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:
- Listener Feedback! Please fill out the short survey here at https://bit.ly/edge-feedback
- HuffPost: Mark Zuckerberg Praises ‘Masculine’ Corporate Energy Amid Meta’s DEI Policy Reversal
- Edie Falco Reads a Letter to White Supremacists
- Inc: The U.S. Economy May Be Too Strong for Its Own Good
- The Center for Public Integrity: New data shows why the U.S. needs more immigrants
- Advocate: Apple, Costco stand behind DEI programs
- HR Grapevine: ‘Doubling down’ | Costco ties its colours to the mast as attacks on DEI continue
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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. 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.
