Your organization is not just some static, monolithic thing. It’s actually a forest – living, breathing, adapting, full of evolving biodiversity. Often leaders get stuck, focusing on our productivity and numbers, and end up underperforming as a result, causing disengagement and mental health crises in their wake. Today, Catherine Bell shares how integrating consciousness, empathy, and relationship-building creates an Awakening Company that combines profitable performance with conscious purpose.
We discuss what an Awakening Company looks like, how empathetic leaders can be more self-aware and conscious in the moment – leading to higher engagement and performance – and she shares an empathic practice to bring you home to your body in a nanosecond. She fuses compassion, relationships, and consciousness with tangible business performance and transformation – your invitation today is to be brave enough to transform your leadership style to reap all the rewards!
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Focus on creating healthy, vibrant cultures within your organizations. In the connections, the processes come alive. Our beingness and our ability to relate to one another is where the awakening is. You cannot check your being at the door when you get to work. We all have a sphere of influence. You can create a microculture around you that encourages empathy and connection, without waiting for the decree to come from higher up in your organization.
“We need seasons in our organizations. We need quiet time. We can’t just be relentlessly on the go and at the mercy of productivity. An awakening organization pauses, takes a breath, and then something more creative and dynamic can come in.” — Catherine Bell
About Catherine Bell:
Catherine is a successful serial entrepreneur, business leader, and best-selling business author who focuses on awakening the fire within as Founder of The Awakened Company. She’s also the author of the revolutionary business book, Awakened Company. Her focus is on helping ignite and sustain the fire within by helping organizations create healthy cultures through her practical experience, wisdom traditions, and business research. She has taught the Awakened Company process in 23 different countries. She was recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 10 innovative CEOs revamping the future.
Previously, Catherine founded BluEra, a Profit 500 executive search firm. As a top-200 growing company in Canada and top-10 in Alberta, BluEra was a successful example of the Awakened Company System in action, one that is being integrated into the Smith (Queen’s) School of Business Masters of Entrepreneurship. She now helps organizations develop culture strategies.
Catherine has been published in Fortune, HBR, Profit, Conscious Company Magazine, Women of Influence, and has written for the UN. She has worked around the globe from the UK to Cuba, with Fortune 500 companies, and serial entrepreneurs.
Connect with Catherine Bell:
The Awakened Company: https://awakenedcompany.com/
Her book, The Awakened Company
Twitter: https://twitter.com/awakenedcompany
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellcatherine/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/awakenedcompany
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theawakenedcompany/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5XwzGZacXitTYvb4NPdhgw
Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/user27041330
Awakenly App: https://www.awakenly.app/
References Mentioned:
Enneagram: https://awakenedcompany.com/enneagram-courses-awakened-company/The Empathy Edge podcast, Chris L. Johnson, When Leaders Pause, They WinCarol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Don’t forget to download your free guide! Discover The 5 Business Benefits of Empathy: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy
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
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Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business.
Did you know your organization is not just some static monolithic thing, it’s actually similar to a forest, living, breathing, adapting full of evolving biodiversity. Sounds about right since organizations are made up of living, breathing, adapting human beings, but so often leaders get stuck, focus on forcing our productivity and numbers and end up underperforming as a result, and causing disengagement and mental health crises in their wake. Today, my guest Katherine Bell shares how integrating consciousness empathy and relationship building creates what she calls an awakening company that combines profitable performance with conscious purpose. Catherine is a successful serial entrepreneur, business leader and best selling business author who focuses on awakening the fire within as founder of the awakened company. She founded blue era, a profit 500 executive search firm, as a top 200 growing company in Canada and top 10. In Alberta, blue arrow was a successful example of the awakened company system in action, one that’s being integrated into the Smith Queen’s School of Business masters of entrepreneurship. She now helps organizations develop culture strategies. She’s also the best selling author of her book, awakened company. We discuss what an awakening company looks like how leaders who are empathetic, can be more self aware and conscious in the moment, leading to higher engagement and performance. And she shares an empathic practice to bring you home to your body in a nanosecond. What I love about Katherine’s work is she like me, fuses compassion, relationships, and consciousness with tangible business performance and transformation. Your invitation today is to be brave enough to transform your leadership style to reap all the rewards Take a listen.
Maria Ross 02:20
Welcome, Catherine to the empathy edge podcast here to talk about what it means to be an awakened company and how to leverage empathy to build better relationships. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Catherine Bell 02:33
Thank you so much for having me. And thank you to everybody who is listening as Yes,
Maria Ross 02:39
thank you. Bye, awesome listeners. So I want to talk a little bit about your both your company and your book called The Awakened company. Tell us what an awakened company is. And what does it look and act like?
Catherine Bell 02:54
An awakened company is an organization that solves a problem. And then solving a problem does not cause harm to either the environment or to humanity. And awakening organizations, I use the term awakening because I don’t believe it’s a conclusion. Whereas awakened, it sounds like it’s concluded, whereas awakening awakening organizations are like a live forest. They have diversity, they have different experiences, and they’re all allowed, and they’re alive and vibrant. Whereas, you know, when we go into organizations, often we can feel like they’re like sludge, they feel they feel slow and stuck, and not alive and vibrant. Not the opposite of an awakening organization. An awakening organization is like seeing all the butterflies in the forest and smelling that great, wonderful air when we walk in the forest. So it’s vibrant, it’s emergent. It’s not something that static or stuck in the mud.
Maria Ross 03:59
I was gonna say it really it really reminds me of, you know, versus some other terms I’ve heard, which is like a conscious company or purpose driven or other terms that are out there. What I like about that is, is that analogy really speaks to how a an organization, like you said, it’s not a static thing, but it needs to ebb and flow. It goes through seasons, it goes through phases, it goes through rebirth, then it goes through death, and it goes through all of these different phases. And it’s okay because it is sort of a living, breathing thing, because it’s made up of people who are living breathing things.
Catherine Bell 04:35
That is so accurate. And in my upcoming playbook I actually talk about the playbook is like how do we create awakening organizations? I actually talked about the seasons, that we need seasons in our organizations. We need quiet time. We can’t just be relentlessly on the go and at the mercy of productivity. That’s not what in a way Any organization is an awakening organization also pauses, takes a breath. And then something more creative and dynamic can come in. So there’s, you know, there’s kind of three pillars, if you were to imagine a drop in an ocean, so we’re dropping a drop of water in the ocean. First we awaken ourselves, then we awaken our relationships, then we awaken our teams, our organization, our communities, but the ripple extends, and it’s alive and it’s moving. The first drop, though, is with ourselves. And that’s where empathy comes in as like, how do we awaken ourselves and one of the tools, because, you know, when you look at the data, the majority of people are disengaged at work. And that’s a real challenge, a real challenge. So how do we wake up something new, and I just want to touch in on empathy, you know, there’s cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, empathetic concern. And what I love about those three things is they tap into the three centers of the Enneagram. And I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Enneagram. But it’s something that every leader should know about, because it talks about the heart, the head in the gut. And so yesterday, on one of our webinars, I’m gonna give like a real example. I had somebody who was just down in the dumps. And I noticed I’m an Enneagram, type eight, I immediately wanted to fix it wanted to, like, you know, get in there and, and, and kind of do oh, here’s the things you need to do. Is that God Cheever,
Maria Ross 06:35
no, okay. Or I don’t know which one that is. But yeah, oh,
Catherine Bell 06:39
okay. Well, let me quickly go through each type. So when we think of cognitive empathy, those are the head types of the five, the observer, the six little loyalists, the seven, the enthusiast, and you can go to our YouTube channel, we have a whole bunch of free videos, and people can learn more about it. Then there’s emotional empathy, which is our hearts, which is the to the help of the three the achiever, which is you the for the individualist, and then there’s the more body centered types, which is me. And that’s the eight, nine and one challenge or peacemaker, and Reformer. So the invitation is to get in touch with, you know, our self wisdom, our self knowledge, so that we can understand where our biases may be in terms of how we’re going to act from an empathetic perspective. So some people will be biased to be more like empathetic from a head perspective. Others will be empathetic from a heart perspective, and others will be empathetic from more of an action or inaction perspective. And so to really get in touch with that, so knowing that my bias was towards action, and I literally felt my body go to wanting to act well, have you tried this? Have you done this? Have you done this? I’m like, No, that’s not what he needs. He needs you to sit and be with Him, in His challenging in his hardship. So that’s what I did. But if I didn’t know what my bias was, in terms of my Enneagram type, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.
Maria Ross 08:14
Right, right. Yeah. And you know, when I did my research for my book, The Empathy edge, it talks a lot about the differences. And when I do leadership trainings, it’s talking about the difference between cognitive empathy and affective or emotional empathy. And then, both of those leading to action, or could lead to action, which is compassion, compassion is empathy and action. And so I love that you’re relating this to understanding your own leadership style, so you know where to lean in, and where you need to sort of watch yourself and tread carefully, or you might not be giving the person what they actually need in that moment. And so let’s talk a little bit about that. Well, first of all, I’m just so curious, because you seem to blend business performance with these, these almost spiritual ideas. So what brought you to this work where you’re we are fusing those two things together?
Catherine Bell 09:07
What a great question. Thank you for asking it. No one’s ever asked me about one before. So thank you. And it’s a brilliant question. So the awaken company merges wisdom traditions with practical know how and business research. And the book was written was published over seven years ago. And it took me seven years before that, to write it. As you know, being an author, it takes a heck of a lot of time. And just now it’s being re released. And so what brought me to it is practical experience. So creating an organization that was one of the most profitable companies in Canada, and also recognizes the best workplaces and my partners and I decided we do things radically differently. So we are doing mindfulness in our boardroom decades ago. And we are doing unlimited vacation decades ago. are doing. And by doing that, and kind of trusting people and doing all these little hacks, it’s all about the little hacks. And I was like, oh, I need to write a book. But how the book came to me is very, very interesting. I was with my colleague, Carolyn, and we are sitting in a dimly lit cafe in New York City. And it was like a lightning bolt shot through the top of my head, and said, You’ve got to write a book called The Awaken company. So I immediately turned to my colleague, Carolyn, I’m like, Carolyn, I’m thinking I’m supposed to write this book, The Awaken company. She looked at me and she’s like, Yes, you are. And that’s how the book began. And it originally began as actually a recruiting book, because I was, it was an executive search firm, that I co founded. And the we were just doing things radically differently. But anyway, when I wrote the book as how to recruit great people, well, well, that got terrible reviews. My business partners were like, Kathy, this is so boring, and so dry. I kept at it kept at it kept at it. And I knew I wanted Eckhart Tolle, his publisher to publish it. Constance Kelo, because I thought it would be a radical statement to have an organization that’s all about consciousness, bright, you know, publish a business book. And when she first got it, she’s like, No way. I’m not going to publish this. Well, I just kept at it, like the little, you know, like, I’m like, the little engine that could, you know, I’m like, I’m just gonna keep trying and keep trying. Well, I asked her probably four times, and she finally agreed she would publish it. And at the same time, I was soliciting opinions from other people like Otto Sharma from MIT, Rose, Macario, Patagonia, and they didn’t know me. So just listeners, get out of your comfort zone and ask people and who cares if they say no. And then eventually, the book was published, became a bestseller won awards, but what I’m most thrilled about is the impact it’s having on people’s lives.
Maria Ross 12:06
And what is it? You know, let’s let’s, for our listeners, business leaders, aspiring leaders, what is the benefit of being an awakened company? What we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about the benefits of empathy to your organization, but you’re talking about even something bigger? So, you know, what are some of the benefits to an organization of operating this way? And can you give us some examples? Who were some of your bright lights that you look to in terms of like they’re doing it right?
Catherine Bell 12:34
Yes. So the benefits are, when we’re aligned with our vertical, like our actual beingness, everything becomes more sacred. So when our engagement goes up, our performance goes up. And I also would invite everyone to think of their organ their organizations as almost like organisms, so that they become alive entities in and of themselves. And what’s been shown is when we focus two thirds, on creating healthy cultures, and 1/3, on financial results, that is where alchemy happens. Now, so often, I’ll meet with CEOs and like, hey, Kath, can you take take my organization from zero to 1.6 billion, like you did in five years? Like you did that other organization? I’m like, That’s the wrong mantra. That’s the wrong approach. Right? It’s, it’s like how do we create the healthy cultures, the healthy, vibrant forests in our organizations where there’s connection, as recently where we were working, it wasn’t me, it was, it was me and my colleagues, we were recently working with a company who had amazing processes, but there was no connection between the people. So our very little connection between the people so where do we focus our energy, creating connection between people, because it’s in the connection, that the processes come alive. Whereas if they’re just processes it, we’re not automatons. And I believe any organization can become an awakened company with the right intention. And with the right leadership, so I don’t you know, I think the time has gone to kind of hold up certain companies, I think we can learn from everybody and everything. And that’s the invitation with awakening companies is like, oh, that company is doing this. Isn’t that interesting? How do we apply that to our organization? I interviewed Zappos for the book. And one of the things that they do that I loved is r&d, which is rip off and duplicate. And I think that’s just so smart and wise, like, how are we learning emerging organizations? And that’s the invitation and also to view it as a grand experiment, because what will work for one company won’t work for another company, and to really kind of consider it visually, our corporate cultures, that’s why I don’t believe in cookie cutter culture. I think our cultures have got to be diverse for us to have a healthy, healthy world, and also healthy organizations.
Maria Ross 15:13
And so what, you know, you’ve talked in the past, about the highest performing leaders are self aware. And so I know you have opinions about how empathy makes people more self aware. Can you share that with us? And maybe some examples of clients you’ve worked with who’ve made that transition?
Catherine Bell 15:29
Well, so one of the things I speak about, is, are we coming from our weak place? Or are we coming from our asleep place? So I often think people won’t like me, I have a rejection structure that’s pretty strong. And so when you can’t, when I come in with that attitude, oh, they’re not gonna like me, I’m too strong, I’m too bossy, I’m to blah, blah, blah, you know, I have these kind of negative things that I see about myself. And that’s coming from my asleep place. That’s not reality. And when I come around that asleep place, what’s interesting is it reinforces itself. So how do I come from my more awakened state, that just being with somebody just relaxing, just relaxing into being, and really thinking about, like, putting myself in the other person’s shoes, instead of worrying so much about myself, really am not that interesting. Other people are far more interesting to me than me. And to come from that place that life is happening actually, for me, rather than life is happening to me. And I think the key ingredients in this in our relationships, and I talked about this in the book, are how are we being heartful? How are we being mindful? And how are we being spacious? So heartful? Like, how are we really connecting at a heart level with the other person? And super interestingly, the most engaged group of people are those who are positively noticed. So how do we here’s a hack began to just positively notice those around you. It’s a simple, simple empathy slash leadership hack. Notice the good things people are doing?
Maria Ross 17:21
Well, that’s a very, you know, reinforcement of a more positive narrative that you learn with raising children you learn about, like, don’t just be on them, when they screw up, make sure you’re catching them doing good, make sure you’re catching them being good, being positive, being helpful. And, you know, we don’t, we don’t evolve that much in terms of those needs from childhood. We need those because we are setting those scripts and setting those narratives. And if we’re getting that positive reinforcement, along with, you know, the thing I often hear from leaders is, well, I don’t want quality to slip, if I’m going to be doing all this conscious work. And being empathetic, you don’t have to, because being empathetic means you’re really clear. And it means you help someone when they trip and they don’t meet those expectations, where they don’t meet that performance level, the empathetic leadership style is to figure out what’s going on for them. And not It’s not to lower the bar. It’s to help them reach the bar that you’re setting.
Catherine Bell 18:22
Very, very much so very much so. And also, what I love about your perspective is it’s learning. So I love Carol Dweck research, which I’m sure you’re familiar with,
Maria Ross 18:32
you know, growth mindset,
Catherine Bell 18:34
the growth mindset versus the closed mindset, that it’s not a conclusion. It’s not just about getting the gold star. We all have gold stars and negative stickies all over us. It’s more about what are we actually learning? How are we present to the here and now with our colleagues. And we so often put old narratives on on people and old stickies on people. When the focus really okay, we’re here together now. This is what’s in front of us now, what are we learning? Where are we growing? Where are we experimenting? And to have that frame of kind of how in our relationships, are we hurtful? How are we mindful? So how are we considering, you know, each other intellectually, and that’s really, really important. When you look at transformational leadership. One of the key aspects is intellectual stimulation, that we need to inspire each other through good questions like you’re asking right now to to get people thinking in different ways. And then how we spaces and that is recognizing that we’re actually autonomous, that we’re together and we’re autonomous, and it’s really, really important to honor people’s individual journeys in our organizations, that it’s not a cookie cutter approach. quote. And that’s another aspect of transformational leadership, which is one of the most well researched business models, or leadership models is individualized consideration. We need to consider people as individuals. So all these kinds of ingredients put together a healthy soup for our, for our organizations, and also for our lives. Like we can pretend that we’re not that we’re working home or separate. And that’s simply not true. If we’re checking our being at the door, when we come to work. That’s a problem. And if we’re checking our work when we come to home in terms of No, that’s a problem to where we are all our sense of time. And we do need boundaries. However, our beingness. And our ability to relate to each other is where the alchemy as in awakening ourselves, awakening our relationships and awakening our collective field. And I do think that there is we’re at a point in time where it’s very interesting, because I think many awakening organizations are feeling this sense of oneness that I haven’t seen before. Yes. Which is really, really exciting to me.
Maria Ross 21:15
It is and I know, you know, the pandemic accelerated a lot of these conversations. And, you know, I’m sure you felt this, too. I’ve shared this on the podcast before with listeners. But you know, when I was first chopping my book around to agents, they didn’t get it. They were like, I don’t understand, is it a business book? Or is it a self improvement book, and I’m like, it’s a business book. But it’s aligning our connections and our and our compassion and our humanity with our work. And actually, there’s a business case to be made for that. And so yes, sometimes, you have to convince people, the skeptics with the business case, and that’s what I did with the book. But my my sneaky goal was just to help create a more empathetic society because it you know, we talked about before we started recording, it spills over, you know, you practice at work, you make work your laboratory, your playground, because you spend the bulk of your time there. But you can’t tell me that’s not going to impact the person you are when you go home to your family and your friends, you’re not going to you’re not going to switch off that empathy. And so collectively, if we if we can say, okay, the moral arguments to be more empathetic and compassionate might not be working for everybody. So let’s figure out a way to look at at the benefits this offers, and it offers to an organization. And what I love about your work is that you are tying it to performance to excellence, to transformational leadership, not just, you know, something woowoo out there that people can embrace, but something that they can tangibly see in their organizations, if they’re willing to try if they’re willing to get curious. And they’re humble enough to say, I don’t know how this is going to go, but we’re going to try.
Catherine Bell 22:58
Well, and let’s talk about this trying, because decades ago, I’d be in the boardroom and begin with mindfulness. And I would literally be sweating, because it would be so it’s it was something nobody had heard of. And so it’s that willingness to try and to risk ourselves and to risk kind of falling flat. Or, however, if we’re aligned with the vertical dimension or with presence, we’ll always be learning something. And let’s talk about some data on relationships and organizations, because I’m really big like you are in terms of marrying all these different dimensions because it, it’s at the intersection where I think reality is, so in terms of relationships, the majority of people, right, the worst time of the day is their time with their bosses. So we have a whole bunch of boss holes. And it’s tragic for the leaders and tragic for the employees, because no leader wants to be known as a boss all and nobody wants to work for a boss. Whoa,
24:01
I love that term. That’s great.
Catherine Bell 24:04
Well, and so the invitation is like, Okay, we need to do something different in our relationships, and to try and to get vulnerable, and maybe sweat a little like I did at the beginning. I’d really literally be in a room full of men and sweating talking about let’s do a centering practice. And then we can also look at the data in terms of our organizations and the majority of businesses don’t survive past 10 years. What more do we need? We have people who are disengaged. We have people who write the worst time of their day is their time with their bosses. So that’s individual relationships, then collectively, the majority of our businesses don’t survive past 10 years. So the invitation for the work we’re doing is there. People it is needed and required to create a more compassionate, grounded world. I am very big into time it needs to be grounded. It can’t just be all woowoo no No, we need the essence, tech ideas to come to life, and how we’re working together and operating together. And that’s the only way I see. As US, the only way for us to be able to solve the challenges that we’re facing is for this more global collective consciousness in a very grounded way, come to life. And it’s all by our simple day to day interactions. And so we can’t pretend we’re gonna save the world. No, it’s like, what am I doing today? What am I doing right now to be of service to help humanity or help the planet? And or help the planet?
Maria Ross 25:39
So that brings up an interesting question, because I’ve talked to a lot of organizations where you’ll get folks that are not in leadership positions, saying, but what can I do? I’m not the CEO, I’m not the person setting the tone for the organization. And I have an answer I give them but I want to hear what your answer would be to them.
Catherine Bell 26:01
Okay, I will say it and then I want to hear yours because, okay, interested. So we’re all leaders, is what I say. And I truly believe and I think the moment we think we’re not a leader, that is the moment we aren’t of service to ourselves, actually, I believe everybody is a leader. And I also really believe that everybody should have a personal aim. So that is an intention, I believe we lead with intention, then we place our attention on our intention, and being very receptive with that, and then we action or inaction. And those three pillars are very, very important. And often people don’t have personal aims. So I’d say okay, what’s your personally, and to really focus because it elevates us when we have personal aims? And then I’d also talk about, are we coming from our weak place? Are we coming from our asleep place? And how does this play out with our self awareness? And what is our Enneagram? Type? And how does that how’s that working into it? So now, how would you respond because I want to hear what you
Maria Ross 27:06
what I often talk about, and I talked about in the book is that we all have a sphere of influence, whether it’s 10,000 people in our company, and I’m the CEO, or I’m an individual contributor, just out of college, and I work on a team of five people. And I have my family and my friends that I influence. And so by adopting the method of work that feels more compassionate to you more empathetic, that is more about connections, you create a ripple effect. So even if it’s not a decree coming from on high, from the CEO, even within a very negative culture, you can create a micro culture. Because if you operate this way, and you succeed, that’s contagious. And people will go well, wow, I really like the way Katherine operates and her how she builds relationships, and she’s killing it. She’s meeting all her goals, how does she do it, you become a model for people to go, I can succeed that way. And so it can start, it can start a groundswell, it is easier if the top leadership is modeling this behavior, recognizing this behavior, putting their money where their mouth is, in terms of the company’s actions, policies, ethics, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t influence your sphere of influence. So you don’t have to wait for that decree to come from on high. So it sounds very aligned, it sounds very much like you’re about the same thing, which is, and I love that you’re adding in this element of if even if you think your organization now it doesn’t mean you stay in an organization that’s toxic or negative, or if you’re not happy there. But it also doesn’t mean you have to give up on an organization. If you love your job, you love your team, you can create that micro culture. But what I love that you’ve added to this is, what is that intention? What is that aim, almost like a mini mission statement. For your group of five or your group of 10. You don’t have to wait for the official mission statement and purpose statement from your organization. You can create one for your team. And I love that and for yourself.
Catherine Bell 29:13
Well, and it begins with ourselves. And you I love what you just described because it kind of showed the drop of the awakened company and the ripples that you just described it so eloquently. And beautiful. And yeah, begin with our individual aim and then get a group of people. And what’s important, what I’ve learned from a lot of practical experience when creating a group vision is something that Margaret Wheatley says, which is people support what they create, so ensuring that it is a group process and learn from my mistakes. So I’ll give you I’ll tell you a story of when we started blue eye we had a team meeting and I was like okay, here’s our vision and I kind of rammed it down everybody’s throats
Maria Ross 29:57
right and I’m like Aaron was your was your staffing firm yes,
Catherine Bell 30:00
yeah was the was the was the executive search firm? Yeah, I’m a serial entrepreneur, as you know. And so then we had someone come in from Denmark because we weren’t doing. We were doing work that nobody else that we are aware of in North America was doing. So we wanted somebody else’s perspective and another VISTA, another country’s Vista, too. And the first question he asked was, What is your organization’s vision and nobody raised their hands. And that night, I freaking cried myself to sleep. I was just like, I have failed epic leadership failure, like, and so leaders don’t repeat what I did. And I realized this because I didn’t get people involved. I did not get people involved. So once we moved from that kind of individual mission, and I believe everyone should have a mission statement, or vision statement, and or an aim, depending on what you want to call it. And then if you’re going to do it with a select group of people create it together. Same with values create together, so the pillars at the organizational level that I used as energize, sustain, regenerate, and to really use those pillars to build your organization. So the waiting company is very practical, and our how to book that’s coming out. I don’t know when but when it comes out, it’s very practical. I also have, I’m going to be doing a whole partnership webinar series with Dr. Deborah Egerton. And that’s going to be amazing, because I think partnerships are the way to go in terms of the future. And this growing this, the growing of this collective consciousness, this community consciousness, I think that is the future, I think we’re moving away from our individual kind of individual egos, maybe two, how do we create healthier collective? That I really think is the future? So the next step? Yeah,
Maria Ross 31:56
yeah, we need that. Because we have, especially in the US, we’ve become such an individualistic society. And we need to move more towards the collective, and the community. And if we can, even just again, one of those things, learning these lessons at work and within our organizations will hopefully carry over. So I love I love this work that you’re doing. As we as we wrap up, I want to give people a very practical action they can take so can we discuss an empathic practice to bring us home in our bodies, again, starting from the individual, something that any listener can can keep in mind? Or can do, what are what are some thoughts you have on that.
Catherine Bell 32:39
So back to my example, yesterday of just noticing how I wanted to jump into action, so the first thing is to not to notice. And then what I do is I do a deep belly breath, because often we’re just breathing from the top part of our lungs, I feel my feet on the ground, then I feel my right hand, my right arm, my right leg, my left leg, my left arm, and then I let my body just relax. Like a body. So that body, it’s like a mini body scan. But it’s very deliberate. And you can do it in a nanosecond. And it brings you right into the present moment. So that you can operate from your three centers. So the from those three portals of empathy, and I really see them as portals of empathy. And to come from that more present place in our relating, and relationships.
Maria Ross 33:35
I love that. And just, we’ve done episodes in the past, I’ll put some links in the show notes where we’ve talked about the importance of the leadership pause. And that we can still be productive, we can still get stuff done, we can still, you know, perform at a high level. But just like, you know, recharging our phone at night, we’ve got to take that pause, we’ve got to be able to slow ourselves down enough or we can’t hear or see anybody else. They’re just a blur if we’re moving too fast,
Catherine Bell 34:06
so true. And just checking in what’s my gut telling me what’s my heart telling me what’s my head telling me? And if you get different responses, that means you’re not aligned. So don’t say anything? Yeah. Apps until you get alignment in your three centers or the three forms of empathy, to stillness, pause, nothingness, and relaxation. Because often that gives the universe time to actually respond on its own. I love that.
Maria Ross 34:41
Well, this has been such a great conversation, Catherine, thank you. We are going to have all your links linked to your organization link to your book, the link to your YouTube channel, in the show notes as well as some of the other resources we mentioned in here today, the Enneagram and Carol Dweck book and some past episodes of the empathy edge. But for folks on go or who might be listening while they’re walking or working out? Where’s where’s one or two places that folks can get in touch with you.
Catherine Bell 35:07
Instagram, awaken company and Facebook awaken company and Twitter awaken company. And we really see our social media as public service. So there’s tons of helpful hints, helpful practical hints on there. So join our social media get, you know, tell us what your impressions are, and share with us your thoughts. So, yeah, social media is the best way to connect.
Maria Ross 35:34
I love it. Thank you so much, Catherine. And thank you everyone for listening to another great episode of the empathy edge podcast. Please remember to share it with your friends or colleagues if you like what you heard, and don’t forget to rate and review if you get a chance on the podcast player of your choice. Until next time on my next amazing guest. Please remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind
For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
