrome is one of the most commonly felt things at work. Like I said, 80% of people get it, and it is a huge detractor to your experience at work. If you’re constantly walking around with feelings of self doubt, you can’t get it done. Why am I not good enough? When that goes away, it is very, very freeing. And for me, what I found is there is no magic wand to wave to become more confident. It’s actually chipping away at removing the self doubt. And this tactic is a great way of just it comes up for me. I don’t get caught in it. I know what to do. I have a formula. I get somebody in a one on one, I ask them follow up questions, and all of a sudden, yeah, the self doubt becomes a thing that I’m looking for. Because I’m like, oh, when that crops up, it’s it’s telling me that I have a moment when I need to go and do a thing that I know works. So just feels great overall. So that

Maria Ross  46:17

sounds like that’s one of the most common workplace challenges, really briefly, because we want people to check out the book why your grass is always greener. What are some of the other common workplace challenges that we might be dealing with as you know, human beings in the workplace trying to interact with each other?

Jason Silver  46:33

Yeah. Sure. So the books divided into thirds. The first is all about freeing up more space and time for yourself. The second is about changing the way you work so you enjoy it more. And the third is about accelerating yourself without having to wait around for a promotion. So first third of the book, it’s all about how to do five days of work and four without changing your job at all, without working until midnight. The things that we talk about there are miscommunications, and how to stop them, because they’re costing you a full day every single work week, slow decision making and how it’s not just your boss’s problem, you can help make a big difference on it with some key tactics and effectively distractions and prioritizations and why that’s a psychological problem, and how to help yourself on them. Got imposter syndrome, which we talked about, how to measure your joy on the job, which is not something that’s talked about very much. You got to measure a thing before you can feel like you can move it. And then how to enjoy your job more, which we talked a little about, bit about earlier, the last third. All about how to progress faster without waiting for a promotion. There we talk about how to make better decisions. Feels great when you’re making really high caliber decisions. How to get more feedback, which is like the rocket fuel for that’s key yourself, yeah, and how to see opportunities that everybody else misses. Love it. I love it

Maria Ross  47:47

so much. I mean, yeah, that is really so much of this overlaps, because this idea of ego kills empathy is so huge, because when we are so focused on trying to play the expert in the room, that is when we overlook risks, when we miss opportunities, and, more importantly, when we miss that opportunity to connect with someone else and maybe find out what their experience is or their perspective is. So you know, this idea that leaders have to have all the answers, or that if I want to be a leader, I have to pretend I have all the answers, is such a false narrative, because we can be confident and say, You know what, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out, or I don’t know, but we’re going to find out together, or I don’t know, but here’s what the next steps we can take are to be more sure about this. You can say that in a confident way and let people know that you have a mastery of the situation, even if you don’t have the right answer in that moment. And so a lot of what you’re saying ties so much into that of being able to sort of take the focus off you and be observant about what’s going on for you and take a beat, and then being able to ask questions and interact with people in a way that you’re actually sharing your problem solving collaboratively versus like you as a leader or an aspiring leader, think that you have to show up with everything baked.

Jason Silver  49:12

I mean, totally agree. You know, I think, yeah, I know it’s not great to judge people, but we all do it. And like I judge people on the quality of their questions, not the answers. I think we live in a world where, you know, almost every answer is at the tip of my fingers. You know, I can go and ask chatgpt A question, as if it’s like the person sitting in the desk next to me, you know, I can Google things, yeah, but all of those things only work if you know the right question to ask right same thing at the office as well as I think great, the best leaders, I know, they ask the best questions to the right people. And those are the things that are very unlocking. Is you’re thinking about it this way, rather than jam my different idea down your throat, like, right? Here’s a question that will broaden your perspective, and then, oh, look at that. Yeah, we come up with an idea that. Better than both of ours combined.

Maria Ross  50:01

Yeah, clarity is not about asking. It’s not about having the right answer. It’s about asking the right questions that’s right and being able to spark that problem solving and spark that innovation. So I love it. Well, Jason, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Today, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes, including your link to your book, which I hope everyone will check out. How your book is called, your grass is greener. Use what you have, get what you want at work and in life. And for anyone who’s exercising while they’re listening to us, what’s the one best place they can go to to find out more about you and your work?

Jason Silver  50:36

Yeah, you can go to your grasses greener.com. That’ll take you to my website. You can see the book there. You can see me. If you really want to look me up, you can do it through the website. Find me on LinkedIn, but your grasses greener.com. Is the simplest, easiest thing folks can remember. I love it. Thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for having me, and thanks for everybody who is still jogging and listening to us and

Maria Ross  50:57

everyone. Thank you for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Courage to Advance: The AI Leadership Crisis with Kevin Oakes, CEO, i4cp

Welcome to Courage to Advance, hosted by Kim Bohr and brought to you by SparkEffect, in partnership with The Empathy Edge.

Tune in to our subseries every 3rd Thursday, right here on The Empathy Edge! Or check us out at CourageToAdvancePodcast.com.

The AI skills gap is widening between high-performing organizations and those falling behind. With only 27% of HR leaders feeling ready to advance their AI strategy, what separates the leaders from the laggards? Join Kim Bohr and i4cp CEO Kevin Oakes as they dive into groundbreaking research on workforce readiness in the era of AI, revealing shocking statistics about executive training and organizational success.

Drawing from extensive research comparing high and low-performing organizations, Kevin shares how leading companies are leveraging AI to achieve up to 30% higher productivity through comprehensive training programs. Discover why companies like Moderna and Mastercard are succeeding with AI adoption rates of 80%, while others struggle to start.

Learn why waiting to embrace AI might be the biggest risk of all, and how to position your organization for success in this rapidly evolving landscape.
Tune in every 3rd Thursday, right here on The Empathy Edge!

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • High-performing organizations are 17 times more likely to train their executive leaders on Gen AI, creating a significant competitive advantage
  • Only 11% of organizations are fully embracing AI across their enterprise, with top performers focusing on both efficiency and effectiveness
  • Organizations successfully scaling AI achieve up to 30% higher productivity through comprehensive training programs
  • The role of HR in AI strategy has dramatically improved, with non-involvement dropping from 41% to 22% in recent years
  • Creating a “change-ready” culture is crucial for successful AI implementation, emphasizing learning over knowing

“You want to create a workforce and a leadership team that are agile and that not only can roll with the punches but can embrace them and figure out how to use this change to our advantage.”  – Kevin Oakes

About Kevin Oakes, CEO at i4cp

Kevin is CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the world’s leading human capital research firm focusing on people practices that drive high performance. He is the author of Culture Renovation®, an Amazon bestseller which details how high-performance organizations successfully change organizational culture. Kevin has an extensive background in HR technology and corporate development, previously founding SumTotal Systems and serving as Chairman & CEO of Click2learn. He currently serves on several boards and is dedicated to advancing human capital practices that create lasting organizational success.

About SparkEffect

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.

Connect with Kevin Oakes

I4cp: i4cp.com

Book: Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company

Connect with Kim Bohr and SparkEffect

SparkEffect: sparkeffect.com

Courage to Advance recording and resources:

sparkeffect.com/courage-to-advance-podcast

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/sparkeffect

LinkedIn for Kim Bohr: linkedin.com/in/kimbohr

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:

Kim Bohr  01:30

Welcome to courage to advance. I’m Kim borer, and I’ve got a startling reality to share. Only 27% of HR leaders believe their organizations are truly ready to advance their AI strategy in the next few years. Yet, companies that are scaling AI are seeing their employees become 30% more productive. So what do they know that others don’t? Today, I’m joined by Kevin Oakes, CEO and co founder of i Four CP, whose firm conducts more research in the field of HR than any other organization. We’re diving into their groundbreaking new study on workforce readiness in the era of AI, exploring why some companies are 17 times more likely to succeed with AI adoption, and what’s really holding organizations back. Let’s get started just a little bit about Kevin before we jump right in. If you are an HR leader in a strategic role and you are not familiar with ifrcp, you definitely need to check them out. We’ll put links in the show notes. Their firm conducts more research in the field of HR and than any other organization, highlighting next practices that organizations and HR leaders really should consider adopting. And Kevin is also the author of a really, really fabulous book that’s also a best seller on Amazon called culture renovation, 18 leadership actions to build an unshakable company. So Kevin, welcome to courage to advance podcast. Thanks, Kim, glad to be here and thrilled to have you with the time we have the partnership we have outside of this podcast, and just excited to have all of our listeners get to share in so this is a really important and timely research that your firm is doing. And so what inspired Ifor CP to you know, to really conduct this research on AI workforce readiness at this time? Yeah,

Kevin Oakes  03:20

it’s really part of an ongoing series of research we’ve been doing on AI for, really the last four to five years, even before chatgpt got us all so familiar with AI, and specifically Gen AI can do for organizations. What we’ve been trying to track Kim is just, how are companies preparing their workforce. How are they trying to leverage AI in the future? And how is HR involved in that? And so this latest study called workforce readiness in the area of AI is just really looking at companies progress boards making sure that they are ready to take advantage of AI. I think one important aspect of our research is that we’re always delineating between high performing organizations and low performing organizations. We define high performing organizations as those that have better revenue growth, profitability, market share, than their competition, and we look specifically at the people practices in both of those either ends of the spectrum there, and we often find big differences in how high performing organizations are implementing their people practices or their people strategies versus those low performers. But what we really hone in on the concept of next practices. And while we come up with a lot of best practices, we find that there are certain practices that are highly correlated to bottom line, business impact or market performance, but not a lot of companies have yet put the practice into place, and so that’s a cue for us that it might be a next practice. And so this particular study, we found a lot of those. We found that this is so new that not a lot of companies are, you know, yet really grasping. How to Get the workforce ready for AI. But there’s a lot of things that other companies can take away from those leaders in the marketplace. What was

Kim Bohr  05:07

some of the parameters that you looked at in this study just to kind of set the stage? Well, we

Kevin Oakes  05:13

looked at a number of different things around how those high performers are treating AI. So for example, we looked at, are you already operationalizing or scaling AI in your organization, or are you just researching and experimenting with AI, or maybe you’re ignoring it or actively opposing AI. And it was really fascinating to us that those who were already operationalizing it, they were high performing organizations. So some of the best organizations that are out there are some of the quickest to adopt AI, and the companies that are ignoring it, they were by far the low performing organizations. And I think you’re going to see even a bigger separation going forward, unless you know companies do start to adopt AI. So that was sort of an overall premise, and then we honed in on those companies that are operationalizing it, and what are they doing? How are they getting their workforce ready for AI, a lot of it revolves around training, but they’re also just thinking about workforce planning and their future skills, and what do we need, and what are the skills gap? So all of that went into this particular study, which is highlighted by a lot of case studies from different member organizations that we work with.

Kim Bohr  06:24

So one of the things that you you know just going on to what you were talking about from high performing organizations, your study found that two and a half times or they’re more likely to operationalize it compared to the low so what do you feel like the sense is that those organizations are doing differently that are so much for further ahead?

Kevin Oakes  06:42

Yeah, I kind of separated into two camps. I think the initial way people usually look at AI is from an efficiency standpoint, how do we take some rogue tasks, things that just take up a lot of time and are very repetitive? How can we automate that and have Gen AI handle some of that. So from an efficiency standpoint, we still got a long way to go. We’re only in, you know, inning one of a nine inning game here, you know, I think that’s where a lot of companies are experimenting right now and trying to, you know, create more efficiencies across the organization. But the other side of it is effectiveness. How are we using Gen AI to make our services better, to create product features that people will want, and improve our products externally. It’s more of a customer facing or market facing attitude towards Gen AI, we still get a long ways to go there, but you see it in most software products today, particularly in HR I was, I was at HR tech this year. And you know, most of the vendors are going to tell you they have some kind of AI component to what they’re doing that will help improve, you know, aspects of what their software does. So it’s sort of two sides of the coin there. Kim and, you know, I think, again, I think companies just need to have a fresh look at what they’re doing. One of the things that we’ve discovered is there are a lot of very clever ways companies are using AI, particularly in HR today, that other companies could implement, but they just haven’t thought of it, right? They just don’t know about it. And so we’re trying to showcase all these really clever uses to our other members, because once they see it, it inspires them to say, hey, you know we could do that too. It just never occurred to us that’s how we could be using AI. And that kind of discovery process, I think, is going to happen over the next few years, as we see more and more really cool applications of Gen AI.

Kim Bohr  08:31

Are you just out of curiosity, perhaps not related directly to this research, but you mentioned seeing, you know, the AI application inside organizations from a customer service standpoint and product standpoint, but then also internally to their own efficiencies. Do you find there’s an interesting, you know, favoring one or the other, or if they’ve done it well, they’re doing it well on both ends, kind of both spectrums

Kevin Oakes  08:53

at all. Just efficiency is certainly, you know, where most people are spending their time these days. It’s trying to speed up processes. How can we free up people’s time to be more strategic if they’re spending a lot of time on very rote tasks? So certainly, the efficiency side is where you know most of the effort has been focused. That makes

Kim Bohr  09:13

sense. So another aspect of your survey saw that 55% of those at organizations that were scaling AI are actually the ones that are more fearful of their job being replaced by AI, compared to only 25% of organizations which are ignoring it. And so is, do you feel like that’s driven by maybe scarcity or fear in some aspects of those that are motivated or are there? Is there some other factors that you found in relevant to size of organization or industry or anything like that. Yeah, let’s

Kevin Oakes  09:44

back up a little bit. The concept of, is AI going to replace my job? You know, has been a fear for a while now, right? And we’ve been fearing that for years and years, just with automation and robots, etc. And the reality is that AI is replacing very few jobs. These days, over time, there’s no question that the workforce will shift, and there will be roles and responsibilities that AI is doing more of than what we’re doing today. I think the smart companies are recognizing that we can redeploy talent in more strategic and effective ways if we can use AI to free up things that don’t use a whole lot of brain power of that very valuable talent, we have a case study of IKEA. Is good example of that, and I think just a very simple example where they applied AI to their customer service department. And a lot of companies have done this to help speed up finding answers to very common problems when customers call in. And so they were able to take a number of their customer service agents that would have normally done that job and reapply them to a new burgeoning industry or or offering that IKEA had, which is helping their customers with interior designs. It’s a virtual interior design and, you know, it’s a paid for service that IKEA offers. And what better way, you know, to spark that business by taking people who already know our products, and, you know, are very knowledgeable about what we do, and have them help others with that interior design. So that’s a case study that’s out on our site. And there’s a very simple one, but it’s a good example. Of where you can redeploy talent. But I said, let’s back up, because I think first we have to think about training the employees on AI. And a lot of companies today still haven’t done that. If training has happened on AI, it’s happened to a very small segment inside the organization. The majority of organizations haven’t trained all of their employees, for example, on AI. Well, we find that when employees do get trained on AI, they recognize they could be doing so much more with it. In fact, we found in our study that in those high performing organizations, the employees that were trained on AI felt like if they received more training, they could be 30% more productive than they were today, even more than 30% productive. So that was an interesting finding, but what the one you referenced was even more interesting. The more they got into AI, the more trained they got on AI, the more they recognize that, hey, there are big aspects of our jobs or other people’s jobs, that can be done by AI. And so that’s where that fear factor comes in. And I don’t know if it’s fear is the right word. It’s maybe just recognition that, you know, things can be done much more efficiently by using AI than what we’re doing today. If you look over time, that’s happened throughout history, right? So Henry Ford had a great quote a long time ago. He said, If I asked my customers what they want, they would have said faster horses, right? As opposed, you know, automobiles, yeah, you look back to the, you know, invention of the railroad, etc. And, you know, over time, we’ve always had this happen, right? We’ve had automation make things better, and there’s a lot of fear that is going to dramatically change, you know, the people’s jobs. It eventually changes jobs, but they morph. They don’t go away. They just simply morph into doing other work around automation. And that’s obviously what’s going to happen with AI as well. Yeah,

Kim Bohr  13:21

you know, I was at a event a couple of months ago talking with HR leaders as well around AI. And one of the things that was really fascinating in this topic of, you know, job evolution, was that by sitting on the sidelines, that’s where there’s a lot more risk than getting involved. And it’s interesting to find the varying degree of which people are experimenting or avoiding or full on committing. And I think your research really just continues to reinforce that very large spread. And, you know, one of the things you were talking about from the training perspective, I think is very interesting, is, what is there a generational gap around adoption? You know, it’s something when you think about people thinking about where the who’s diving in, and you think about the statistics around, like, where’s the strategy landing, and what’s not being conveyed around strategy and use of AI, do you feel that your I don’t think your research explored this, but do you just have a sense that there’s anything generational there, or is that an area that we maybe need to be looking at To help get everybody more on the same page?

Kevin Oakes  14:22

Yeah, there might be. We’re not, as an organization, real big on trying to just label people based on, you know, their age, yeah, generational divides, yeah. Sort of another, you know, form of, I don’t know, just discrimination sometimes, but, you know, just looking at people, you know, by generations, and labeling a generation is one thing. I think there’s a lot of individuals in each generation that are quite capable of leveraging AI. And frankly, I’m seeing it all over the place with boomers. You know, you would normally think, okay, older, you know, folks aren’t going to rush to, you know, really understand AI and leverage AI, but I’m seeing lots of them do that. I suppose. If you. Look at it by generation, you’re probably going to see some differences in generations, but we didn’t tackle that. We didn’t think that was part of what we wanted to do here.

Kim Bohr  15:06

Yeah, that makes sense. I know. I think in our conversations too, from what the work we’re doing at Spark effect and working with leaders, I don’t know that we’re seeing a generational component either, but I do think we’re seeing just different across the board, regardless of what kind of role people are holding, but I do feel that we are starting to also see some separation of getting everybody in the leadership team, on the same page. I think that’s kind of a big and I kind of got that sense from the work you were, you all did, was that there’s a big opportunity there to get everybody online, because that’s probably where it needs to start. One of the things that that was really interesting also in your research, you talked about it, identified the top five barriers to AI readiness, lack of organizational knowledge about Gen i ai led at night, 39% lack of AI specific training at 27% and then I thought was really interesting is this lack of strategy articulated by senior leaders comes in at 24% I’m just curious what jumped out to you and your team when You saw those top three indicators, and if there was anything that has prompted you maybe to want to explore anything further from that lens?

Kevin Oakes  16:08

Well, yeah, like I said, we’re continuing to research this, so this is a very longitudinal topic area for us, and we’ll continue to look at how companies are improving. And frankly, we have seen some big improvements. We came out with a study a year ago called is HR already behind in the AI revolution? And so I’ll cut to the chase. The answer was yes, HR was already behind. And what we were finding is that in many organizations, HR was being left out of the strategic conversations and the governance conversations around AI, which is kind of silly, because AI affects the workforce. You know, first and foremost, HR, if you’re going to say who’s in charge of the workforce, you know, most people would say HR, you know, is most knowledgeable about the workforce. That has changed dramatically. We found in this particular study that was cut in half. I think we had 41% of organizations where HR wasn’t involved. Now it’s only like 22% something like that, and HR has gotten much more involved in identifying what the strategy should be, what the governance should be for the workforce going forward. But you started out that question just talking about leadership, and I want to just touch on that, because we found leadership is super important to adoption of AI. No shocker, I suppose, but the stats that we found are kind of shocking. We found that in those organizations that are already scaling and operationalizing AI, they are providing targeted training for their senior executives, and so those companies are 17 times more likely to have trained their executive leaders on Gen AI. They’re also 15 times more likely to indicate that their executive leaders are using Gen AI at least to a moderate or high extent inside the company, and then 10 times more likely to say those executive leaders are encouraging others to use Gen AI to a moderate or high extent. And I think it just goes to show that if leaders are involved and they understand Gen AI, then as a workforce, as an organization, you’re going to be more likely to, you know, be ready for the future and be already using Gen AI inside the company. I think a lot of those companies that are ignoring or opposing Gen AI or, frankly, even just in sort of the research mode, you’ll find that the senior executives probably aren’t that familiar. They don’t have that hands on experience. They haven’t been trained. So I think that that was a very interesting finding, just seeing how big the difference was there.

Kim Bohr  18:37

Those are astonishing statistics. So if you think about from the HR leaders lens, you know, how can they have a more prominent voice in this policy discussion, right? And getting everybody aligned, yeah,

Kevin Oakes  18:51

what we encouraged in that initial study that we did HR to do is, first of all, get you start using it right? So get familiar with HR with AI and begin using it also what I said earlier, look around at what other organizations are doing, because that’ll give you inspiration of how to leverage AI within your HR function. There are certain areas of HR that have adopted AI more quickly than others. Probably, talent acquisition has adopted it the fastest and is really seeing good results from Ai. They’re using it to find passive candidates, you know, much more efficiently than sort of the manual way we were doing it a few years ago. We have one case study where a company is using Gen AI to send emails out to passive candidates on an automated basis, seeing if they can get them interested in different positions in their company, and they were finding dramatic improvement in the response rate from the Gen AI emails versus the human written email, which we thought was really fascinating. And there’s a whole bunch of other ways TA is using it just to help the candidate experience. Experience, etc, but TA has been a big user of it. I would say L D is the other 1l. D is right up there with TA and all the research we’ve done, and they’re using AI to provide personalized development paths for individuals. They’re from an instructional design perspective. They’re using AI to much more quickly, create courseware and design, you know, design those courses. So L and D is one that also really embraced, AI, for sure.

Kim Bohr  20:28

That’s great to hear. And I think it’s so important to for more of that to be coming forward, because we talk about HR, you know, trying to keep that seat at the table and but yet, carrying being expected to solve all of the organization’s problems, it seems like it many times. And so this is a big one of, how do they continue to to coordinate? When you think about all the different, you know, stakeholder interest around the security lens and you know, the IT lens, and the actual, you know, application internally, I think it’s a huge opportunity. Was there, has there any been any interest in the research you all have done of some of the different studies of looking at AI and this skill based world that’s starting to evolve in so many organizations, or is that not something that has kind of crossed paths yet?

Kevin Oakes  21:11

No, it’s crossed paths a little bit. We’ve done a lot of research just on how organizations are leveraging skills, and most organizations have morphed into a skills based approach across, you know, a lot of things, what they’re doing, what hasn’t really worked is creating internal talent marketplaces based on skills databases inside the organization, in many companies, that has stalled out a bit, just because the culture isn’t ready to leverage that. And so that’s a whole nother issue, and we felt that for a lot of things, and Gen AI is included in this, you have to really first focus on the culture of the organization. Are they future ready? Are they agile? Are they ready to accept, you know, some of the things that you want to put in, and particularly with an internal talent marketplace, you know, where we have such a job mentality inside of organizations, versus a project or gig mentality, and even where you know, talent mobility isn’t all that common. You know, in a lot of organizations, that kind of that internal talent marketplace is going to stall out a bit, but you can use Gen AI to help on the skill side. Certainly, Gen AI can help identify the current skills that you have and what’s the gap with the future skills that you need going forward, it can do that a lot more quickly than we can as humans. And so I starting to see some application there on the skill side.

Kim Bohr  22:30

So it sounds like maybe those are some of the things that some of those progressive companies you’ve seen adopting are starting to bring forward as some of these best practices, or future practices as well.

Kevin Oakes  22:39

Yeah. In fact, what we list out in this particular study on the future ready workforce, they’re doing the ones that are really high on future readiness. They’re doing some things that are a little bit over and above what most companies are doing. So for example, they’re cataloging their current skills and capabilities. It’s sort of a difference of 48% to 10% you know that they’re doing, that they’re forecasting their future skills needs. They’re identifying the skills gaps. They’re offering up skilling, or I don’t love the term re skilling, but they’re offering those opportunities and then exploring sources of talent outside of their full time workforce. You know they tend to have a cadre of gig talent that they can tap into when needed. So all of those are components of being a future ready workforce.

Kim Bohr  23:26

I think that’s really important, so important in the work we do at Spark effect, where we’re working with executives around from a very high level executive coaching lens, or leaders trying to create alignment to be able to obviously be ready for what’s coming. And I think we find there’s big gaps in leadership readiness be to not only deal with this, you know, very new work, remote workforce, that people have finally got used to. And now here comes another layer of complexity, and how to lead in. And so we’re finding these topics to be really relevant. You know, just in how leaders are trying to get their arms around it all, and we find that helping them understand where, as you mentioned, some of this just tactically can help them is great. And then where is it that can strategically help them, when we think about the AI and their role and how they can be more informed, when one of the things that your research shows that I want to talk about a little bit more is that high performing organizations are investing heavy. You mentioned that 65% are specific training at the executive level. Yet there’s many organizations that seem to be taking a more reactive approach to that leadership development lens that we’re talking about. What risks do you see that organizations may have that were really more proactively, like getting on board in this more organized way.

Kevin Oakes  24:47

Yeah, it’s still a small percentage of companies that are leading from an operationalizing perspective. It’s only about 11% of all organizations are really embracing AI in their work. Flows in their organization, across the enterprise, really. So I think the risk is, the longer you wait, the harder it is to catch up to some of those organizations. For example, the companies that have embraced, AI, they’ve done a lot of training, not only across the workforce, but particularly with their leadership, as we outlined before. And they’re already in, you know, a lot of brainstorming. You know, this brainstorming mode of, you know, enabling the workforce to say, here are areas of my job that I think could be automated. And that’s one of our recommendations, is to enlist the workforce in that task right, to identify parts of their jobs that could potentially be automated. You have to have a psychological safety to do that. You have to have an environment where the employee feels like that’s going to benefit them, not hurt them, to be able to do that. But you move much more quickly if you can evolve the workforce in identifying that. But the ones that are forefront now are starting to look at agentic AI. You know, how can I put in AI agents that are doing complete tasks for us going forward. And you know, how can we create more of these, you know, over time that will even further speed up processes for us, you know, or make us more efficient, whereas those laggards, the ones that are, you know, still sort of researching or even ignoring AI, they probably don’t even know what agentic AI is, right? And so they’re just, you know, they’re falling further behind in this whole space. So, you know, our advice is, don’t, don’t sit on the sidelines. You know, you got to get involved. You got to start creating some sandboxes where people can experiment safely about, you know, using Gen AI, you got to create some governance around it so people know how to use it. But also, more importantly, articulate your strategy. That’s what still a lot of companies haven’t done. They haven’t talked about, you know, how do we think we’re going to use this strategically long term, all those are, you know, aspects of trying to get up that curve, that maturity curve, towards operationalizing. Ai, why do you

Kim Bohr  26:58

think that is that they haven’t been able to articulate that? Is it that alignment piece, getting leaders on the same page? Is it just the complexity of who owns what? Do you have a sense

Kevin Oakes  27:07

all of that? And, you know, look, change is hard, and a lot of lot of organizations are change resistant. They don’t, when they look at change, they think it’s not only a nuisance, but a lot of them fear, you know, change, especially if things are going well within their organization. And history has shown time and time again. Our research shows this over and over again. Companies that not only are used to change, but the ones that embrace change and look at change as an opportunity, right when things are changing in the marketplace. You know, how can we make use that to our advantage, right and benefit from that change? Those are typically the leaders long term and with things constantly changing. Gen AI is a great example of a huge change in our environments, but there’s going to be more. You want to create a workforce and a leadership team that are agile and that not only can roll with the punches, but can embrace it and you know, figure out, how do we use this change to our advantage? So

Kim Bohr  28:04

I think that change is so important. And I think one of the things that I’ve been really fascinated with lately is that there’s this idea of, you know, change is we know it’s happening. We know it’s constant. It’s always there. And yet we still have this almost, you know, parallel thought of, once I get through this thing, it’s kind of that arrival fallacy, and I talk about that in this January podcast of once we get through this, things will be easier. I’ll have more space. And I wonder how you know, at some point I think those have we have to reconcile those two thoughts to be really one, in order to be more, to take advantage of what’s in front of us. So I’m curious if that change exhaustion, or any of that you know, as you talk about from the research, if that’s something that companies really need to be understanding that in order to make that shift to what you’re talking about, of being more leaning in and more, you know, embracing. So I’m just curious if you have some thoughts on that, something I’ve been very fascinated by,

Kevin Oakes  29:00

yeah, you mentioned the book that I wrote, culture renovation, and I talked a lot about this in that book. And there’s a lot of history to this of how organizations have tried to condition a workforce to constant change. You just use the word change exhaustion. I would try to change the attitude towards change excitement, right? You want a workforce that is very comfortable with change, but actually gets energized by change, as opposed to exhausted by change. And so it’s an attitude shift. You can hire for it, for sure, I think more importantly, you want to create a change ready environment. There’s a lot of companies that induce change on a regular basis, just to keep the workforce accustomed to it right? Just so that people don’t get to this point where they don’t want things to change. I think that it’s critical, and Microsoft did a great job in their culture renovation. Satya talked a lot about I want to learn it all attitude inside the organization, versus a know it all attitude. And really, what he was getting at there is I want an organ. Organization that’s agile. I want them to constantly be learning. I want them to embrace new things, share their knowledge internally. And anytime we find a company that says we have a learning culture, they not only are a very change ready culture, but they’re a company that typically is off the charts, high performing, meaning that, you know, they have better market share, profitability, you know, revenue growth, etc. So I think it’s an important concept. I think if you’re trying to be a high performing, high performing organization, you have to get that attitude in the culture of the organization,

Kim Bohr  30:32

yeah, and I think that’s something that’s, like you said, hiring for it being very intentional. I think that’s really the key one as we move into some of our kind of wrapping our conversation up. One of the interesting findings in the research is that organizations successfully scaling aren’t just focusing on technical skills. They’re really investing in more of these leadership capabilities you have mentioned in our conversation prior around, companies like moderna achieving 80% adoption rates. MasterCard success with AI initiatives or significant? What role are you seeing? The executive development playing into this? Anything that you feel like you know, again, we’ve put up so much on HR, what do we do to get everybody you know more to have these kind of results that you all have been able to document through some of your clients? Yeah,

Kevin Oakes  31:18

those are two good examples of dozens and dozens of case studies that we’ve tried to capture, going back to the notion that I said earlier, where people are doing really cool things with AI, but you just have to get other companies to see it, to help them, you know, understand what they can do with AI. And moderna and MasterCard are great examples of where they’ve embraced Gen AI, throughout the organization have trained all employees on Gen aI have very specific training offerings and continuous training offerings. They don’t just stop at the basics, right? They’re helping people really advance their skill set. And the leadership in those organizations has been very clear on the fact that they have an AI strategy and what it is, and the leaders are using AI like I talked about before. In fact, if you go out to modernist site, they have a great video that showcases how they’re using this across the organization and really trying to advance, you know, some of the solutions that they’ve been providing to society, trying to do that in a much more rapid way. So good, you know, just two good examples. But there’s many others out there, depending on what industry you’re in, or, you know, size of company, even you can really learn a lot from some of those companies.

Kim Bohr  32:31

So as we wrap up the conversation and we think about, you know, what your research has shown, what are maybe the top, you know, three takeaways or so that you feel like listeners should really be hearing and what’s going on and what able to start to think about what actions they should take.

Kevin Oakes  32:49

Yeah, we have some recommendations in the study we’re coming out with, so one of them is what I said earlier, engage your workforce and identifying where parts of their job can be automated and used, you know, leveraged with AI. I think that’s a big one, the agentic AI that I talked about. So if you’re not familiar with that, get familiar with it, because that’s going to be a good big part of, you know, of AI going forward, training everybody, including leaders, is a big one as well. Is sort of a simple one, but just so many organizations haven’t really embraced that and then creating a future ready workforce. It’s not just about AI readiness, it’s about being future ready as a workforce and addressing some of those change issues that I talked about. Those are some of the broad recommendations that we have, and then we have more specific recommendations underneath each one of those. One example, you have a love for leadership, we find that some of those leading companies are having leaders teach, and leaders as teachers, has been a concept that’s been around for quite some time. Jack Welch actually popularized it decades ago. But while most companies don’t do this, they don’t have their leaders teach, the ones that do tend to be those learning cultures that we talked about, and there’s a lot of benefits when you have leaders teaching others. You never learn something as best as possible, unless you’re forced to teach it. But there’s also a lot of, I just think, interaction with the workforce and leadership that happens when leaders are actively teaching. So that’s one small recommendation underneath the hey, you know, let’s train everybody recommendation.

Kim Bohr  34:21

That’s a fantastic recommendation as well that we need more people modeling what we want others to be able to embrace and do. As we wrap up any final thoughts or points you want to make sure the listeners get to particularly like

Kevin Oakes  34:36

you’re behind. Don’t worry, you’re in good company, because most, most are, yeah, so we’re really early in this process, and you can catch up. There’s no question about it, you can catch up very quickly in this AI game. But don’t wait, because the longer you wait, the harder and harder it’s going to be to catch up. And so I would just encourage listeners to do what they can to try to get the workforce up to speed on AI and just. Be ready for this future that, obviously is Gen AI is going to play a big part in

Kim Bohr  35:04

Absolutely. It’s not slowing down, it’s not going away, and so we better just find a peace with it, dive in. So thank you so much, Kevin. I so appreciate your time and this knowledge and information for our listeners. We’ll have free resources at that you can download, take advantage of we’ll have links to what you’ve talked about, Kevin, so people get familiarized with this report and some of the recommendations that you’ve suggested for our resources, they’ll be at courage to advance podcast.com. I want to also thank the empathy edge for hosting our podcast sub series and to our the listeners for tuning into the episode of courage to advance where Transformative Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, but it’s about having the courage to find them. Thanks again, Kevin and we’ll tune in again for another episode of courage to advance next month.

Kevin Oakes  35:51

All right, thanks Kim

Maria Ross  35:54

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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Jen Stark and Jarrid Green: The DEI Flashpoint and How We Move Forward

Today I speak with Jen Stark and Jarrid Green, Co-Directors, of the Center for Business and Social Justice. We candidly discuss how DEI and other topics became flashpoints and ideological hostages rather than sustained corporate efforts, and how companies can break this cycle.  We explore the questions executives and boards are asking, how companies can respond to activist shareholders and continue to promote fairness and equity while also fulfilling their responsibility to ensure strong financial performance – and why we’re “beyond the business case” so we can adapt our narrative. Jen and Jarrid offer valuable advice on how everyone from the C-suite to DEIB and CSR professionals in the trenches can stay motivated and respond.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • You cannot be neutral anymore. Consumers want to know what their money will support and want to be value aligned.
  • Be authentic with yourself – you need to understand why you are doing what you are doing.
  • Lean into your smaller, individual communities. Mass media and social media information sharing is not enough.

“We’ve left the era of case-making. There are enough data points, surveys, and white papers that if it is was just rational thought governing business decisions, you’d be in a different place.” —  Jen Stark

Episode References: 

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 Jen Stark and Jarrid Green, Co-Directors, Center or Business and Social Justice

Jen Stark is a strategy development and implementation expert at complex health and humanitarian organizations with 20+ years of experience. She launched BSR’s Center for Business and Social Justice in 2022 alongside Jarrid Green to illuminate a path for companies to shift from performative to transformational actions with a focus on public policy engagement and influence. She is frequently cited in business press on flashpoint topics and is an advisor to Gauge.ai and GoFundMe’s Compassion Leadership Network. 

Jarrid Green co-designs and implements programmatic efforts alongside Jen Stark for the Center for Business and Social Justice, an initiative of BSR that seeks to mobilize companies to take systemic and intersectional approaches to their social impact efforts. Jarrid’s role includes developing research, thought leadership, frameworks, and capacity-building opportunities related to corporate social impact strategies.  He also provides collaborative oversight and direction for the Center’s organizational and administrative functions, and acilitates the execution of the Center’s ongoing corporate, civil society stakeholder, and donor activities.

Connect with Jen and Jarrid:

Business for Social Responsibility: bsr.org/en/collaboration/groups/center-for-business-and-social-justice

Jen Stark LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenstark

Jarrid Green LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jarridgreenmba

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:

Maria Ross  00:04

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, social justice work and dei are flashpoints at the moment. We all see this, and it boggles my mind, because the data so starkly proves how these initiatives boost performance, ensure better business decisions, mitigate risk and increase customer loyalty. So if these actions create more shareholder value, why the current backlash? Today, I speak with Jen Stark and Jarrid Green, co directors of the Center for Business and Social Justice. The Center advances social justice and equity by mobilizing and equipping companies to take a systemic and intersectional approach to social justice and equity initiatives. We candidly discuss how dei and other topics become flashpoints and ideological hostages rather than sustained corporate efforts, and how companies can break this cycle. We explore the questions executives and boards are asking how companies can respond to activist shareholders and continue to promote fairness and equity while also fulfilling their responsibility to ensure strong financial performance, and why we’re beyond the business case so we can adapt our narrative. Jen and Jarrid offer valuable advice on how everyone from the C suite to deib and CSR professionals in the trenches can stay motivated and respond. Here’s a little more about both of our guests. Jen Stark has 20 plus years of experience as a strategy, development and implementation expert at complex health and humanitarian organizations, and she launched bsrs Center for Business and Social Justice in 2022 alongside Jarrid Green to illuminate a path for companies to move forward, past performative actions into transformational impact, with a focus on public policy engagement and influence, Jarrid Green co designs and implements programmatic efforts alongside Jen and his role includes developing research thought leadership frameworks and capacity building opportunities related to corporate social impact strategies. He facilitates the center’s ongoing corporate civil society stakeholder and donor activities. This is the conversation we need to have right now. So take a listen. Welcome Jen Stark and Jarrid Green to the up at the edge podcast. We’re going to talk about dei and social responsibility and transformation and impact to success and all the things today. So I am delighted to have you both on the show. Thank you so much for having us, Maria, so this is going to be fun. So I want to hear first, you know, we heard about your bios. We heard about your organization, the Center for Business and Social Justice, but tell us how each of you individually came to this work. Tell us a little bit about your story. Jen, why don’t you start

Jen Stark  03:38

Sure? Maria, I came to this work. I was managing the disaster fundraising team at American Red Cross national headquarters, back just before Hurricane Katrina hit what was then one of the most you know, historic disasters of her time that since been you know, subsumed many times over and got to see firsthand the power of the private sector when it brought its talent resources and commitment to meeting urgent needs and long term recovery, and it really opened my eyes to again by whether it was the tech sector unleashing and again, this was in the early days of social media, you know, unleashing their power to create a safe and well website so folks in disaster shelters could check in and let their loved ones know where they are to ways. You know, other companies that you know, if they had nothing more than, you know, trailers on trucks to use to transport items to the Gulf Coast. You know, we’re signing up in all kinds of ways. And it was, you know, a time when everyone was leaning in and really empathy and action, yeah, ways, it was very inspiring. And now I say kind of half jokingly, I’ve experienced, you know, disasters all the way from, you know, natural. Man made that sort of brought me to this moment, and what I think the private sector is really capable of,

Maria Ross  05:04

I love that we are very much aligned on that, because I really believe that there is a power and an influence for good that so many of these powerful, well resourced organizations have, and that’s really what my work is about, is helping them be a catalyst for good and use their platforms for good. So I love it. Jarrid, how about you? How’d you get into this work? All right,

Jarrid Green  05:26

I’ll just lean into a little bit of curiosity. I think where I got to be a wonderful co director with Jen here is just being curious about what opportunities there are for business to actually achieve social impact, being really intentional about what they were trying to address when they talk about social impact. We’re the CO directors for the Center for Business and Social Justice. So that was, of course, at the forefront of our minds and our thinking around the center. And it, of course, was at the forefront in the minds of folks around the globe, right? Yeah, coming out of 2020 we saw some really unfortunate events with folks dying at the hands and public safety officers, and seeing some of the systemic connections that led to that, and the reparations throughout the globe for that in terms of inequality, wealth inequality, gender inequality, those kinds of things. And so I’ve been fortunate enough to have some experience in nonprofit advocacy, some working with think tanks prior to this, and working right just for this role, working in philanthropy and actually supporting groups on a number of issues, working foundations and their efforts to support across civic and social justice issues, groups that were on the ground trying to build communities, trying to address real, challenging problems like criminal justice reform, which crosses ideological lines in terms of support folks who are Trying to build wealth and really underserved under Resources, communities otherwise, and of course, in the throes of the pandemic, which really exacerbated and put on display some of the inequalities and inequities that we experience. And so the constellation of having seen try to intervene in some of these questions in terms of, how do we advance social justice? How do we create a better world that is more inclusive and has lots of opportunity for all folks. Was something I experienced about my career in different roles, in profit, advocacy, intermediary work or in philanthropy before I got to BSR, but I came to BSR because I was just so excited at the opportunity to see, especially given the momentum, where can business achieve impact, whether through internal operations or externally, how can they actually achieve impacts on social justice causes?

Maria Ross  07:23

So I want to get to that question. And I just want to talk about, what do the businesses or organizations that come to you, what are they requesting? And this is kind of a two part question, what do they believe social impact is? And I assume, like my work is all about, they must assume there’s an ROI to that as well. Like we can do good for ourselves and for others. So first, like, if you kind of break that apart, what are they coming to you? What challenges or questions do they have when they’re coming to you? And how did they define social impact? Jen, maybe start with

Jen Stark  07:56

you. Sure. I say this quite often, and I remember back in 2020 when there was a business, an academic Business Press article that talked about the new era of corporate social justice, back in 2020 and often I think back, and I look back at this headline, and I think, if only right, fast forward to where we are in 2025 so just by way, just a tiny bit of background. So BSR, where the Center for Business and Social Justice sits is comprised of a network of 300 plus of the world’s largest companies headquartered in the US or globally. Typically, you know, large companies, complex value chains, and, you know, all the corporate functions and bells and whistles across every industry. So I would say the questions that I’ve experienced since we’ve launched the center have really run the gamut from, you know, reacting to current flash points on issues which I know we’re going to talk quite a great deal about, dei and the cross hairs, what I think we’ve aspired to be is also a couple clicks ahead of where businesses are at the end of the day, corporate social responsibility, corporate social impact, only got us so far, and There’s a lot of unmet, chronic gaps that require larger systemic change that through some of the resources we’ve put out without kind of any pay wall or barrier to entry or social justice guide for business, and a lot of the other materials that we put out are trying to connect the dots for companies, because there is a growing ecosystem of folks of champions and executives across all kinds of businesses that are really seeking a more methodical approach on these issues, whereas often they devolve into, what does our General Counsel say we can or cannot do, or what is the PR play? Here, and there’s so much in the middle that just gets sort of kicked down the road from Flashpoint to flash point.

Maria Ross  10:09

And so kind of back to the original question, though, what kinds of things? If you can give us some examples of what are some of the issues you’re discussing and the things that companies are looking to make the business case for those that are still kind of committed, how did they define social impact?

Jen Stark  10:27

Jarrid, I know you’ve been tracking closely on a lot of the incoming questions,

Jarrid Green  10:31

yeah. Oh, I so many good question in terms of recent showing us here, I think I really want to say, you know, no secret that in the past few years that companies have been trying to respond to the fall of row and then the Dobbs decision in 2022 right? Yep. And so many different SCOTUS companies are like, Well, I just know that it was the year before the affirmative action decision in 2023 right? I don’t, I mean, I’m sure that we did have decisions last year, including, you know, administrative rule making all sorts of attacks, different sort of policies and sort of precedent in the country in terms of how we went about doing things for decades that built the economy that we know and that created the business operating landscape that we live in. And so I just mentioned too, right, major laws that saw dramatic change and shifts that businesses needed to respond to. And so since we launched the center in 2022 right, we of course, have been have been trying to provide businesses with guidance, advice and peer learning spaces where they can talk to other colleagues, whether in their industry or across industry, about what they’re doing, how to navigate this moment. I used to say a lot, and I should say still, right is that businesses are full of people. There are real people who work at companies. I think we typically in the media, it’s really easy to see the brand and associate business with a brand. And businesses are brands, right? They’ve got to protect their interests. And the discussion we’re having right is, how do companies actually be a business, a for profit enterprise, and at the same time take into account but the fact that their for profit enterprise is fueled by individuals and people from communities and different backgrounds. And so naturally, with the two decisions I just named and some of the other ones right that companies have had to navigate around reproductive care, abortion access, you know, diverse talent pools and workforces, inclusive works, places and environments that work for folks to help them mitigate the risk of litigation or, you know, blind spots when it comes to discrimination, that those are the things that folks are coming to us with questions around and how folks are navigating that internally, on their own organizations, what their strategy should be globally, even because what’s happening in United States is happening in the United States, it has influenced globally. But there’s actually global regulations and policies that are afoot as well. But

Maria Ross  12:39

when you say that, that’s a big thing. So what is it they actually are asking? Are they asking for what benefits do we need to offer? What does our public stance need to be about this? How do we need to structure the organization to better address it like, what are the things that they’re asking when they are faced with those decisions or those changes in policy? Is it all of the above. Yes,

Jen Stark  13:01

all of the above. How do we adapt or increase? How do we leverage what’s within our walls? What are the workplace policies, practices, benefits? How does inform or influence physically where we have footprint and that may or may not make us subject to local jurisdiction around data privacy or other kinds of things, yeah, especially, you know, focus on the US. Yeah, more fragmentation between states. This is just sort of more cost and chaos for business to try to navigate what might be, you know, right, in one state, on any number of issues, is criminal in another. This is, you know, a lot for companies to mitigate all the way to, what does it look like to stay the course in a public fashion, in a private fashion, and I think increasing, as we’ve seen in, you know, since, you know, in the last two weeks alone, companies sort of also self sorting into those that seek and secure federal contracts, and therefore are vulnerable to direct retaliatory action as it comes to their bottom line, and those that aren’t affected by that, and therefore, then how do their scenarios differ in terms of the past that they’ll pursue on a number of issues? So I think this is exactly from the inside out we’re seeing companies have to sort of put all the puzzle pieces on the table in a cross functional way, lean into some scenarios that, if we were to have offered them up to companies 12 months ago, we might have been seen as hysterical, but now is sort of a version of reality that companies need to sift through. Yeah. So I think we’re seeing a bit of everything. This, how this, how current events are hitting across all corporate

Maria Ross  14:45

functions, and I think we forget that. That’s why I wanted thank you so much for pointing out those specifics, because we hear the headlines, but we don’t really understand how it actually impacts businesses from an operational perspective. You know? I mean, I. Had guests on the show that talk about, you know, being able to do business travel on behalf of their companies. And I’ve had transgender folks say, I have to be careful where I travel, where my company sends me. So these are things we don’t think about when we think about the repercussions, the real life repercussions, of some of these policies that are, you know, in my opinion, very misguided, but I know other people have opinions about that. I’d love to get back to this human aspect you talked about. Obviously, we understand it’s people behind the company. And that’s, you know, the work I do is about empathy. Has a place in the workplace, because anywhere you have people having to collaborate with other people, you need empathy. So are you finding and maybe Jarrid, this is a question for you. Are you finding that, given what’s happening, are these individuals as humans conflicted with what they have to do in service of protecting their company and playing the game versus what they in their hearts would like to do to promote equity and opportunity. I assume they’re probably not coming to you if they’re not conflicted so. But can you share a little bit about their mindset right now and kind of where their hearts and minds are? I mean, I think

Jarrid Green  16:13

you hit the nail on the head. I think we work with individuals, right? People who have roles in government affairs, dei leads, sustainability, professionals, corporate social respect, responsibility, professional supply chain folks. You know, we’ve seen, we put out materials covering a range of topics and social justice, of course, more broadly. And we’ve seen engagement from folks who are working in different functions across business organizations and at different levels too. So yes, exclamation point on the fact that we’re working with people here, and it’s important to that again, business is not some sort of figurative thing that exists in the world without people behind them, and that diversity, equity, inclusion and practice professional within one company is going to want to maybe talk about what their practice is, what the best practices are, what their lessons learned with folks from a different company, right? It’s not, yeah, the walls, just like with any other sector, there are individuals and roles that want to know what the best way of doing things is, and then want to think about how to tail that with to their company. And so I talked with an individual today at a major consumer brands company, and they talked about this sort of personal to professional conflict. They, of course, you know, in this we were talking about in the context of gender equity and what is right for company to do on gender equality and how they, at the same time, have to navigate their the private sector landscape and even the legal landscape with the scrutiny that’s afoot. And think about, how do I ensure this work surprise continues? I could dig my feet in the ground and say that I think this work should look like this, and these are my values and that kind of thing. But the same time, if I do that, then I’m stuck with that, right? I need to also try to evolve, because at the end of the day, as Jen and I stress a lot, it’s about the outcomes. Like, we don’t want to be a tooth and we don’t want to water down things, there’s a risk to trying to escape talking about something plainly and trying to clear outcomes, right, especially given the history of this country and the history of the globe. But we also want to endure moments, and we also want our best ideas, our best outcomes, to come up. But I just want to quickly, sort of touch back on the loop this to something you named earlier, right? We are working with people. There is a human aspect. People are conflicted. When people come to us, it’s important to remember we’re not legal, right? And so they have their own legal teams who which are also people, right, who have their own practice and experience and profession, and they’re going to look at things with their point of view to try to, you know, protect their own jobs and roles, and also, it’s the organization they’re seeking to protect. And so what we do is try to offer a point of view, and we can offer that point of view through research and data that we put out, we can offer guidance on how folks should talk to their CEOs. So we talk about empathy. How do we persuade? How do we give the data anecdotal talking points that are going to convince the CEO pick up for their internal operations or external operations otherwise? And then also connections, of course, I mentioned peer learning, but how they talk to their other peers in their field, and then how to do this work. So it’s a very personal effort, but yeah, I know it from the way that

Maria Ross  19:05

I know it’s hard. A lot of my, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of my work is about making the business case for a lot of this and but I also a brand strategist and a marketer from my background, so I also understand that data alone doesn’t persuade we’ve got to have stories. We have to have human to human connection. We have to have an understanding of how this actually impacts real lives. But then, when I do exercise that left brain, analytical part of myself that is not as strong as other people, I’m like, but the data like, it’s good, you know, if we’re talking about just shareholder value, these are the right things to do to enable the company to thrive and be sustainable and make better business decisions. And this is what I love about the younger generations coming into the workforce, is they actually link diversity of thought with business outcomes. It’s not just it’s yes for them, it is the right thing to do. But. But it also is something that leads to a better decision, because you are able to see more risk. You’re able to uncover more opportunities when you have diverse voices and perspectives at the table. It just makes business sense. So how is it not crazy making to you as you do this work? And Jen, maybe this one’s to you when you know that this impact directly leads to bottom line results. If we’re being really crass about it 100%

Jen Stark  20:28

and I think I often use that term, yes, I’m about to be really crass about Well, I think we’ve left the era of case making. Yeah, there is enough data points and surveys and white papers that if it was just rational thought governing business decisions, you would be in a different place so much when it comes to equity, around tax policy and common sense regulation ensure the dignity of workers and their health, all kinds of things right? The fact that you know policies around protecting workers from extreme heat don’t pass because of outsized influence. I mean, there’s so many examples, so yeah, with that

Maria Ross  21:07

little flash, I guess that’s like, why is this exactly?

Jen Stark  21:10

So, you know, but I do think I heard melody Hobson say this on CNBC the other day, where she talked about she used this phrase where she said, math doesn’t discriminate and talent is evenly distributed. And I just thought that was such a great bumper sticker in that we can oftentimes, again, kind of get in our own way, again, with, you know, the academic papers and the survey data and the research, but when you don’t have the kind of workplace that values the diversity of thought and idea and experiences. There’s not only the near term impact, but all of these sort of unknown, long term costs. And the fact that this, you know, we’ll talk about dei in particular, like other functions was evolving in, you know, all kinds of ways with more orientation around, you know, impact and outcome. And at the same time, you had this sort of rising tide of a very politically driven, sort of, you know, online, you know, driven opposition. It just became this real cauldron that has us sometimes asking the wrong questions about, How do we improve? Sort of, what’s behind a lot of these practices that you know lead to a lot of cost benefit for business, and not do so in a way where we say, well, the whole theory of change and you know, how workplaces were, you know, evolving again in important ways to be more effective and productive, that somehow we need to roll that back. So I think we’re kind of taking too broad a brush, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of fuel for that fire right now. Yeah. So

Maria Ross  22:55

how are you now talking to people, if we’re sort of like, beyond the business case, maybe not the people working with you, but you know the public at large trying to continue to make sure that these efforts continue, that the progress continues. How have you changed your approach, if at all, given the current climate? And Jarrid, yeah, go ahead.

Jarrid Green  23:19

We have done and I think we knew this when we launched the center and put out our social justice guy, that we kind of moved past the need to make the business case right for business investment and societal programs or building inclusive, diverse and equitable workplaces. We’d move past it, because right, I think, in my hunch,

Maria Ross  23:38

but into what did you move to? Yeah, oh yeah,

Jarrid Green  23:41

I would say we moved past that because practitioners knew that, and business leaders knew it. It was obvious, plain as day. Is why we wanted to do it for the reasons you name, right, stronger organizations, more profitable

Maria Ross  23:51

enterprises, more engagement, better loyalty, all the things, yeah, where we

Jarrid Green  23:55

were was trying to actually bring folks together, to actually elevate best practices on certain topics, and while also navigating flash points right? And what we’d seen was folks engaging on a flash point while they’re trying to advance best practice work, and the flashpoints were so loud and so disruptive to the good work without being, in some cases, good faith in their effort to actually improve the work right we see, I say, Bad Faith Efforts right to advance and in progress that folks have made to create a society where we all can go to work, do our jobs in a safe and welcoming environment, and go home and feed our families and live in an affordable home and seek out opportunity. Otherwise, that’s maybe the core bread and butter what we all maybe want to do with our lives, without getting into the nuances of each particular constituency right and have our civil rights upheld, but tragically, given the media, the data, all the resources available to us and everything that I mean to point fingers, but just given our environment, you know, we as a culture are susceptible to whatever the loudest word. Voice in the room can be despite, right? Not that voice could should be tempered, given the facts and the reality, right? I see you have a question. Yeah,

Maria Ross  25:07

I was going to say, so does that make your focus more on we’re not going to try to do any more convincing of the skeptics. We’re going to try to bolster the people that believe. Is that fun?

Jarrid Green  25:19

Yeah, but what’s shifted is the reality that we, yes, there are constituency of companies and leaders who we can continue to try to input some ambition into. Let’s look 10. I love that.

Maria Ross  25:32

Input some ambition. That’s right. Support their

Jarrid Green  25:34

ambition. Let’s, let’s also recommend some future forward facing things. But the reality today’s world, right, as we see it unfolding rapidly, and I mean literally unfolding. The number one guidance I have for companies right now is talk to your legal team and talk to them about and bring your company’s values and the work that you all have been doing to the conversation, so that you’re not just getting a strictly legal opinion and point of view, but bring in the realities of the entire conversation into that conversation, because it’s important for your legal team. As you have this conversation, as you convince your other stakeholders to know what the global context is, to know how things differ between geographies, to understand how your industry is working, that kind of thing. So

Maria Ross  26:11

can you give me an example? And Jen, I see you wanting to jump in here. Can you give me an example, like a scenario, of that? But Jen, also add your point, please. Yeah. I was

Jen Stark  26:18

just going to say and to make you know of the couple sort of recommendations that we have for business right now, in this moment, it’s about engaging with legal counsel, but in a way that that becomes the floor and not the ceiling. That’s not the ambition for the work right? That’s to ensure that you know what you’re doing is, in fact, consistent with the law, and pulling apart, what’s the law and versus what is meant to have a chilling effect, but is not, in fact, the law or legal. So that’s sort of step one, really tracking trends as far as how this is showing up in your workforce, as they might have questions related to, you know, dei benefits, policies and programs where, again, dei has shown up, perhaps not in name, but in practice, we often forget to think about things like access to paid sick days or paid family medical leave, right? I mean, dei isn’t just sort of one thing. Yeah, exactly so it’s really important to think about how many all workers can benefit from dei Programs and Practices before again, if we give too much oxygen to often, you know, detractors and folks that want to do this rollback. And then we have a couple other steps we recommend too. But it does get very tactical in terms of, you know, finding ways to ensure that company leadership and the board have a really, really understand the why, so that they can be re they can help reinforce, again, what’s legally required the company’s performance standings, and I think, as Jarrid often aptly says, will sort of outlast the current landscape and points of the moment. We also talk about how companies need to be mindful of having a diversity of stakeholders that they’re talking to within the company and outside of it again, so they’re not giving too much weight on the scale to any one single shareholder that’s, you know, aiming an arrow at the company. Well, that’s,

Maria Ross  28:24

I was going to actually bring that up the activist shareholders, and how some companies recently have folded, and how others, like Costco, have said, No, we’re doubling down. Yeah. What can companies do to withstand what I imagine is just a very vocal minority, but yet they’re caving in. What advice do you have? First of all, how do you see that? And also, what advice do you have about what we can learn from what Costco is doing on how to stand firm?

Jen Stark  28:54

I’ll just say quickly, to always consider the source, to examine that carefully before making an over correction. And the shareholder space has become what historically has been a very sophisticated mechanism that only a few activists have been able to find a pathway in has now become sort of this new lever for across the political spectrum, where folks are seeking action from business when government can’t or won’t lead. So it is this new battlefield that companies need to be wholly prepared for, and those that are will have cohesive responses, and those that don’t will engage in a kind of verbal jujitsu, if you will, or a kind of backsliding that damages the issues they pretended to support. Sorry, I’ll get

Maria Ross  29:54

a note box. No, no, I love it. I actually, for the first time ever, I have a me. Working soon with someone at the fund company that you know manages three quarters, two thirds of a trillion dollars. They’re making time to talk to me because I asked my financial planner, how can I have a voice on these proxy votes? I’ve never asked that in my life. I’m 52 years old. I’ve been investing in my 401 ks and mutual funds and all that since I was 21 and we need to do more of that. We need to make sure that there’s other voices being represented at that conversation. And there’s ways, you know, we can’t. We don’t have to just put our hands in the air and say, like, oh, well, my portfolio’s got a ton of things. So I don’t, actually, I’m not a direct shareholder. I don’t vote. You can make your voice heard, to your funded, to the advisors, to the managers of those funds. So I was just curious how you if you had any I love that advice of like checking the source. And what other advice would you have for C suite teams, for boards that are dealing with that pressure right now?

Jarrid Green  30:58

Jarrid, it’s actually not too far from checking the source right. The last two weeks, it’s checked the source and really read the What’s actually happening. Right? We can see companies and leaders thinking that it might be necessary to over correct, because a source that has historically an institution, has had some credibility, puts out a new directive or an executive order, for instance, and it’s all an example, a lot of verbiage, for instance, that is a lot of smoke, doom and gloom, and seems real consequential. But again, I go back to check with the legal because here’s the thing number one, if you read things closely and they talk about what might be unlawful activity, right? Diversity, equity, inclusion programs are actually lawful. And in fact, they have a fact, they have a long history of being lawful under constitution. And so the thing about companies may be moving too quickly because of flash point moments or because or optics or PR despite what actually is legal activity and legal programs, it may not feel like, oh, we can run the risk of moving so swiftly because we’d rather attract the attention of certain individuals or stakeholders and try to nip this in the bud. But the reality then, for what what was to what end is your enterprise doing efforts and programs to ensure that your organization, your company, is actually trying to achieve the goals and targets it’s been trying to achieve. To what end did you hire individuals to come into your company and think about ways to prevent and avoid harassment and discrimination and improve your workforce and have positive friends in the communities that actually are buying your products and supporting your entire business supply chain. To what end Are you up ending all of that because of a rush to not actually see it all through

Maria Ross  32:41

or a fear of retaliation. I think that’s very real for a lot of these companies. Of all of a sudden there’s going to be, you know, federal agency investigations or Justice Department investigations on our company if we don’t toe the line, right? I think that’s a very real and that’s to your point earlier of bringing in the legal team of, what are we really and also, you know, risk mitigation, what is our actual risk of exposure here if we continue to stay the course and stay true to our values,

Jen Stark  33:09

you know, building off of that too, though, what companies would be and practitioners and executive champions among your listeners would be remiss to Think about this as is that there’s some middle ground here that’s safe, like the sidelines are not the middle ground, even some fairly benign kinds of norms and practices that might exist within workforce that have large majority support, you know, are starting could come under closer and closer scrutiny. Is the kind of practices that say somebody, and, you know, an office holder or others, don’t want companies to hold. What will those red lines be for companies? I think, is an exercise that they’re having to figure out in real time. What that bridge too far is, I mean, going back to what we were talking about before, workforces and employees and sort of the tension that a lot of folks that have been really committed have been sort of part of this ecosystem and pipeline that’s growing within businesses. You know, they see their CEOs in different public settings, you know, towing various lines or doing what they feel like they need to do to keep the business going, and again, it this. 2025 is a different moment than 2020 than you know is 2017 just stating the obvious, and these tensions are just going to continue to unfold. There’s not going to be clear answers. Things are just going to be complicated. So all the more companies really need to apply a rigor that they have right, whether it’s, you know, a rigor that they have from how they’ve, you know, thought about, you know, human rights, if they operate, you know, across the globe and in various regions, if you know other different kind of competencies and expertise that they’ve had to develop, they have to bring to this to really identify. What are the decision points and what are the costs? Because, you know, I talked about how it’s no longer the era of case making. I think it’s also no longer the era of sort of like the double triple win right now. It’s decisions and costs, yeah, and

Maria Ross  35:12

no one can, and this has been happening for a while, just from the lens of my brand strategy and brand messaging work is you can’t be neutral anymore. This is not what consumers want. Everything is too transparent. They want to know we’re talking about customers. They want to know what their money is going to support, and they want to be value aligned consumers. And so you can’t just avoid what’s happening. You have to take a stand about what you as a company believe is right, what is our purpose, what is our mission, what our values? And not just those pretty bullet points on the wall, but how do those actually help us make decisions like this, like you’re pointing to, what’s the rigor around how we decide how we’re going to move forward, or not? We have to have that based in something it has to be based in. Do we have a set of beliefs? Do we have a culture here? Do we have a mission and a purpose here? If so, we have to start making decisions based on what is in pursuit of that purpose and mission, and those values, or what detracts from it, and those elements, those the mission, the values, those are not only the things that attract your top talent and your employees, but they attract your customers as well. And so they can’t be wishy washy, they can’t be vague anymore. So to your point, I think you said, you know, there’s sort of no would you say there’s no safe middle ground anymore? I think that’s spot on. I want to take this down a level, because I know I have, we have a lot of listeners who are in the trenches. They might be a employee experience professional or a dei professional. Do you have any advice for how they weather this storm? Do you have any advice for how they can adapt the work they’re doing, not to, like hide it, but just to, you know, to be able to still continue to do the work and have the impact that they want to have, and also just even your advice or guidance on how to stay motivated in this kind of environment, I think would be really beneficial. You

Jarrid Green  37:17

know, I want to be in my response. I’m gonna challenge myself to take my own responses advice, which is to be authentic, okay, right? And I think we talked a little bit here about hiding, and that being, you know, caught in the middle, or figure out what the middle ground or not being on the sidelines. And I think, you know, I started this conversation off. You asked me what my background was, and I mentioned, sort of my background and nonprofit advocacy work, helping folks think about how to increase opportunity for folks, whether through community wealth building activities, or through ending and dismantling structural racial inequity and public policy and actually working with federal, state and local lawmakers to do so because challenges like disproportionate access to wealth, housing, energy, transportation, healthcare, any you name it, and we’re going to find our disproportionate impacts, and we’re going To find our inequities, right? And so when we talk about social impact and we talk about businesses and their ability to hire inclusive workforces, we’re actually talking about how our society operates to actually ensure benefits and the welfare for all people, writ large. And when we talk about companies actually not being on the sidelines or figuring out where they’re going to be, we need to be thinking about how companies are doing that authentically, before even 2023 The question was whether or not co corporate commitments to the $350 billion with the commitments that companies had made to end racial injustice because of the so called racial the global reckoning with racial systemic racial inequity, right was actually doing anything, was actually getting put out there to actually affect that change internal to the organizations or externally. So my advice to the professionals, yeah,

Maria Ross  38:45

the ones in the trenches don’t feel like they have the power, yeah, 100% and

Jarrid Green  38:50

so my advice is to be authentic with yourself. Understand where you work, be authentic with yourself and understanding why you’re doing the work you’re doing in the context in which you’re doing it. Because it might be that you’re doing work in a context where your company is being quite authentic, it cares about it, yeah, you know who they are. That’s not going to do it, right? And some others are going to say, actually, these are our values, and they’re worth fighting for, right? And that’s, this is the kind of company we want to be, this kind of world we want to live in. And those are the companies that I would advise some of these dei professionals and your listeners to think about, how do I get in touch with those companies? How do I support more companies like this? How do I get my company to be like that company, and investigate the work that I need to investigate internally from the vantage point that I have to get there, but I just want to hide the ball because I don’t want to. I think a lot of times in these conversations, we can assume that business should just go about and everyone’s working in this space where we can convince and persuade our leaders to do XYZ. Well, if the folks who have leveraged all of our data to create billion dollar companies by way of advertising revenue by leveraging our private lives that we share and give to them on the interwebs, then go on and celebrate the support folks who are throwing up hit. Signs at their inaugural parties and clearly dismantling the fabric that actually brings people of color, women and other folks along into an economy, into the 21st century. If we see folks like that and companies actually shifting their movements to actually support that agenda, they’re telling you who they are. Mm, hmm. So dei professionals and other professionals in different roles, I think. One, just be authentic and be real with yourself about the environment that you work in and what you’re trying to achieve. And, number two, be agile. You’re not in that role because you just magically appeared as a professional into a company. You actually probably went to school, got a bachelor’s degree. Yeah, actually, Dan’s in 1520, years of experience, probably more experience probably more experience than some of your peers who don’t deserve the roles that they earn themselves to be, and they actually leaders of the company, right? I want to real talk here a little bit. Yeah, who are actually in the don’t discredit your own experience, your history, because the mic, the folks who have the microphone have historically had the microphone and are doing their best work to make you feel inadequate.

Maria Ross  41:02

That’s not the case. Okay, I love that mindset shift, mindset kick in the pants. And I’m wondering, if I’m curious, if there are any tactical things that you’re advising folks on at that level that you’re seeing are being done. Jen, I kind of want to punt this to you. What are some things that folks maybe can take away from this conversation? Obviously, we’re not gonna be able to give them all of it in the next, you know, five minutes we have left. But can you give them some places to start? Obviously, we will put, you know, all your links in the show notes so they can check out those resources. But can you share one or two gems of Yeah, so

Jen Stark  41:39

well. And actually, I was going to exactly, I think our social justice Guide is a great starting place again for providing methodical approach for how companies can think about the the real impact within their walls and the systemic changes that have yet to happen. And I appreciate there’ll be many other resources that the center provides, and we provide updates and sort of other things that we put out in the public domain. What to fuel people’s individual fires too? Though, I think that is such a beautiful question. I just wanted to go back to it for half a second. I’ve made a list of what I would say, sort of our three bits of, sort of reading homework I would ask folks, because I think so often we forget, or we skip over the history, right? We find ourselves in a role with only maybe an inch of depth, where we’ve developed an expertise in one particular area, but without regard for hundreds of years or decades that have brought us to this point. So there’s sort of three things that I sort of often turn back to. One. There’s this book called How to Survive a plague. It’s not about COVID it’s about the HIV AIDS epidemic, and how committed group of activists brought HIV testing, treatment and linkages to care from the periphery into the mainstream over a few decades, and the role of industry both positive and negative. This is sort of a sleeper, but it’s really important one, what’s known as the Kerner Commission report issued under President Johnson in the late 60s. It was an 11 member panel, mostly white men, that asked themselves in the wake of a summer of riots driven by racial injustice. Again, I’m talking about the late 1960s late 1960s not 2022 ask themselves, what could be done to prevent this from happening again and again. And it’s all the same things we are talking about in 2020 and 2022 and I think it had a moment too, as kind of a best seller. They nearly didn’t release it. They thought it would be so incendiary. There’s that. And then, unfortunately, I think it’s had its run now on Broadway, but the musical suffs, I think it might be coming out other domains, yeah, beautiful and inspiring. And essentially in it was one of these moments when, you know, American democracy and franchised a group of people, which has only happened a couple times. And in the instance of SUS, they talked about women getting the right to vote in the US, and how democracy transformed instantly, but it was by no means a foregone conclusion. So all of these things, I think, in these very confusing, chaotic moments, I think it’s important to maybe take a step out of the present and yeah, just in the larger spectrum

Maria Ross  44:23

well. And I think I’m going to share all those links in the show notes, by the way, I love it. And I think also just knowing that there are some playbooks out there, and there’s also people you can talk to, and I know a lot of activists that I know are actually reaching back out to the black community, the Brown community, about the playbooks from the Civil Rights Movement, and what is the advice? What is the ability to mobilize to your point, the facts in the business case were beyond that now, and being able to share that with people and to know that you’re not doing this in a vacuum. So if you are you know a dei be professional, and you’re listening and you’re disheartened and you don’t know where to go from here. I love this advice about reading some of these things, consuming some of this information, and finding support with organizations like yours. Jen and Jarrid of there’s other people out there that can share best practices, can talk about what they’re doing within their companies. One of my big themes for this year is collaboration, but kind of, you know, asterisk community, because we have to lean into our smaller communities, the mass media community, the social media community, is not going to do it for us. We’ve got to lean into these individual communities. I’m even hearing people at local levels putting together little political action book clubs and discussion groups, just to say, how can we share information, how can we share best practices, and how can we make an impact? Whether we’re six people or we’re 50 people, or we’re 1000 and I think that’s, you know, now I’m on my soapbox, but I think that’s going to be the way forward for all of us. So I know we have to wrap. Jen Jarrid, thank you so much for all of these insights. There’s so much more we could have talked about, and I will definitely be putting links to the center and to where people can find those resources. But in terms of connecting with you both, what’s the best place not giving your email, but what’s the best place to have people connect with you? Jen under

Jen Stark  46:24

Social justice.bsr.org, folks can Subscribe to See and hear more what we’re about, and also, you know, certainly can follow us on LinkedIn, more in the moment, updates and hot takes on what’s going

Maria Ross  46:36

on. Awesome. And Jarrid, would that be a ditto? That’s a ditto for me. Yeah. Okay, great. And my public service announcement always is if you reach out on LinkedIn, tell them that you heard them on the podcast so they don’t think you’re trying to sell them something. Thank you both so much for your time and insights today. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you Maria, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate review and share with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care, 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 and.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

February Hot Take: A Rant, a Perspective, and a Challenge

This month’s Hot Take is a bit of a hodgepodge. You’re going to get the chance the tell me more about you and what you want to see on the show this year (and maybe share what you wish were different) – and I warn you: I’m gonna go on a bit of a rant about how we need to desperately stop moving backwards and band together to keep achieving progress – for ourself, our organizations, and our world. You may think I’m being political and ranty, but I am truly sharing facts – albeit yes, with my personal and professional opinion layered in for context.  I mean, that’s why you love me, right?! My goal is to inspire you to think differently about what you are hearing and seeing and stay focused on moving forward.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

  • Ambition, competitiveness, bravery, and strength are all key human traits. They do not need to be labeled as masculine or feminine. They belong to everyone.
  • Sharing opportunity does not remove anyone else’s opportunity. It opens the doors for more people and greater success for all.
  • All this backlash to DEI,  empathy, and emotional intelligence is a mere distraction to the last dying gasp of an old-world leadership paradigm.

“That is what inclusion means: a place where you don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not. A place where everyone has the opportunity and access to grow and contribute – and yes, feel safe doing so.” —  Maria Ross

Episode References: 

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.

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. Hello, friends. Happy to be with you for my very first hot take of the year. Ah, 2025 Wow. You have come in, bringing all kinds of change anxiety, and yet my little optimist inside of me sees opportunity and growth potential. This month’s hot take is a bit of a hodgepodge. First, you’re going to get the chance to tell me more about you and what you want to see on the show this year, and maybe share what you wish were different. And I’d like you to be honest and candid. I’m going to also today go on a bit of a rant about how we need to desperately stop moving backwards and band together to keep achieving progress for ourselves, our organizations and our world. Now you may think I’m being political and ranty, but I’m truly sharing facts, albeit, yes, with my personal and professional opinion layered in for context. I mean, that’s why you’re here, right? That’s why you love me. My goal is to inspire you to think differently about what you’re hearing and seeing and stay focused on moving forward. So first, the survey. If you know podcasting at all, you know that Apple Spotify and all the rest tell us hosts very little to nothing about our audience. Sure, they give us numbers and countries and devices you log in on, but we don’t really get to know you. Now I know who I’m targeting with this content, and many of you kindly reach out on LinkedIn and via email. Thank you so much for that. You are leaders, change makers, C suite professionals focused on employee and customer engagement and experience culture and brand, but I want to know more, so I created a super short survey, and would love if you could take five minutes out of your day to fill it out. I’d like to learn who you are and what you like or dislike about the podcast, your ideas for future topics or guests, and to gage your interest in a powerful and fun community I’d like to put together for us this year. So many of you need to know each other, connect support and engage in the work of practicing the new leadership paradigm. It can get lonely and it can get discouraging, as we’ll talk about in a second, but we need each other in this empathy revolution to stand up, change the game and bring humanity back to our workplaces and our world for that matter. So please go to bit.ly/edge-feedback, that’s B, I T, dot, l, y, slash edge, hyphen. Feedback, like I said, it’s just five minutes of your time, but would be a treasure trove of info for me to continue serving up the right content, guests and talks. Thank you. So let’s get to it. How are we doing in the world of blazing a trail for empathetic leadership? Well, some leaders appear to be actively trying to set us back. It’s happening so fast, it’s giving me whiplash. Check out. Mark Zuckerberg, most recent words about celebrating bringing back more masculine energy in the corporate world, a place he deemed as having become too culturally neutered. His words, not mine. In fact, here’s exactly what he said on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which, by the way, the fact, in and of itself that he was on there tells you a lot about what you need to know. And I’m reading from the Huff Post article that I will link to in the show notes. Quote, the kind of masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. End, quote. He later continued. Quote, I do think that if you’re a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it’s too masculine. It’s like there isn’t enough of the kind of the energy that you may naturally have. Saying that his could lead to the perception that things are, quote, biased against you. That’s not good either, because you want women to be able to succeed and have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people, regardless of background or gender, he said, but added that quote, These things can always go a little far. This all comes as meta removes content moderation in favor of a community policing model read shirking responsibility for content on its own platform and dials back its DEI efforts. Just as companies like Walmart, Ford and McDonald’s have done so, my empathetic question of Zuckerberg would be, what do you mean by masculine energy? Tell me more. Or is that just coded language for white supremacy and patriarchy? Because, quote, masculine energy has done nothing but create a toxic environment where men are not allowed to feel their feelings, where they have limited choices and they experience loneliness, depression and suicide at alarming rates, where boys can only turn to violence or intimidation to soothe their hurt. If that’s the masculine energy you’re referring to, we’ll take a hard pass. Thank you. We actually need more feminine energy in the world to end wars and conflict. If you ask me, the Eastern religions have well understood this fact. Now, Mr. Zuckerberg, if you mean ambition, competitiveness, bravery and strength, I hate to tell you, honey, but it’s 2025 and women can exhibit all of those traits as well, but thank you for your gender bias. We don’t really need to label these traits masculine or feminine. They’re human traits, and they belong to us all. So what is going on here? Well, here’s my hot take. Tech billionaires like Zuckerberg and other company leaders are cowardly kissing the ring of the new administration in the US to get tax breaks avoid Department of Justice investigations and generally curry favor. This sycophantic behavior is so transparent, it’s not even funny, and much of this comes from people who used to champion diversity as a strategic advantage, which it is they used to champion equity for all women’s leadership. I mean, again, the reversal is giving me whiplash. This move by Zuckerberg comes after donating $1 million to the Trump campaign and appointing Trump’s PAL to the meta board of directors, oligarchy. Here we are. We’re already seeing this in action with billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy heading up the newly formed Doge department of government efficiency, designed to cut regulations spending and head counts within the federal government. Doge, by the way, is a wink wink, nudge nudge, reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, we’re seeing a backlash to DEI efforts labeled as efforts to get quote back to merit, as if non white male hires are not as capable or high performing as other groups just because they are black or brown or female or gay. Dei B ensures that talented people from marginalized groups are simply being given the opportunity to compete when they’ve been overlooked and left out for so long. It’s about opening the talent pool, not limiting it, and let’s not forget, this is not just hiring. It’s about creating a culture where everyone belongs, inclusion and the organization can reap the benefits of different points of view and experiences, and can allow everyone to show up as who they are, so they can contribute ideas freely. That is what inclusion means people a place where you don’t have to pretend to be something. You’re not a place where everyone has the opportunity and access to grow and contribute, and yes, feel safe doing so, but put all that aside. What does this mean for empathy in the workplace? Empathy and all the benefits it brings, higher engagement, more innovation, better collaboration, higher performance, retention, customer loyalty, productivity, the list goes on. They still exist. Those benefits are still there. We can’t deny the data. Second, I want to point out that as we have progressed in the workplace, our economy has thrived, yes, truly, higher than expected, jobs report, lower unemployment and inflation being staved off officially, although I empathize that prices are high in some areas, I know I’ve paid for eggs to the point that the US Fed is worried about lowering interest rates too soon, for fear of upsetting the apple cart. I’ll link to a great article in ink for your reference, because in it. Brian Rose, senior US economist for UBS Global Wealth Management, says, quote, given the overall strength of the recent economic data, there is little reason for the Fed to consider cutting rates anytime soon. Yes, eggs and lattes cost way more than they used to. I get that but from a national economy perspective, we’re doing great having bounced back from the pandemic pressures, all that I might add while Biden was still in office, look, I’m not an econ expert, and you don’t tune in to hear me be one. My point is no one is losing jobs to less. Qualified workers, nor are white people going to be put out on the street. We’re fine for a pointed and priceless take on this, please tune in to actress Edie Falco’s 2018 reading of a letter written to white supremacists by a 67 year old white woman named Johnna Ramey from Salt Lake City. It was written soon after the 2017 Charlottesville violence. The letter was titled, what’s wrong with you. The link is in the show notes, and totally worth it if you haven’t seen it, look the US and the world is made up of a huge tapestry of different colors, cultures, languages, religions, work styles, sexual orientations, gender identities. We are a collection of people with neuro diverse needs, different talents, strengths, abilities and emotional health. We have to find a way to work together and continue to share opportunities with one another. We as organizations need to keep innovating and growing to remain healthy. We need different perspectives, global alliances, partnerships and yes, we need immigrants to fuel our workforce. Estimates show that we need them to fill growing jobs so our labor force stays competitive, and we need the tax revenue, especially after the Trump tax cuts back in 2017 Here are other reasons why we need immigration to fuel our country’s growth. Immigrant workers will add an extra $7 trillion to the US economy within the next decade, and an extra 1 trillion in federal tax revenue and new immigrants will prevent the US population from shrinking. They will be the source of all US population growth by 2042 the people denying these facts to embrace exclusion over empathy are playing a short game. Honestly, I’m not actually sure what game they’re playing, but it doesn’t make any data driven and yes, ethical sense to me. Why would you work to exclude more voices, more ideas, more opportunity? What can your organization possibly gain? From a myopic standpoint, your organization serves the people who live in the world, and those people span a broad, diverse spectrum. How can you possibly innovate and activate them if you build a business that doesn’t include them in making the decisions, elevating women, underserved and underrepresented groups, expanding your base of leadership potential only benefits you no one loses. Find me the people they claim are taking their jobs or promotions without merit. There aren’t any to limit competition in this way, just rigs the game. It’s like a pro sports team only playing against the minor leagues, if you’re really good at what you do, open the tournament to everyone. We made so many great strides in recent years. No one is being left behind. That’s just what the cult leaders would have you believe. Know that the leaders and organizations who lead with empathy and inclusion are the ones who are winning. Leaders like Costco and Apple are confidently standing firm and committing to dei as resolutions to end such programs are brought before their shareholders. Costco released a statement that said, quote, our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our company. The importance of creating opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed. This capacity is critical, because we owe our success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe. We believe that our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are legally appropriate, and nothing in the proposal demonstrates otherwise. End quote, the results of these important shareholder votes will not be known until the end of January, so stay tuned on that. You know what? All this backlash to dei to empathy, to emotional intelligence is a distraction, and it’s the last dying gasp of a leadership paradigm, and, quite frankly, a cultural world order that puts white men at the center of everything and creates division and caste systems when the true success model of the 21st century is about partnering, not domination, collaboration, not command equity, not inclusion. Activist board member Jeff rakes from Costco, said it best as he doubled down on Dei. Quote, attacks on dei aren’t just bad for business, they hurt our economy. A diverse workforce drives innovation expand. Markets and fuels growth. End quote. My challenge to you, dear listener, what role will you play in this revolution? What can you do within your own sphere of influence to change the conversation, practice empathy, thrive and win. Thanks for listening today. Please don’t forget to fill out my short listener survey as soon as possible. Go to bit.ly/edge-feedback that’s bit.ly/edge-feedback the link is also in the show notes. Like I said, it’s just five minutes of your time, but it’s so important to help me give you more of what you want and need. Thank you for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. Would love to hear what you thought. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a friend and 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.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Tamsen Webster: Say What They Can’t Unhear: Communicating for Lasting Change

When we have information to give, the communication doesn’t start and end with just one email, announcement, or conversation. Effective communication is more than just the info you deliver, or the words you say. It requires empathy. This is a note for anyone needing to communicate strategic shifts, return-to-work policies, performance expectations, or even layoffs.

Tamsen Webster and I discuss why her work is driven by her desire to only do things once! How the risk of change belongs with the person or organization asking for it, how to understand the why behind how people approach change, and the first step in building buy-in that most people skip. She shares why leveraging pain is almost always guaranteed to fail long-term and how it’s almost always possible to find common ground (and if it’s not, to have a way to identify those differences clearly and without judgment).

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

  • Every decision has a story. Every action or change we decide on has won the argument even if it is only internal.
  • It is important to understand the story, the heart of the message, surrounding the conversations about change.
  • Pain is the ally of quick action, but a brain in pain is not a rational brain. Once rationality is resumed, those decisions are often reconsidered.
  • If people don’t understand what you’re saying it doesn’t matter how powerful or important what you are saying is.

“Anchor the outcome of the change in something that you fully acknowledge and you share with the person that you’re talking to.” —  Tamsen Webster

Episode References:

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 Tamsen Webster, Message Designer and Author, Say What They Can’t Unhear

Part message designer, part English-to-English translator, part magpie, Tamsen Webster helps leaders craft their case for large-scale change. In addition to her work in and for major organizations such as Harvard Medical School, Fidelity Investments, and Klaviyo, she’s a judge and mentor for the Harvard Innovation Labs, a professional advisor at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and has spent over 10 years as the Idea Strategist for one of only nine legacy-level TEDx events in the world. She was named to the Thinkers50 Radar in 2022 and is the author of two books, Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible and Say What They Can’t Unhear: The 9 Principles of Lasting Change. She lives in Boston with her husband, two sons, and two brindle Greyhounds, Hazel and Walnut.

Connect with Tamsen:  

Website: messagedesigninstitute.com

Book: Say What They Can’t Unhear

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tamsenwebster

FREE RESOURCE: The Compact Case, designed to help people apply the principles of Say What They Can’t Unhear to their own case for change. thecompactcase.com.

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

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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. When we have information to give, the communication doesn’t start and end with just one email or all hands announcement or even just one conversation. Y’all, we’re skipping some steps to ensure folks believe us agree with the principles underlying the change and are moved to act. Effective communication is more than just the info you deliver or the words you say. It requires empathy. This is a note for anyone needing to communicate strategic shifts, return to work, policies, performance, expectations, or even layoffs. Today you’ll hear my second conversation with Tamzin Webster. Part message designer, part English to English translator, part magpie. Tamzin Webster helps leaders craft their case for large scale change. In addition to her work in and for major organizations such as Harvard Medical School, Fidelity Investments and clavio. She’s a judge and mentor for the Harvard innovation labs, a professional advisor at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and has spent over 10 years as the idea strategist for one of the only legacy level TEDx events in the world. She’s the author of two books, find your red thread make your big ideas irresistible, and her newest book, say what they can’t on here the nine principles of lasting change. We discuss why Tamsen’s work is driven by her desire to only do things once, how the risk of change belongs with the person or organization asking for it, not the audience, how to understand the why behind how people approach change and the first step in building buy in that most people stumble on or skip, she shares why leveraging pain, one of the most popular approaches to persuasion, is almost always guaranteed to fail long term, and how it’s almost always possible to find common ground, and if it’s not to have a way to identify those differences clearly and without judgment. Such a great conversation. We went long, and it was worth it. So take a listen. Welcome back again. Tamsen Webster, to the empathy edge podcast. So good to see you.

Tamsen Webster 03:01

It’s the sequel. I delighted to be back. Maria. Hi. Heart you.

Maria Ross 03:06

I love it. Yes. Last time you were here, we spoke about the red thread and the wonderful work you do around message design and helping people build messages that have impact and that stay with people and actually compel people to take action. And so now you’re back with your book. What they can’t on here the nine principles of lasting change. So bring us up to speed. Why this new book? Tell us a little bit about your work. We know we heard a little bit of it in the bio, but tell us a little bit about again, that story of what brought you to this type of work, and what led you to this new book? Well, what brought me

Tamsen Webster 03:44

to this work is a lifelong interest in doing things once. So again, I don’t know, yes, exactly. And, you know, complicating that was things that are difficult to do at all, you know, so some personal, transformational changes that I work towards for quite a long time, like I lost 50 pounds over 25 years ago, and have maintained that I also overcame a 17 year panic disorder. But in my day job, my it was again about doing things once, mostly because I was working largely with resource constrained organizations, lots of nonprofits, lots of mission focused higher education institutions, and even though they had these incredible opportunities and we had a really important message to get out there, I just saw that Things weren’t always working, and so I’ve just really been focused for three decades now on how is it that we can communicate to people in such a way that we can accelerate the understanding and the adoption of new ideas? Rather, those are new to a person or new to the world. I’ve just endlessly, just fascinated by that. And the first book was the product of figuring out, or really it was the product of figuring out how to construct those messages, what they had to have in them and what order. And that was capturing a process that I had been using for five years previously, now for eight years. And I realized that all the reasons why I did those things, all those principles that I had collected over those years about how to do things once when it comes to communicating change. We’re not conventional wisdom yet, and so that’s really where the second book came from. Was to say, Okay, for those folks who aren’t ready to actually start crafting these messages, step by step by step, which is what the first book was about. These are the big ideas underneath this whole approach. What is it that we need to understand about people in order to inspire them to internally motivated action so aligned with your work? It’s ultimately a much more empathy driven way to communicate, but from my point of view, trying to figure out how to make that work in the business world where taking a lot of time to figure out how to talk to somebody, or that frustration of like, I don’t know how to work through their feelings, could come into play. So that’s really what this whole second book was all about. Well, I

Maria Ross 06:35

love it, and I want to make sure we’re being clear. We’re not saying that you necessarily are just communicating a message once and never revisiting it, right? Because I think that might be a takeaway for people of, yeah, I only have to tell them like, No, we’re doing layoffs and we’re having a reorg once, and then we’ll never have to say it again. No,

Tamsen Webster 06:54

yeah, exactly. Thank you for that clarification. It’s talking about the idea of having to do all the work to get a customer on board, and then they churn out, or a donor on board, and then they turn out, or you get somebody who says yes in a sales meeting, but then they ghost you, or folks that can’t ever really get them to get along or get on the same page in the first place. So this is, yeah, absolutely. Sometimes this is a process of communication, but fundamentally, that process starts with understanding what is it that somebody has to hear in order for them to even be on board in the first place? Just a quick example. So I saw on LinkedIn the other day, actually, a friend of mine posted a poll, and she’s a very well respected researcher, and the poll was about, what do you think is most important when it comes to getting an AI initiative off the ground in the organization? And so messaging and training was number one, and number two was build confidence with trying AI. And number three was something like, you know, demos and practices. And I remember responding to the first one saying, I know what this answer is going to be, predicting it was going to be number two, build confidence in AI, I said, but I don’t understand how you get there without number one, which is messaging. And lo and behold, when the poll came back, it was like, build confidence in AI, you have to communicate the purpose. And I’m like, That’s messaging. This is that little, tiny scenario captures perfectly. I think what happens when we are trying to do a change initiative, we kind of somehow skip to step two, which is we’re going to communicate with them, and then magic will happen, and people will be confident, people will be on board, etc. And I want to dial it back and say, What are you communicating? Exactly how? Because how you communicate, what you communicate from the very get go, can set the future of that change and can kill it right there. Yeah.

Maria Ross 09:04

And I think that’s the most important thing, is that often, when we’re dealing with that step, and I’ve done communication plans in the past for change management initiatives, yeah, communicate doesn’t just mean tell them the thing, like, if there’s more to it than that, right? Like, yes, send it in an email, say it in an all hands, like that’s not the end and the beginning of the communication. That’s just one aspect of it. So what the words you say and the information you convey is one thing, yes, the communication plan of that is entirely another. Oh, absolutely.

Tamsen Webster 09:40

And I would say, even in the I mean, I often think of this as step zero, because the vast majority of messages, and I’m talking now not just change official change management communication messages, but sales messages, marketing messages, all of these other things. All. Are missing at least one piece, if not five. And what I mean by that is, typically, folks will, you know, if they get to we’re doing this because, right? They feel like, well, that’s it. That’s all we need to tell people, right? We’ve got, we’re trying to achieve this outcome. So this is the effect that we want, and so if we make this change, we’ll get that. So we should do the change, because everybody agrees we want that. Now, if this was a change that you were skeptical of, would just saying it’s gonna get us that be enough. No, right? Not and not just because you know you’re a smart, capable, good human, it wouldn’t be enough for anybody to say, Oh, I trust you that just because you say this is going to get us there, that I’m going to believe you, because what’s happening there is that we are missing some really key information that not only is part of what people need to hear in order to even understand the rationale behind the change. Again, it’s not just it’s gonna get us this thing that we want needs to also be this is why, how we’re going to do it is going to get us there. People need to agree in principle that change will happen, and we almost always leave that part out. So a lot of times, this book is very much kind of a call to arms, a critical manifesto to say, hold up. Make sure that when we are talking to people, and we’re when we’re thinking about, what is this, the heart of the message that’s going to be how we have conversations about this change, how we build a communication plan around this change. We need to make sure that all the pieces that build the story in people’s heads is actually there.

Maria Ross 11:56

Okay, so let’s break it down for people, what are some of the things that they’re not considering that they need to consider as they frame the message and get it out there.

Tamsen Webster 12:07

Yes, well, I’d say related to what I just said, would be principle number two, that every decision has a story. And that’s something I said in my first book, and this book’s variation on it, is that really, when it comes down to it, every single action we take, any change we agree with, any idea we agree with, essentially, is because it is one internal argument in our head about why that action, that change, makes sense. And so one of the key things we have to understand is they’re like, this is human. This happens. Not only does it happen in everyone’s head, it also happens oftentimes subconsciously, without our conscious knowledge that it’s happening. So why this is so important is if you don’t give someone all the pieces of that story that they need to for it to make sense to them, then they will fill in the missing pieces with what is most readily available, well

Maria Ross 13:10

and sometimes the worst case scenario, yeah, exactly

Tamsen Webster 13:12

right, because, based on their wiring, their history with you or with the organization, or with changes like this, with just whatever messaging they may be floating around in the ether right now, if they don’t hear it, there’s a vacuum in that story. In order for them to process it, they’re going to fill it in. And so this is part of why I was talking about making sure that all the pieces are at least available, that you know what they are. So if somebody starts to ask you about them, yeah, you can supply them, yeah, because without it, right, they are going to fill in with their own pieces of information, right, right? And we forget that we have reached the decision about this change, because it makes sense to us, it satisfied a story in our heads. And we forget that we can’t just give them the beginning and the end of the story for them either. Because, you know, that’s as unsatisfying as any story would be if you just said, you know, once upon a time, there was a kid named Harry who lived under the staircase, and he defeated an evil wizard and saved all his friends, and you’re like, I think there’s something else that happened inside there. And I don’t even know how those two things are connected. Yeah. So this is the same thing is true, no matter what kind of communication we’re trying to get across. Does that actually change communication? Does

Maria Ross 14:38

that really bring in the aspect of transparency, of bringing people along with I mean, maybe some of those decisions have already been made, but letting people peek under the covers to say, well, this is how we got here. I know, you know, in my past, communications and marketing work, a lot of times when there was a big change, we would develop an FAQ of all the questions we thought. People might have about what this was, and then we were always adding to that, right? I’ve done that in crisis communications, but also in positive change communication, of course, yes. And it’s always great to be able to in your messaging address those objections that you know they might already have. But it’s not quite an objection. It’s more just like, Well, how did we get here? How was the sausage made? Right? In other words, really bad phrase. But you know what actually got us to this point? I know, especially when I was doing brand strategy projects. For example, the reason I would bring in a cross functional team into the workshop, people that said, I don’t know why I’m here. I’m an engineer. Why am I in this marketing meeting for six hours is because I wanted them to see the process. I wanted them to see when those decisions were made. They were in the room when it happened. And not everybody can be if you’ve got an organization or you’re trying to move 1000s of people or hundreds of people, so being able to tell them the story of what happened in the room they weren’t in can go a long way, from a transparency perspective, to say, well, first we considered this, and then here’s why we mixed that, and then we saw that we had this problem. Instead of just, let me just open the finished box and show it to you, and you will accept it. So is that kind of the link there of transparency, of also, just like thinking ahead, of seeing it from their perspective, and like you’ve been living, eating and breathing this change for maybe two months with the executive team, you are springing it on them now in this all hands meeting. So how do you think they might feel

Tamsen Webster 16:31

right if they don’t have the information that they need, then they are again, they’re going to fill in the blanks with whatever makes the most sense to them. And you know this so well, given your work like how people think affects how they feel about it. So if we are giving them what they need to think positively about it to what they need to think positively about it, then they aren’t going to feel positive about it. So what I just, what I saw over and over again was again, this kind of missing piece, and you landed right on it when it when talking about transparency. And the thing is, is that a lot of times what happens is that a decision makes sense to the C suite, which is where I’m often having these conversations, because of assumptions, principles, values, that are actually implicit, that they’ve never stopped to really think about why they think this particular thing makes sense. What is it that they believe that makes this particular approach make sense? And so what this trend? You know what I’m suggesting here, and not just because I think it’s a great idea, but because I’ve seen it work. I’ve been testing this approach for two years, and then much longer, because it’s really what’s sitting underneath the red thread is we are making those implicit assumptions that create that internal rationale for the change explicit. And what that means is, instead of layering on features, benefits, data, where we’re actually starting that conversation, even if we have to present a done deal, is saying because we believe this principle is true, and we believe this principle is true, yeah, that’s why we believe this change, which combines those two ideas, yeah, will achieve this thing that we’re anchoring all of this on, something that we all, collectively, or at least as an organization, agree that is important, agree that we want. And so what that does is it allows for the principles to come first, and what that allows for with the leader is that it means that not only is it a much more principled, literally approach and ethical approach, but it means that you find out very quickly where the actual misalignment is, yes, and that is really important. And this is true in a sales conversation as well, because, you know, if somebody doesn’t want the outcome that this would provide, right, they’re not a prospect for you, right? If they don’t agree with a core principle for why you develop your products or why you offer the services you do in that particular way. Again, not prospect. And so, you know, what I’ve just seen over and over again with my own experience with my clients, is that I would yeah, getting to yes is really important, but getting to know quickly, yes, just as if not more important yes than the other. So it will also tell you where there’s opportunity, if any, for negotiation. Well,

Maria Ross 19:51

okay, I have to bring up my dear friend dia Bondy, who I’ve had on the show, and I will link to her episode. She is queen of asking for the No She applied. As the principles of auctioneering to making a big ask. And one of those principles of auctioneering is that you ask for the no because then you know where you stand, yeah, and then you know what you need to back down from, right? And so asking for the no is a great way to get information. So I’m definitely going to link to her episode, because that is the crux of her work, and you should meet her. So I want to get to this idea of leveraging pain, which is a very popular approach to persuasion, right? We talk about either promoting benefits or helping people avoid pain from a marketing perspective, why is it almost exclusive, right? Why is it almost always guaranteed to fail long term, if you’re focused on leveraging pain.

Tamsen Webster 20:42

Yes, so and the key here is leveraging pain, not identifying with pain. Now, when it comes to empathy, identifying the pain that someone’s already experiencing is really important, as you know and acknowledging listeners know absolutely because not only does that allow them to be seen and feel heard, it also allows you to demonstrate a level of credibility and understanding that you know what it feels like to be in this position where they don’t have an answer to a question, they’ve got a problem that they haven’t been able to solve, they’ve got a goal that they’re trying to reach, and they can’t think how to reach it. So I want to make super clear that I’m not saying never mention pain, because when someone’s in pain, one of the most important things we can do is hold space for that pain, right?

Maria Ross 21:30

And it also gives you credibility, because if you don’t even acknowledge that there’s pain, if you’re like, it’s fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine, like, no one’s going to trust you at that point, right? Exactly. Yes, you can say this sucks and here, and we know why,

Tamsen Webster 21:43

and we know why, and, yeah, that’s the power play. Is that, you know, you can say this sucks, and you know, here’s what we understand as to why, or here’s what, even what we believe is what’s going on, based on the research, based on our clients, etc. Would I, you know, full stop, fully object to, on multiple grounds, is introducing pain in order to create a mental state where someone is more likely to act right. Because people know this, and that’s the problem. People pain is the ally of quick action. If somebody’s in pain, they will act to remove it. But here’s the issue, a brain in pain is an anxious brain. It’s a fearful brain. It is not a rational brain, yep. So it means that any action that is taken by an anxious, fearful in pain brain is probably going to get reconsidered when that person is no longer in that anxious, rational state, and not only that. So that’s why I think a lot of times buyer’s remorse happens, because you get into this like, oh my gosh, I have to act now, oh my gosh, everything’s going to fall apart if I don’t do this. And then when you have that moment to calm down, you’re like, Well, wait a minute. Not only was like, why the heck did I do that? Why the heck did I buy that, but the first time you have to explain to somebody else why you bought it, why you hired that person, etc. You’re like, ooh. And it also makes that person go, Well, who is this person to make me feel that way in the first place? Yes. So it also does damage. So what drives me bananas about leveraging paint in that way? I mean, I’ve literally had someone say to me on a webinar one time, well, that’s what my job is, is to make them sick so I can make them well. And I was like, oh, okay, well, we don’t see the world the same way. No, no, and that’s fine. Not everybody does, but the thing is, like, I don’t whether your drive is ethical or economic or efficiency, it’s there is no basis under which leveraging pain, introducing pain in order to induce action works for you long term,

Maria Ross 24:03

100% I mean, we know from science that your cognitive abilities, your executive functions, shut down when you’re under stress, when you’re in fear. We always talk about this from a culture perspective, right, in terms of if you are running your culture by fear, by command and control, and inducing anxiety and generating competitiveness, where there doesn’t need to be competitiveness, right? Your people are operating on half their brains, if that right? So those are not the kinds of people you want innovating in your organization, because they literally can. They

Tamsen Webster 24:35

can, yeah, and so,

Maria Ross 24:37

you know, and I, you know, from a lot of I have a 10 year old, I know you have kids too. Yes, a lot. We’ve talked on this show with a few parenting experts as well, talking about peaceable discipline and things like that. This idea that, you know, there’s like a visual where you hold a fist and it’s your brain, right? When a child or an adult is under stress, they flip their lid and you put the first four fingers up. And that means it’s all chaos, right, right? There’s no way that they can get out of that red zone and think clearly and make good decisions, and more importantly, that their decisions will stick for the long term, that they’ll actually learn something from that to carry them through for the long term. So yes, you got short term compliance, but not long term success. Exactly,

Tamsen Webster 25:20

exactly, speaking my language, absolutely. I love it. And so again, whether you’re trying to go from an efficiency standpoint, like I only want to have to have this conversation once, right again, at least introduce this idea once, then regularly. If you only want to have to introduce the idea once, then don’t be doing it in the situation of peer, pain and anxiety. In that case, what you want to be doing if you really want people to understand something new, which is a process of learning. By the way, any new idea means people have to learn. You cannot learn when you’re anxious or fearful, and so you cannot achieve what you’re trying to achieve, at least in that state. So part of what we’re trying to do, and why the suggestion that you had made earlier so is so valuable, when you’re saying, I get it. It sucks, but here’s why we here’s why it’s happening. It that activates curiosity. That moment you activate curiosity, that’s, again, a neuro, biologically validated way to start to reduce pain is to create curiosity. So again, efficiency, ethically, I think it’s a better thing to do, because I get I use, I start to question, particularly once somebody knows this about how an anxious brain can’t make a rational decision once somebody knows that and continues to use that device, I would question that person’s motivations. And that’s applicable in all sorts of fields and areas around us right now and, you know, months ago. But yeah, generally, I think that’s the thing. But also just from an economic standpoint, when changes don’t stick, when people back out of a deal, when people ghost you, when they just give you lip service to make you stop talking. That extends the process, which extends the effort, which extends the time, which extends the money invested exactly and who’s got that nobody does. So yeah, I’m pain is the enemy of long term change. Is how I looked.

Maria Ross 27:27

So I know you say people stumble at the first and most important step of building buy in, and that’s ensuring the audience’s understanding. So what tips do you have for folks that maybe do fall back on the idea of just, I just need to communicate the thing, and then I need to be done so I can go move on to other things. Like, what could they be doing to, you know, how I don’t know if they’re going to understand me. I’m using words they should understand. Like, how do I What kind of advice would you give to someone that’s like, how do I even understand if they understand? Yes, well, there’s a certain

Tamsen Webster 28:01

there are certain things that will help, and you’ve already touched on one of them, which is making sure that we’re talking in language and in concepts that are not only understandable to your audience, but recognizably true for them. Because you know you we can talk, just as a quick example. So this approach that I talk about can be used all sorts of ways. I also use it with my TEDx New England speakers who are assigned and, you know, we had one came into me one time, and he’s like, Well, now I said, you know, tell me what your idea is about. And he’s like, it’s about homeostatic regulation of criticality in the brain. Okay? And I was like, we can’t start there. I’m not saying we can’t end there, but we can’t start there, because this audience is not an audience of scientists. And so whereas you know homeostatic regulation and Criticality means something to you, they don’t, it doesn’t mean anything to them. So how can we talk about the same concept in an accessible way. Now, again, not trying to simplify or over simplify. Simplify. This is important. What we’re trying to do is to find the most accessible entry point to what you’re talking about. And so sometimes that’s saying, instead of calling it homeostatic regulation, you’re going to say it’s like maintenance. It is maintenance. It’s the maintenance of something, it’s the maintenance of balance, it’s the maintenance of a temperature, it’s a maintenance of a set point, and in the brain or in the body, we call it this fancy word, but as long as you understand the concept, the principle that we’re talking about here, we’re good. So I think that’s a really important thing. It’s one of the reasons why, fundamentally, this book is about, if I were going to state in one sentence what the big idea of the book is. It’s about the idea that, in order to truly build emotional, intellectual buy in, to get people invested in these ideas. Right? Then we have to build our case for it based on elements of an argument that they already agree with. And what I mean by that is, number one, make sure it is tied to something they agree they actively and knowingly want right now. And this is one of those things, if you’re a leader, you probably have a much broader, more strategic answer to that question than somebody who may be three that levels down from you in an organization. That person is probably thinking about how to make their job a little bit less annoying. There. That problem is, yeah, that person is probably trying to figure out, how do I make this particular quota? That person is probably thinking about, how do I make sure I deliver to my standards, the company standards in this relationship with this client, that’s what I’m talking about. We need to anchor it towards. Because if somebody can understand how it applies to something that they’re already moving towards, to something that they’re already working towards, then you don’t have to do nearly as much work. No, you know, again, just think of it from a physics standpoint, they’re already moving that direction. So it’s a lot easier to kind of draft in the direction that they’re moving than to try to shift the whole thing in the first

Maria Ross 31:18

place. This is the whole crux behind how I got on the empathy work with the empathy edge was a book for the skeptics to show them the ROI of empathy on the bottom line and to get them to empathy through something they already cared about, which is increasing engagement retention, lowering customer churn, increasing customer lifetime value, all of these things. And I did a TEDx talk called How to Trojan horse leaders into being empathetic. And it’s interesting because I got some, you know, pushback on that, of like, how can you make this thing that’s supposed to be this moral beautiful, like, we should have empathy for each other? How can you turn it into something that’s so cold and calculating? And it’s because you have to meet people where they are,

Tamsen Webster 32:01

yes, and very definition of empathy, yes, yeah.

Maria Ross 32:06

And they experience the benefit of it, they will be transformed from the outside in. So I don’t really much care what brings them to adopting an empathetic mindset, because once they’re seeing someone else’s point of view, they can’t unsee it. That’s right. So it’s, I love this, like drafting in your work and this idea, and that’s that holds so true for marketing, as well as what’s in it for them, how can you tie what you do and what you provide to a problem someone already has and speaking it in their language? That’s right. So that ones are the voice in their head, and you’re not speaking above them or outside of them, because that’s going to get you a glazed expression, or

Tamsen Webster 32:46

down to them, or down to that place. And this is a place that I have another bone to pick, and that is this focus. It’s related to the leveraging of pain. It’s focusing on the real problem and and I put that in quotation marks with my fingers, not because there isn’t a real problem, but if somebody doesn’t know they have the real problem, you start the message there, then you’re in a already in for a world of hurt number one, if this is a marketing message, how are they going? How are you ever going to end up in their consideration set, because they’re not looking for anything you say you do, right? Exactly. We have to start with a problem they actively and knowingly have one that they know that they want the answer to, and by the way, as urgent and important version of that as possible. So can your product help someone be more successful. Can it help them be an industry leader? Yeah, probably. But you know what’s going to win, what’s going to be more attractive is somebody who’s going to help them understand how they can increase their profit margin by 5% in the next quarter, right? And so figuring those pieces out is really, really important. The second thing about starting from this real problem is, again, it’s kind of talking down to people. It’s saying, I know you better than you know you. And that’s a big old assumption I mean, and I mean that in a in every sense of the term, right? Like that is big, and it’s an old assumption. Because, you know, one of the main themes of the book, it’s the whole chapter four is very much about this idea that one of the main human drivers is that people want to be seen as smart, capable and good. And what’s important about this is that where we even if we just have understood that intuitively, what we end up doing is we end up twisting it and we end up making smart capable good conditional meaning, you will become like the messaging, essentially is saying in not so many words, you will become smart, capable and good if and only if or when and only. When you do this, you buy this, you agree to this, you see that I am right. And so part of what this is all about is to say you don’t actually know that person better than they know themselves. And even if you think you do, it really doesn’t matter, because if they’re not in that space yet, whatever you say to them won’t make any sense to them. It won’t like you’re at a different level of awareness than they are, not at that level of intelligence. So this is very much about saying, Okay, I’m going to start from the assumption that the person that I’m talking to is already smart, capable and good, and I’m going to think to myself, Well, why would a smart, capable and good person be doing something other than the thing that I want right now? What would they want? What would they be concerned about not having by doing this change? And what that does is it really avoids that. Well, I know what your real problem is. You basically say, I know what your problem is. You’re experiencing this thing that you know you’re experiencing right now, and what I’ve seen is that if we focus over here, then we can start to make some progress on it. But it’s not because you weren’t smart enough to see it in the first place. There’s probably a really good reason why you were doing that. And so that’s a big shift, but it has a lot to do, actually, everything to do with improving your opportunity for success. And back to your point about kind of backdooring empathy, what it allows leaders and business folks or just really anybody who’s communicating to do is start to understand cognitive empathy. What is somebody else thinking? Yes, and I would argue that it’s that really is the only thing we can directly influence with somebody else is how they think about something, because how they take that information and process it is completely up to them. In other words, that feeling that they’re going to get from those thoughts that’s not under your control or your influence, but you can influence the input of the thought, right? That’s what this is all about. Start from the perspective of, you know, my input I’m putting in there is, I believe you’re a smart, capable, good person, and that you want to be seen that way, and then the whole tone and tenor of how you frame that change will also change, and they’re going to end up feeling that, because that was part of what you put into the message in the first place. Okay, so

Maria Ross 37:38

as we wrap up, I want to talk about this idea of finding common ground, because it’s a very big tip that I give around strengthening your empathy and trying to put yourselves on the same side of the table, rather than it in confrontation. Yep, not meaning that you’re going to agree, not meaning all the myths of empathy. It doesn’t mean you agree, it doesn’t mean you’re going to do whatever the other person wants, but it’s just finding a way forward based on different perspectives of the same problem or the same issue, and so you say that it’s almost always possible to find common ground, and if it’s not to have a way to identify those differences clearly and without judgment. So give us an example of what you’re talking about, especially when you’re talking about maybe communicating a change like it could be anything from Return to office to layoffs to a completely different strategic direction. Oh, yeah. What are some ways that you have found work? Well, to find common ground? Well, it’s a great question

Tamsen Webster 38:32

to end with, because it pulls together a lot of the things that we talked about. I mean, the first thing is, is to anchor the change, the outcome of the change in something that you fully acknowledge and you share with the person that you’re talking to. So again, that may mean that you need to be talking to the effect of that change much more in the standpoint of this is going to make the day job easier. And you may be thinking where, and ultimately that’s going to do X, Y and Z for the bottom line or the top line revenue of the company. But for you, I actually do want to make your day to day job easier, because for me, it’s going to do this. So we want this to happen, then it’s about building that quite literal argument in their head. And the simplest, strongest way to do that is to back to Aristotle state the argument for it using two recognizable truths that put together make this change make sense. So for instance, kind of thinking off the top of my head there is, if we’re trying to implement, I’m going to use one of my client examples, but we’re trying to implement and face a strategic shift in our organization, and we want to make sure that our leaders are ready for it, right? That this we as a company are going to be able, we’re going to be ready to successfully execute this strategic shift. That’s where we’d anchor it, because leaders want to be successful. The C suite wants to be successful like we’ve got. The shift. We gotta make it and, yeah, there may be negatives for it, whatever, but we’re gonna anchor it there. And then let’s say that we’ve decided right that there’s gonna be some, you know, leadership development, some training, some assessment that’s going on to make sure that we are, in fact, ready for that. Now, if we just say so, we’re gonna do some training to make sure everybody’s ready to do the strategic shift, people are gonna be like training on what like and why and what’s that mean. So it’s about, again, explaining what why this. So again, using this is Vince Molinaro and the leadership contract, we work together to to sort this out. But you say, Okay, first and foremost, we believe that the most important thing that we can build in this organization in order to make sure that that shift happens is make sure that we’ve got accountability running. You know that we’ve got accountability because we believe that accountability is the ownership of outcomes. If we want to successfully execute this strategic shift, we need to make sure that we’ve got people owning the outcomes. We’ve got leaders owning the outcomes. But if it’s just one leader, or you can’t count on the other person to do it, that’s not going to work, because we also believe success requires execution at scale. So that’s what we’re going to work on. We’re going to bring in this company that’s going to help us scale accountability throughout the organization. Here’s how it’s going to work. And instead of where so the training becomes a how, like that’s lower down. But what it allows us to do is say, this is what we’re doing. In principle, we want to make sure we’re ready for strategic shift. That’s the big Simon sinekian, why, right? This is why we’re doing it. But what’s also really important is the why behind the how. We believe that accountability is the ownership of outcomes, and we believe success requires execution at scale. So those two things put together say that we believe that in order to be ready to execute this strategic shift, we need to scale accountability. Stop there like it doesn’t even take 30 seconds to get that out, and just pause for a moment, because that’s where you get a that’s how you’re going to know whether or not people are agreeing in principle with the change, because if they don’t want to be ready for strategic shift, they’re probably not great on your leadership team in the first place. Second, if they don’t agree that accountability is the ownership of outcomes or the success requires execution at scale again. So you see, this is where the common ground comes from, because what we’re trying to do is, in addition to anchoring it on something that we are fairly sure that we share in common with them, we’re also basing our explanation and our argument for it, our case for it, on things that we believe they will recognize and agree are true. And so if somebody says, Yeah, I don’t agree that’s the case, or I agree that this other thing is actually more important. Well now you’ve got a much more workable basis of understanding where the gap is, because if somebody ultimately says, Well, okay, yeah, scale accountability, but I believe we actually have to work on psychological safety. Okay. Well, then either we can talk about how accountability creates that, or we can start to say, Okay, well, let’s talk about psychological safety and how that could lead to accountability. But again, at this point, you’re just it is much more natural, and this is what I’ve seen over and over again, to go, Okay, well, we may just get to a point where we agree to disagree, underlying peace, and what we stay away from is my way is better than your way, right? It’s this, is why I believe this. And one of the things that I think is ultimately most important about this Maria is that it puts the risk of change where I believe it belongs, and that’s on the person asking for it. The vast majority of communications that are designed to create change, whether in thinking or behavior, are essentially asking the other person to take a leap of faith, to say, based on this evidence we’re putting in front of you, we’re asking you to believe that this is going to work based on what we say is going to be true. And what this approach does is it really flips it around and says, I believe that because I believe these things are true, which I believe you are going to agree is true too. This is why, in principle, this is going to work. Now, do you still need to actually go then and then do the work of making sure that someone agrees as possible and practice as well? Yes,

Maria Ross 44:50

absolutely. But back to what we’re saying at the beginning. I think we skip over this part. Yeah, almost every time, all the time, not every time. Because then that’s when you get into a tit for tat over tactics, yes, and you’re avoiding the issue that you both don’t fundamentally have the same goal. And you can bring this down to even a more practical level of have, you know, I talk about this example all the time, having a difficult performance review, yeah, as a manager and an employee, does the manager start out with the review, sort of setting the tone of like, here’s why we’re both here. Here’s what we both want to get out of this performance review. The goal is to help you do your best work and succeed. Can we both agree that that’s our underlying principle? So now we know that we both have positive intent. Right now we both know that it’s really might just be an issue of the tactics that we disagree on, but we’re not disagreeing on the fundamental principle or values, right? That we’re saying, that we’re stating out loud. And I’ve even used the example in talks that I’ve given of just like, you know, two folks having a disagreement about a strategy, and they get in a room to hash it out. And can we both agree that we don’t want to lose our jobs this quarter? Yeah, we both agree that we want to make our numbers like get down to that nitty gritty level of this is something we can actually recognize that we’re on the same page. And that’s why what you’re saying is so powerful. Because if that is not agreed upon, no discussion of tactics or strategies

Tamsen Webster 46:20

matters. Because one ever matters. Yeah,

Maria Ross 46:22

one person doesn’t agree that that’s why we’re here, and the other person does. So now you’re talking about a fundamental difference in the approach. That’s right, not just how to solve it. That’s right.

Tamsen Webster 46:32

Yes. I mean, that’s exactly it. I mean, I see message design as really three phases, and by and large, we skip the first two. Yeah. In other words, we go straight to the wrapping. We go straight to picking out the drapes and hanging the chandeliers in the house. And we haven’t actually made sure that the walls are going to stand and we haven’t put a foundation under it in the first place, right? And so it doesn’t matter how much data you’ve got, how snappy Your copy is, no matter any of that that’s or how eloquently delivered your talk, is, if people don’t understand what you’re saying, that’s the second phase, right? Like they need to make sure that you’ve got the information they need to get there. And even that doesn’t matter, which is what? Oh, this is another. I know we don’t have time, but story is not the end of the story. Like there’s something underneath the story. That’s the principles upon which that story, which is an argument, by the way, is based, right? So if we haven’t figured out from the beginning why someone would actually agree with it, why do we agree with it? Then there is. It doesn’t. Nothing else matters. Truly, nothing else matters. Yeah. And the bonus is, like I said, you can get to the core conceptual case for what you’re talking about in 30 seconds or less, and then you’ve got all that extra time to really engage in those conversations about it, to add that detail, to add that evidence, to add that what is it going to look like? In principle? To ask and answer all those other FAQs. But ultimately it says this is what I believe, this is what we believe. And yeah, are you taking a risk by putting yourself out there? Yeah, you are. But if you’re not, you’re taking a risk no matter what, and I’d rather know where that true risk was coming from, and being able to really spot it and work with it, or to determine, huh, this just isn’t going to work. And, you know, I think we’ve all had an organization, maybe that we work with, or maybe that we work for, that at some point, typically, if you leave an organization, it’s because something about those underlying principles didn’t actually align with you, right? And so this is really about saying, Yeah, we can wait to the disagreement to get to this, yeah, or we can start the conversation there, right? And be more productive from the beginning and being able to build forward from like, getting everybody on the same, yeah, it’s

Maria Ross 49:05

better to know that up front. And that’s why, you know, clarity is one of my five pillars of empathetic and effective leadership, because you need to suss out the problem sooner rather than later, or the difference sooner rather than later, and then both parties get to make a choice. That’s right, that they want to move forward together with it or not. But, you know, a lot of times there’s leaders that, in the name of empathy, avoid those difficult conversations, avoid those difficult discussions. In the name of, you know, either I’m trying to be nice or I’m just trying to make everybody happy, or that’s going to upset someone. But the empathetic thing is, let’s get it all out on the table so we understand what we’re actually talking about, and then we can both make a choice within that interaction if we want to move forward and make a change, or maybe we don’t

Tamsen Webster 49:50

see what I mean. It’s this funny paradox, which is, and I wonder if you’ve seen this too, Maria, is that I believe, to my core, that there’s a logic. To emotion. And what I mean by that is that how we feel about something, and I mean, this made me be super clear that this is about intentional action, right? This is intentional action because, you know, someone can step out from the bushes and we’re going to be scared, and it’s not because we had a conscious thought that, like, oh my gosh, right? Like, it’s like our bodies reacted. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about like when you’ve had a chance to listen to somebody, when you hear when you’re watching an infomercial, when you’re watching a TED talk, when you are sitting with someone who’s trying to pitch you something, and you know they’re trying to pitch you something, right? What you’re listening for is for those pieces and parts and how you end up feeling about that whole thing is whether or not like those pieces that you fill in fit. Not just logically, does this plus this add up to this, but because fundamentally, those decisions are based on beliefs which are not rational, right? So we use this logical structure with illogical, irrational thing. And so to me, this is good news, though, for leaders who are afraid of empathy and that kind of thing, because by taking something down to its core, logical structure and yet filling in the blanks of that logical structure with belief, we actually depressurize this whole situation and by taking it on ourselves. Ken, if you don’t believe in this change, why would they if you can’t find a reason that you can 100% get behind about why this is the case they’re never going to get about get it there either. Now are there sometimes changes that just aren’t in the best interest of the people you’re talking to? Yeah, yeah, there are. Are they going to be able to suss that out no matter what you say to them? Yeah, they are. So again, back to this like it’s they would rather understand their rationale, right, than feel good about it. What doesn’t feel good is when they don’t understand, because that’s when the feelings will come in, because the thoughts will drive that Well, why didn’t they tell me? Why did they like say it was this, when it was actually this? Why didn’t I know about this rather than saying, here’s what’s happening, here’s I know it’s not in your best interest, but here’s why we had to do this. This is why, again, don’t sugar coat it. This is not inventing concepts and principles to make people feel better or to make you feel better about your brand. This is absolutely a process of excavation. What is actually driving this, with you know Jim Duterte at the UVA calls it the deep rules of an organization. Also notice like, espouse theories versus theories in you. She probably know this too, right? And so what we’re looking for is, what are we actually using to drive these discussions?

Maria Ross 52:52

Awesome. Tamsen, I love it. Well, we’ve gone over, but this has been such a great conversation. We will have all your links in the show notes and a link to your book. But for folks on the go, please tell them the best place they can get in touch with you. Your

Tamsen Webster 53:05

best place is message, design institute.com, that’s where they’re going to find me and all the things that we do to help people do all of this work on their own, but with help. Love it. One. Love it. Love it.

Maria Ross 53:16

Thank you. Always so great to talk to you. I learned so much every time we interact, and I know my listeners will as well. So thank you for your time today.

Tamsen Webster 53:23

Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me back, and thank you everyone for listening

Maria Ross 53:27

to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share with a 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.