You’ve heard me talk about Both/And leadership and about Both/And business models. The ability to balance mission-driven, social impact work with sustainable profit and growth AT THE SAME TIME. It is possible, and it’s not just a theory. Today, we talk with Jonathan Beck, someone who knows this firsthand.
Today, Jonathan and I discuss the tension between purpose and profit and how to recognize if you are in a growth vs. survival mindset. He chats about how to integrate compassionate and impact-driven business practices while building a business and making a profit, how nonprofits can scale personalization to drive more impact, and how to leverage innovation to make a difference. Jonathan peels back the curtain on the surprising con being run by many leading CRM players on nonprofits and how we can create a marketplace of meaning. Finally, he shares how WeGive successfully models values such as transparency, honesty, and accountability to gain trust and build relationships that benefit the company and the customer at the same time.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- In a non-profit organization, your donors are your customers. You should have an ideal donor in the same way that for-profit organizations have ideal clients. It’s not enough to just say “We need your help.”
- Non-profits are often so busy taking care of their mission and purpose that they forget to take care of their internal team. You must steward your own culture while trying to save the world.
- No matter the size of your organization, as a leader, you must model accountability and vulnerability with your team. This allows others to take responsibility for what they bring to the table.
- How to increase engagement is not a mystery. It all comes back to creating an environment where people know their contribution and perspective matters.
“Giving is going digital. Consumer expectations are that they have an incredible digital experience. It’s about trust and communication. It’s about a purchase of identity, ultimately.” — Jonathan Beck
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 Jonathan Beck, Founder/CEO, WeGive
Jonathan Beck is a seasoned software and financial technology entrepreneur with a strong foundation in faith-based initiatives. After successful ventures in Silicon Valley, including as a founding team member for the global digital payments solution PayStand, Jonathan returned to his roots to make a meaningful impact in the nonprofit sector. He founded WeGive, a SaaS platform that empowers nonprofits and faith-based organizations with cutting-edge fundraising and donor engagement tools. With a passion for supporting mission-driven causes, Jonathan leverages his expertise to help organizations grow, engage supporters, and maximize their impact.
Connect with Jonathan:
WeGive: wegive.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathanbeck1
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. You’ve heard me talk about both and leadership and about both and business models, the ability to balance mission driven social impact work with sustainable profit and growth at the same time. It’s possible, and it’s not just a theory. Today we talk with someone who knows this first hand. Jonathan Beck is a seasoned software and financial technology entrepreneur with a strong foundation in faith based initiatives after successful ventures in Silicon Valley, including as a founding team member for the global digital payments solution pay stand, Jonathan returned to his roots to make a meaningful impact in the nonprofit sector. He founded we give a SaaS platform that empowers nonprofits and faith based organizations with cutting edge fundraising and donor engagement tools. With a passion for supporting mission driven causes, Jonathan leverages his experience to help organizations grow, engage supporters and maximize their impact. Today, Jonathan and I discuss the tension between purpose and profit and how to recognize if you’re in a growth versus survival mindset, we chat about how to integrate compassionate and impact driven business practices while building a business and making a profit, how nonprofits can scale personalization to drive more impact, and how to leverage innovation to make a difference. Jonathan peels back the curtain on the surprising con being run by many leading CRM players on nonprofits and how we can create a marketplace of meaning. Finally, he shares how we give successfully models their values such as transparency, honesty and accountability to gain trust and build relationships that benefit the company and the customer at the same time. So many gems today. Take a listen. Welcome Jonathan. Back to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so glad you’re here.
Jonathan Beck 02:43
Thanks for having me. Yeah, glad to be here. So we heard a little bit about
Maria Ross 02:47
we give and the work that you do. And I am so curious as to how a, you know, software and financial technology entrepreneur gets to creating a platform for nonprofits and your passion around that. So tell us a little bit about your story.
Jonathan Beck 03:04
Yeah. Well, I think most of the people in what we call like the nonprofit tech space probably have a pretty similar story. They either came from, usually an agency that was doing something for nonprofits and then decided, Oh, we can make a product around this, or they came from the tech world and decided they wanted to do something, quote, unquote, more meaningful, so that the latter’s me was at a payments company that payments companies ended up is is still going to do so one of 3/3, fastest growing company to Silicon Valley for three years in a row, And does, like, a tremendous amount of volume, and I built the sales and marketing team I was very not passionate about, you know, selling payments to companies to do payments, yeah, but some of our customers were platforms that helped nonprofits, and we had some nonprofits as as customers And and I just kind of saw an opportunity for what I thought. There were problems they were dealing with that I thought software could fix and, and so decided to start this company. It originally was a consumer financial technology app, basically an app where you can download, find nonprofits, give to them easily. And it was horrible. It was truly a terrible application and wasted, you know, two and a half years trying to get that to work. I don’t know if waste is the right word, but you learned from it. Yeah, we ended up pivoting that. It was called give list. We ended up pivoting that to we give, which is basically does the same thing, but sells to nonprofits instead of tries to get individuals to be the main user driver. So regardless that, yeah, it’s kind of the genesis well, and then
Maria Ross 04:47
what do you do for nonprofits? Then how do you help them further their mission with this technology platform? Yeah, that’s
Jonathan Beck 04:53
such a great question. I oftentimes completely forget to mention, yeah. So basically. The nonprofits do two things, right? They do, quote, unquote, their program. So whether that’s a school, your hospital, you’re an international relief organization, a church, whatever you are, you have, like, in your mind, something that you’re doing that’s charitable, that the government’s agreed is charitable, and you do and that’s your program, and then the other part of your entire organization basically tries to sell that meaning and identity and purpose to people and communicate to them about the meaning and purpose they’re accomplishing. And so we help with that second piece, but basically the whole front office of the nonprofit can use our tool to communicate and meaningfully to that those basically their their group of supporters, their entire contact database, and then also allow them to have really delightful, personalized, highly, highly personalized giving experiences, not just Giving, but just kind of any kind of digital purchase or interaction, and then gives them kind of a home where they have a profile, they can live on that nonprofits website, see their impact, their numbers, just really dynamic, delightful. Oh, this is who I am, right? My here’s, this is my digital relationship with this organization, right, privately visualized for me, yeah, so
Maria Ross 06:20
I love what you’re talking about here, because, you know, digging under the surface, there is this tension when you are working for a mission driven and I kind of put nonprofits in that category, but there’s many for profits that are mission driven as well. When you have these mission driven organizations that at the end of the day, have to realize that there is something that they’re selling, they’re selling an idea, they’re selling a product, they’re selling a service. But it’s that tension between the commercial aspect of what they’re doing and the mission aspect of what they’re doing. And as someone who’s done brand strategy projects and brand messaging projects for nonprofits, that’s the bulk of the conversation, is getting them to open up. Enough about you know, you are very close to your mission and your purpose, and that’s great. But if you if you can’t communicate that in a compelling way, and then set up a mechanism to make it really easy for people to give or get involved, then your wonderful mission goes nowhere. And so it’s a lot of times, it’s about coaxing them into understanding that this is not gross to deal with this. This is what’s going to enable the organization to achieve its mission and to sustain itself, so that they can help as many people as possible, and getting them to flip to understand that, for example, they need to look at technology platforms. They do need to maybe customize the giving experience. What are those conversations like? Do you butt up against those? That tension a lot, and how do you help them through
Jonathan Beck 07:51
that? Yeah, I mean, most of it is a lot of times that tension. I mean, the nonprofits in general, compared to, you know, I’m from the corporate world, not the nonprofit world. So, you know, we’re all about trying to find optimizations right to grow. And we have growth goals. Nonprofits have survival goals, and they’re all about all their KPIs and OKRs, or whatever you want to call it. They even have them, which they usually don’t, are usually almost all orbiting risk aversion. And, you know, it’s kind of like I heard someone say, once you know, to have a successful career in in government, all you need to do is just not mess up. And it’s kind of the same thing in probably you don’t need to increase bottom lines. But I think because of that, and because of the lack of that good, personalized communication that has, I think, a deep understanding of why someone donated to you, that is largely almost a new idea that’s like kind of becoming a thing right now, and because of the lack of It, retention rates in nonprofit specifically, are really low, like, first time donor retention rates, like less than 20% which is incredible, right? I mean, if you’re for every customer, you’re gonna get you basically of 10 you keep two. Is
Maria Ross 09:15
pretty bad. It’s a bad churn rate, yeah, yes.
Jonathan Beck 09:17
I mean, they’re not selling T shirts, right, right, right? There. Ideally, their products a lot more meaningful and identity based than a t shirt, right? So then Commerce has got better retention rates for first time purchasers, but then the nonprofits that do a good job storytelling essentially about your making a difference in the world. Thank you so much. Get those retention rates to be as high as 80 90% and those organizations grow much faster. So that’s really kind of comes down to, like reframing the conversation around, well, no one in your team has staff capacity because they’re all just trying to communicate meaningful. Fully at all, some kind of meaningful touch point with a group of donors. Usually it’s just, like the top 10% in the CRM that they’re using. Everyone else just doesn’t even get what they just get added to, like a mail list, right, right, you know, and just get treated like ATM machines, the communications, Hey, give again. Hey, give again. Hey, give again, right? Next, like, decade of their life, and that’s really not meaningful, right, right? Yeah, that’s usually the conversation we bump into. We try to reframe it like, I think you guys are thinking about this wrong? This isn’t it. Is the riskiest thing to do here for you guys is to optimize risk aversion. Yeah, right. You’re gonna cease to exist unless you innovate. Because people like retentions are giving dropped this year for the first time, right? Giving is going digital. Consumer expectations are that they have an incredible digital experience, and there’s a big distrust now, you know, you give to Red Cross, and then what’s that going to is it going to buy someone a house and a Ferrari in the Hollywood Hills? Or is that going to, like, save a child’s life. I have no idea anymore, right? And it’s so it’s all about kind of trust and communicating that meaning, yeah, yeah. And
Maria Ross 11:09
I think that that’s the important reframing, you know, that I’ve done in my work, doing brand messaging with them, is, you know, when you talk to them about their ideal donor, which is just, you know, nomenclature for their ideal customer, they’re like, well, our ideal donor is anyone who gives us money. And I’m like, right? That shows you don’t understand anything about them. Like, who are those people that are going to be more likely to be aligned with your mission? And why are they actually donating to you? They may not be donating to you to help those kids, like, hopefully they are. But there’s also other reasons why they donate, and so we need to all of those reasons and having empathy. You know, this is why empathy is such a superpower in marketing, and I love using marketing for good to help nonprofits achieve their mission and expand their impact by learning to look at their donors as human beings, as people like you said, not as cash machines, but what is it they need to hear? And it’s not, unfortunately, it’s not enough to say, we just really need your help. You need to feel sorry for us, or feel sorry for the people that we serve. That only goes so far. That’s maybe your first time donor. And then, you know, because it hit you in the gut, and then what do they want going forward? What do they what community do they want to be a part of going forward? Because that’s showcasing the empathy of like, we really understand you as a donor, and we know why you’re here and why you want to give to us versus all the other places you could be giving money to. This is the purpose, and this is the mission that you support fully?
Jonathan Beck 12:41
Yeah. I mean, it’s that’s a purchase of identity ultimately, right? You know, I’m taking like, that 10 hours that I felt was largely meaningless in a cubicle, and I’m turning it into, like, changing time and a being provided for someone. So there’s that piece. It gives me a feeling of meaning and purpose as as, I’m sure, you know, it’s kind of the hot topic. Purpose is actually what makes people happy, right? Meaning is actually what makes people happy, relationship, community, and it’s, I think ultimately, the reframing of the whole industry as like a marketplace of meaning?
Maria Ross 13:20
Oh, I love that marketplace of meaning. That’s great. And so I want to ask this question, because this is a really important one, if you like, pull out to a higher view of, how do you integrate compassionate and impact driven business practices while still also building a sustainable business and making a profit. Where have you landed in terms of being able to have a both and philosophy, which is very important and what I preach on this show? But how has that actually worked for you in practice? Can you give us some examples of you know, obviously your work is benefiting mission driven organizations, but how have you seen some of them balance purpose with profit?
Jonathan Beck 14:04
Yeah, you know, and that’s such a good question. I think that there seems to be, and you know, there seems to be a large majority of these nonprofits that are the number one complaint is staff capacity, and they’re also very risk averse, you combine both of those, and a lot of times you get really, actually poor cultures internally, Oh, yeah. And they may be all about basically selling empathy, or be agents of empathy in the world, bringing justice and mercy in different areas, but internally, as an organization, it can be, I think, you know, they can be quite a mess. And so as it speaks for nonprofits, you know, I’m not really sure. I think for us, I thought it would be a lot more meaningful to building a company that sold basically that partnered with. Nonprofits instead of, you know, mid market manufacturing companies or whatever, thought serving nonprofits and, yeah, I thought that would be more meaningful. And to be honest, I’m not sure that it has been. It feels better to know that the organizations we’re helping are have at least vowed to be good, right? And still, as of today, like in the government size, provide a public benefit and therefore shouldn’t be taxed, right? That’s basically the line of getting a 501, c3, status. So, but that doesn’t really have much to do with our culture, the way we run our business. I think from what I saw when I came in was I saw a lot of competitors and the incumbents still today that have taken tremendous advantage of the nonprofits in general and their lack of, let’s just say, knowledge in purchasing Other software, systems, solutions, products, I won’t names, but like the gorillas in the space that do CRM, like our aureus, or really long contracts, and then not letting people relinquish their data, and then clamping down on increasing SaaS fees to show growth rate. So instead of new customers, forcing people to have a terrible experience if they turn to limit churn and then increasing revenue by increasing costs. Right? Where I’ve seen other organizations come through that are like some of the leaders in the fundraising space, the giving space, come in and charge unbelievable, really large monthly SaaS fees or annual fees to multi year contracts, not let organizations leave, like, hold on to the payment data for the recurring plan so they can’t leave, and then charge 234, 5% fees on top of, like, an already high bundled rate. What a lot of the nonprofits don’t know is that interchange is, like, really cheap, like a Visa debit transaction for nonprofits, like less than half 4% and they’re paying like 7% Wow, for those transactions. And so what we’ve tried to do is we’ve just basically, kind of approached the industry as okay, like, let’s put ourselves in their shoes, and let’s try to have a solution that really clearly explains what we do, that tries our best to not say yes. A lot of these platforms say, Oh, we can do that. We can do that. We can do that historically. Then they get into a big contract, and now they’re kind of out of luck because they’re stuck. And that solution actually couldn’t do that. That just makes a bad customer relationship. They’re gonna get referrals from that, etc. And so that’s not fun to me. I want to have fun. I want to recreate, not feel like I’m toiling, right? Yeah. And so when I’m working with people that are happy and we’re their partners for a part of their business, and that’s a lot more fun. And so that’s been kind of one piece. Was like, kind of one of our core values is stewardship, humility, autonomy, grit and joy, right? And so like, let’s not be afraid to work hard and over the top to try to help these people that are actually kind of behind, 10 years behind, in fact, in technology adoption and business frameworking, right? Like you mentioned, like the donor customer profile that you were talking about, that was like a revolutionary idea for them, right? So, like that was really popular 10 years ago. Everyone was talking about ICPs, 2012 2014 in other industries, right? Yes, nonprofits are just talking about that right now, right? And so they’re kind of having like a renaissance that, like, I think business experienced most tech boom, and they’re kind of having those framework shifts mentally. And with that, I think there’s a exhaustion with kind of price gouging, sort of extortion tactics. Yeah, that sounds very predatory, for sure. Yeah, exactly. Predatory is the right word. Yeah, predatory business practices from the 90s in software, and yeah. So we’ve been trying to step out of that, practically as a business, but then just as a company, making sure our top goal is steward. And so, like, we don’t want to make money for the sake of making money, right? Like the quarterly goals and the annual goals like those derive like the roles that we hire and the stuff that we do. But if those goals are we need to sell for $300 million by q4 of 2025 then we’re gonna have really, like aggressive things that we need to basically sacrifice. Or to treat certain customers really poorly, yeah, right, yeah. But if the ultimate goal is to, is to, at the end of things, feel like we are really good stewards of the opportunity in our customer relationships, our employee relationships, everything as a company, then most of them, then I think whatever the decisions we make, whatever goals we end up having in between, will be fine. The successful follow for sure, right? So that’s kind of a long winded answer to a difficult question. Yeah, well,
Maria Ross 20:27
and I’d love I’m curious what your definition of stewardship is internally. What Is that understood to mean, and what does that look like practically for your people, when they say, give me an example of what we mean by being good stewards. Can you explain that? Because that is a in my brand work, that’s a brand attribute that a lot of people claim. But then when you actually ask the bulk of the employees, they don’t actually know what it means. So what does it mean in your organization, and how do you expect it to show up?
Jonathan Beck 20:55
Yeah, so we actually have it like little paragraphs written down, yeah, for each of the values that aren’t definitions, but just kind
Maria Ross 21:03
of, they’re narratives for each of the values. Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan Beck 21:07
And that’s kind of a gotcha. I’ll don’t have mine memorized from stewardship, but I think what do you understand it to be? Yeah, I can, can repeat it word for word, like I’ll probably get made fun of internally for this later, but I believe it’s along the lines of we’re purpose driven to be good stewards in our work, and that is very specific, to be of our like everything that’s with that we’ve been entrusted with, and that’s anything from our employees to our clients to our investors, our pre product into our circumstances, like the bad ones and the good ones in all of those that we should have an ownership mindset and approach however we act and think and feel, kind of our posture internally when we’re acting and speaking and living in those circumstances and within those relationships and people with the mindset and approach to Do the best possible job, we can have mindset as like, this is my responsibility, and I’m grateful to have gratitude for having this as a responsibility. How I see how fortunate, how awesome it is that I get to deal with this problem today. What a wonderful challenge. And so just for the sake of doing an excellent job and honoring the sacredness of what that is, and having that be. It’s a goal of the goal within itself, which is more of a process of doing things. And it is a nice made up revenue number for this made up exactly,
Maria Ross 22:33
exactly. It’s our rules of engagement. It’s sort of like the mindset that we want our people to have that’s going to actually, you know, it eventually will impact, you know, I, all my work is about talking about the ROI of empathy, and it’s there if you focus on the people, and you focus on doing the right thing, and you actually, you know, assuming you have a great product or service, we have to, you know, quality is there totally but the numbers will follow. It doesn’t mean you don’t get competitive. It doesn’t mean you lack ambition. All of those things are important too, but, but when you are able to leverage those types of things in the way that you operate, then you have a better chance of success. And so I really like what you’re talking about here in terms of helping. And also, I’m sure you know you see that with nonprofits, and you said something earlier that I want to go back to, which is the this idea that I wrote about in the empathy edge, which was sometimes nonprofits have the worst cultures internally, because they’re sort of the last to take care of themselves. They’re so busy working on their mission and their purpose outwardly, that they can sometimes, you know, like you said, there’s a lot of resource constraints, there’s a lot of staffing shortages, there’s, you know, constantly worried about the budget, and so there’s a lot going on internally that can actually contribute to a negative culture if you’re not careful, if you’re not also stewarding your own culture while you’re trying to save the world, right? So it’s, and that’s that’s counter intuitive to what a lot of people think, where they go. Oh, well, surely the nonprofits have empathetic cultures. They don’t always right. And, you know, for profits can, and some have incredible Of course, yeah, no, I’m talking about some of them though, like, and because there’s a lot of stressors that are there. But also on the same side of that is you can have for profits that have wonderfully empathetic cultures, wonderfully mission driven, purpose driven organizations. And I think the important thing we’re hearing from you is that there needs to be a desire from leadership to balance both, and that has to be part of the values of the organization, the expectations of the organization. And so what do you do within your organization? If you can share with some leaders listening today, what are some ways that you help your team stay true to the values? What practices or rewards or models do you have in place? Just give us like one or two. Examples of how you help them live out the values on a daily basis.
Jonathan Beck 25:06
That’s a tough question. Yeah, I think, well, you know, right now we’re just sub 20 employees, so I really haven’t, you know, it’s different when there’s 250 employees, and that’s just really different, right? When you’re got full blown departments and you really need everything to flow through multiple levels of hierarchy really well, from vision to, like, reporting, etc, it’s quite different. I think, for the smaller team size, I think the lines around 25 it feels like to me, from the experience, I’m actually
Maria Ross 25:39
gonna I’m gonna be a little controversial. I’m going to push back on you on that, because you can have a culture with three people. You can have a culture with 10 people, and so culture is just how work gets done and how we reward and model the work. So I’m curious, if you have, even with the 20 people that you have, what are some ways, you know, obviously you’ve done a lot of work on your values, what are some ways that you implement rewards or practices to recognize and show people that those values actually have meaning to their day to day? Work?
Jonathan Beck 26:09
Right? Totally, yeah. Well, we have a number of things, right? I mean, we have just kind of your basic and standard benefits that you would expect. We also have an unlimited pay time off policy, you know, where we definitely make sure not to use family language. Like, I don’t know that’s just for us personally. Like the leadership team is just like, you’re not my wife or my husband. You’re Yeah, you’re my colleague and you’re my employee, right? Stop using the dumb family language. You don’t want to be hanging out with us after work. You want to be with your kids, and you should be and like, let’s be honest about that, right? And not try to kind of over index there, and we’re very honest. Earlier today, we had, like, a really hard kind of criticizing, kind of public criticism call, but it’s not done with kind of a goal of shaming anyone. But it’s just, yeah, hey, I think as a team, we could do a lot better here. Yeah, right. And you know, I’ll be the first to say that, like, you know, obviously this rolls up to me, and I’m so sorry. I apologize. You know, I’ve totally failed leadership here with by, you know, not giving you guys more goals to keep you guys more accountable to these goals, right off the mark, right? And we all know it, and we’re not talking about it. So let’s talk about, talk about some solutions.
Maria Ross 27:32
So that’s huge. Jonathan, that that just that modeling right there. You know, you sort of brushed past it a little earlier, but that is actually huge, and that’s what you need to do, no matter the size of your company, is really to be about setting the stage for these are the kind of conversations, and this is how I, as a leader, hold myself accountable, and where I’m going to be vulnerable in that things could be better. That’s actually setting the stage for allowing other people to take accountability for their own work and what they bring to the table, and just being able to show that and have that in sort of a transparent public forum, that idea of honesty that’s going to go a long way as you scale and grow. And because we’re going to know this is how we get work done around here, and this is what is expected. And if our leaders can hold themselves to this kind of standard of honesty and transparency, we all need to be able to act in that way, and that what you’re saying right now builds so much trust, and that’s where folks can relax and feel like, hey, I can actually be who I am here, and I can make mistakes, and it’s okay, as long as I take accountability for those mistakes. And I want to keep coming back. I want to say we just
Jonathan Beck 28:41
want people to make mistakes more quickly, yeah, and correct more quickly, yeah. Ultimately, what we’re trying to optimize for is people just the honesty and humility of everyone and autonomy is the other one that I mentioned, where, where it’s like I we definitely want the to accelerate the speed at which we point something out that it’s not going right, and then correct it very quickly, right, right?
Maria Ross 29:04
And so knowing that it’s and knowing that it’s safe to do so, yeah,
Jonathan Beck 29:08
exactly correct. Yeah. So that’s awesome, perfect example. The other thing that we do is we do an all hands every month, and the all hands is all just completely open all the data, the revenue numbers, the bank account numbers, everything. The only thing other employees don’t know is each other’s exact salaries and equity positions, because I believe that’s unhealthy. So anything that can cause like comparison and basically puts them into a judgment mindset is we try to avoid that, right? But the most, more largely like the conversations are, here’s what our like ARR was this month, and here’s what the product team developed, and here’s what’s forecasting the pipeline, and here’s what’s happening with this. And this is a problem here. And blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and then we leave a lot of time, and I basically will try to force people to ask questions. Yeah, Tom, are you sure you don’t have a question? You seem like you were unsure about that revenue number. Yeah, you know? Well, yeah, I don’t. I don’t know if it’s as big as that. I don’t know if I believe that number. And you’re like, Okay, well, let’s talk about that. Yeah, right. Does anyone else not think is that big, you know, send, there’s like four people raising their hands. You’re like, okay, so literally, almost 20% of our team doesn’t believe in that number, right there, right? So we need to talk about it, yeah? Talk about how we got there. Yeah, absolutely. But everyone’s like, totally. We need to get committed Arr, to move to ARR faster, or whatever. So now we’re all back cohesively focused on a goal, right? Yeah. And so anyway, so it’s just small things, I think more so like that, and those are the things that either provide more meaning than like, the working with nonprofits is like trying to have fun. That’s fun, right? That’s like, healthy relationship,
Maria Ross 30:54
yeah? My fifth pillar of being an effective and empathetic leader in the new book is joy, creating that environment of levity, where people can relax, they can use their cognitive skills and not be living in fear and anxiety to actually innovate and to do their best work. And so that’s how you increase engagement, and that’s how you increase meaning of this is a place that I know the role I play. I know that you know, especially what you’re describing in your meetings. I know my opinion is valued and my perspective is valued. It doesn’t mean they, you know, Jonathan does everything I want him to do at every moment. It just means I can have input and I can have impact. And that goes a long way to driving engagement. We try to act like increasing engagement is some creative mystery, and it’s really not. It’s just treat people like they matter. Create an environment they want to keep coming back to where they know their contribution matters and their perspective matters and that they can be themselves they can agree to, you know, Hey, Jonathan, I’ve got this crazy idea.
Jonathan Beck 31:56
Let’s totally why, right? Yeah, and I think that kind of you combine, like not getting people’s identity, not allowing people’s identity to get wrapped up in the perception of their value at the company, and it creates a ability to be criticized, right? Yeah, almost a superpower in business where someone could like, I’ve had multiple times below all hands, if someone says something super inappropriate, like, just to like, because they’re frustrated and like to someone else or to me. And it’s I’ve noticed, it’s not getting defensive at all. It’s being like at all, and just being like, Wow, it sounds like you’re actually upset about that, like, labeling the emotion and being like, and you don’t that numbers as high as it should be, yeah, you know, first of all, I’m sorry that you’re feeling that way. What can we do about that? And then all of a sudden, anyone else that was feeling a little bit of it too, yeah? Is like, all fully diffused and like, oh, but glad we got that off our chest, being like bowing up on the person and getting
Maria Ross 33:05
aggressive, or you have all the backdoor chatter after the meeting ends right, which is counterproductive, but what you’ve said is a classic example of an empathy, you know, Jedi move, which is about, you know, grounding yourself enough to not react to what the person said with your lizard brain, but to take and say, Wow, here’s what I’m seeing, here’s what I’m hearing like, you know, let me make sure I heard this right. Are you saying that you don’t trust the revenue number? That’s a valid point of view. Tell me more about that, because I can tell this is really frustrating. You totally giving them the space to get curious enough to go, what is that person experiencing? And what does that person see? Because perhaps that person might see a risk or an opportunity that other people didn’t see. So we don’t want to, you know, we don’t want to label them necessarily a troublemaker, or like, Oh, they’re just an instigator, or, Oh, it’s being open enough. And like you did so beautifully putting your ego aside, because ego kills empathy, and so being able to be an empathetic leader and say, I want to hear you out, because maybe there is something we’ve missed, or maybe there is something we need to discuss. Yeah, I just
Jonathan Beck 34:13
have been part of too many situations where it’s like the biggest bottleneck to everyone’s success and the company’s success as a whole is the fact that criticism is not rolling a pill, right? It’s just, and it’s like if the CEO would just listen to the sales in the entire 300 person sales team, saying, We have to stop building that part of the product and doing this break. We have to stop it’s killing us. Yeah, a buddy just won’t or like that. This person’s when he says these things, makes these people feel this way. It’s like, how do you get that information to float up? So you have to, especially if speed is apparently your kind of your competitive lever, which is as a venture. Find a startup it should be, yeah. So
Maria Ross 35:02
I love that, because, you know, kind of speaking to another pillar. The first pillar in the book is self awareness, and if you’re not willing to do the work on yourself at whatever level you’re at, to say, I’m going to have a growth mindset. And just because I’m CEO or just because I’m SVP, it doesn’t mean I don’t have more to learn, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t have things to work on and right then and there. That changes the tenor of the conversation. Of you know, I may be more seasoned than people that work for me, or I might make more money, but it doesn’t mean I’m better than them. It means that I can still learn. It
Jonathan Beck 35:35
means you’re much worse. Usually I’m the like the worst CEO in the world. The more like vet, customers, responsibility and product, etc, employees that comes under my roof that, like, in my mind, I’m a steward of it’s more and more and more apparently obvious, like, oh my gosh, I am so bad at this job, and a flabbergasted at, like, these other guys and gals out there that are able to, like do it so well, I said, Okay,
Maria Ross 36:05
that’s your that, but that’s your superpower. That’s your first step to greatness, because they’re probably all feeling the same way, and they just don’t express it. And so that means that also performing incredibly true, true, but you know, you’re doing well. So this, it’s this idea of being humble enough to say, I’m going to have my eyes wide open, not only about my team and my people and my performance, but about myself and how I show up. Yeah, I have a partner that I’m working with, Spark effect. They are an HR consultancy that works with groups to kind of marry leadership capabilities in the age of technology, in rapidly changing technology, and marry those things together. And one of the things they do is evaluations at every level, and one of their most popular services is CEO evaluations, because everyone else in a large organization gets evaluated, right? You get performance evaluations. Who’s evaluating the CEO, and they’re being brought in by boards or governance committees or compliance to say no, the person at the top actually needs a performance review as well to understand how they could improve and how they could do better. And again, like I said, ego kills empathy. So if you’re able to be a leader that can let go of ego, you can actually outperform you can do better. You can do more with your team.
Jonathan Beck 37:24
That’s a really interesting point. But what are these? You mentioned a number of pillars. What are you want to list them all off? I will.
Maria Ross 37:30
My listeners are very familiar with them, but yeah, in the new book, just as a reminder for everyone, the empathy dilemma, the five pillars are, self awareness, self care, clarity, decisiveness and joy. And if you have those elements present as a leader and in your culture, you can balance empathy and performance, empathy and accountability, empathy and your own mental health, quite frankly. So you’ve touched on so many of them without even knowing what the pillars were, and that’s a beautiful thing. So well,
Jonathan Beck 38:02
the book’s only been out for what, two weeks. So it has at the time of this recording, at the
Maria Ross 38:06
time of this recording, yeah, but yeah. So I, I really appreciate the time and the candor today. I love learning from my guests, and you definitely gave me a great viewpoint into this, and I know that you’ve shared a lot with our listeners around the importance and the possibility of balancing purpose with profit and that it can be done. And then there’s a way, and you don’t have to feel bad about it, if it helps you have more impact for your mission and your purpose. So Jonathan, we’re going to have all your links in the show notes, but where’s the best place for folks that are exercising while they’re listening to us right now to find out more about you and your
Jonathan Beck 38:43
work. Yeah, I think probably just our website. We give.com which I’m sure is in the show notes, or my LinkedIn, where I’ll post some thought leadership type stuff. Great.
Maria Ross 38:52
Well, and folks, if you reach out to connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn, remember my etiquette rule, write him a note that says you heard him on the podcast so he doesn’t think you’re trying to sell him something. Jonathan, thank you so much for your time today. It was so fun to connect with you and hear more about your great work. I wish you every success. Thank
Jonathan Beck 39:11
you so much for your what’s been a real pleasure. Yeah, thank you, and thank
Maria Ross 39:14
you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate review or 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.
