Think about your organization’s values for a second. I bet you have values such as integrity, honesty, innovation, or others that are similar. Maybe you have something like, Take Risks, or Customer Obsession, or even Embrace Curiosity. But do you have the word “love” anywhere on that list? Does even saying that in a business context make you feel a bit nervous?
While it’s Valentine’s Day season and we’re talking about love in all its forms this time of year, I bet you never thought about including that word in any sort of business communications whatsoever except maybe to say “We love our customers” or “We love a challenge.”
Your invitation today is to think about the role love plays in your company’s mission, culture, and success, in the way you operate with each other, and to not be afraid of it anymore. We’re in this together. But we need to show up in ALL areas of our lives and business. Don’t be afraid to make work personal. Get aligned. Choose love.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
We don’t all have a common definition or construct around love, even though it’s one of the most important human emotions.
“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.” – bell hooks
Choose love – you can start small with those in your circle and let it grow from there. We are in this together, but we need to show up and choose love in all aspects of our lives.
“Now is the time to use your voice and choose love – as a leader, as a colleague, and as an organization.” — Maria Ross
Think about your organization’s values for a sec. Oh, and if you don’t have those articulated, we should probably talk. I bet you have values such as integrity, honesty, innovation, fail fast, or others that are similar, maybe you have something like take risks or customer obsession, or even, as one client of mine did in the past, embrace curiosity, which I always loved, especially as it relates to empathy. But do you have the word love anywhere on that list? Does even me saying that in a business context make you feel a bit nervous while it’s Valentine’s Day season, and we’re talking about love in all its forms, this time of year, I bet you never thought about including that word in any sort of business communications whatsoever, except maybe to say we love our customers or we love A challenge. Well, your invitation today is to think about the role love plays in your company’s mission, culture and success, in the way we operate with each other, and to not be afraid of it anymore. Of course, I don’t mean romantic love, although I and a few others all met our spouses at one particular company I once worked for, I’m talking about love in its truest form. Last year, I devoured Bell Hooks, his book all about love, New Visions, in which she explores the fact that we don’t all have a common definition or construct around love, even though it’s one of the most important human emotions, and that’s part of the problem, individually and as a collective world. The book got me thinking about what I really believe love to be. I’d never really thought that much about it before. And she goes on to talk about how we conflate love with romantic love or caring, or even fondness. For those of you who don’t know her Bell was an American author and social activist writing about race, feminism and class she explored the intersectionality of race, capitalism and gender and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published more than 40 books, ranging from essays to poetry to children’s books, and appeared in many documentary films, as well as being a lecturer. She sadly passed away in 2021 and to my own detriment, that was the first time I ever heard of her. So I began reading her work. Bell writes that quote Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. She also states in another book that to love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds, commitment, responsibility, respect, trust required in all meaningful relationships. If that doesn’t have a place in organizational culture, I don’t know what does our workplaces are, where many of us spend the bulk of our time, if you add up the time each week, you often spend way more of your waking hours with your work colleagues, clients or customers, than with your own family. So how can love not have a place in these essential relationships? Again, we don’t have to think of love romantically. We can think of it exactly how Belle describes it. Love means caring. It means commitment. It means honesty, respect and trust as we break free from outdated models of corporate culture and dysfunctional relationships with colleagues or customers, we can see that love absolutely needs to be part of the equation. A while back, I wrote a blog post called choose love, and I’ll link to it in the show notes. It was about embedding love into your values and business model, no matter what you do, no matter how big or small your organization, no matter who you are, you have influence, whether it’s 100,000 followers a team of 150 or your email list is just your mom and your best friend, whatever you’ve got use it. Right. Never underestimate the importance of your work or message, no matter what your role. It may seem trite, but if you can influence or inspire even just a few, then you’ve done your job well. Now more than ever in these tumultuous times when folks are feeling raw, vulnerable and afraid. Now is the time to use your voice and choose love as a leader, as colleagues and yes, as an organization. You can absolutely build love into your values, leadership style, or Yes, business model like this. Love yourself and be self confident so that you don’t feel the need to bully others or let bullies win over you. Love your neighbors and colleagues, so that all people can feel accepted and appreciated. Love your clients, so you can bring real, honest value to them. Love your customers, so you can make their lives better with your products or services. Love your partners so you can create wins that benefit everyone. Love your community, so you can collectively pull everyone up together. Love your environment, so it’s beauty and nourishment and riches generations to come. Love your family and friends so they have a firm foundation to fully spread their own love to others. Here’s what I know to be true, no matter what your religion, nationality, gender, identity or even sexual orientation, the only thing that matters is how you show up in the world and love. You are the example when you think no one is watching, because sometimes only you are watching and you want to be proud of what you see. Same thing goes for your company. Maybe you’re not world famous, maybe you don’t think the press will care about you. Or perhaps you think you’re so large that such a personal value doesn’t impact your work day to day. I’m here to tell you that’s not true. It all matters to someone somewhere, sometime, an employee, a leader, a customer, someone in the community, choose love. Start small and practice love with whoever is in your circle of influence right now, if that’s just your family and friends, choose love, if it’s a small team or 1000s of employees, stakeholders or email subscribers or Instagram followers, choose love. We’re in this together, but we need to show up in all areas of our lives, business too. Don’t be afraid to make work personal. Get aligned, choose love. Thanks for listening. Have a great February.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
If we help young people develop empathy throughout their educational journey, they can boost understanding, reduce bias, and nurture a culture of belonging and increased well-being. Of course, many of us adults need this, too! My guest today, Ed Kirwan, founder, and filmmaker of Empathy Week, is tackling the challenge for future generations so that maybe someday there won’t be a need for empathy books like mine because this skill will be so ingrained in our consciousness, starting from a young age.
Today, Ed talks about his journey from teacher to filmmaker and how he discovered the power of film to expand minds and activate behavior in his own classroom. Now through Empathy Week, he leverages films to develop empathy and expose students to different cultures, lifestyles, and points of view so they can better collaborate and create belonging. If you are a parent, teacher, or administrator, please look into Empathy Week for your school. Enjoy the conversation!
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Film gives us an excuse and a reason to reflect and talk about our past experiences and to start conversations to connect with one another.
Empathy is not soft or weak. It will increase productivity. It will increase retention. It will strengthen your bottom line.
We need to spend more time listening and asking questions. Listening is great, but unless you’re asking questions, you’re not having a conversation, and you’re not learning.
“It’s about increasing the number of experiences and the diversity of those experiences. Where films and arts can be so powerful are with low-cost, scalable actions to change perspective and build empathy.” — Ed Kirwan
Ed Kirwan, CEO and Founder, Empathy Week
Ed Kirwan is the CEO, founder, and filmmaker at Empathy Week – an award-winning global educational event and programme using the power of film to develop the skill of empathy.
Empathy Week has so far engaged over 140,000 students across 40 countries with a mission to build the #EmpathyGeneration. Having worked with Cambridge University, Empathy Week has proven that empathy can be developed and also help increase students’ self-esteem whilst reducing othering and stereotypes.
Previously a teacher and Head of Chemistry in a North London School for 3 years, Ed also completed a Masters in Education and Leadership at UCL IOE. He then moved into a career of filmmaking and human-led storytelling.
Ed believes that in order to change the world we first have to understand the people in it. Empathy is the number one skill to develop and underpins other vitally important skills such as leadership, creativity, innovation, and teamwork. Whilst also being a catalyst for well-being and mental health, it is crucial to leading a better personal and professional life.
If we help young people to develop empathy throughout their educational journey, they can boost understanding reduce bias and nurture a culture of belonging and increased well being. Of course, many of us adults need this too. And my guest today Ed Kerwin, founder and filmmaker of empathy week, is tackling this challenge for future generations so that maybe just maybe, someday there won’t be a need for empathy books like mine, because this skill will be so ingrained in our consciousness starting from a young age. Empathy week is an award winning global Schools program and 40 plus countries using the power of film to develop the crucial skill of empathy in students aged five to 18. It starts this year on February 27, a few weeks from now, and all schools and teachers are invited to take part online empathy week has so far engaged over 140,000 students across 40 countries with a mission to build the hashtag empathy generation. Having worked with Cambridge University, empathy week has proven that empathy can be developed and also help increase student’s self esteem while reducing othering and stereotypes. Today, Ed talks about his journey from teacher to filmmaker, and how he discovered the power of film to expand minds and activate behavior in his own classroom. Now, through empathy week, he leverages film to develop empathy and expose students to different cultures, lifestyles and points of view so they can better collaborate and create belonging. If you’re a parent, teacher or administrator, please look into empathy week for your school. Enjoy the conversation.
01:55
Ed Kerwin, welcome
01:56
to the empathy edge to talk to us about all things empathy week, and teaching children empathy. Welcome.
02:04
amazing to be here. Thank you for having me.
Maria Ross 02:06
So I want to start with your story. Because you are a filmmaker, you used to be a teacher, you are really all about human led storytelling. Tell us a little bit about your journey. And what brought you to this work of helping children learn the skill of empathy?
Ed Kirwan 02:27
Oh, where do you want me to start early on, I’ll probably start from maybe me as a as a kid at school because I think that’s always interesting. I think that tells a lot about people. But I was an active young boy, let’s say I was involved in a lot of sport as a kid, I actually really enjoyed school, I had quite an interesting schooling life in the sense that I went to a state school, public school in the US up until the age of 16. And I actually went to a private sick former a private college 16 to 18. And had a huge kind of shift in what I saw as education. But that’s been super useful. Now as a as an adult, having seen the sister to kind of competing systems of education, loves both for very different reasons, was very kind of, I’ve always been quite practical lead. So I really enjoyed science because I just loved the practical side of it. And I was kind of pushed to be academic by my parents. I think I’ve got like an Irish dad as well, my father kind of born in Ireland and grew up in the UK. And then my mum, Scottish and they kind of both wanted the sons, I’ve got brother to be kind of academic and push for that kind of university level to set me up for life. So I did science and I studied biochemistry at uni, and I thought I might become a doctor. And then I actually decided to go into teaching. And I think that came from the fact that my mother was a child minder growing up. So my mom looked after two to three children from the ages of six months to three years old. In my house, from the age of two, I would say it was all I remember from the age of two, till I was 22. Even when I came back from university, I’ll be woken up at 7am by you know, screaming babies and children being dropped off at the house. And picking up a child or picking up a baby was just second nature because it’s all I ever knew. And I think I had then that kind of led me to write teachings quite practical. I like kids. I like getting on with kids. I was coaching some basketball as well. So I tried my hand at teaching science teaching, which is actually crazy. Because it’s just, it’s just a completely different side of the classroom when you’re the teacher and you’re in charge of 15 Bunsen burners and 30 kids, you know, try not to kill themselves, with fire going everywhere and just metal exploding all sorts of stuff, but I loved it. I absolutely of teaching, and I was teaching North London School of 1600 kids, I went through a program called Teach First, which is the equivalent to Teach for America. And actually, there’s 50 kind of different organizations that do the same thing. So there’s teach for Nepal as teach for Vietnam, to teach for. I think, Nigeria right now as well, yeah, there’s there all over the world. But basically, they send you into schools that maybe have students that are of lower socioeconomic background, and are really trying to bring up education and level up people. And I taught for three years. And that was a huge Lee defining, I suppose, life moment for me. First kind of idea of proper work. I mean, I’ve done lots of other jobs, working in bars and working as a cash out checkout person and all sorts of stuff, but actually having a full time job and then being responsible for student’s education at the age of 22. It’s quite, it’s quite overwhelming. But that’s kind of where I suppose.
06:02
Yeah. How did you make that leap into filmmaking? From teaching?
06:06
So yeah, so I really loved when I was teaching, I love the fact that I had a chance to also, I was quite creative. In my lessons, I didn’t feel I maybe pushed it a little bit was a bit cheeky, because I think the head teacher would want you to run a lesson in a certain way. But I would try and be creative. And I would also, sometimes just stop a lesson for half an hour. And just talk to students about, you know, what’s going on in the world, because they will complain about the most ridiculous of things like a 15 minute homework, I want to remember a girl. Alright, so no, but yeah, you’re 11. So 1516 years old, and I gave them half of the time the homework they should have had, because I was always about right, I just want you to do something that is going to be really beneficial for you. And this 15 minute question. 15 minutes of exam questions. I want you to do this. Ah, sir, I’ve got got party this weekend. And I said, oh, sorry for giving you homework that’s going to help you for the rest of your life, you know, sorry for giving you something that’s actually going to benefit you. I said to you, I will only give you something, and I said to them, I said, Well, you shot on the way to school. And this was probably 2015 16. And a lot around isis a lot around Syria, in the news, and I had, you know, our school had refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, as well. A lot of the students in my class were the children of refugees, or people that have come over to this country for a better life. And I said to them, go home and ask your parents, you know, how many of you in here, a first generation English born, you know, most of them? If and actually the ones that weren’t, then were, you know, they arrived in the country. I said, you know, you’ve You’re so lucky to be here. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the White Helmets. It’s a Netflix film, which basically followed the Syrian Civil War kind of force, they rescue people out bombed out buildings, and it won an Oscar. And the opening sequence of this film is a bombed out building, they rushed into it. And they managed to pull out a baby and they’re all screaming Allahu Akbar, God is great. Coming out, coming out of a building a child’s crying, but they’re, they’re celebrating that, you know, they’re pulling people out alive. And all of a sudden you just hear the bomb hit another bomb hits exactly that building. And it just goes black. And it just cuts out. And I showed them this clip. And just it was dead silent in the room of like 3016 year old teenagers who had just been putting up a little fight about some small bits of homework, Monday morning, hundreds and homework and I don’t think I’d ever heard that. And it was little things like this little moments where I also had an infamous group of young men called the U gang, self self proclaimed new gang. So they, they all got ungraded in their mock exams, a bunch of young boys put together and I taught them and it was the same thing with them. I would always show them like motivational videos, often around basketball, because it was a shared common interest about you know, going against the odds and trying to pump them up and I realized the power that video and film had. I also really enjoyed speaking. And then when it came three years in, I just decided to I basically kind of burnt out from education or burnt out from teaching. I certainly took too much on I got promoted too fast. The position was there as a young male with an ego. I wanted more money and a little bit more power, but also kind of common sense. I was like if I don’t take it, I’m gonna end up doing this job any way for less money. So did I took a kind of position as a head of Chemistry at 2324 And then I also studied part time Master’s in leadership and education at UCL and was writing then a dissertation. 20,000 words in the summer, and I just decided, right, this is too much. And I took some time out, because I realized I’d been in formal education, whether it was school, university, or then teaching myself from the age of five. And I was now 25. And I was like, I’ve never actually had any choice about when I take a holiday, or when I, you know what I do? So I took some time out. And then it was from there that I managed to do a voluntary trip with the government to work with entrepreneurs. And it basically, then yeah, I really realized that, ultimately, I came back, I wanted to do stuff around homelessness, that was something I chose as a teacher in school to talk about to get the students to really care about, and I essentially picked up a camera and started filming people across the UK. And then even in Mexico at the Homeless World Cup. And that’s where my kind of idea of filmmaking came was I wasn’t trained in it, I wasn’t any good at it. I learned through YouTube. And I just realized that actually to tell the stories of people who were homeless, I actually needed to film I needed to use film as a as a tool. And I realized it can be a very powerful tool to actually develop that empathy in people.
11:21
So let’s talk about that. Because how do you feel as a filmmaker, I’ve talked a lot in my book, and also as I am sort of a part time actress in my spare time, which I don’t have any of now that I have an eight year old. But I really believe that film and story and documentary and art is a great teacher of empathy. It gives us a safe place to practice empathy and practice thinking about cognitive empathy. What would it be like, if I was in that situation? For you, on the other side of the camera? How do you see film being a tool to engender and cultivate empathy? What? What have you seen, you’ve obviously shared what you’ve seen in your classroom. But since now doing filmmaking full time and telling those other stories, what are some of the transformations that you see? And how do you feel that film can be used to create more empathy?
12:12
Gosh, it’s, I think we all can relate to a time if you’re listening to this podcast, you’ve probably been to a cinema. And I don’t think it’s just it’s not just so much about the film, or the art, whatever art form it is, I also think it’s about the environment that it’s observed in. So I could I could show you a film on my phone, on a busy train on a 9am commute. And you’ve got some headphones in and you’re trying to listen and watch it. And it would not have the same impact as it would if you sat in a dark cinema with really good sound and really good visuals. So I think environment is also an important thing to consider. But I think it is just so powerful. And the thing about art. And the thing about any art form, whether it’s play song, film, is that actually everyone reacts to it completely differently. So if I sat everyone in a cinema screening showed them Star Wars, same cinema, same day, same city, same location, the weather’s the same, everything’s the same handed surveys to people outside as they came out. And I said, What’s your favorite moment? Where was the moment where you felt felt most emotional? All of these questions, they will all have completely different answers. And that’s because all of us have completely different lives. Up until this moment in time, we have all lived completely different past experiences. And I think the power of film is that it allows us to then it gives us an excuse also to talk about our past experiences. It gives us a reason to reflect on what we’ve done and where we’ve been. It gives us hope for the future as well. It brings up so many emotions, and so many thoughts and ideas. And one powerful thing that I’ve realized with the films that I make for empathy week, when they go into schools is that they are conversation starters. So you I always say you have you have either one of two people, when you show a film, you can either have someone that can relate, and therefore feel seen and heard and understood. But also has them permission to talk about that and can also bounce off can reflect their own experiences of someone else. So they don’t feel as alien. They don’t feel as often people think, oh, it’s totally me that’s going through this, I can’t, I can’t say anything because I don’t want to look like I’m making a scene or all of these things. All of a sudden, that person has a little bit more confidence to say, You know what I felt like this in the past, not the same thing, but I can I can relate. And then you’ve got the other type person who goes, You know what, I have no idea. I have not even thought about that perspective. I’ve not even seen that kind of life. But now I have a bit more understanding. Both are just as equally as equally as powerful. But what happens when you have both of them in the same room and then you create that environment. Where you allow discussion? Oh, it’s amazing. I have teachers like, come to me and say, Oh, the lesson, the lesson plans are too long. And I said, Okay, well, what’s long about? All the students won’t stop asking questions. And I said, Isn’t that like, isn’t that the perfect scenario? You know, where you have a lesson where, or a time where students are asking all these questions, and I go back to teachers and say, Actually, this is showing that you need to spend more time talking about this with your students. And we’ve we all know that if you rock up to a room full of people can be students could be adults, go right, Mental Health Awareness week or month, right? Who’s feeling crap? You know? And no one’s gonna say anything. Right? Right, you show a film, and then you give permission for people to an opportunity for people to talk about it. film songs, art, theater, cultural events, they are the key to unlocking emotions, perspectives of other people. And without them, our world really suffers. And I think we saw that through COVID, where art was diminished. And these cultural gatherings were diminished.
16:07
Yeah, absolutely. And so what led you to creating empathy week, which is, you know, a worldwide event where schools from all over the world are participating students from all over the world and their teachers? What? What how did that come about? If you can just quickly give us a
16:25
Yeah, so
16:27
empathy week? Yeah, it
16:28
came about, by chance, in a way. So I was I was filming a lot around homelessness in the UK, and then a man called John Finnegan, who runs a football team full of people who are experiencing homelessness, again, giving them a chance to play and feel seen and heard said, Oh, have you heard about the Homeless World Cup? I said, No, what’s that he said, you know, everyone gets together and plays football from different countries. And it was in Mexico that year, and I said, you know, I’m gonna go went out there, met the Indian team, who then said, Do you want to come to India after and I was, by this point, I was just like, just riding, riding a wave of opportunity. And I said, if you can pay for my flight, and keep me alive, ask them out, then yeah, I’ll come. So went out and volunteered out there. And I helped them develop a leadership course alongside their football program. And I was there for three months. And then I realized, hang on, I’m going to be in the middle of India, where I’m going to be alongside these people are going to really get to know them. And I’m, I’m a filmmaker, and I’ve got to a good level where it’s starting to get paid, it was starting to become my income. So I’m going to create some films. And I at this point, I was doing lots of different projects. So I could create some films about these people that it isn’t poverty porn. It’s not a charity advert. It’s not for charity, it’s not to raise money. I think that’s really important, I think, yeah, I think we could have raised money. But I think it’s really important not to do that, to really emphasize that this film was about developing empathy, not about raising money. And I think there’s been so much damage being done by charity in the past where it’s played off of people’s environment, and to raise money for a good cause, okay, but isn’t changed behavior. And miss it, I had lots of frustrations when I was a teacher. And everything kind of came into one I was like, I’m so annoyed with students just bringing in a pound or $1, or whatever, to wear non uniform for this course, they can even tell me the name of the charity they’re raising money for. So it’s not changing their behavior, which is actually what we need in this world. Because money when he goes, it’s fleeting, right? But to change the behavior of a student, so that they understand another perspective, and maybe someone who has a disability and they don’t and be able to communicate, that’s way more powerful. So I thought, right, we can create these films. And I have the trust of these people. This organization called slum soccer. And it just started as a project. And it just started actually, for secondary students. Ages 11 to 18. And just for UK schools and other countries and teachers got wind of it started signups on Well, I’m not going to stop them. So they did that. And I’m a second year we expanded to primary school. So we now do five to 18 years old. So we we’ve How it works is that I film an amazing person’s life. For 11 to 18 year olds, I create a film that’s 10 minutes long, it’s then slightly shorter and slightly different topics for eight to 10 year olds. And then there’s a five to seven year old version that’s three or four minutes long, which is very much just about the students getting to see them meet them see their environment. So it’s, it’s managed for their cognitive level of, of education and for them to be able to engage with it. And then we have lesson resources that go alongside it to support that learning because it’s not just about watching a film then. Okay, done. It’s about those discussions.
19:48
So does the week take place where they log in online and everyone’s doing the same? Watching the same film and having the same discussion every day? Or do you give them just one film and And one group of curricula, and then they can do it whenever they want during that week, it actually work.
20:06
So it’s changed over the years. And we’ve adapted it just from feedback. And you know, we’re constantly learning and it’s kind of changed a little bit every year. But what we now say is that, right, empathy week, you start it in empathy week, this year, for the first time, we’ve actually got like a series of events, webinars and different things for students and teachers during that week. So it’s more of a celebration of empathy and different concepts. But they start with the five, we now call it like a five week film program, because teachers have said that they actually prefer to watch one film a week, because it’s so dense, and so much, actually, that works better, right, the more the more touch points you have over a longer period of time, it’s going to develop empathy better than a really high spike, you know, a full empathy day, and then nothing for another year. So we actually prefer that that’s the feedback we’ve had from teachers. But ultimately, once teachers have registered, having been a teacher, myself, we try and make it as easy as possible, right for all the resources. So you get, you get even certificates to download. We even pre write a letter to parents that you can just as a teacher, you can change your school address, and then send that out to parents so they know what’s going on. And they can get involved, we we try and keep it as simple as possible in the sense that we have one key teacher at each school that logs in with one login, because I’ve been on the receiving end of trying to do something at school, and then you’ve got 150, teachers at school, 30 of them can’t sign in. It’s just chaos, right? So we just, we we try and keep it as simple as possible. But also there’s flexible, there’s a structure that has a flexibility to it as well.
21:35
And so can can parents participate in it? Or does it have to have to be through their school.
21:40
So we always ask schools to register. That’s kind of our base. Because also, you know, we’ve got our our own IP to protect, but also because we want these films to be delivered in, in the way that encourages the development of empathy and sympathy, and a group setting. And with with a trusted adult there as well, because, like we’re saying a lot, a lot of the time you do not know even your students potentially what they’ve been through. And so some of these films in the past that we have, some of them have talked about suicide for the older students, some of them talked about really serious issues, racism and gender, gender, gender identity, gender identity, their various various different discrimination as well. And you might not know that actually a student is going through that. And so if that’s brought up and they’re on their own, it might or they might not want to talk to parent, however, this year, for registered schools, we are giving access to the events platform, with the talks and things for parents to get involved with to. And it’s definitely something that we want to continue to do I always talk about it, like the triangle right of education is really, you know, you’ve got the school as an environment, you’ve got the teacher, and you’ve got the parent, and you’ve got the kind of the student in the middle. And often one of them’s missing. Either the teachers are disengaged, or the schools not good environment, or the parents kind of out the picture. Yeah, I think if you can have those three around a student, that’s what really brings holistic well being and really great education. And then yeah, the grades and everything else follows, right. But I’m so frustrated with that focus on academics at the moment, without the well being,
23:17
I want to talk about the focus on wellbeing and the catalyst for this event and for the work that you’re doing. What have you seen in terms of the benefits that the schools get, and the students get from an event like empathy week?
23:32
Yeah, it’s, it’s been amazing to actually go into different schools and see what they’ve done with it as well. And I really like the fact that we kind of trust teachers to take the resources and then okay, we say, this is how we would use them. But every school is different. Of course, it’s not even just every school, every classroom is different. So even within watching the same film, within each of the classes in the same school, you’re gonna get different conversations and different outcomes and different talks. But the important thing is that there is conversation and there is accepted. And then that is well being when you can talk openly about yourself, when people feel understood, if you can increase understanding, which is ultimately the foundation and core of empathy, you increase connection. If you increase connection, you increase trust. If you increase trust, you make better relationships. What’s the foundation of well being good relationships is the foundation, with your family, with your friends with society. And if you then have better wellbeing, you are happier, if you’re happier, and you have great well being you have greater productivity. And we’ve seen schools now actually involve the whole year with empathy lessons, put empathy lessons themselves, they’re now trained more about what empathy actually is. Rather than them just thinking it’s, you know, the one okay, just trying to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, because we try and it’s a useful same but we try and say it you know, I’ve seen Brene Brown talk about it as well. I’m sure you know, you know, It’s not so much about you putting someone else in your, in their shoes, it’s about walking, holding someone’s hand and then bringing you through. And I think we’ve just seen well, we’ve done some pilot research with Cambridge University, and Dr. Helen Demetrio who released a paper on empathy in students in 2021, as well. And we’ve seen that actually our program, even if it’s just done for one year, the first year that’s done, there’s an increase in self esteem and students. There’s a reduced reduction in othering. There’s a increased want to find out more about people from other countries, from before and after. And there’s an increased level of empathy, as well as students. And you think we always talk about, okay, it’s not about one year, we talked about building empathy generation, and that is from the age of five to 18. Hopefully, we’ll even move into early years from three soon. But if you can build that five people’s films, every year, for 13 years of education, from five to eight, that person will have left was 65 an understanding of 65 different people’s life stories. Now, it doesn’t 65 You know, in an age when numbers are thrown about and big numbers are used all the time. 65 doesn’t sound a lot. But if you watch the trailer for empathy read, just for this year, and you see the diversity of fight the five people from the pool, cheer on who’s blind, you know, completely visually impaired from from birth, but yet talks about his disability as a complete kind of gift and advantage and he gets to experience lifeline. Not many other people do. They got Tandy, who’s a Sherpa who’s summited Everest 14 times. They’ve got Bhavna who talks about gender equality, and what it is to be a powerful female in the pool. Santana, who is then a teacher entering the education system in the pool and wants to do her best for the kids. And then mingma, who talks about growing up in Katmandu, and becoming a teacher himself, but then also his perspective on on life in Nepal, from like, kind of a cool young guy who’s just pretty relaxed, completely different stories. And that’s just five. And he times that by 30. These students, when they go out into the working world, when they go into university, they don’t bat an eyelid at someone who’s gay, they don’t bat an eyelid who someone completely different race to them, or religion or creed or belief. They understand that you can speak with someone communicate well with someone and still disagree with them. You can eat at the same table as people that you don’t necessarily agree with the way they live their life. You might even think they’re morally wrong, let’s say but you can still talk with them, communicate with them, respect them, understand them, work alongside them. If you can do that, though, I believe there would be no war. I mean, that’s a really hopeful, optimistic picture. But you know,
27:45
well, I mean, it’s, it’s true. I mean, I think that the sooner we develop the innate empathy that we already have, instead of letting the muscle atrophy, atrophy, at a younger age, the better off are future leaders. And, you know, I hate to I hate to call kids future leaders, because they actually can be leaders right now. So, you know, in terms of the next generation of organizational leaders, whether it’s government or for profits, or social impact organizations, or just you know, community groups, the sooner we can help them just flex that muscle. So it’s, they don’t even have to think about it, the battery correctly, right. But
28:24
you’re right, I completely agree about the future leaders. And I agree, students are leaders now as well. But there is also a realization that we need the leaders that aren’t now to develop this. And we’ve started to do stuff with companies and I know that you are all over companies. And it will frustrate you as much as it will shake frustrate me that how you have to define empathy to these companies and how you have to explain it’s not something soft, it’s not something weak, but it’s actually increases productivity, all of the research is there to say that it will increase retention, it will increase your profit margins, it will increase your bottom line and not just increase your bottom line. It will make everyone feel happier, they’ll want to be at work, there’ll be less sick, sick days off, you will have a environment where people thrive, which is ultimately what we try to create a home for ourselves and what we want to create a work but we need the leaders of today to actually get on it because it’s no good just I think that’s the frustration with students in the UK if anyone follows UK politics watching this, they’ll understand that we’ve had I think I can’t even now think that three or four prime ministers this year, even though
29:35
it has been a little bit of a game of musical chairs there Yeah,
29:39
ridiculous and you’ve got the kids in school saying, Oh, well Boris Johnson are all Prime Minister he lied. Why isn’t he in jail? Yet we’re telling them to be more empathetic and be moral and talk about honesty and just and the leader the number one on person in the country apart from I guess the rules or whatever is lying and and is keeping their job. It’s just absurd. It’s just ridiculous. And so we need actually our leaders today to really follow in a life of integrity, a life of honesty, and put empathy there, and they don’t have a, there’s such a divide, you know, they don’t even have an understanding of what food costs. I was watching the news just tonight. And, you know, a firefight that we’re saying firefighters that are on 32,000 pounds a year, are using food banks. And this MP has said, That’s ridiculous. They need to budget better. straightaway, that MPs on a salary of 82 84,000 pounds plus all of their expenses for the day, you know, there’s just obviously an obvious comparison there, where there just as a complete lack of empathy, a complete lack of understanding and that wants to understand has that has that MP has that part parliamentary person even spoken to someone I think our society is craving for just honesty, empathy and integrity. And, and it’d be so powerful as well.
31:02
I think it’s also about the fact that we’ve become an it’s very true in the United States, but I feel it, I feel like I’m starting to see it in other developing countries as well. This move away from collectivism to individualism. And this idea that, I mean, when you talk about government, for example, I am not going to support any legislation that I myself will never have to use, versus understanding that there are people out there and you may never have to take advantage of that policy, or that law, or that organ, you know that that investment, but other people do. So it’s worth fighting for, especially if they’re your constituents, right? There’s this very, like, if that doesn’t impact me or mine, then it’s not important. It’s not priority. And we’ve got to start moving to this place where our leaders are thinking about things and trying to implement policies across, you know, government organizations that may not benefit them, but benefit other people because of the experiences of other people.
32:12
Yeah, selfless leadership. Yeah, I also think this is where film coming back to film, this is why films are powerful. Because I can show I can get a group of people together. And I do this in companies as well. And show them two or three films within a short space of time. And also film and arts, we can communicate very powerful, strong messages in a very short amount of time, if you’re if you’re good at storytelling. And within, you know, an hour, I could show four or five different people’s films and life stories to someone, and they can get those perspectives in a powerful way. Whereas if you were to do it in person, maybe someone’s got to travel. And I think there’s a scalability. So with empathy week, the design of it is to have a scalability, the perfect scenario would be I would pick up loads of kids and put them on a playing experience. They would experience like, playing for the first time, then they would get dropped in the middle of Katmandu this year,
33:10
if only the billionaires would spend money on that, instead of buying social media networks. That would be great, right?
33:16
Just charter charter, like this empathy exchange for everyone. Right, exactly. What do you remember about school or education or university? It’s all it’s not the day to day in the classroom learning. It’s that one day that someone came and spoke
33:30
to you, or this field trips or the trips? Yeah. And
33:34
what’s the first thing to go and a time like now where we’re facing recession? Trips, arts, culture, anything that is not necess? Necessary? Yes. For people listening I’m doing
33:48
right now. Yeah.
33:51
It’s, it’s crazy. Because, yeah, we just need, we just need to spend more time listening and listening, but not just listening, asking questions, because people just go listening, listening, listening, and listening is great. But unless you’re asking questions, you’re not having a conversation and you’re not learning. You’re just onboarding information. Right? The real understanding comes from when you do ask a question, because listening, you might not fully understand still, you can hear it, but you need to actually go. Okay, so you said you did this, but why did you do that? And I always say, with companies as well. agreeing with each other and disagreeing with each other stop, generally stop conversations. And people kind of get to disagree with one and they agree one. I didn’t really get what you mean. I say, Okay, well say you got meeting you need to make a decision. Someone comes in and says, right, this is what we’re going to do. And you go Yeah, no, great. That sounds awesome. Let’s do it. Six months down the line. You get to a point where like, Why? Why is that happened? That Oh, no, you’ve agreed this. And you realize that actually, that you can agree on something, but with completely different rationale and reasoning behind why you’re agreeing without explaining it. And we need to ask more questions, even if you’re agreeing with someone, especially in the workplace. Why? What’s your reasoning for what you’re trying to get out of that? Because we just assume that people understand or hear our thoughts and understand what we’re saying. And it’s not it’s not the case. And I think if we can lead with a bit more curiosity, that’d be amazing. I always say people always get it right. How do you develop empathy? You know, is that is the big thing, how, what’s the easiest way? And it’s always just about increasing number of experiences, and increasing the diversity of those experiences. And I say to people, if you do those two things, you won’t be going viral. Right, right. Right, just as simple as possible, increase the number and diversity of experience. The problem is, what what what does that require time? Sometimes money, time and access? Yeah. So it’s about how can we and I think that’s where films again, arts, things can come in and be so powerful was low cost scalable actions to really change the perspective and build empathy in people.
35:59
And to leverage them even within organizational teams and leverage film as a catalyst for discussion. I am part of the faculty of an organization called the Executive Institute on inclusion. And they put together custom bespoke dei programs for different groups. And what what holds it together is number one, the the fact that they use data that’s custom to that organization to show that organization exactly where they need to work on. But also they they partner with a company whose name is escaping me right now, to leverage film, especially with the executive team, to get them to crack open very difficult conversations that they’re not having about Dei. So instead of hitting them with all these statistics, and you should, and you must, and you need to have the show film, and then engage in a discussion. And that’s, you know, again, the power of film to be able to just it, it brings someone story to life for you, you get to see them in the situation that they’re in. So perhaps you can think about what might I be feeling in that situation? Or even like you’re saying, I didn’t even know that that was what that situation was like. Right? So now I have a new appreciation for your experience.
37:19
Yeah, what really humanizes every humanizes the workplace, right reminds people. Oh, yeah, no, I am a person. And this is actually my job. And I am actually designed to actually emotionally connect with people. And I think I think the amazing thing about film and the amazing thing about this, because you’re basically describing exactly what to do, right? And then right, and then start, watch what
37:45
happens. Start start the magic. Yeah,
37:46
you never know. And what you need to make sure that you have a good facilitator and someone to craft that conversation, right? Because it can be yes can come up, I’m doing a workshop at a conference and hamburgers creativity conference, I was there to talk about empathy. It was just after Russia invaded Ukraine, and we’re talking about empathy. And also and then all of a sudden, this young lady just kind of shared that she’s Ukrainian. And that she’d and it was it was I think it was a month after, and just the room went silent. And I think if had I not had my training experience and being a teacher, because teaching is facilitating thinking on your feet. I used to have kids throwing stuff, swearing this right that control. And you have to think on your feet. And I’m so glad I’ve had that training. And my heart, I feel like my real job is as a facilitator still, even today as a teacher. Yeah. And and being able to manage that situation. I didn’t really know what to do. But I could sense that she doesn’t, she didn’t want to question she just wanted to kind of put that but what she put across was that she had seen all Russians as evil from that day, hadn’t want to, hadn’t want to hadn’t wanted to engage with anyone to do with Russia. And then all of a sudden, she’d kind of watched this film. And it wasn’t to do with war either. And I think this is this is the point that I’m trying to make is that you can watch a film about something completely different. But you can get trained in that kind of perspective taking, and also the emotional empathy side of it, and building that. And then you can, you can, it’s like a blueprint, you can copy that onto a completely different social issue. Even if you haven’t talked about it and use those skills. Because empathy is a skill, you can train it and like you’re talking about it as a muscle. You can just build it and then all of a sudden you you catch yourself in another scenario or another situation you say, Hang on, I’m judging or I’m, I haven’t really asked any questions. I’m not curious. I don’t really know what’s going on. And this young lady was basically said, Yeah, I’ve now thought actually hang on. Maybe not all Russians are bad. Right. And that was that was you could just see in the audience like, wow, and that was it. And then she just wanted to say that she just kind of wanted to say that. I think that’s important as well. Not. Not everyone wants to open up. You know, I think that’s the fear in the corporate space. When you go in like, right, we’re going to talk about, you know, exactly. I see people go, Oh, melting. Yeah.
40:17
I love that. I love that. Well, empathy week starts February 27. Yes. 1023, just a couple of weeks from now. And how can schools and teachers engage? Where’s the best way for them to get involved?
40:33
Yeah, great. So the best place is empathy dash week.com. Then that across the page, there’s register, quite easy to do that. Anyone can also watch a film from last year. So there’s a bit called free. Even if your teacher Nottage anyone can if they sign up to our newsletter, then gets access to an amazing young woman’s story called leper from last year, who talks about the right to wear a hijab or her choice to wear the hijab and life as a semi professional footballer. And the moment that she switched from kind of being a young girl that didn’t wear one to get other than decided to wear one and racism that she, she suffered. But she’s got such an important story. And I think particularly with what everything that’s going on with Iran at the moment that we’re seeing there. Her story is even ever more important. And I think that’s again, a great thing to watch. So people can get involved that way as well. And, yeah, our website and and we’re on social media at empathy week on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter at the empathy week, and I am Ed Cohen, on all of them.
41:41
Yes. And we will have all your links in the show notes, as well as a link to the empathy week, the empathy week event, which I hope teachers, educators, parents, who want to bring this to their school will take this and show it to their school and to their teachers and their principals and, and really get involved. I think the more we can grow this movement, the better. I mean, and like you said, not just developing that skill of empathy, and kids aged five to 18, but also continuing to work on it as adults. And absolutely, I remember when I was researching my book, I interviewed a woman who runs a school where the empathy is baked into the curriculum. Y’all don’t know Java, of Golestan in Northern California. And I remember asking her if adults, she was one of my earliest interviews with the book. And I asked her can can adults who are not currently very empathetic, learn how to be empathetic? And she said yes, but it’s more of an active choice. They have to actually decide that that’s what they want their identity to be. And they can exercise it every day and build that muscle. And I just thought that was just a beautiful way to remember that it is actually is innate in us as human beings, but the muscle for whatever reason, environment upbringing, circumstance, that muscle may have atrophied. So there’s always a way to strengthen it if we really, really want to. So, Edie, thank you so much for your work and for what you’re doing in the world. And I want us to stay in touch because I want us to do more together. But thank you, and good luck with empathy Week this year, and we will have you back to find out how it went.
43:23
Amazing. Thanks so much for the opportunity to talk and yeah, I’d love to speak to other people that are interested. So do reach out.
43:29
Awesome. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. Please remember, if you liked what you heard, just share it with a friend or colleague. Don’t forget to rate and review of course, and until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
When we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, some leaders still roll their eyes or assume they have bigger fish to fry. But, happily, the trendline shows that companies that can move beyond diversity into true inclusivity experience sustained growth, higher performance, and more revenue. They are the ones harnessing more innovation, attracting top talent, getting more ideas and innovation from their people, and frankly, making smarter business decisions.
Today, I talk to Gianna Driver about how DEI efforts support organizational goals and the link between DEI efforts and bottom-line performance. She shares how a company can make the leap from a diverse culture to a truly inclusive one in order to better enjoy those benefits. Gianna shares the ground rules you need to set to make DEI work, and how to be empathetic to – yet manage executive resistance to change. And we talk about her personal story growing up Filipino-American and how it shaped her passion for empowering people.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
People are at the heart and center of everything you do. If you are trying to make a change in your organization, you need to remember that.
Healthy relationships have conflict. What matters is not the existence of conflict, but how individuals resolve conflict; the same is true of organizations.
We do not leave our humanity at the door when we come to work. Employees need to be treated as humans with respect and multiple facets of their lives. When employees thrive, they bring their best selves to work and have higher performance as a result.
“Conflict is necessary for high performance and innovation. What differentiates are those organizations who have found ways to create spaces where people can respectfully and healthfully disagree and come up with better solutions together.”— Gianna Driver
About Gianna Driver, CHRO, Exabeam
Gianna Driver is Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at Exabeam, a global cybersecurity leader that adds intelligence to every IT and security stack. As CHRO, Driver manages the strategy and processes related to building, investing in, and retaining top talent at Exabeam, enabling employees to do their best work. She is responsible for architecting the company’s talent strategy, driving corporate culture and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and leading the global human resources function. Prior to Exabeam, Driver was the Chief People Officer at BlueVine, a private fin-tech company based in Redwood City, CA. Driver has also led HR and People functions in high-growth technology, gaming, consumer, and SaaS organizations including Playstudios, Aristocrat, Actian Corporation, Talend, and Balsam Brands. She is passionate about building high-performance cultures, establishing operational excellence, and creating joy at work. Driver is a graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
When we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion or Dei, some leaders still roll their eyes or assume they have bigger fish to fry. But happily, the trend line shows the companies that can move beyond diversity into true inclusivity experience sustained growth, higher performance and more revenue. They’re the ones harnessing more innovation, attracting top talent, getting more ideas and innovation from their people, and frankly, making smarter business decisions. And as we all know, empathy is the fuel that makes Diversity Equity and Inclusion work. Gianna driver is Chief Human Resources Officer or Chr. O at Exabeam, a global cybersecurity leader that adds intelligence to every IT and security stack. She manages the strategy and processes related to building investing in and retaining top talent at Exabeam. enabling employees to do their best work. She’s responsible for architecting the company’s talent strategy, driving corporate culture and dei initiatives and leading the global human resources function. Gianna has done this work for many companies in the tech space and speaks to the strategic shift top performing leaders have made in recent decades. Today we talk about how DEI efforts support organizational goals and the line between DEI efforts and bottom line performance. She shares how a company can make the leap from a diverse culture to a truly inclusive one in order to better enjoy those benefits. Gianna shares the ground rules you need to set to make dei work and how to be empathetic to yet manage executive resistance to change. And we talk about her personal story growing up Filipino American and how it shaped her passion for empowering people. Take a listen.
02:05
Welcome Gianna driver to the empathy edge podcast. I have been looking forward to this conversation with you for a while to talk about all the great work you do in terms of culture, diversity and inclusion and help our listeners understand how to connect those dots and connect it to performance. So welcome.
02:24
Thanks, Maria. I’m super excited to be here. Okay, so
Maria Ross 02:27
let’s start off first with your story. How did you get into this work? You were at your Chr? Oh, four Exabeam. You’ve worked at several other companies as a head of HR as a head of people as a head of culture. How did you get into that work? Tell us a little bit about your story.
Gianna Driver 02:46
Yeah, well, you know, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a Chr. Ro.
02:50
We knew what those acronyms met. Yeah,
02:54
that’s so true. Yeah. And so my story begins in a small town in East Texas. My mother immigrated as a mail order bride from Manila in the Philippines. Oh, my dad was a cattle farmer rancher, in very small towns in East Texas. And unbeknownst to me, I think the seeds of HR were sown very early in life. You know, I grew up primarily with my mom, but also regularly saw my dad. And we were an uneducated family. And I remember with my mother growing up in the shelter you your your privy to lots of heartache and lots of stress and you know, call it the underdog, for lack of a better term. Well, fast forward, I ended up going to college university and going to the Wharton School. And that juxtaposition from my roots to Wharton were incredibly, incredibly Stark and pronounced. And what I realized now in reflection that I didn’t realize then is that the seeds of a career in HR had been planted and cultivated meaning one of the things that really resonates with me today and why I love doing HR is because I get to help organizations help people, people like my mom, like my dad, like my family, but at the same time, we are also working on business outcomes and achieving, you know, the overall goals that our business exists to solve. And it’s that marriage between the two, the human out element and also the business side of things that gets me really excited. So Little did I know my career started as a little girl. I love it.
04:47
And also just that exposure to diversity and inclusion and although the lessons both good and bad from that experience are so profound, and I love the fact that you know what we’re going to talk about today which I’ve thought felt this way for a long time. And it’s why I always demand when I do my brand strategy engagements, for example, that someone from HR or culture or people be part of the process, because when are we going to learn that our companies are collections of people, and that without the people, we don’t achieve any business outcome, we don’t achieve any growth goal. And so really seeing HR not as like, the form fillers, right, or the benefits people, but seeing HR as a strategic lever for growth. Exactly where business goals like it, it sounds like you’ve been lucky enough to work for organizations that get that.
05:39
Thankfully, yes, yes. You know, and that’s what attracts me to organizations like exa beam, right, because people are at the heart and center of what we do.
05:49
Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about whether it’s x beams goals or other goals of companies that you’ve worked with how diversity, equity and inclusion efforts support those goals, meaning how do you as, as the leader of HR, draw that line for executives, and for the rest of the company of how these initiatives lead to growth, success? Profits, revenue, all the things? Huh,
06:18
yeah, great question. Well, so I’ll start with I think, thankfully, you’d be hard pressed to find a leader who would say diversity is bad. Right? So so that that is progress, relative to 2030 years ago. So we’re like, that’s, that’s huge. And we aren’t we are moving in the right direction. But I think you’re also correct in that some business leaders need the the the lines to be drawn between why diverse and inclusive companies make for better businesses and better organizations. And so I point to several things when I’m having these conversations. One of those is to look at some of the recent studies by McKinsey and some of the other consulting firms. Harvard has a study on this as well, that show organizations who are more diverse, meaning they’ve got larger percentages of not just gender diversity, but also ethnic and other types of diversity. Those organizations outperform and have higher valuations than their peer companies who are less diverse. So when you look at a lot of the data and the stats out there, you know, it reinforces that diverse business is better business. But then I also specific to, to Exabeam. And into cybersecurity, a conversation that we had recently was around neurodiversity. Specifically, yes, you know, we were talking about how we need more diverse people at our company, because we want people who think differently, we don’t want we’re solving big problems in the world, we’re making the world a safer place. We are outsmarting hackers, and you know, people who are attempting, you know, phishing attacks and malware attacks and things like that those folks are thinking outside of the box, those folks are thinking differently, it is imperative to our long term success, that we have people who think outside of the box as well helping us solve these problems and get right. And so when you’re able to engage in these types of conversations, there is that, oh, yeah, like I should care about diversity, not just because I want to have better dei statistics, but because it’s actually really good business. And it’s what’s going to differentiate and allow us to win in the future.
08:33
I love that. And I love that you’re bringing that in because as someone who survived a brain injury years ago, neurodiversity is very important to me, and something that I see. And you know, my heart is warmed when I read about these companies that understand the value of bringing in autistic individuals, for example, because the way they solve problems and how they even the the angle within the prism of the problem that they’re looking at is very different. And it can expose blind spots. And so I love hearing those stories about about understanding that when we’re talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, this is something I’m trying to educate my son’s school about. It’s not just about gender or ethnicity. Yes, it’s about physical ability. It’s about neuro diversity. It’s about all these other things that make us different. So and I had never connected that dot between cybersecurity and neuro diversity and it makes complete sense.
09:32
Well as a mother to a neuro atypical child, you know, these are, these are topics that are also very near and dear to me, because I see in my my daughter, Abigail, who has dyslexia, that, yes, she does process the world differently. She does think differently, and that’s a gift. There are challenges with that, but I also think it’s a gift and so I get excited thinking about creating an organization where people like her are welcome and wanted and valued. I love
10:01
that for one moment to another like, that’s why I wrote the empathy edge was I wanted to create a world that was more empathetic for my son. And for him to be exposed to leaders, when he was very young, the lessons I was trying to teach him about collaboration and empathy and sharing and kindness. I didn’t want those lessons to be just lessons he had when he was little, and then he was gonna go enter this horrible world of business or anything, you know. So I think we both are driven by the same by the same pieces of our heart. So let’s talk a little bit about diversity and inclusion. Because I find that there’s, there’s so much misunderstanding, they’re often used together, D and I, you know, D and I, D. And I explained to us the difference, because I think people can get their arms around diversity in terms of a checklist or a pie chart of different people in the organization. But the concept of inclusivity is a little bit more elusive to them in terms of how they can take steps to create a more inclusive environment. So talk to us a little bit about that.
11:05
Yeah, you know, a metaphor that I heard recently that that resonated about this difference was diversity is being asked to the party inclusion is being asked to dance. I love that. Right? Because, you know, I think, applying this to business contexts, diversity can mean checking the box around, do we have ethnic, gender, religious, socioeconomic? Do we have all of these different types of folks in our organization, so that can help quote unquote, check the diversity box, but true inclusion is, how involved do those individuals feel at the company? How engaged are they? How much do they feel? They matter? How valued Do they feel? Do they feel that their voice is something that is honored in the organization, and so that is true inclusion? So diversity is merely having the folks who be a part of the organization, inclusion and belonging is are these individuals valued, engaged, excited parts of our organization. And I would say companies that succeed at being diverse, but not at being inclusive, start to see a revolving door of diversity, because what will happen long term is yes, they may have diverse groups, and you know, underrepresented minorities inside the org. But if those folks don’t truly belong, and feel a sense of inclusion, they’ll attract, they will tap out. And then you’ve got, you know, the diverse folks that you want in the organization, you’ve got them voluntarily leaving, which is which is problematic
12:50
100%. And that’s something that, you know, if you want to hold on to those people, it’s it’s one thing to invite the diverse perspectives and experiences to the party. It’s another to actually hear those diverse experiences and perspectives and do something with that information. And I came across, you’ve probably seen this data before, I think it was from Deloitte, when I was researching my book a few years ago, talking about the fact that, you know, Gen Z, in particular, is one of the most diverse generations we have entering the workforce. And they are looking beyond the pie chart and the checklist they actually want to see before they will sign on with a company. How is that company harnessing the different perspectives to make better business decisions? They’re actually equating it to the company’s ability to make smart decisions. And that is a factor for them in terms of accepting the job or not? Yes, when we’re talking about accepting top talent, you know, you’re not going to attract those people. If and one generational expert I spoke to, for the book even went so far as to say the companies that don’t get that will not be in existence anymore, because all that top talent will go to their competitors. I concur. Yeah, I absolutely.
14:00
And, you know, I think that’s a beautiful reality of the market norms. I am excited that this new crop of working professional, the Gen Z years are coming in, they’re so values oriented, they are demanding that companies truly have diversity statements, senses, you know, like, a sense of belonging and, you know, for all of the the underrepresented minority groups, I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think it’s a wonderful forcing function for organizations.
14:28
It’s amazing. And I, you know, I even look back as being a Gen XOR. You know, I remember being on the Diversity Committee when I was a management consultant. And when did that actually mean, right? And for us, it stopped at the, at that point in time, and then in the early 90s, it stopped at the like, do we have these people in the organization? Are they part of the pipeline? Yep. Now what I love is that that these folks are much savvier than I was when I was leaving college, and that they’re going but but I want to know that the company Make smart business decisions and they can’t make smart business decisions if everyone in the executive team or on the board looks and sounds alike, like they just they’re seeing everything from the same lens they can’t possibly make the smartest decision they could make
15:16
all and this is why representation matters. Right? Like it is very, very important that we have individuals leading companies who look differently think differently process the world differently. I will say implied in diversity is also conflict, right? And I’ve seen this in organizations, because when you have individuals who are passionate, and they’re excited, and they’re motivated, and they process and view the world differently, there will be disagreements,
15:47
or clash for sure. And we need to be uncomfortable. We need to be comfortable with the discomfort. Yes, that brings us
15:53
right. And I think that having a healthy way of engaging in meaningful conflict is really important, because conflict can be a very healthy thing. I would say conflict is necessary to high performance and innovation. Yes, absolutely. And what differentiates are those organizations who have found ways to create spaces in environments where people can respectfully and healthfully disagree and come up with better solutions together.
16:22
It’s kind of like a marriage where if somebody says, Oh, we never fight, so we have a really healthy marriage, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a really healthy marriage, it might mean that you’re swallowing the conflict, and you’re not dealing with the conflict, or you’re avoiding it or you’re passive aggressive.
16:37
And so it’s like the Gottman Institute and the Love Lab that they do. Yes, yes, healthy relationships have conflict. What matters is not the existence of conflict, but how individuals resolve conflict. And I would say the same is true of organizations.
16:51
I love that. And I’m actually going to put a link to a prior guest, we had me Hart, who’s a dei consultant, because we did a whole episode about having on how to have honest conversations at work. And his point was exactly this, that we need to instead of running from the honest conversations, we need to just get better and improve on being able to be in the discomfort. Yeah, and see where that leads, yes, growth occurs outside of the comfort zone, for sure. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about, you know, we’ve talked about the difference between diversity and inclusion. So I’m an executive listening to this podcast, I’m fully on board, we’ve done a good job in our company with with getting diverse representation, but I’m not really sure if we actually have an inclusive environment. And this is something I’m working on with my son’s school, for example, we can’t just send out a survey that says, Do you feel that we have an inclusive environment and that you belong? Right? So how does a company culture take that leap? What are the things they should be looking for to assess? inclusivity? And also, what can they do to boost inclusivity? What are some of the actions they can take? And I think you’ve also talked about the ground rules to set in culture. And so it’s kind of all wrapped up in the same question. But let’s get to the, you know, what, what folks can do and what they should be looking for?
18:20
Mm hmm. Totally? Well, so in terms of what what people can do, and what what leaders and organizations can can focus on, you know, I think part of this starts by awareness building and training. And yes, there’s, there’s as a baseline things like, unconscious, unconscious bias, and, you know, awareness there. And you know, that’s actually a really huge umbrella when you think about unconscious bias that shows up in all different shapes and forms. And it’s important that everyone in the organization go through a lot of these educational types of workshops and series, because that’s what’s going to allow folks to have a common way of talking about and framing these we need a common language as we talk talk about these topics. And that’s where some of the leadership, development and training modules can be super, super helpful. So I think it starts by that number one. One of the other things that we do here at Exabeam, that’s been really helpful is we have employee resource groups throughout the organization. And so these are groups of like minded individuals, groups who share something in common and or are an ally about whatever the cause is, that is at the center of that employee resource group, or ERG for short. And what we found is these groups allow folks to feel a sense of belonging and feel they have a safe place in the organization to express and to shout and to celebrate and to be themselves and then what we do and we’re making various different decisions and it could be small decision These are bigger decisions, we actively seek out and engage those ERGs. We want to have their thoughts and their opinions. As we’re crafting and making decisions. It’s not just after the fact right matters, we want to involve them in, in the conversation. And then And then lastly, I do think it’s important to look at data. And as someone in in the the HR space, there’s this exciting area in our, in our HR industry called people analytics that is getting a lot of airtime right now. And as that pertains to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, we like to look at things like not just do we have these diverse folks, you know, represented in the organization. But when we do our surveys, we look at, okay, how engaged are they? When we look at promotions across the organization? are we promoting people across the entire org, not just folks who were part of certain categories are profiles of individuals, same thing when it comes to raises. Also, let’s look at our attrition data. Are we disproportionately losing people who are in certain underrepresented groups? And if so, like, let’s let’s lean into that and really start to understand, are they leaving because they don’t feel safe? Are they leaving because they don’t feel welcome? Thankfully, that’s not been the case here. But these are the some of the processes that we go through to really understand how we’re doing on these fronts.
21:22
Well, and I think it’s interesting, because I do think you have to be very careful when you’re even designing a survey to start figuring out what’s going on, because you can actually do more harm than good with your survey questions. This is something I was working on with my son’s school is that we, we might do more harm than good if we just throw a question in someone’s face that they might be offended by or feel threatened by. So there’s all I love what you’re saying in terms of looking at all these other areas like attrition like promotions, potentially even you know, are they do they feel comfortable attending employee events, or, you know, social events that the company might put on? So trying to get at the question of comfort and belonging from a safer place. And so that’s why I think it behooves many executives who might be wading into this without the prior skills to work with a professional that’s that’s crafted these kinds of surveys before, and I’m sure you’ve worked with many people like that, and you probably can craft your own at this point. But that’s just like the caveat I would give to folks listening is that if it were that easy to just ask people if they feel comfortable or not, yeah, no, you’re doing it right. But But if someone doesn’t feel like they belong, and they don’t feel comfortable, they’re never going to be honest with their answers. And so you might get data back that tells you you don’t have a problem when you actually do. Yeah, right.
22:45
Exactly. Right. Yep. The way in which the questions are asked has a lot to do with the authenticity and integrity of the data. 100% agree.
22:55
So what So given your your vast experience in leadership, around HR around people around culture, as we kind of wrap up this conversation? What are the trend lines that you’re seeing in real life? You know, not from research, or data or consulting reports? But your experience working in organizations? What, what conversations with executives are getting easier? What aspects Do you think that they are more aware of than they used to be? Can you just give us an example of, of the growth you’re seeing in terms of of leaders wanting to pay attention to their people in the organization? Because I’m sure from when, you know, same thing from when I way back when I started, way back when you started? Yeah, what has been some of the really surprising and delightful shifts you’ve seen occur?
23:43
Yeah. Well, there’s a ton more awareness and consciousness about these topics, which is, which is huge. I also think as painful as the great resignation has been for many organizations, it was also a bit of a wake up call, because we had executives across all different industries in different sizes of companies who were saying, Oh, my goodness, why am I losing all of these people? And what can I do to retain and keep the talent that we have? And I would add on to this, what I’ve seen recently, which is, I think a very beautiful thing is that boards are now asking for not just product roadmaps and a pipeline summary of, you know, sales projections and all this other stuff, but they’re also asking for that in the context of people and in the context of diversity. And I think it’s wonderful because you have a rising tide that raises all ships. And so, you know, this isn’t a here is the silver bullet one, you know, one stop shop solution, but it’s all of these things working in partnership. Plus also to your earlier point about the Gen Zers who are joining the workforce and they are demanding that companies live, what they what they espouse And that’s that’s done wonders. And so we are seeing a groundswell of engagements of enthusiasm, and a true passion for being more diverse, but also being more
25:10
inclusive. Right. And I see it just as a shift to being to bring more humanity back to work. Yeah, understanding that we don’t park our humanity at the door, when we come to the office, or the virtual office, or whatever it is, that whatever we’re dealing with in our lives, whether it’s mental health challenges, or micro aggressions, or whatever it is, that impacts our ability to innovate, to create, to collaborate to perform, if you’ve got all these distractions on your people, rather than helping them stay focused on the work you hired them to do. You need to actually look at, you know, how are we treating our people? How do our people feel? And I love that, you know, and you could probably attest to this, too, you know, early in my career, you know, emotions in your personal life had no place at all, yes, no, you’re right. It’s not that we’re trying to create this world where everyone’s you know, crying on the floor at the office, we still need to get work done. But this idea of like, looking out for each other and saying, you know, hey, if someone is someone, okay, is someone not? Okay? How can we make things better for that person, so that in the end, we can get, we can get there, their full value of what they can contribute. And if they feel like they thrive, they’re going to, they’re going to be more loyal to us, they’re going to innovate more, they’re going to perform better. So it’s just this pylon effect. Now I have a
26:31
and I, that’s a beautiful part of this moment in our in our history is that you’re right, early in my career, there was this sense of, Well, you can’t, you can’t really bring your life outside of work into work, right? Like, you got to drop out of the door on your way in, and now you’re a professional, and it’s, you know, like, you’re serious, we got to get work done, etc, etc. Well, in the last 10 or so years, there’s been this beautiful shift and change where leaders and organizations realize, oh, wait, there’s the whole human, it’s about integrating all of these different parts of who we are. And actually, I think the pandemic, if there was a positive thing to come with the pandemic, I think one of those is it really showed us. Wow, okay, there’s this intersection of being, you know, parents and partners and having, you know, live all smushed together in our living room. Right, because we, we had to show more of our outside, you know, personal life to our colleagues, because, you know, we were we were in everyone’s bedrooms and living.
27:37
Exactly, exactly. I mean, I feel like it really accelerated. I know, for me, it accelerated the conversation around empathy. But I think it accelerated the conversation about like, again, humanity at work. I agree. So I do have one last question. Do you have any fear that that will snap back? Or do you think that that’s a mindset shift that will stick? If you know, once we get hopefully soon, someday we get beyond the pandemic? Yeah, we move beyond this? Is there any concern you have that that is just a flash in the pan, given the time we’re in? Or do you think that that mindset shift will stick?
28:11
I think the trendline, the trendline and the macro economics are such that this is here to stay on? Right? I was hoping you’d say that. Yeah. Organizations be more inclusive and diverse and having, you know, a greater awareness and sense of, you know, creating spaces where people can really thrive and be who they are. I think that that’s here to say, to stay. I will caveat, though, and say, remember, the path to progress is not linear. And so while I do believe very strongly that the macro trend line is is a positive one, I do think yes, there will be moments of setback there will be moments where, you know, there are leaders who who stumble and who may organizations who have policies that are not the most inclusive or whatnot. But I would say that, that’s okay, let’s point those things out. Let’s be forgiving, let’s have grace. And then ultimately, let’s also hold our leaders and organizations accountable. And you know, I do think because of the Gen Z ers and others entering the workforce, I think they’re helping to make sure the stays.
29:21
I love it. I love it. Yeah, I mean, I think just like all humans, we don’t like change. And even if someone is kind of being dragged along on a change, they may revert back to something they’re more comfortable with, especially our senior leaders who I have a lot of empathy for, because I’ve talked about this on the show before, where they’ve spent decades operating in a certain way because of the rules they were given. Yeah, and then now all of a sudden, it’s like, all bets are off. You know, we’re not we’re bringing our personal selves to work. And we’re this and we’re that and I know it’s jarring for them, because they these habits got so entrenched for them for so long because that’s what they were indoctrinated in.
29:59
Totally That’s how they got to where they are. Right? Well, in one of the conversations that I have with leaders who have that sentiment is, we can embrace diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, we can be champions and allies. And that is not to the detriment of those in privilege, right, like we’re able to do a better job at being inclusive. And also continue to have the in value, the contributions of those who are in privileged, this isn’t zero sum. And you know, folks taking pie from each other. Let’s grow the pie and share the pie with everybody.
30:41
I love that. Let’s leave that there, then. Thank you so much, Gianna, for your insights today. And for the work that you do. We’ll have all your links in the show notes. But where can folks most easily connect with you? Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place. Great, great. And we will put that in the show notes link. So thank you for your time today.
30:59
Awesome. Thanks, Maria. It was great. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you liked it, please share it with your friends or colleagues. And until next time, and our next wonderful guest. Please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
If you ask everyone on your team if they know why your company exists, what would they say? And no, “to make money” just won’t cut it these days. You might not think such existential ponderings have a place when you’re fighting fires, closing deals, and growing the business – but nothing could be more important to your organization’s long-term success. Today, we talk with Denise Roberson, who shares her work and research showing that organizations with clear, actionable purposes enjoy many tangible and intangible benefits – profit and longevity being among the most impressive.
Today, we talk about what a Chief Purpose Officer does, and we parse out the word salad of purpose, vision, and mission so you have a better understanding on how they all work together. She shares examples from market leaders Unilever and others who are measuring the value and impact of purpose in more accurate ways. We also talk about big mistakes Boards and leaders make when thinking about purpose and what you can do to get maximum benefit instead.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
While vision, mission, and purpose all have different meanings, what is most important is that, within your organization, you are all working with the same vocabulary and all understand what you are talking about and what is most important.
Purpose is important for every aspect of business: employees, investors, consumers, customers, and management.
Empathy and purpose are important to every company, whether 100 or 100,000 employees. It makes a difference, it gives a business edge, and it is good for the world.
“Purpose has now become a really powerful operating system that goes across the top of the organization. It’s a great uniter: It’s got this juicy business case that helps attract top talent, reduce turnover, and protects against risks.” — Denise Roberson
About Denise Roberson, Chief Purpose Officer, Omnicom TBWA
In her role as the first-ever Chief Purpose Officer in the Omnicom and TBWA network, Denise is leading some of the biggest brands in the world to actuate their business case for purpose, through focusing on a scalable, differentiated, and business goals oriented approach. In this capacity, Denise is helping companies connect their brands to value and purpose, and using this unified strategy to create 21st-century value and growth across the entire stakeholder wheel. TBWA was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company and has worked with Fortune 500 and world-class brands around the globe such as Apple, Gatorade, Google, McDonalds, Intuit, Principal Financial Group, and the Grammy’s.
Denise is also serving as a marketing professor for Pepperdine University’s Presidents & Key Executives MBA program and has served in a board role for a number of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
If you ask everyone on your team if they know why your company exists, what would they say? And know to make money just won’t cut it these days. You might not think such existential ponderings have a place when you’re fighting fires, closing deals and growing the business. But nothing could be more important to your organization’s long term success. Today we talk with Denise Roberson, who shares her work and research showing that organizations with clear actionable purposes enjoy many tangible and intangible benefits, profit and longevity being among the most impressive in her role as the first ever Chief purpose officer in the Omnicom and TBWA network. Denise is leading some of the biggest brands in the world to actuate their business case for purpose through focusing on a scalable, differentiated and business goals oriented approach. She’s helping companies connect their brands to value and purpose. And using this unified strategy to create 21st century value and growth across all stakeholders. TBWA was named one of the world’s most innovative companies by Fast Company and has worked with Fortune 500 and world class brands around the globe, such as Apple Gatorade, Google McDonald’s into it, Principal Financial Group and the Grammys. Denise is also a marketing professor for Pepperdine University’s presidents and key executives MBA program, and is served in a board role for a number of for profit and not for profit organizations. Today we talk about what the heck a chief purpose officer does, we parse out the word salad of purpose, vision and mission, so you have a better understanding of how they all work together. She shares examples from market leaders, like Unilever and others who are measuring the value and impact of purpose in more accurate ways. And we talk about big mistakes boards and leaders make when thinking about purpose, and what you can do to get maximum benefit instead, take a listen.
Maria Ross 02:35
Welcome, Denise to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on this has been a little while in the making. But I’m so excited to talk about purpose, and your work with TBWA. And your work with clients and your work on helping companies create brands that mean something.
Denise Roberson 02:53
Oh, thank you, Maria. I’ve been excited and waiting for the day. I think we have so many points of intersection. It’s become incredible. So finally, we get to have this conversation.
03:03
I love it. I love it. So let’s start off real quickly you our chief purpose officer for Omni comms purpose collective and TBWA. Yes, for folks that are fuzzy on what that actually means and what you actually do. What does what’s the role of a chief purpose officer? Because not every organization is lucky enough to have one?
03:22
No, the role was actually made for me almost three years ago now. And it’s interesting because I still have people in our organization that are like, what do you actually do. And what I actually do is I go in mostly with the C suite and board of directors and I help them create their business case for purpose. So a lot of folks that are of a certain demographic, they didn’t come up the ranks in business with purpose. So there are a lot of preconceived notions of what it is, you know, it’s soft and fuzzy, it’s getting hit with a pretty stick. It’s all these things. But we all know in 2020, to post the events of 2020, it’s now become a really powerful operating system that goes across the top of the organization. It’s a great uniter, it’s got this juicy business case, that helps attract top talent, it helps reduce employee turnover, it helps protect against risks. So I always like to think of purpose as two halves to a hole, you have risk on one side, and growth and innovation on the other. So we really try and tap into those two or three spheres of influence, and develop the best business case we can specifically for the organization. So that’s where I spend my days.
04:39
Oh my gosh, I love it. Now do you do this for clients as well? Or is this just internal? No, I
04:44
mostly work on the client side. And I get lucky sometimes and get to do this internally for our own organization. But this is done a lot through our various clients. So it’s wonderful because I get to touch so many different industries and sectors and what you get To see time and time again is that they’re more alike than they are different.
05:04
Mm hmm. And what are what are some of the misconceptions about purpose? Because I imagine you probably get a lot of deer in the headlights stares when you start talking about purpose. And people going well, I don’t know, is that just like, an inspirational vision statement? Is that, you know, how do you go about helping them understand what purpose actually is? Tell us?
05:26
I think by deconstructing it, really looking at where its source of power lies. It’s a great uniter, it’s a great activator. McKenzie did a fantastic piece of research, looking at what they refer to as the purpose gap. And what they identified is over 80%, of vice presidents and above firmly believe they get their purpose at work. Well, unfortunately, 80% and above of mid level managers and frontline workers firmly believe they do not get their purpose of work. So it really sort of an earth why a lot of people don’t feel like they’re getting that it’s because it’s not getting out to the furthest ends of the organization. So we have to spend a lot of time and energy figuring out how do we activate and meet employees where they are? Then we broaden that sphere, how do we meet stakeholders where they are? How do we meet investors, where they are? How do we meet customers where they are, and really start to use this purpose as a unifying lens by which all these organizations can start making really key critical decisions to the business. And it’s fascinating what starts to happen when you hold that lens up. Because all of a sudden, a lot of organizations have this gut instinct that they have to respond to everything. No, you don’t. You don’t have to respond to everything. And as a matter of fact, if it’s not part of your core, not part of your purpose, I would suggest potentially not, and maybe holding back and really focusing your time, energy and effort, where you show up how you show up when you show up through your purpose. And it starts to anchor things.
07:05
And do you think the language actually matters? Because you know, people throw around things like I mean, for me, for example, with my brand strategy and brand story clients, we talk about vision and mission. And really, vision is the what’s the future state that we’re here for what I actually tried to define it as, what’s the future state that could potentially put us out of business right day that if it was achieved, you no longer need our company? Right? And that’s where that gets a little scary. But does it matter what it’s called in the organization? If it’s called vision or mission or purpose? I’d love to know if that yeah, that nomenclature makes a difference.
07:39
I think we’re having a lexicon nightmare right now. And people are using words interchangeably that aren’t interchangeable. So one of the things I always do is ask if they use a word, what does that mean to you? So all here things like ESG and purpose be swapped out. Sustainability gets swapped out all of these words start, you know, mission and purpose are swapped out. And I don’t think that anyone’s necessarily absolutely right or absolutely wrong, because we don’t have these universal definitions. But I do think it’s very important that you’re speaking the same language. So clearly delineating what you mean, when you say those words, especially with any client, and as a client is speaking to their key stakeholders. Everyone has to understand what they mean when they’re using those words. So I think it is important because the way I see purpose, purpose is the strategic operating system that goes across the arc. It’s the umbrella concept, and things like ESG and sustainability and Dei, they hang on to that purpose. Right. So all of a sudden, we’re starting to create these layers and how they connect together matters.
08:48
Exactly. And when we you know, we talk about brand architecture, that’s where I try to get them to, you know, that’s actually not a mission statement. That’s a vision statement, a mission statement is more about the actions that you take every day in support of the vision. So I think it’s I think you’re right, it’s absolutely about can everyone internally at least come to an agreement about how we’re using these words and what they mean to us. And maybe you have another word for it, maybe it’s not purpose, maybe it’s our philosophy or a credo or whatever it’s called. But it’s the important thing you’re saying is they need to have it, they need
09:18
to have it, they need to understand what it is and how it applies to them. Specifically, I have clients that are allergic to the word purpose, you say the word, they’re immediately going to check out on you because they’ve had some negative experience and they can’t get past it. So we use other words, we just figure out how to define what we’re talking about, and that’s the word we’ll use. But if you look at the epicenter of purpose, this is over oversimplified, but it really gets to the why question. Why does the company exist? Sometimes it has to do with the founders story. There’s usually a really deep rooted explanation as to why the world would miss that or organization if they work no longer to exist. So the why is usually what we start as the epicenter and start moving out those concentric rings to build that in a meaningful way.
10:11
Well, I love this conversation, because I have a lot of clients in tech and a lot of startup clients where the company started by a technologist who just had a really cool idea for how to make something work better. And they struggle with this whole mission vision thing, because they’re like, but I don’t get it. It’s just there was this problem, and we created this piece of technology to solve it. We don’t think there’s any other story to it than that, oh, there’s
10:32
always more story to it.
10:33
Exactly. So tell us about that.
10:36
It’s part of you know, if you think about an onion and peeling back those layers, if you get a client like that, that genuinely believes we just did this, because it was the right thing to do. If we can make money doing it, we can make money doing that. Well, if you would like to have employees in the next 10 years, they care a whole lot. This next generation, we have five generations in the workforce right now. Yes, and the upcoming generations care a lot. salary isn’t number one, it’s not even two or three, it’s down at like five. So that’s usually compelling reason. Think about having employees and your well being and their turnover and their tenure with your organization. So we’ve got all those interesting facts. And then we look at the sustainability of an organization if we want a sustainable organization, and I don’t mean it being you know, kind to the environment. But if we want it to have longevity, and we want it to be here, it’s one of the cornerstones. So another facet, you know, it’s good for the company, this is good business. And we’ve got a lot of rich data from our friends in academia, and I sit on both sides of the hall. So I’ve got a lot of academic threads that have rigorous and robust research. And then we’ve got our consultants that have done some phenomenal things. And we now have a trend line, that’s pretty hard to debate. It’s, if someone now asks me to debate, the business case, I’m like, oh, yeah, I will, I’m happy to that’s the academic and male, gladly play both sides. And take your argument, and try and you know, kind of 360 find my way all the way around. But it’s so rich, it’s so detailed. It’s so deep now from every one of our key stakeholders, right? It’s kind of hard to say it frivolous, or it’s a law center, or some of these things I hear all the time.
12:31
Well, I think that’s part of the the job of, of those of us that are brand shepherds or communicators is to help give them the words because I find it’s not. Once I pull the story out of them, then I can articulate a vision and a mission a purpose, and it resonates with them. But they were not able to find those words themselves, right. And it’s just, I am convinced of the power of being able to articulate an idea because that’s what people can get behind. That’s the story behind stories
13:02
are the great thing throughout the ages that have united people and connected them and good storytelling is where this lives on in perpetuity. So super important.
13:13
Well, and not to mention, you know, you were talking about employees, which a lot of the research for the empathy edge was around that about millennials who are now in their 40s but and Gen Z coming behind them, how they’re not putting up with the same crap no put up with when we were coming up. Right. And I have always said this, for folks that have been listening for a while they’ve heard me say this ad nauseam. I’m like good on them. Because it makes it better for all of us that they’re just asking for the things we were too scared of exactly. We think we had the right, exactly ask for. And so not only that, but the idea of what consumers are demanding, whether it’s b2b or b2c, it makes no doubt their their purchase decisions, say something about them, they do. And they want to become part of communities that are aligned with their values, whatever those values are. So if you have that purpose, it stands to reason that you’re putting up the flag. Yeah, of this is this is who we are. If you know, if you’re I always say if you’re down with this, come work with us, come partner with us come buy from us,
14:12
right? And I would put investors on that list. Now. Yeah, we are seeing investors vote with their dollars. And we’ve never seen an explosion of ESG activity, purpose driven activity like we have in the markets. And it’s been really fascinating. And it’s happened both ways, because we’ve seen investors that are drawn towards companies with this values alignment. But we’ve also seen activist investors in the House who are frustrated or upset by the lack of alignment. And they can do a lot in a short amount of time. So we’ve seen both scenarios where its investors saying our values are not aligned, and we’re going to do something about it.
14:52
Now that’s interesting. That kind of takes me off on a little bit of a tangent because I’ve been reading a lot about how some ESG initiatives are getting sidelined because The state of the economy and the state of the markets. Are you seeing that? Or were you seeing sort of a robust commitment to purpose? Do you see that waning at all in the face of economic pressure?
15:11
I don’t in the sense that the organizations that are already using purpose as a source of growth and innovation, they’ve already seen the magic, it’s good business, it’s helping the business become more sustainable, and its growth in its trajectory. And all of those wonderful, beautiful little bits and pieces of the business case, for the companies who haven’t, and there may be very early on their journey, of course, they’re starting to ask the question, can we invest in this and still be good to our organization? And I think that’s a fine question to ask.
15:49
So can you give us some examples of folks that are doing this, right?
15:53
It’s interesting, because no matter who I say, there’s no perfect organization, there’s no perfect person.
16:00
So if I do it, 80%, right, yeah. 70%, right.
16:03
Unilever, I think is a great example. Because when I walk into a boardroom with the C suite, or the board of directors, they always want to get to that bottom line case. And it’s very, very difficult to compare apples to apples. That’s something that not a lot of organizations can do. Unilever does it beautifully. They’ve actually bifurcated their products into different portfolios that are based on the sustainable portfolio. And then nonsustainable portfolio. And what we can see is that sustainable portfolio is dramatically outperforming the regular portfolio every time year over year. So for the people who want to get right to that bottom line, which I think is a mistake, I think there are a lot of other wonderful details that ladder up to the bottom line. But they’re also very important to be measured, but I think Unilever can definitely hold its torch as the standout when we’re talking about that metric.
17:01
Awesome. Awesome. And that’s what caused that initiative within Unilever, was it consumer pressure, was it just gauging the winds of change, you know, that they were trying to create more sustainability to be more environmentally conscious. So they wouldn’t, you know, be made obsolete. Like what I think
17:20
it was within that nation, I was not in the room, but I do have friends that were there was a transition and a CEO, it was trying to define what the new era was going to be about. There was something about that, that really spoke to them in the early days. And that was their purpose statement for a really long time was, you know, really leaning into making every consumer sustainable. And I think it’s grown from there. And now they’re doing these wonderful things where they’re looking into supply chain, and they’re encouraging more diversity, not only in their employee groups, but in their supplier groups. And they’ve definitely kind of left the entry level Long, long ago. And they’re able to really fine tune and make these programs so much more robust. And I really commend them for that, because it’s kind of this great golden star to hold out for everyone to say, Oh, the financial case is very much there. This is really causing, you know, a ripple effect. That ladders up to fantastic business and growth. But we’re also having profound effect on the planet and people. Right, so it’s that win win win.
18:26
I know, I just I don’t see how there’s a loss there for anyone. And that’s why, you know, they’re one of the case studies in my book, The Empathy edge because of the ability to do it at scale. Absolutely. You know, because I think a lot of times, we tend to think, oh, this purpose driven stuff, this empathy stuff, it’s for smaller companies. And there is a way to scale it that way. You know, I have examples in my book, I’m sure you’ve worked with larger organizations that are global in nature, it doesn’t even matter. Because it’s just a collection of people, no matter what, no matter what 100 or 100,000.
18:59
That’s the thing, I will tell you, the companies that start with purpose at the epicenter from the beginning have an advantage just because it’s built into their DNA. So we have our B corpse, we have some organizations. That’s what their intention was all along. So it’s a bit easier because their hiring practices, most of their goals, their setting, and the KPIs that they’re tracking, all support that notion from the beginning. But it does not mean that a massive multinational, can’t have the same effect. It’s a bit harder, it’s a bit slower. It’s all the things you would think because of the size but you look at a company like p&g, who is also doing some fantastic things. I just had the good fortune of spending some time with their chief sustainability officer and she blew me away. I actually had some of the most fantastic stories of how she got senior leadership, particularly the CEOs, and they had quite a bit of turnover in a short amount of time. How she got them to own it and really make it theirs and I was just putting in her hands. Yeah.
20:02
Oh my gosh. Well, and that actually brings me to another question. What are the what are the ingredients required? If a company is going to say, Yeah, we want to, we want to commit to purpose, we’ve got to actually define what our purpose is. Yes. Does that is it a combination of leadership, driving the conversation, but then also getting input from all levels of the organization? Does there have to sort of be one champion? That is, you know, again, you know, with the with the expression too many cooks in the kitchen, you know, when you actually have to get to a point where we need to decide what our purpose statement credo is going to be. Is does it have to be clear from the onset about, you know, this is where we’re gathering all the input, but then these are the people that are going to make the final decision, you
20:50
should be interested in the tactics, yeah, you should try and endeavor for that, what it usually ends up being is you have to have the CEOs buy in, if you do not have CEO buy in, it’s destined to fail itself. It is, and it’s tedious and difficult. And for your passion players that have shown up, this really means something to them, it’s just a source of incredible frustration. But I will add to that, getting your CEOs personal purpose to mesh with the corporation’s purpose, that’s where the magic happens, when they start to see how that works. And how that intersects. One plus one starts to equal four, or five or six, it’s really an exponential growth factor. So I think you have to have the CEO, but I wouldn’t necessarily have the CEO own it. Because the CEO has a lot of other tasks during exactly. You need the CEO to champion it, but you need a person to own it. And then you need a committee to support it. But I believe strongly, yes, you’ve got to have the participation, you’ve got to have the interaction and the collaboration. And I’ll use the word co creation, with your employees at every level, if it isn’t speaking to them, and they can’t see themselves in the purpose. It’s a lost cause.
22:09
So true, so true. So how you got on my radar is that I read an amazing article that you were interviewed for, which was called five mistakes boards make when thinking about purpose, and as you said, it could have been five mistakes leaders make when thinking about purpose. So can you talk to us a little bit about what those pitfalls are maybe just a few highlighted ones, I’ll put a link to this article in the show notes for my listeners. So don’t you worry, you’ll get all five, but maybe other some highlights in there to nice that we can, we can dig into and maybe what’s the antidote? For some of those.
22:43
One of them is what we were just talking about. And I had the good fortune of writing this article with off Dale Aziz. And he’s just fantastic. He’s also a fellow purpose practitioner. So it was us really dreaming about what we wished we had when we were sitting in the boardroom, especially with people who have not come up with purpose as something that was a lever in an organization that had power and a lot of potential behind it for this, you know, notion of growth for this notion of how to innovate, and for reputational risk. And again, we’re kind of coming back to that. But the last one, I will tell you, I got a lot of chatter online about and that was not having a Purpose Committee and assuming everyone is responsible dollar for every time I can archy, I sit on a lot of boards. And you know, there’s a lot of we will leave out the first part, but the splaining Oh, everyone’s responsible for that. I’m like, great, who owns it? Who’s responsible for the KPIs and measuring this and making sure it’s enacted? Then you get the kind of HA base, I have Great Danes, and they’re infamous for making the you know, cut a Hefei sucking their head to the right. That’s it. And I’m like, oh, then we have a problem. Because even though yes, I agree. Everybody should own this. If someone doesn’t own it, it’s never going to be developed into something that’s meaningful, rich and robust. And if we’re not doing it at the board, or the C suite level, the rest of the organization is not going to perceive that it’s important. Yeah. So that, to me is something that it’s that notion of modeling. You’re asking your organization to adopt it, your board had better adopted and your C suite leaders have to adopt it. So I think the board sometimes exempts themselves. And that’s for the executive team. That’s for the employees. That’s where whatever the truth is, no, you should be mirroring a great culture and if the culture is purpose driven, you had better be purpose driven on the board. And there are just some key things that at the end of the day if you’re missing them, boards not representing the community that was another one that I was that
25:02
was that was one that really resonated with me, tell us what you mean by that. So or doesn’t represent the community. That’s a big mistake. We’ve
25:08
got a lot of dei issues right now that people are contending with and trying to rectify a lot of wrongs that have been out there. One of the fastest ways to identify whether or not that board is taking things seriously is to look at its composition. Does it look like the community it’s representing? Or does it look like a lot of unfortunate other boards where you see the same gender the same same age demographic. And if that’s the case, you should probably reconsider, because you’re not representing your stakeholders, if that’s the case. So I think it’s really important to look long and hard. And not just against one or two of these slices, and demographic, but multiple slices. Age is one of them. I think it’s really important. There’s a, like I said, Five generations in the workforce, we should probably have people that can speak and represent them in a really authentic way. Gender salutely. As we all know, the big fight is California sort of kick things off. And you know, women on boards is become something that we’ve got so much data to prove that the boards and the companies improve.
26:16
I had someone asked me once about that and say, Well, I’ve never seen any, you know, we talk a lot about the fact that if you have diverse executive teams and diverse boards, but is there actually any data and I literally sent this person an email with like, nine, just just nine good ones, I could find that like, how’s that? First? I want to say that my page of a Google search do more and Yeah, well, the other one that really resonated with me, too, was the first one which is focusing on the short term versus the long term, because this is an issue. I don’t, it almost doesn’t matter what vector if it’s purpose, if it’s brand, if it’s customer loyalty, customer experience, there’s there’s such this desire to shortcut everything. I don’t know if that’s because we’re not lifers anymore in our jobs, that we just think about, like the next two or three years that we’re going to be in this role. And then it’s somebody else’s problem. I don’t know where that comes from, but But how can you get an organization to think about purpose, longer term, even if those players might not be around?
27:19
I have empathy, first of all, because exactly short term, you know, those quarterly earnings calls, they’re no joke, and they’re no fun, yeah, it will get put through is really difficult. So I have a lot of empathy, because you can’t abandon the short term wins, no, but you can recontextualize them, you can look at those wins as stepping stones towards your long term goals, you can reframe the conversation to be looking at value creation. And once you really set that as the epicenter, the conversation begins to change. The problem is you have a lot of demands coming in. And if you aren’t able to have alignment on your leadership team, and at the board level, you don’t have the armor to be able to say, we’re not putting all of our time, energy and effort into those short term goals. Those short term goals are going to ladder up to our long term goals. It takes a lot of humility, it takes a lot of strength, it takes a lot of action and support to get to that place. But the companies that do there’ll be along around for a very, very long time. So I think it’s really important that we start reframing that conversation. And the good news is if we look at our investors, our employees and our customers, they’re looking for a lot more in terms of value, alignment, values, alignment, and having those the value ladder up to creating value. So it’s a good time to have those conversations. But you’ve got to have people that are supporting you, you’ve got to have, you know, like I said, the leadership team has to have the Board of Directors agree on on all of this. And you’ve got to have those concentric rings of support to be able to make that transition. Once you do you can see it you can see the believers, you can see the IP as you can see all these organizations that are able to do it and do it successfully and are still incredibly financially viable.
29:21
I love that. And, you know, to to stress your point about how important it is the tenor that the board sets because I’ve been a part of many startups in the the merry go round of Silicon Valley and the first bust in 1999, and then recent recessions. And if if that board is the one that’s just focused on the short term pressure, that’s where it’s all coming from. It’s it’s from them. It’s not necessarily that the leaders wouldn’t like to do things differently. It’s they’re, they’re doing those quarterly reports every year, every every quarter, and they’re the ones that have to take the heat right And so if but if you have a supportive board that has a longer term vision, and is willing to be a little bit more risk tolerant. Yep. Then what you’re what I hear you saying is that it’s worth it. It’s worth it.
30:14
Absolutely. And if I understand Patagonia is not a publicly traded company, but they just set the bar for this new expectation. I mean, Mother Earth is their only stakeholder now. And right, I think all of us that read the news, were just like, wow, just when you think that Patagonia clothing right now, yes, when you think they can’t set the bar any higher. I know, there you have it. And it was incredible to see. And it was incredible to see the reaction, because people kind of felt like we had hit some sort of ceiling. And all of a sudden, they just blew it clean out of the box. And people were like, Okay, we have a lot more to do, and a further way to go, and it sort of energized and excited people. So it was wonderful to see once again, our champions went out there and just blew apart these conceptions of how it had to be. Yes, that a whole new standard for what could be
31:08
right. And I love that, you know, these, these companies come from positions of strength, Rei just did something recently where they said health care for everybody, regardless of whether you’re a part time employee or a full time employee, all these little actions, the thing that frustrates me, and it might frustrate you too, is when I see all these other leaders lautering these, these actions, but then being unwilling to take them in their own organization, like they have all those, they have all those management books on their bookshelf, and those leadership books on their bookshelf. But yet, when it comes to their day to day, yeah, and how they’re leading their companies, it’s like they forget, the supports are
31:45
there. It’s kind of deep held. And I think antiquated belief that if you want to have a successful business, these are the metrics we have to hit and be measuring. And the truth is, it no longer holds true. society changed. All of our key stakeholders changed. And we’re now accountable brands and one of the things that I love brands used to be singularly created in a funnel. One way communication, the company was totally in control, they would push it out. Brands are co created now. And there’s nothing you can do about it. And the company itself has very little control of their own brand. They Bray they can hold on to bits and pieces of it. Right? The truth is, it’s being co created across that entire stakeholder echo system at lightning speed with technology, what it is today, and levels of transparency, what they are, the consequences have never been higher.
32:39
So and I always I always love to tell my clients that very lesson, but also say so all you can do is intentionally take the actions you can take to make that a narrative you want. And so you don’t have to throw your hands up and be like, well, it’s whatever people want to say we are no it’s going to be all what they say it is and how they perceive it is going to be based on all the actions big and small that you take. So isn’t it in your best interest to do the best intentions have the best intentionality about those actions so that you’re in sync with those customers? And again, hope and pray that their perception of the brand is what you actually wanted them to have? Well, I genuinely are Yes. Oh
33:23
100% were in alignment. But I also describe it as putting deposits of goodwill and credibility in the bank. It’s not if a disaster happens, it’s when it’s when it’s going to happen. The transparency is so high now due to all the technology we have the fact that every person is a citizen journalist. I mean, we just have employees striking now and boycotting. I mean, we have so much happening now. It’s when Yeah. So if you’re making those deposits along the way, the chances of those stakeholder groups are giving you giving you the benefit of the doubt, believing that there was no mal intent if there wasn’t any
34:00
right and that it’s Yeah, exactly. Asterisk. Yeah. But also understanding that that’s an outlier, not the norm. Exactly. It’s when you get that for good. You’ve got a track record. Yes, exactly. And it’s just like, like you said, it’s deposits in the bank. And it’s, it’s when you consistently under deliver and let people down that that’s the problem. But if you can build up that goodwill, enough. And by the way, circling back around, that’s where being committed to your purpose, helps people say, Well, this is my career, I understand.
34:31
Yeah, empathy, all those beautiful things that work together harmoniously to create this greater hole. They all have to be firing and they all have to be utilized constantly. It’s not a one and done. You don’t do something truthful once and that’s it, you abandon it, you have to do this daily. It has to be part of the fabric of who you are as an organization. It has to be part of the culture. It has to be a part of everything you do, but when you do it and you do Well write, it’s amazing how much strength it provides when you need it most. Right?
35:06
I mean, I wrote about the empathy veneer in my book, which is the you know, we’re empathetic because we give to the food bank once a year at the holidays, right? So I, I also sense from what you’ve said today, there’s there can be a purpose veneer unless you are actually walking your talk and embedding this, I call it operationalizing empathy, but operationalizing purpose salutely Not just as we talked about the pretty poster on the wall. But what are you doing with hiring? What are you doing with rewards? What are you doing with performance evaluations? What are you doing with culture, it has to be at every level of the organization has
35:40
to be embedded across the entire organization. And I always suggest to people do as much as you can internally before you push it out externally. Yes, hold on to it. It’s your baby, like nurture it, grow it. Make sure every level of the organization understands how to see themselves and how to participate in the purpose before you feel like shouting it from the rooftops. Right. It’s better than make it genuine. That’s it. And it’s better to have difficult conversations internally with friends than it is with the markets. That’s a little upset with you.
36:13
Well, this has been such good stuff. Denise, thank you so much how, as I like I mentioned, we’re going to have your links in the show notes. But where can people find out more about you or more about the work that you’re doing with
36:23
LinkedIn is always a great place. It’s where I keep most of my current articles, and you can find me pretty easily. So that’s always a fantastic place to connect. I love meeting new people. I think that’s how we met very first time. Yes. So it’s just a wonderful opportunity to get to say hello to get to figure out other people’s interest to get to learn more about each other. So I welcome the LinkedIn connections.
36:48
Awesome. Alright, folks, you heard it here. Connect with Denise writer note first to tell her that you heard her on the podcast, so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell or something. And I just I really enjoyed talking with you. I could have talked for you with you too. About this for another hour. So
37:03
I think I could have well thank you, Maria. This has been fantastic. And hopefully we’ll get to do it again. Yes.
37:09
And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. As always, if you liked what you heard, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And don’t forget to rate and review and until next time and our next insightful guest. Please remember that cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
The “future of work” is not in the future – It’s already here, so let’s start calling it the new era of business and work. Especially coming out of the Pandemic, many leaders struggle with how to adapt to changing work requirements, current business challenges, and different employee needs, motivations and demands.
Today, Sophie Wade and I talk about how Millennial and Gen Z habits are shaping new social contracts at work, why we understand how hard it is for seasoned executives to adapt to this new reality, and what it takes to create a more human-centric environment. We dig into the challenges of generational differences at work, where they stem from, and how empathy is the way to bridge those distances to increase engagement, understanding, and performance. We also chat about how work has changed from linear and routine to more networked and complex – and why the leadership skills that got you where you are might need a tune-up in today’s reality. Sophie will share a few practical ways you can improve your culture.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
The last 3 years of the pandemic has expanded the mindset of learning and leading – ideas are now more likely to come from all levels of the organization than before.
There is a difference between using technology functionally and using technology intuitively. The same goes for the evolving workplace. Younger generations are more likely to adapt to changing work environments than older generations because it is all they have known.
AI is not replacing your job. AI cannot replace the human touch and human interactions and human relationships.
“Many leaders now are missing out on the contributions of their youngest employees who have a feeling for the power of technology that we just can’t have.”
— Sophie Wade
About Sophie Wade, Work Futurist, International Keynote Speaker, Author of Empathy Works
Sophie Wade is a work futurist, international keynote speaker, author of Empathy Works, and authority on Future-of-Work issues. She is the host of the widely popular Transforming Work podcast and over 450,000 learners have taken her four LinkedIn courses which cover empathy, Future-of-Work skills, and Gen Z. Sophie is the Founder and Workforce Innovation Specialist at Flexcel Network, a Future-of-Work consultancy. Sophie’s executive advisory work and transformative workshops help companies adapt and update their work environments and attract, engage, and retain their multigenerational and distributed talent. She helps corporations maximize the benefits and minimize the disruption in their transition to talent-focused, digitalized work environments.
The future of work is not in the future. It’s already here. So let’s start calling it the new era of business and work. But especially coming out of the pandemic. So many leaders struggle with how to adapt to change in work requirements, current business challenges and different employee needs, motivations and demands. Sophie Wade is a work futurist, international keynote speaker, authority on future of work issues and author of empathy works the key to competitive advantage in a new era of work. She’s the host of the wildly popular transforming work podcast, and over 450,000 learners have taken her for LinkedIn courses, which cover empathy, future of work skills, and Gen Z. Sophie is the founder and Workforce Innovation specialist at flex cell network, a future of work consultancy, Sophie’s Executive Advisory work and transformative workshops, help companies adapt and update their work environments and attract engage and retain their multigenerational and distributed talent. She helps corporations maximize the benefits and minimize the disruption in their transition to talent focused, digitalized work environments. Today, we talk about how millennial and Gen Z habits are shaping new social contracts at work. Why we understand how hard it is for seasoned executives to adapt to this new reality, and what it takes to create a more human centric environment. We dig into the challenges of generational differences at work, where they stem from, and how empathy is the way to bridge those distances to increase engagement, understanding and performance. We also chat about how work has changed from linear and routine to more networked and complex and why the leadership skills that got you where you are, might need a tune up in today’s reality, Sophie will share a few practical ways that you can improve your leadership and culture. So you don’t want to miss this one. Stay tuned.
Maria Ross 03:49
Hello, Sophie and welcome to the empathy edge podcast to talk about the future of work and how to create a thriving workplace culture. That is a popular topic here on our podcast.
Sophie Wade 04:01
Wonderful to be here. Mary Maria, thank you so much for having me.
Maria Ross 04:05
And before we get started, I just want to hear a little bit about your story and what brought brought you to this work of you know, a future of work consultancy. Just briefly tell us how you got here.
Sophie Wade 04:17
Well, I have to go way back unfortunately, I did science at the end of high school didn’t want to do any more science in college. So I started Chinese, and then Chinese got me actually going to move to Hong Kong. And after Hong Kong, I lived I live in France. I lived in Germany, I’ve lived in Italy for a bit and in the States. So I’ve lived in lots of different lives and worked in many different countries. And as a result, I really, in order to be successful, I really had to lean in I had to try to simulate try and get inside people’s heads trying to understand what was going on. And that really that is about empathizing and so without even realizing it. As I was writing this book, and then sort of looking back I was like, Oh yeah, that really makes sense. offense. So it really was being in lots of different other environments, cultures, that I had to really try and adjust. And so I also didn’t have any preconceptions about what work should be like, because living in Germany, it’s very different work culture, nobody works at the weekend, apart from tech folks, I was working in a very early tech startup there. So we did have people working over the weekend. But mostly, you know, people don’t. And so when I came to the States, and we’re looking at all of this, and how much workplace was changing, I didn’t have any kind of like, what work is always like this, because it isn’t. And so that really, I think, really gave me a much more much, if so very open mind to what it was like and what it could be like, because I know that it’s different everywhere. And therefore that sort of gave me a much easier foundation for looking at much more empathetic sort of way of looking at kind of like what could be
Maria Ross 06:02
absolutely well, and I think I think so many of us empathy activists have come to this from this realization later in our careers, where we realize actually what we’d been doing to be successful all along, was actually empathy. And, for me, I mean, I can speak for me, it’s that we get that curiosity that trying to get to know other people that were in different functions or in different areas of the business, and trying to create good relationships with them. And then people wondering, Well, how did you get that person to do that project? We can never get him to do anything, you know? And it’s like, well, I just got to know him, you know? So it was It wasn’t until I did a StrengthsFinder that I came to realize, oh, that’s actually called empathy. Because I would never describe myself as an I had a person do I had
Sophie Wade 06:46
Well, the thing is, yes. I got into the future work. And I didn’t, it wasn’t kind of I guess, empathy is the thing. But I had three sort of pillars that clients kept asking to me speak about and, and work on with them. One was the changing styles of leadership, which I called leading from within or, you know, it was more oversight and more coaching, those type of things. The second was inter generational challenges or communications or misinterpretations. And the third was the decentralized workforce and people working sort of remotely, which has been, you know, telecommuting, which has been going on for years and years. Absolutely. And the key one really was about so many people wasn’t even Gen Z, it was lamentations, loud and clear about millennials, those darn millennials, blah, blah, blah. And so many people complaining that I was like, Okay, fine, I sat down, and I looked at all a lot tons and tons of research. And I was like, hang on a second. They’re very, very similar to you know, anybody else at that age, however, where we are, where careers are, how technology has changed things for them, is very different, and how much technology that they’ve grown up with all the rest of it. So it was really putting myself in their shoes. And then I was like, Well, okay, that’s that’s empathy. Okay, so let me let me just try and communicate that if you’re going to try and understand these people, and stop complaining about them, or completely differently, just much more understanding, right, just put yourself in your shoes first. And so empathy became the solution, or the way of explaining it. And then I realized, of course, that for remote working and for changing styles of leadership, when it’s much less about, it’s much less about ego, and much more about empathy, which is a chapter in my first book, that that’s where I was like, oh, empathy is the solution. And then after that, and then for a while, it was kind of like the secret sauce that I never talked about. But in that, like in a presentation, it would finally come out to the end, right? Right. Later on, it became some clients are comfortable for me to lead with it. And other times, it sort of still comes out as a solution, just depending on the audience.
Maria Ross 09:00
I love that. And, you know, I’ve had on on the show before a woman named Lisa and Stromberg, who did an episode A while back on on 21st century leadership. And her organization is a cultural consultancy. She also teaches a leadership class at Stanford, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But she, they have they have a model at her company where empathy is one of the pillars of being a 21st century successful leader. And, you know, yeah, we weren’t talking about those kinds of things. I’m Gen X, you know, we didn’t talk about those kinds of things back then. And oh, no, and even just in the course of the work that I’m doing, you know, I started writing my book in 2017 2016. And it was like, Okay, well, I can’t say empathic, because people are going to think that’s too woowoo for the business world. I even chose like, empathetic, even though I could have used empathic or, you know, so that the way we’ve had to sort of make it palatable for people to embrace that this is not weakness. This is not about acquiescing to every case. Easy demand, which I talk a lot about in terms of Gen Z, and but I’m really getting people to, like, pull up a chair and listen. And it sounds like you’ve done that with your clients to like, whatever entry point you need to get in there. Eventually, they’re gonna hear about it. Yeah,
Sophie Wade 10:16
Right. And that really is empathy really, because, you know, if I’m going to try and communicate to somebody, I need to understand where they’re coming from. And I recognize that the empathy word is so loaded. And just, it’s not going to be helpful. There’s no point in saying it, because it’s going to become a barrier rather than a solution. So So human centric, or just, you know, it’s talk about a human understanding. And, you know, and those being the words because, you know, even different mindsets that Oh, I’m so glad you’ve written a book about being kind of nice in the office. And I think I talked about that being once as being not what it’s about.
Maria Ross 10:54
Exactly, exactly. I think those myths of empathy are so powerful of being able to bust those for people. And I’m sure when you do your presentations as well, you kind of see a collective sigh of relief from especially some senior leaders about explaining to them what empathy actually is. So, I would love to hear more about you know, given that you run a future of work, consultancy future of work is a buzzword, it’s a trending hashtag right now. But what are the actual challenges you’re hearing from leaders around dealing with the future of work? Is it is it as basic as I don’t understand what that means to? You know, how do I better prepare? What are you hearing from clients?
Sophie Wade 11:33
Well, the future of work is here, it arrived in 2020.
Maria Ross 11:37
Kind of present of work?
Sophie Wade 11:38
Yes, yes, well, I typically am talking about the new era of business and work because it feels weird to be talking about the future when it’s here. The the reality, though, is that most people are not in the future of work, whereas the environment is the future of work. And that’s where so much of the strain is, because if it was already pretty uncomfortable, prior to the pandemic, the pandemic accelerated the arrival of huge work, because it is so much so much driven by technology and the technology implementations that we have been doing for the last 2030 years, but then really accelerated to those of this sort of, you know, non incremental leap, that we haven’t really been able to, to accommodate very easily. So it is, it is very challenging. And I think the pain and the struggle that everybody is dealing with now, which is, you know, in addition to all the economic challenges, from where we are, from the pandemic, from dissipating disruptions, to all those things a lot, you know, what I do say is that most, probably close to 90% 89% of the characteristics that we were dealing with, during the pandemic, were actually the future of work. This, you know, nonlinear pivoting, changing lots of different changing behaviors, new software being implemented, changing customer behaviors, which then meant you had to change your behavior, then how are you going to the, you know, the cycles, the feedback loops, all of this, I mean, there’s a lot that’s changing, and has been changing the nature of work being not so linear, much more networked, non routine, non routine work has been growing, you know, very strongly in the last 30 years, and the Harvard Business Review their last the last issue, the 20, November, December 2021. Issue, so the project economy has arrived, you know, and that has been building for for 20 years or so, it would actually explain that in Germany, between 2009 2019, the percentage of GDP that was a sort of attributable to projects became got to 41% in 2019. And what that means it’s non routine work. And it’s often are mostly working together closely in teams. And that’s where que empathy is when we’re working very closely together in unpredictable conditions at a faster pace, because we’re so interconnected by their technology, that’s when we need to be able to understand each other better. And that’s sort of how I approach it. But looking at how much change there has been, and this is what I saw, not obviously, not the pandemic, but the two in 2014, when I saw what this future work thing was called, because I was in workplace flexibility and had been since 2011. And then this this umbrella term, which encompass so much more, all driven by it by technology, or mostly, I mean, the beats societal changes as well. That was when I sort of was like, Whoa, that’s going to be tough. Yeah. And people have known people, some people have have been there that got there there, you know, have put a lot more flexibility into the system and use and using that technology and thinking about things in a very different way. But but we have so many legacy ways of thinking structure frameworks, that it’s very hard and what the pandemic was able to do was like, shake things up a lot. and be thinking differently and be pivoting more and be, you know, assigning roles in different ways and sort of helping us catalog and record how we worked in the workflow and sort of changing that a bit. But there has been this tendency, obviously, you know, as we emerge from the pandemic, to try and go back to what felt safe and comfortable and slower, but but that’s not where we are.
Maria Ross 15:22
Exactly, exactly. And more of that emphasis on humanity at work. I mean, I think that’s really, that’s really the biggest acceleration I’ve seen, is the fact that we are, we have now because we were in each other’s homes with Zoom, right? We were we saw the kids and the pets and the juggling the this and that. We were able to develop empathy by seeing our colleagues and even our teams as human beings as whole human beings.
Sophie Wade 15:49
Exactly.
Maria Ross 15:50
And I think there’s there’s a level of patience and understanding. I mean, not that we’re still not in a hustle culture. But there’s there’s a level especially in corporate that I’ve seen of patients and understanding that I did not see a few years ago, do you? Would you say that’s true?
Sophie Wade 16:06
So I would have said, Yes, but this new research, which shows that we are less, the title of the article that I read was about the research was like is the pandemic has turned us into jerks? Well, what he was basically saying is that out at the very beginning of the pandemic, apparently, and I read this in great detail, because I was not happy about Trinity College tree and monkey different. Empathy, it’s like that, I think. And it,
Maria Ross 16:38
what was the point of the article, just just that we are,
Sophie Wade 16:41
We have come out of this less effectively less empathetic towards each other. Now, I think I haven’t, I do want to go and dig into the actual layers of the data. Because I think there are so many other elements to this, this political divisiveness that there’s leaders that we have, you know, around the world, that are not helping any economic situations, which are not helping. So I don’t, I don’t know whether all of that really sets but but a lot of the, the, the data that they were gathering about how people feel about each other, how much more supportive they are now that it does, it was better with with younger generations, um, in terms of supporting each other. But it hasn’t come out to be now that we’re out of this, that we’re actually in a better place. And I do, you know, I mean, we do see this generally now sort of it we have emerged that there is this sort of seems to be a battle in the workplace, about this sort of pool, which often unfortunately, seems to be between generations. You know, we need to be working, go back to working like this, or no, we should be working more, you know, flexibility operationally. And that does tend to be coming from the younger generations, even though it’s actually I see it but mean much more of a need in this new type of work environment. But it’s, it’s, it’s causing a lot of strain.
Maria Ross 18:06
So let’s talk a little bit about the generations, because that’s always a hot button. And, you know, a lot of the research I did for my book was about the attitudes of millennials and Gen Z, and how they are changing the conversation of what work means. workplace culture. You know, quite frankly, I’m, I’m cheering them on, because they’re brave enough to ask for the things that we were too scared to ask for, like respect at work and flexibility. And the, you know, ability to bring my real self to work. And then you know, and in doing so, to provide immense innovation and value and loyalty as a result. So what are you seeing in your work around the generational conflict?
Sophie Wade 18:48
So I look at this as being something which is natural to any of us, we have more of a second world war, there’s been all this research into psychology, understanding how our brains work, you know, we don’t want to let that kind of stuff happen again. And so that information has been coming through, it wasn’t there were both Gen X’s. It wasn’t there when we were growing up. And we weren’t gonna grow up in England. And, you know, therapy still isn’t, you know, as acceptable. As it is here in the US. We’re in which I applaud here. And so the information the understand that that we have now, which as parents, boomers and X’ers as parents are bringing up our children in a different way, you know, I mean, I do I did find out that in the 1950s, not with one up but there was still 1960s, that the British whatever the British Pediatric Association has called the way that they they explained it. If you hug your children, you tell them you love them, it will make them weak. Now, that doesn’t help anybody. So, so it’s it’s, it’s not that we’re different. It’s that we have as parents, I believe.
Maria Ross 20:06
Yeah
Sophie Wade 20:07
We have learned we were bringing up these kids, they’re the ones, we’re still the people who are in the workforce who are complaining about those kids. But we’re the ones who raise them completely. And so the information understanding, and then what I see happen is that of course, they pick up the tools that we taught them to advocate, we’ve taught them to be logical, we turn to the look at the data. And we’ve taught them to do what makes sense. And then they come into the workforce, and we say, don’t use those tools don’t use, you know, those efficiency things don’t be, you know, trying to use the, you know, whatever, Product Manager don’t
Maria Ross 20:40
question everything, which you tell Don’t, don’t do not growing up, ya
Sophie Wade 20:44
know? So this is, this is real challenge of these months, just we’ve created, you know, what are you gonna do with it? So I think we all need to, it’s not that they’re any different. We are the ones we were the ones who created this technology that is sophisticated, and advanced and mobile, and can be used in so many different amazing ways. And, and we actually have also trained the people who are going to be using them, and then we complain about what it does
Maria Ross 21:09
well, and also there, we can’t underestimate this idea of being digitally native versus adopting technology. I mean, yes, again, Gen X, we knew life before a cell phone, we knew life before an iPod we knew, before email, and all of those things. And so even though we’ve learned to use those in our everyday life, it’s still different for us than it was for someone who grew up as a digital native. And that that is sort of sideswiped by so many seasoned executives that you know, why I use that technology too. And I’m on social media too.
Sophie Wade 21:46
How do you use Sideswipe?
Maria Ross 21:50
But you know, it’s but it’s very meaningful, because it’s a generation generations of people who grew up with instant access to information, open platforms to express their opinion, wherever they want, the ability to find out information to vet to fact find to, you know, to what’s the word I’m looking forward to uncover if something someone says is truthful or not, especially a lead, right. And so this is just given for them. And so you know, that that is going to lead to a different way that they approach information gathering a different way that they approach learning a different way that they approach interpersonal relationships.
Sophie Wade 22:32
Absolutely. And, you know, in the past, when we came into the workforce, information was power, right up at the tippy top of the triangle had all the information had all the power, of course. So that is, for me, what I see is what has, you know, what has flattened the hierarchy is, everybody has, has, well, you know, very similar amounts of information. And so you don’t see him all powerful as my, you know, you know, five layers up boss, because I have a lot of the same information. And I also may be much more up to date with it, because I’m actually checking my phone more. And as I was in, interviewed a young guy, veteran, the son of one of my friends for for the, for my book, and he said, You know, it’s actually very hard. He’s probably three, four years into the workforce. And he said, um, I find it, I will say that I find it sometimes hard to respect my boss, who is paid 10 times what I am, and he has no clue how to use the software that I’m using in order to do my job, and, and do the work that I do. So. And then we also look at the state of the world, the planet, you know, all those type of things. And there’s, you know, there’s a credibility gap. And so there are lots of things that are also complicating, I think, the relationship but the other thing about technology just wanted to say is that the big difference, for me is exactly what you’re saying, I pick up my phone, and it’s functional. Like, if somebody tells you something more about it, my great Absolutely, and I want to do that thing that overlays, I can do this better. And I will learn that and just about it, because I don’t have any one other time. But if you have if your your sort of modus operandi is to just play with it, and just and have this intuitive, like, Oh, I wonder what the customers gonna do. And you’ve got time to do that, then you’re going to think about technology and the possibilities, and oh, I can’t find this. But maybe there’s something out there that can do that. And I just have a much more expensive way of thinking about what technology could do in this or that situation. And that’s what I think many leaders now are missing out on in not getting the contributions of their youngest employees who have a have a just a feeling for the power of technology that that we just can’t have.
Maria Ross 24:52
Well, and I want to bring you back to something you said earlier around the fact that you know, leadership power used to come from information who had the information Right. And since it doesn’t come from that anymore, that’s why leaders are floundering. Because that was what they were brought up. That’s what got them successful was how do I hoard the most information? And so I’ve always talked about empathy as a two way street, like being empathetic to those leaders that are like, yeah, for 3040 years, I played this game, and now you’re telling me the game is completely different. And so now they’re struggling, because they didn’t shore up those other skills that actually make a great leader. It’s not just command and control. It’s not just I have all the information and you don’t, I’m always right, and you’re not. There’s other skills that need to come into play, that enable people to be great leaders and people to follow them and engage with them and stay loyal to them. And is that what you’re finding is that they’re struggling with those basic skills? Because they were thinking the skills they had were leadership skills, but they really weren’t?
Sophie Wade 25:54
Well, they were at the time rate. I mean, that was the world that was the structure, I don’t tend to look back, because I don’t think it’s I don’t find it productive when I’m, you know, working with people. But you know, when there are many leaders who have moved on who or or have moved to seen it differently different way. Yeah, and be more embracing of it, particularly if this will say, well, whoa, I don’t understand what’s going on. Let me ask people, and that was one of the things I think that asked people at any level in my company, and that’s what I think the pandemic helped us sort of adjust and find that the world lots of ideas coming from different places in the organization, because we were just scrambling, but that scrambling, you know, the leaders got got people through it. And that’s why I sort of say, look to the look to the learnings that you that can come from the past two and a half, you know, two and a half years, because you were still leading, you were still you know, you got your business through it, you rallied, but he wasn’t it wasn’t being done, do you weren’t doing to the same way, you were much more flexible. You were adapting to what was going on? You’re like, Okay, who has an idea? How can we deploy those skills? What else do we need to do? What can we learn? How can we look at the supply chain differently? So I think that kind of that sort of expanded mindset and sort of expanded way of leading it and, you know, really sort of morphing, how leadership can be thought of and adapted, and adapted for I think, is, is, you know, so I’m trying to sort of push people to to keep going in that direction, rather than go back to a much more static, you know, way of being now. In fact, there was great, there was some really interesting research, which was SAP and I think Oxford Economics from, which was actually done in 2016. But it was looking towards it, it was called leaders, leaders, 2020, something like that. And in 2016, they looked at who the digital winners were, what they described as digital winners, as companies. And they were already seeing that companies would really embrace this digital age that was coming or more digital, had already decentralized a lot of the decision making, because they could see that, you know, waiting for all the decisions to have to roll up to the top the decision to be made, and then it go back, it was just too slow. So it’s it, it has been coming and I think there are different businesses have been able to, to stay in in a much more hierarchical static format, because of the nature of their business or, you know, there are different things that that have caused businesses to be able to adapt or need to adapt earlier. But I do yes, I have huge empathy for for the leaders who’ve been doing things in a certain way for a very long time. And and that was sort of how how you know leaders were right and I do remember going to a it was a was actually from from one of the professors at INSEAD where I went but she was she was giving it her men many are meaner, a bit bearer. And she gave a talk about the changing the changing characteristics of leadership saying was going to be sort of more female. This was 2014. I was like, rubbish. Yeah, nice, will be great. And it was about you know, how many leaves there are women and women who leaders who don’t want to be women leaders, because they have to act like men. And that’s what was the premise was that, you know, leadership is gonna change. And of course, whether it’s like women or not, but it is leadership has changed. Yes, so much. Since 2014.
Maria Ross 29:30
Well, you have leaders talking about emotional intelligence, vulnerability, transparency, you know, these were not things they used to talk about before.
Sophie Wade 29:39
Yeah, yeah.
Maria Ross 29:40
So. So, you know, you talk a lot about creating a human centric environment in this new era of work. Can you make that really practical for us? What are some simple and practical changes that leaders can make to create a more human centric environment and improve the culture so that their, their teams are more engaged especially the younger generations, yes.
Sophie Wade 30:02
So I do get I do, there’s a lot of stuff that I do in terms of helping people bridge distances and geographic sort of dispersion of teams. And because that is one thing to do with the culture, but it’s also very much about empathy. Because if you’re trying to connect with somebody where ever they are, they can be across the table from you, as well. But it’s really, it’s, it’s just putting yourself in their shoes, it really is getting practical about listening to someone really trying to understand what they’re saying. And there’s some very interesting examples of words. Now, I’m a Brit. So I’ve already had to go through some of that coming to the states, we are separated by a common language, and I changed some of the ways that I, you know, speak in order to be more ease
Maria Ross 30:52
My husband has as well, it’s fine.
Sophie Wade 30:53
Right? But there was one thing that so when there’s a lot of traffic, your husband may say it to, you say it’s chock a block, right? It’s chock a block full of cars. Now, nobody told me for about 10 years of being here, that they didn’t understand this. I say what I use the phrase too many times, but I
Maria Ross 31:14
just thought you were being charming.
Sophie Wade 31:16
Weird English, because now
Maria Ross 31:19
My husband always says that, oh, he’s foreign.
Sophie Wade 31:23
Nobody told me. I don’t mind. Nobody told me but it didn’t occur to me that this just
Maria Ross 31:29
Your message was getting lost when you were communicating this? Yeah.
Sophie Wade 31:32
So I really think about words. And that really can also be a generational divide in terms of, let’s say, hard work. Sounds very obvious, hard work to you and me, may mean long, hard hours, you know, at the office burning the midnight oil coming back, exhausted at 11 o’clock, to a much younger person, let’s just say a new, you know, labor market entrant, they may be working 40 hours or fewer. But working using amazing technology tools, you know, project management, whatever it would it whatever that it is that they’re doing, and producing the same results. But working very hard, very effectively. Now, the problem obviously becomes how if I in that person’s boss, and I’m evaluating them based on one of my criteria is of how hard they worked, is how long they were at the office or
Maria Ross 32:26
I can’t wait till that. Oculus,
Sophie Wade 32:30
But that’s so I think really carefully about words. And so I do, it’s not just about listening, but it’s also about what words mean, and thinking. And instead of saying, you know, there’s a restating reconfirming, just to make sure that you’re understood, having realized that I’m not necessarily being understood. And I use words so carefully. And I’ve had people who are really thoughtful, who are really careful about trying to understand me, and I will find that they have taken out their own interpretation, from what I’ve said, about the future of work about, you know gen Z, whatever it might be. So try that. So what I really sort of, you know, lean into and try and one of the key things is really making an effort more of an effort to to understand the other person, not make judgments not make assumptions about what you think they mean, right? And then doing the same, you know, back and like, helping them understand lots of, you know, did you understand me, but really helping them understand maybe sort of rephrasing it a second time slightly differently, so that they can be more authentic. And of course, that can be a little bit more work to begin with. But I think then, you know, as you start connecting, you start going, Okay, I understand what she’s talking about.
Maria Ross 33:44
Yeah, what you’re saying is reminding me of that, you know, the technique I was talking about, which is to ask and reflect back, and just make sure you’re on the same page. And you may be familiar with Edwin Ruch who conducts empathy circle training for people all over the world. Culture of empathy, I will put a link to his episode as well. But, you know, he’s trained all these people in the facilitation of empathy circles. And when I went through it, I, I describe it as a painfully precise workout of your active listening muscles. Because you actually can’t add color to what the person is saying you literally no matter what they’re saying, and he’s done these at the most divisive political rallies in the US over the last few years. Oh, great. It’s about listening without judgment. And no matter what you hear, you know, I even do this in some of my trainings. It’s like, so what I hear you saying, Sophie, is that the sky is purple, and trees have black leaves. And we are all floating on a trampoline. Is that what I? I get that right? Right. So
Sophie Wade 34:47
Absolutely
Maria Ross 34:49
And then you can like move forward from there. But it is that that ability to reflect back and make sure that you actually are having the same conversation that you both think you’re having,
Sophie Wade 34:59
And for me that’s at the core of all of it. Right. And I think the other piece of it is really trying to put myself in somebody else’s shoes, not as me. And those two things can really go hand in hand. Really trying to understand your perspective. You’re married to a Scott. Okay, so what does that mean? What are they, like?
Maria Ross 35:25
That’s another episode.
Sophie Wade 35:26
He’s got, he’s got to kill them, they killed, my marriage just got as well. So I’m at the we really trying to understand what is going through the other person’s head, whether their agenda D, whether they’re a Gen X, it really changes how you see the world, obviously. And, you know, obviously, you can’t get completely there. But one, as you know, the the act of doing it does so much for the other person. Yeah. And then, you know, when I’m looking at, you know, when talking about conflict resolution, or trying to get through a difficult issue, when you have those shared experiences, and you can share where you are closer, or where you do agree, then you and you’re trying so hard to understand what’s inside their head, there is so much more of that more willingness to try and bridge that last bit. And so I think, when we can try and and obviously, in these, you know, difficult and divisive times, trying to understand somebody else’s perspective, this is really not that easy.
Maria Ross 36:33
And you don’t have to agree with it, this is the thing that we talk about all the time is that you don’t have to condone it, you don’t have to agree with it, you just have to hear it. And you know, like going back to Edwin and his empathy circles at different political rallies, the goal getting them into the empathy tent was not to convert one one side of one to the other. The goal was to get them to see each other as human beings. And actually, actually, I still don’t agree with you, but I understand why you feel the way you feel. I can understand the context.
Sophie Wade 36:54
Yeah And then also maybe a few tiny pieces of overlap, we just help some kind of approach more some kind of more willingness, that is that can be helpful in the future. Mm hmm.
Maria Ross 37:19
Absolutely. What’s one more practical change that leaders can make to improve the culture?
Sophie Wade 37:27
So, I think it really goes to building relationships find, you know, creating, finding common ground and creating shared memories, shared experiences, because I do think that that really is what helps bridge gaps predict build bridge, despite differences, bridge differences. And when and that can be that can be virtual, it can be in person, there are companies that certainly survive and are very connected. Without, you know, everyone necessarily getting together in person at all, I think if you can, you know, get in together in you know, at times during the year in person, for retreats, whatever, if you’re not spending as much money on on, you know, office rental that can be there can be used for part of that. But I do think that really leaning into the human relationships and all this, all the ways that we’re working now are, a lot of them are new. And we haven’t one of the critical changes, I guess, in terms of where where we are and how we’re working in this new era of work is that is the how, and the how we need to, we need to think it through, you know, we have we sort of come up to this point. And we just, you know, we work in the factories, and we had, you know, built the buildings around the factories we worked on.
Maria Ross 38:52
And we are told exactly what to do and when to do it and how to do it.
Sophie Wade 38:55
Yeah, like the machines. But it wasn’t nobody, I think it was it was all focused on the machines, because it was so much originally, there’s so much of a fear of of not having enough food producers, that population was exploding. And so it was really focused on machines. Now we can do machines is sophisticated, and mobile, and light and very powerful. And we can work in different ways. Now that we have the tools, we deliberately created these tools, very sophisticated, powerful tools, how can we best use them? Right? So when we think about all this and sort of think about how it really, it really changed the dynamics of work and when we think about that, how we also need to be connecting more as human beings and developing those relationships, because that’s at the core of how we’re going to be the the sort of the the the top level element which is supported by the tools and the technology is how we connect as human beings were interrelated and moving from that transactional to the sort of experiential way of work
Maria Ross 39:55
And as we automate as AI automates more tasks spend more things that, that it can take care of to increase efficiencies. The competitive edge is the human relationships that the machines can’t emulate. Those experiences that. So that’s actually if you are a leader who connects with your team on a very human level, and provides empathy and is curious and is actively listening, those are things the machines can’t do. So you know, you’re not going to get replaced by a machine. You know, only if you’re only focused on the transactional and tasks. Yeah, you might lose your job.
Sophie Wade 40:36
Well, and it’s the, it’s actually, generally it’s parts of jobs that are being lost to machines, and it’s the most boring parts
Maria Ross 40:44
Exactly, the low value parts.
Sophie Wade 40:46
Yeah, low value. And so if we’re doing more interesting work, and and, you know, it does require upscaling. And that’s the sort of nature where we are now. But that is that can be much more interesting we can be doing and if you also have a boss, who is saying, Well, you know, what is it that Maria enjoys doing, because she’s really going to engage if I can align her with where her skills on where her strengths are, what she enjoys, which tend to tend to overlap. And then if there are some gaps, you know, maybe there’s somebody else I can get in, who’s a freelancer or whatever, I can be assigned somebody because they like doing that instead, you know, when we think about the how differently and we think about it from a human centric perspective, the whole game, it changes a lot. But I find it very powerful and very exciting.
Maria Ross 41:30
Yeah, it’s gonna be a much more fun workforce workplace.
Sophie Wade 41:33
So I think a lot of this a lot of challenges, a lot of strain and right filling in between now and then. But I’m very hopeful.
Maria Ross 41:41
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing these insights with us, Sophie. All your links will be in the show notes. But where can folks on the go find out more about you and your work?
Sophie Wade 41:52
So, sophiewade.com and flexcel network.com. And also, I do do you know videos, I’m typically do a sort of short video every week, which is kind of summarizing one particular point that I’ve found in the news that I think is sort of interesting or worth noteworthy. And I have a podcast transforming work. And so there’s a lot of different ways you can apply.
Maria Ross 42:12
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you. And the book, again is called empathy works. And so please check that out the key to competitive advantage in the new era of work. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. It was great conversation.
Sophie Wade 42:25
Thank you, Marie. I really enjoyed it.
Maria Ross 42:26
And thank you everyone for listening to another great guest on the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, please remember to share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, always remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Talking about racism is hard. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Empathy requires us to be humble and curious and to sometimes have hard, honest, emotional conversations. Only in acknowledging wrongs can we make things right -and that actually benefits all of us.
Today, my guest Saira Rao gets real about the role seemingly well-intentioned and even Liberal white women play in supporting the patriarchy and oppression. Our conversation goes far deeper than DEI efforts – which Saira will share her opinions on. We talk about how Race2Dinner got started, what Saira experienced in her run for Congress a few years ago, how she and Regina’s voices have even been censored by the BBC. We also talk about why white women’s conditioning to be nice and not rock the boat is killing people of color, and the hard choices we need to make if we truly want to save our country and communities. As Saira says in the interview, we are dying and we need to take risks, become aware, and have hard conversations with each other. As she states, once white supremacy goes away, many of our societal problems will go away, too.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
White women have more power than they know, but consistently choose whiteness over everything else. You have the power to talk about racism and to make changes. So do it.
It takes all kinds of people, of all backgrounds, to do this work. Start the conversations, point out the inequalities around you, and start doing the work on yourself first.
Individualism is colonialist behavior. White supremacy hurts everyone, including white people.
There is nothing micro about a microaggression.
“The amount of energy white women spend – time, money, and energy – to say ‘not me,’ use that energy to go turn other white women – your neighbors, kids, friends, parents, teachers. Get to work. Instead of patting yourselves on the back, start turning other people in your community. Because we can’t. You can.” — Saira Rao
“Let’s start feeling comfortable having these conversations. We’re not going to be able to affect any change until we start being honest with ourselves and each other.” — Saira Rao
About Saira Rao, Co-Founder, Race2Dinner
Saira Rao is the co-founder of Race2Dinner, New York Times Bestselling co-author of White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How To Do Better and co-subject and Executive Producer of the documentary Deconstructing Karen.
Saira grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of Indian immigrants. For forty years, she wasted her precious time aspiring to be white and accepted by dominant white society, a futile task for anyone not born with white skin. Several years ago, Saira began the painful process of dismantling her own internalized oppression. Saira is a lawyer-by-training, a former congressional candidate, a published novelist and an entrepreneur.
Talking about racism is hard. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Empathy requires us to be humble and curious, and to sometimes have hard, honest, emotional conversations. Only in acknowledging wrongs, can we make things, right? And that actually benefits all of us. Today, my guest, Saira Rao gets real about the role seemingly well intentioned and even liberal white women play in supporting the patriarchy and oppression. And yes, that means my role too. She and her business partner Regina Jackson founded race to dinner, an organization dedicated to igniting conversations that acknowledge how we are complicit in creating, enabling and engaging in oppression and white supremacy, conversations that can lead to liberation for all of us. So, we can frankly acknowledge racism in our schools, companies and society and dismantle it. Saira is also the CO subject and executive producer of the documentary deconstructing Karen, as they write in their New York Times bestseller white women everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better. If you cannot see color, you don’t see white power. And if you don’t see that you don’t see your racism. And if you don’t see racism, you can’t dismantle it. Today’s conversation goes far deeper than DEI efforts which Saira will share her opinions on. We talk about how race to dinner got started. What Saira experienced in her run for Congress a few years ago, how she and Regina is voices have even been censored by the BBC. Why white women’s conditioning to be nice and not rock the boat is killing people of color, and the hard choices we need to make if we truly want to save our country and communities. As Saira says in the interview, we are dying, and we need to take risks become aware and have hard conversations with each other. As she states. Once white supremacy goes away, many of our societal problems will go away too. I got to admit the book was difficult, candid and made me both sad and angry at times. But it gave me hope. It enlightened me. It opened my eyes and every single word written is truth. We must face it. I encourage every white woman listening to this podcast whether you’re a CEO or a college student, to read the book and watch the documentary, honesty and collective action will make us a very powerful force for change. Take a listen.
Maria Ross 04:25
Saira, welcome to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so so genuinely excited to have this conversation with you today. I finished your book last night. I have sheets of questions. And I’m really just excited to amplify the work that you and Regina are doing. So welcome to the show.
Saira Rao 04:41
Thank you so much.
Maria Ross 04:43
Okay, so quickly. Let’s give people who have not been familiar with her work who have not yet read your book. We will have links in the show notes. So, folks, you will have to check out the book when you get a chance but tell us a little bit about your work at race to dinner. And we’ve been a little bit of your story of what, what made you come to this work, and what you’re most passionate about and what it is that you do with the different programs you have in race to dinner?
Saira Rao 05:10
Sure. So, our book, you’ve just read, it’s called white women, everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better. And it’s sort of the book version of our work at race to dinner. So, I am South Asian, first-generation daughter of Indian immigrants, my partner at Race2Dinner, a black woman named Regina Jackson. And together, the two of us have actual in real life dinners and zoom dinners, but mostly in real life dinners with eight between eight to 10 white women, where we facilitate, they’re not their dads, not their friends, their racism and their white supremacy and helping them to start the journey of dismantling both. And what that looks like, is extremely raw, honest conversations. And these are conversations that white women have been trained not to have. It’s not only like, no, gosh, I’ve never really had it, you’ve been trained explicitly not to have it, because it’s impolite to talk about politics at the dinner table, which means shut the fuck up about race, you know, racism, sexism, ableism, all of the ism’s transphobia, homophobia. So, the foundational part of white womanhood is to not have these conversations ever, but especially not in your sacred space of of your dining room. So, we specifically chose the dining room to have these conversations. So, once you have it, you could do it again, it’s not so scary everyone, as Regina says, Nobody died, you know, during that dinner. And white women are nothing if not polite. And you know, it wouldn’t be nice for white woman to get up and stormed out of the dining room, which at every single dinner, there has been at least one who would really like to do that. And so, it’s twofold. You’re you’re kind of stuck there, right. And you can also do it again, again, and again and again and it’s happening. I mean, it’s actually working. And so, the that’s race to dinner, the program, the book, is a way for us to scale the message, because we are only two people. And now we don’t even live in the same city. We both were in Denver, I just moved back to my hometown of Richmond, Virginia a couple months ago. So, we’re still doing the dinners, but they just are more planned out. And one of us has to fly for it, at least one of us has to fly for it. But the book enables us to bring the work to now. I mean, the books only been out not even a month and it’s in its in its third printing. It’s already a New York Times bestseller. 10s of 1000s of people have already bought it. I mean, it’s kind of like we’re doing something, you know, right. And we have a documentary out that just came out a couple days ago called deconstructing Karen, which is an actual dinner, you can actually watch. It’s a dinner that was shot in Denver in the summer of 2019. So those are in we have a slew of kids’ books coming out middle grade, and one early, I mean, one illustrated children’s book called Race to the Truth series. So, an indigenous woman to Indigenous women, a black woman, Mexican American guy and a Chinese American woman have written those. So, we’re expanding into schools. And we have a program called Race to community, which Maria, I would highly suggest you do. It’s an eight-week program run by a resident white woman, Lisa bond, who’s all over the book. And she works with white women cohorts of eight to 12, I think white women, where all you do is deconstruct your whiteness, you do not even talk about black and brown people. All you do is talk about whiteness, and what whiteness looks like and how you can start deconstructing it.
Maria Ross 08:33
So, so many things I love about that. I I’m also just curious how you and Regina came into each other’s orbit. And I’m super curious how Lisa bond at your resonant white woman that’s referenced throughout the book, and I know she does a lot of your programs with you. Yeah. How did you all connect?
Saira Rao 08:52
So, I think a testament to the power of our work is this was 1,000% organic. And it’s pretty new this we started this in 2019. And we have a whole last pandemic in between, like, we couldn’t even do these dinners for a big chunk of that time, right? We’re only in 2022. So, I ran for Congress in 2018. In Denver, I ran, I was trying to primary out of what a super liberal white woman who has now been in Congress, like a billion years, and has done exactly zero and made a statement to a friend of mine, a brown friend of mine that civil rights are not one of her issues. This happened in 2017. So, I wrote an article that was published by Huffington Post in December of 2018. Called um, a brown woman who’s breaking up with the Democratic Party, it went viral. And what I got Oh, and a lot of this is in the movie deconstructing Karen is is why Why don’t you run for office? And I’m like, can’t we critique our government without running for office? But then I’m like, I have so much privilege. I’ve able bodied privilege I’ve class privilege. If I don’t at least challenge the status quo. Shame on me. So, I did. I was one of the last people filed with the FEC to run for Congress in January of 2018. In February of 2018, we did a poll, I was given a 2% chance of getting more than 12% of the vote. And in five months, I got 34% of the vote upwards of 42,000 votes. And my entire platform was anti racism, abolishing white supremacy within the Democratic Party. White supremacy is the Genesis the basis, the foundation for all the ills that we have in this country. You eradicate white supremacy, you’re getting pretty far with with positive policies, policy changes. So Regina volunteered on my campaign. That’s how we met. That’s how I knew Regina. And she would notice it every single every single event I spoke. I mean, I wasn’t nobody, I was a complete no name, random, middle aged Asian lady.
Maria Ross 10:45
I remember you actually announced your candidacy at the organization I knew you through which was CEO, when you were a finalist for their pleasure.
Saira Rao 10:55
Yeah yeah
Maria Ross 10:56
And you stood on stage and you said, and you’ll be the first to know I’m running for Congress.
Saira Rao 11:00
Yes, yes. And I would like, and every event I spoke out was packed, packed. And, and it was white women waiting to talk to me to tell me, not me, not me. Not all white women, you’ve got the wrong one. And they would ask me for coffee and for drinks and for dinner. And I would have to do all that because I was trying to court their votes, of which I got none. I got more white male voters and white women voters. And, you know, that was the whole it was very frustrating and horrible. And then I lost. And Regina had a friend will call her and, in the fall of 2018, and comes to her and she says, You know what, Regina, I’m done with Syrah. She hates all white people. But can you set up a lunch for us? Regina comes to me. And I’m like, you know what? I’m done. Like, I have a whole laundry list of these white ladies who are trying to have lunches and dinners with me. And by the way, the straw that broke that Karen’s back and back is that I said that beta or work was a white savior. I said beta or work is a white savior and I just donated to his campaign. And if I lived in Texas, I would vote for him because multiple things can and are true can be and are true. But I say to Regina, I’ll round up some of these other white women who have asked for dinners as well. And I’ll do it if you come with me. So, we did it. We had a dinner in someone’s in someone’s house. And it was full white woman Broadway musical crying arms folded. One lady got up and circled the table like like it was just outrageous.
Maria Ross 12:28
And then so Lisa came into the orbit through the campaign as well or whatnot. So
Saira Rao 12:32
That was how race to dinner formed. And I posted about it on Facebook, and it went viral. Like we just had one dinner. Maria, this was not a anything. I posted about it on Facebook. It went viral. Regina and I were like, I mean, if we’re educating her onto something, yeah, we might as well do it. Yeah. So, Lisa, had taken an article I had written and put it in, she lived in Chicago at the time, she put this article in her white woman, like mom group, and she and these were liberal, white women. And she said, My God, like they went nuts, ripped me to shreds all of it. And she said, Holy shit. This is This is wild. It’s literally what this woman is saying. So, she Googled me and saw that I had started this company, and reached out to us to say she wanted to do a race to dinner. So, Regina and I went to Chicago did a race to dinner. So, Lisa was a host of one of the dinners. And we ended up just staying in close contact with her. And that’s how we brought her in eventually into being a resident white woman.
Maria Ross 13:38
I love it. I love it. I love that you call her the resident white woman. That’s great. So, one of the things that I want to share or amplify is what is the goal of the dinners? Because, you know, you share some pretty horrific experiences, how they sort of the dinner sort of fell apart. But then I thought about it and I thought is that the intent? Or you know, sort of what is the goal of the dinner? What are you hoping to leave people with? What’s that? What does success look like a successful dinner?
Saira Rao 14:08
Starting to be comfortable with talking about these things out loud with your friends, with your family with your colleagues. Maria, the bar is so low for white people it is underground. So, I you know, I know you work with folks in dei Dei, we talked we say this in the book, it’s a lipstick on a pig situation. It is not about a raid, eradicate ing racism or white supremacy or anything. It’s to make people feel good. And it’s checking boxes, we are the opposite of that. We are the opposite of that. And so, this is about something so basic, you cannot change that Regina says this all the time. You cannot change what you won’t acknowledge. Right? So, if you’re not acknowledging your own racism and white supremacy, you can’t change it. All we’re saying is start having the conversation. start acknowledging and start having the conversations. That’s it. That is literal Really it?
Maria Ross 15:00
Is it also getting them to notice or getting us to notice more than they we have in the past. It’s another marker of success of like that epiphany.
Saira Rao 15:10
There’s no marker markers of success. That’s all very white supremacy, capitalistic colonial thinking markers of success. There’s nothing like that there was no box to check with anything that we do. I would say if people really need to have a marker of success, I’ll tell you what, I did an interview last week with TMZ like TMZ, how funny, right? A white guy and a black guy. And they say to me, right when I get on, they’ve been their CO hosts, their famous co-hosts. And they say, Oh, my God, we watched your movie. And we just had a conversation that we’ve never had with each other before. We’ve just had we spent hours this morning. And then you know, three minutes in the white guy makes a statement who’s like, well, I don’t agree with you know, this, or this or this, that you’re saying, and I’m like, I don’t care. But you just said that the two of you who have known each other and worked together for years had a conversation that you’ve never had before. goal achieved. Like, you don’t have to agree with everything we’re saying. But if you’re actually having conversations that you’ve never had, before, that you yourself said we’re transformative, just from watching a 72-minute dinner of ours. That’s we’re doing something. That’s great. That’s it, have the conversations, right? Start having the conversations first with you, with yourself, start digging deeper, I mean, start noticing, yes, start noticing behaviors of your own, and thought processes of your own that are toxic.
Maria Ross 16:37
Well, that’s what you know, reading the book, it’s, it’s hard to read because I, you know, as I’m reading, I’m doing all the things and then like a paragraph later, you’re sayin, this is what the response probably is from white women. And by the way, it’s so funny, because most of my life, I’m the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, all four of my grandparents are from Southern Italy. And I didn’t feel white. When I was younger, I wanted a white name, I want it. So, it’s just really funny. I’m like, no, but I am white. I’m European, like, you know, so all these realizations came to me while I was reading this book, and also, the reactions, the instant defenses that go up. And the book caused me to start questioning the defenses. And even when I thought I was with it, for what, you know, for a while for several pages, I’d get to something that would be like, ah, I don’t know about that. And it’s like, what, wait sit in that. And why does that make you angry? Why does that make you uncomfortable? So, the book is really, I think eye opening for people. And like you said, reading the book, and then watching the documentary is probably a good flow for people. But we have to be humble enough to say, how can you argue with this, these two women are sharing their experiences their truth. And it doesn’t matter if any of us sit here and say, well, that’s not me, or that’s not how I act. We’re, we’re still part of that system. We’re still marinating in that soup. And we’re still benefiting from it. And that’s the thing i Another thing I wanted to ask you, because it blows my mind. And I’m not trying to do it like those white women. But I feel like there’s so many of us that are going to support this work and support anti racism. And then, you know, you look at the voting numbers. And it’s like, what are you? What are what are you doing? Like, what why do you think that all these women talk the game are all of us, I’m going to put myself I mean, even though I make the votes, and I you know, I’ve made those selections. Why is it that when it comes down to voting or supporting candidates or supporting legislation, it falls apart for white women? What’s what’s, what are you thinking on that?
Saira Rao 18:49
White women overwhelmingly in the numbers don’t lie, choose whiteness over everything else over gender over their children? I mean, whiteness is to largely be blamed for the gun violence. Who what what kids by and large look, everyone’s getting shot all the time. But it’s it’s largely white kids in fairly affluent schools being murdered by white boys or young white men. That’s what’s happening. So, when white women go and you know, in famously in 2016, it was what 52 53% of you voted for Donald Trump. It went up after he actually showed you what a fascist he is. Right went up right? To 56%. So, you’re consciously voting for whiteness. And so, our entire pedagogy Regina and I are first of all consciously black and non-black women of color, black and model minority, what is a foundational tool of white supremacy dividing and conquering us? So, Regina and I are not supposed to be on the same team. We’re supposed to be fighting each other. And we’re saying no, we’re not doing that. And what we’re saying is white women stop caping for whiteness, and join our intersectional gender You know, solidarity, and it all goes away. If White women chose Regina and I over whiteness, the entire nightmare of America would be over, it would be over. Why do you think, Maria, that Fox News has done a five-minute hit piece on us recently declaring that deconstructing Karen is the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, they don’t care about Regina, and I could care less about us. It’s you. And what they’re seeing now is Oh, my God. Like, it’s a New York Times bestseller this book there, these white women are reading this book, and they’re loving this book, go look at the many, many, many reviews we have on Amazon right now. Five stars, five stars, five stars. Many, many, many people are watching the documentary, same thing. My God, if this is true, if white women stop, they’re finished. The whole bit, it’s finished. That’s the kind of power you all have, because of your white skin.
Maria Ross 21:02
And so is the goal with what you’re doing to try to get white women to get on the same page, if there are white women who are not supporting those candidates or not listening to those narratives is getting us to speak up and have those conversations with other white women.
Saira Rao 21:19
Yes, yes, yes. So, what you can’t do so look, check this, the Department of Homeland Security. I was at the World Trade Center on September 11 2001, by the way, so I left my apartment as the model minority and I came home as a terrorist. That’s how fast it changed. In the course of a day, Department of Homeland Security was created to criminalize people who look like me. That happened and everybody who looks like me became a crime. January 6, that was you those were your people? Did you guys get penalized or criminalized after that? No one’s really even Donald Trump is running for president again. But you all are so unique, and not a monolith. You’re not all not all. Not all. So, you guys get to commit a terrorist attack on the Capitol live streamed. We all watched it live. And you’re not you’re not those white women. You’re not those white women. Meanwhile, I’m Mohammed atta. Right like that. That’s literally how this works, right? And so, when you all say, well, I’m not one of the the women who voted for Trump, I trust me, you know, plenty of white women who are Republicans who are openly racist. You all need to start working on your sisters. That’s it. Instead of exceptionalism yourself the amount of energy white women spend time, money and energy that white women spend to say, not me, use that energy to go turn other white women, your neighbors, your your kids, friends, parents, teachers, get to work instead of patting yourselves on the back, you know, putting black boxes in your Instagram account, start turning other people in your community, because we can’t, we can’t, you can.
Maria Ross 23:00
Right. Oh my gosh, one of the quotes you had in the book were was if you cannot see color, you don’t see white power. And if you don’t see that you don’t see your racism. And if you don’t see racism, you can’t dismantle it. So, what does dismantling racism look like? We talked a little bit about that just now in terms of having those hard, honest conversations, turning, you know, turning other white women over helping them understand the truth and understand the system that we’re swimming in. What else does dismantling racism look like to you?
Saira Rao 23:34
I think the most important piece is that you all start racializing yourselves. You can’t do anything until you do that. So, what does that look like? On a good day, I’m brown or I’m Asian, or I’m South Asian or Indian. That’s not normally what I’m called. I mean, Google my name, go to Twitter and Google my name it is really next level. Same with Regina. She’s called Black or African American on a good day. Y’all are just people, you’re just people, right? And if you’re just people, you’re you don’t see yourself on the that’s the that’s the norm system. That’s the norm. It’s not just norm. It’s not just the norm. You don’t see yourself as racial players. And if you don’t see yourself as racial players, you are allowed to not see your, how your racial oppressors. So, the big here, and lots of white people ask this is what’s next. What’s next start with this. You’ll say my Indian friend, my black colleague, my white friend, my white colleagues, my kids, white friend, my kids, white teacher start with that. It is a lot harder than you think. And once you get in the habit, I never and by the way, I used to be a white woman trapped in a brown woman’s body. Like this is six years in the making. I’m 48 this started at 42 Like anyone could do this, right? I can’t even think of the last time that I haven’t said white person. My kid’s white teacher like it’s now set. It doesn’t even occur to me to not say that, and then you know where everything falls, but you’ll get looks. People will stop even doing this very tiny shift. People will stop speaking you. Who cares? That’s the thing is you all are so scared of your own shadow the world is literally falling apart. In we are in a fast march to fascism. This is not like a moonwalk. This is a full-blown sprint of fascism. And you all are so scared of saying white people out loud. Like, think about that. Like it. Meanwhile, you’re the same people who like, if I was around during chattel slavery or Nazi Germany, I’d be one of the please. Whatever it is you’re doing right now is what you would have been doing right back then, which I’ll say for the vast majority of you is zero.
Maria Ross 25:43
How do you, you know, obviously, you have a specific approach that you and Regina are taking with, with tackling this issue and with the anti-racism that that you’re trying to accomplish? And the way that you’re the way that you’re fighting the fight? What do you think about those, and I’ve talked to some of those folks on my show, black, brown and white people that specialize in in all facets of diversity, equity and inclusion, where they talk about creating a safe space to have these conversations and creating psychological safety. What do you think of that? Is that sort of a waste of time? Is that just coddling people? Or do you try to make the dinner psychologically safe? Or you’re not trying to make them on psychologically safe? Like what do you think of that when you hear those that talk from people that are that are supposed to be fighting the same fight?
Saira Rao 26:39
So first of all, our dinners are totally safe spaces we’ve never known. I mean, contrary to what Fox News says, We don’t like drunk people and flog them and drag them into the room. They’re free to leave. But we also didn’t we chat, we changed all the names of everyone in the book. Because you’re all the same. And we never if you and people have done this, people have actually done this, go read my very robust Twitter feed, or Instagram and Regina is as well, we never named anyone one time you’re in. So, here’s what I think Maria, I think that white supremacy is not the you know, the table or the house. It’s the air. It’s the sun, it’s the moon. Last time I checked, being nice and creating psychological safe spaces have not eradicated racism. All that being said, I would never shade any black indigenous or brown person doing any kind of equity work. Because it takes all kinds. It takes all kinds. And it needs to be fought from every single angle. Yes. And have at it, whatever. However, you think it’s going to work for you and you know, your people in your life better. Great. Have at it. This happens to be what we do. You know, is it is it the end all be all? No, this is just this is one two-hour dinner. This is one book, you read the book, your dick. It’s finished now, like the movie is 72 minutes. Like, this is just one thing. And we know we’re doing something because it’s taken off without literally with us doing anything, right? I mean, it’s really, and so people are starting to think in ways that are different. And even haters, people who came into this, like thinking I did a podcast two weeks ago with a white woman who said the cover of the book made me mad. The first 20 pages made me mad and she said somewhere around page 40 I realized that this is a gift of love. This is like the kindest book I’ve ever read in my entire life. And I’m like, Yeah, so like, yeah, people were having it there. They’re doing a bit of a one ad array. All right, because it’s not what they thought it was.
Maria Ross 28:41
Well, your mission is noble. I mean, your mission is about creating harmony and creating equity. And so, it’s not like a mission to like grift off people or you know, do that which brings me actually to my next question. I really loved the points you were making around the wellness and, and holistic health and empowerment culture. And a lot of the people that talk about the in the coaching industry, the wellness industry, the coaching industry, and how it’s steeped in toxic positivity. Lisa wrote in the book so much of the white life coaching self-help wellness industry requires that white women feel inadequate within the current systems. It relies on our being oppressed but doesn’t allow us to see the ways in which we oppress. These programs are not centered in abolition and decolonization rely heavily on the trauma of white supremacy culture, and reactivate it with more white supremacy. So, there’s there’s lots of influencers out there that talk about ending racism that talk about you know, anti-racism, equity. But what’s your take on this? Because obviously, you guys are calling this white supremacy trauma. And who does it impact?
Saira Rao 30:01
Yeah, I mean
Maria Ross 30:02
I guess a lot in there I just, I just like whatever your thoughts are.
Saira Rao 30:05
I’ll sort of give you my my, my brain splatter. Um, first of all, we are called Grifters all the time. And I think that’s really funny because America, white America is the greatest gift of all time white people came here, they killed, committed genocide against indigenous people and stole their land. They kidnapped and committed genocide against African people and then built a whole class economy on the backs of chattel slaves, chattel slavery. So, for white people to say that a black woman and a South Asian woman and by the way, the history of Asian Americans here is pretty horrible, you know, for them to say that US charging money is a grift is amazing. And the reason they say this is that it doesn’t matter if we’re charging $5 million, or a penny, it’s too much, because white people think that you’re doing us a favor by doing this work. So, we should be paying you. Right? So just like let’s start with that, in terms of the wellness industry. So, you know, white supremacy culture and we dig deep in this in the book is perfection based, you all have to be perfect. And that that resonated a time that part by definition, it’s impossible, it is impossible. So, you will always feel lesser than you will always feel like a failure. So then enter all of these white gurus and these white, you know, wellness people, to teach you how to like girl boss your way into being perfect. It’s you It’s you. It’s this individualism of You, yourself are responsible for feeling like shit. And you yourself are response, it’s not white supremacy, culture is responsible for you feeling like shit. But so, pay us all of this money. And we will get you all the merchandise the girl boss, you know, no must say y’all spiritual gangster shit, you can dreadlock your hair, you can do the NAMA stay salute, you can speak in broken Sanskrit. And this is going to make you feel so much better, and you feel so much worse. So, then you keep paying, and you keep paying and you keep paying. And that’s a great I mean, that’s the ultimate grift. So completely, it’s a trillion-dollar business, right? Half of it is cultural appropriation, with yoga, etc, etc. And so it’s really meant to continue to perpetuate what it’s just it’s grifting off of white supremacy culture to make you feel like worse and worse and worse, and us keep paying more and more and more.
Maria Ross 32:33
Yeah, that was that was really powerful to read that. And also, it got me thinking about, you know, that collective move of our country, and I’m not really a collective move, it’s always been there. It’s been the foundation of our country, this individualistic approach, not a communal and a community-based approach of if everyone’s doing well, we all do well. But this idea of putting the onus on the individual, while I support that, in certain arenas, think about the people they’re telling this message to. So, when you’re telling that message to someone privileged and white, yeah, maybe they can do something about it. But you’re going to try to tell Black, Brown Asian people who are already living in oppression, that it’s their fault, they’re living in oppression. And if that we just pay you $5,000 Of course, you use your you know, even I do a podcast with a friend of mine, that’s more about like, women finding their voice and you know, you have a voice use it. And even after reading your book, I’m like, Yeah, but some people can’t like it’s literally dangerous for them to use their voice. Exactly. It’s making take pause on all this. All this rhetoric that initially, we thought was a good thing. And really, when you do when you deconstruct it, it’s not it’s a little nefarious, well,
Saira Rao 33:50
Individualism is colonial behavior, right? Colonialism, white supremacy behavior. And so, you know, I would say the COVID response every oh my gosh, look at that. Look at that, like how little how little both parties Democrat, Biden and Trump, right. But how little concern we had for other we are each other people vote for each other, how little we care about each other. And look at how much mass death it’s a genocide. By the way, this is a genocide that’s happened globally, but we could just talk about the United States, and now mass long term disability. So, then the question is, how does white supremacy hurt white people? COVID That’s a great example of gun violence. Great example. And we are so focused on me, me, me, me, me. And we just like and this is colonialism. So that’s part of also Dei, you know, is in diversifying your workforce if you’re not decolonizing space, just air dropping black and brown people into your white supremacy colonized cultures horrible, which is why what happens is we see people come in and people leave.
Maria Ross 34:59
Exactly. Because they check the box and they have the pretty pie chart on their recruiting materials. Yeah, exactly. But then those people don’t feel safe in that environment. They don’t feel welcome. They don’t feel like their voice matters. And so that’s where include like, coming in. And yeah,
Saira Rao 35:14
I mean, I worked in corporate America, and it was horrible. And it’s I worked in nonprofit, I mean, I’ve done all of it. Right. And I checked all the boxes, you know, they look great. And it was, it was an awful experience. And I mine wasn’t an unusual thing. Very common.
Maria Ross 35:30
Yeah. And, you know, that’s what we’ve talked a lot on the show with a lot of the diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging, experts that have been on and speaking about empathy. You know, I remember writing this in the book in 2019, which was, you know, empathy, there has to be genuine empathy there for diversity to even work. Because otherwise diversity is just a bunch of different people sitting around a table, second guessing each other and not liking each other and misunderstanding each other. Unless there’s a true ability to connect and listen and say, okay, what are the systems around us that are supporting this behavior? Yeah, maybe we start in our organization, but hopefully that ripples out into larger society. But that’s where you know, you get them, you get them hiring, diversity hires, this has been a common complaint of the folks that I’ve had on my show. And then those people don’t belong there. They experienced microaggression after microaggression equity, yeah, which is not a microaggression we have, which is not and I love that you define that in the book, their micro aggression is not micro, there’s no doubt about it. Now, but
Saira Rao 36:35
You know, a good example of this, like a sort of macro example. This is Rishi Sunak, who’s the new Prime Minister of the UK. Right? Host cologne. I mean, for an Indian guy, you know, his parents were probably born into British colonialism. And Rishi Sunak is to just give you a sense of how crazy this stuff is. I tweeted, Rishi Sunak is white supremacy and brown face, and I would rather have my white supremacy straight up in white. Right? And he said, trans women are not women. He wants to deport Rwandan refugees. Yes. He voted for Brexit. Right. And so, a black woman journalist at Channel Four in the UK, which is, you know, their public broadcasting?
Maria Ross 37:15
Yeah, my husband’s from Scotland. So, he’s been following that whole storyline. And he’s like, you know, I was like, Oh, is this a good thing that this Prime Minister got elected? He’s like, no,
Saira Rao 37:24
No, it’s not so bad. So, she was doing a story on Regina and I, we did an hour long interview over zoom. She’s in London, we’re in the US. And I she reads this tweet of mine. And I say this thing about Rishi Sunak. Long story short, this is the liberal public broadcasting channel in the UK, for white bosses killed the story. Because I said that no way. And she calls me and she’s like, this has never happened before. So, to give you a sense of how much silencing is going on right now of our work, like we’re being literal, global silencing, because what we’re doing is actually, if it works in masses, if it works in masses, it is all over. It is all over. You’re disrupting the power structure. And these people will lose power, all of it. But so that’s what’s so interesting is No, I don’t Rishi Sunak is no great gain. And that’s that’s a great I mean, that we you see, black, indigenous and brown token people in positions of power all over American companies. It doesn’t make me feel good to see these Indian bro tech assholes running these companies who are jerks and inflicting harm on everybody. That’s not good.
Maria Ross 38:35
Right? Well, they’re fitting themselves into the system of oppression. So, they’re like, well, I don’t want to be I don’t want to be oppressed. So, I’m going to become the oppressor. And I find that really interesting. Again, we’re talking about you know, as as the granddaughter of immigrants, I find it fascinating that the groups that are that over time, if you look at history of like the late 1800s, and then the first wave of immigrants that came to the United States in the 1900s 1910s 20s, my family came over and like the 1910s, how those groups are marginalized. They experience all kinds of oppression, and all kinds of prejudice. And then as soon as they get a little bit of standing, they step on the next group that’s coming. And I’ve had conversations in my family of, you know, when you’re, you know, some offshoot relatives being crazy on Facebook and talking about the border wall. And I’m like, our grandparents immigrated to this country, and what you hear back is like, but they did it legally. And I’m like, well, it was easier than a no, also, immigration policy hasn’t always been racist, right? Like, that’s right. Okay. But just even like, and you’re and I’m like, you know, that our family experienced. Prejudice I had my grandfather was actually put in an orphanage when he was a baby, because his mother passed away when they came to the States. And they didn’t think Italians could raise their own children, especially men on their own. So they put him in an orphanage and he was bitter about it his entire life. But, and then as soon as you get a taste of of the good life, as soon as you get a taste of success, now you’re oppressing the next group of people, and I don’t understand how they see themselves in those people. And what is it that makes them like, and I know that this is the point you’re making about white women too, in the book, where it’s like, we’re learning from the best we’re learning from white men about how to oppress. And so we do it to women of color. And we don’t and we, you know, we say, wait your dinner and we say, all of the
Saira Rao 40:30
Asian Americans do it to black people.
Maria Ross 40:32
Exactly.
Saira Rao 40:33
I mean, it’s, it’s, but that it’s
Maria Ross 40:35
But why think that is? What is what is the thing that turns someone from being instead of being empathetic and trying to make it easier for the next group? What is it? What’s your theory? What is it about us?
Saira Rao 40:46
It’s power? Yeah, all of us what power we all want proximity to power, that is the natural human instinct. It is the it is individualism, you know, on steroids. That’s why colonialism ultimately, well, you know, post, we’re gonna, we’re all gonna die here from this, right? We’re all basically in a hunger game situation. Culturally, that’s what this is. That’s what white supremacy patriarchy capitalism is. It is Hunger Games. We’re all in competition with each other. And you get a running start based primarily on your skin color, but then the intersections thereof, right? So white men, able bodied white men, you know, we know we there’s all its there’s all this stuff, right? But generally speaking, white men are at the top and you’re right, one rung behind below them, propping them up, and stepping on everyone else. And we’re all on this hierarchy to win the game to win the game. That’s all it is. And once you see it, for what it is, and once you see your role in it, like really is is buying that second house is like affording you know a season pass or whatever it is to Barry’s Bootcamp and getting to walk into Lululemon and buying whatever you want and going to the the 15th Horrible holiday party with the same horrible people having the same lame Converse like stupid conversations. Is that worth what you’re doing with your life? Is that worth being silent in the face of oppression? Is that worth being an oppressor? I have decided? No, it is absolutely not. And I guess I can’t understand why more people can’t get that. And what our work is doing Maria is it is waking up other people to doing that. We’ve I can’t tell you how many women have contacted us saying they’re in the process of leaving their husbands once they started down? Oh, wow. Because they’re no longer going to play with the patriarchy. We’ve had a bunch of white women do our programs who have said it’s been the first thing that to help them kick their eating disorder. You know, this is like, this is what you empower people in one area, it’s like, once you realize rates, that perfectionism like it was someone famously said a black woman famously said If white women spent even a fraction of the time trying to end racism as they tried to lose weight, we would have been done with this shit centuries ago. And that’s it. It’s true. Once you realize that you’ve been programmed right to be the skin. You see these 50-year-old women walking around like skin and bones like they haven’t eaten in decades. What to be skinnier than next door, Molly, it’s so sad. It’s so pathetic, actually, when you start seeing your life. And the same goes for business. By the way, we you are asked me early on about business incorporation. It’s all the same, right? So, I think this this fake, we live in capitalism, we live in really horrible, violent capitalism. So, there is no difference between companies and home life. It’s all the same, right. And it’s funny because I’ve started getting on LinkedIn, which I think is a riot because the amount of white men who come on my LinkedIn and they’re like, this is not the place really. So, your let me get this straight. You can’t talk about racism at the dinner table, which means you also can’t talk about it at the lunch table or breakfast table. And you also can’t talk about it at work, which means you can never talk about it. So that’s like ultimate. So, if you can never talk about it, it just stays the way it is. Right. So, I think it’s intellectually dishonest, which is a white euphemism for a lie to say that there’s some perfect professionalism is white supremacy culture. Yeah, absolutely. The whole definition of what professionalism really means. So, I’d be interested to do we have I mean, we’ve had some major companies reach out and start conversations with us coming to do work, but they all like in big university, including my alma mater, University of Virginia have reached out we’ve had initial conversations and they basically come back and they’re like, we can’t we can’t do it. Well, that’s like
Maria Ross 44:42
That big scandal. I think it was last year and I’m Hope I’m quoting this right there was the company Coinbase that dismantle their entire diversity, the affinity group that had been started by employees because it would it had been started around the time of George Floyd and people needed a space to talk about these things. And they basically banned all political Will speech on any of their channels in any of the organizations, they fired their Head of Diversity and Inclusion after that person was brought into systematize. This group that it started up, and they said it was a distraction from work, and it was too divisive. Yeah. And I’m like, well, now you’re showing your true colors. So, anybody that joins your organization now knows what they’re getting into. And if they choose to sign on, because you gave them a really great signing bonus, then they’re part of the problem as well.
Saira Rao 45:27
You know, it’s too divisive, Maria, white people, when you say white people at Google, or you say, white people at, you know, Sherman and Sterling law firm, that’s divisive, that’s divisive. And so we are called divisive all the time, because we talked about white people. So again, you just, I think that this work, if you stick with it sincerely, you’ve read the book, you’ll watch the movie, I would suggest even going back and reading the book, and having your friends read it and have conversations with actual, in real life conversations with people and ask earnestly, why won’t you read this book? What is so scary about writing the book, once you start and have start having these conversations, it will blow your mind? The amount of peeling of the onions, you know, channel for banning or interview what like, in this woman’s it’s never happened before. You know, what is so scary. What is so scary, right? And you know that it’s something very deep. And what’s so scary is the end of patriarchal white supremacy. It’s over what happens when white men are actually everyone’s brought to the same level that’s terrifying for the people who’ve been in power. So, here’s
Maria Ross 46:36
I’m gonna, so here’s where I get stuck. So, you have these conversations. And you all agree to do what like what what are. And I know, we’re not going to sum it up in a 45-minute podcast conversation. But I do like to leave people with something actionable. So once once we see this, and we can’t unsee it. What are some actions people can take in terms of like, whether it’s in their workplace or in their community that are meaningful, because I know we talk a lot about performative, anti-racism. And you know, like, the social memes are great, but they don’t do anything, they just make you feel better that you did something. So what are the real meaty, juicy ways that we can attack this problem? If we’re not a CEO of a company? Or we’re not? We’re not in those positions of power? What are some things that you’ve seen the women from your dinners come out with? After they’ve had they have these conversations? Because my thing is having the conversations is great, but I don’t also want to keep talking. I want to do something. Okay. Right. So this is also an people ask us this all the time and have a hard time with our response. Right? We didn’t know. Yeah, I want the reset is for sure.
Saira Rao 47:48
That is your path. This is not, this is not a box checking exercise. So, I can talk about myself and other and white women who are actually and we’ve got lots of them, we’ve now been doing this for three years, we have hundreds of white women who we work with regular, that’s by the way how our book took off so fast and furiously is because we actually work with real people who told all their friends to buy it all their friends to buy it. And all that is once you start your life, you will make different decisions every single day that you can’t even quantify. So, I’ll give you an example. I basically only, you know, Will, with exceptions, buy things at black and brown women owned companies. It’s not like it just now I know where the black owned restaurants are where like, you know, South Asian owned restaurants, the yoga studio I go to and Richmond is owned by a black woman, like, those are the types of like things I only I’m not a big fan of electoral politics at this point. But I will still give donations to black, indigenous and brown progressive candidates anywhere. You know, those are, that’s a major life shift decision. I basically no longer have the same friends that I used to have. Six years ago, I have a whole new community of people. We’re our our values are the same. Our entire bond is anti-racism, anti-whiteness work. That’s a huge change. I no longer we literally no longer socialize with like other couples, we don’t do double dates. That’s very white supremacy culture. My husband has some friends, I’ve got some friends, we have our own lives and we have our family, you know? So, it’s hard to like, I don’t know what that’s gonna look like for you. Yeah, but your life will be your life will look radically different if you stay with us six years from now, right? And you’re not gonna even know what that is because you’re gonna have to go down your own rabbit holes. People say Who should I follow? Follow a ton of black indigenous, Asian, Latina women on all the social media platforms. You’re not going to agree with everyone.
Maria Ross 49:46
Right, right.
Saira Rao 49:47
You know, I don’t have the time agree with some of the stuff I say. You know and unlearning
Maria Ross 49:50
That’s the thing. Yeah, it’s it’s having that humility of learning from those experiences and remembering
Saira Rao 49:56
learning and unlearning
Maria Ross 49:57
learning and unlearning and that you know, I I recently wrote a piece about the true story of thanksgiving through a podcast that from a podcast that I listened to and how I just because the truth is painful, it doesn’t make it any less true. So, you can sit there with your hands in your ears and be like, well, I don’t want to hear about that. I just want to have my pumpkin pie and my my turkey and like, have my kid do a Thanksgiving play at school and whatever. And that’s the thing that those are the little things that the eyes are opening to the ears are opening to about, like, the more we can speak these truths to each other. And as you said, you may lose some friends along the way.
Saira Rao 50:40
You may lose your friends
Maria Ross 50:41
But that’s okay.
Saira Rao 50:42
And you may lose your eating disorder. Like
Maria Ross 50:44
There’s a lot to be gained.
Saira Rao 50:46
Yeah.
Maria Ross 50:47
Well, I’m not saying that’s the other thing too, is that recognition that white supremacy and racism is detrimental to all of us. I had a guest on the show a few weeks ago. And he talked about the fact that they work. He’s a he’s a black man. And he works with a company called Soul focused, and they go in and they do talks and trainings with organizations with just community groups. And he talks about the fact that a lot of the time they’re working with white people to help them understand that racism hurts you to you have been brought up in a in a toxic masculine culture as a white male, to like, squelch your feelings and to act like you know, all the answers, and it’s killing you inside. So, everything impacts everyone. It’s not just a black, brown, Asian, trans.
Saira Rao 51:35
It’s bad for everyone
Maria Ross 51:37
being in the same soup.
Saira Rao 51:38
The thing is, you’ll just be like, I’ll be safer longer than Regina. Like, right? There’s that old saying from World War Two, like, first they came for the blanks, and I was silent. Then they came. They came for me. And so there was no one left to stand up for me. Yeah, and I know we don’t have much time. But like in this in this world of okay, if we really want to kill everybody, except for the straight sis, able bodied white men. They’ll kill each other as soon as that happens. I mean, it’s, it’s not. This is not a kind world to anybody. And, and at least, are people happy? Are people having really meaningful happy existences? All indicators say no. Zero, no. We live in a society without health care. There’s food insecurity, there’s housing insecurity, you know, the Colorado River is drying up places are on fire, like we have a big problem. And people are scared of calling other people in themselves white people. Like that’s where we are right now. And all we’re saying is, let’s start feeling comfortable having these conversations, nothing, we’re not going to be able to affect any change, until we start being honest with ourselves and each other.
Maria Ross 52:51
It’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as they say, I want to leave with a hopeful note and also your hope for the future. And I just want to read this from the book that really spoke to me stop aspiring to be an ally and good lord, stop calling yourself an ally, rather be an accomplice, a partner, a collaborator, a co conspirator. Anything but an ally. So, is that is that what gives you hope and keeps you going? Because it is very bleak. So, what is it that drives you? And what is it? What is that, that hope you keep burning alive? To continue doing this work?
Saira Rao 53:26
I was a white woman trapped in a brown body working on Wall Street. Okay, like, that’s what I was doing. And here I am. So, if I can wake up, anyone can wake up, and my life. For all the loss what I’ve gained is liberation. What I’ve gained is freedom. What I have gained is a values-based existence. What I’ve gained is true friendship and true community. And I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. So, if I can do it, anyone can.
Maria Ross 54:00
I love it. Thank you, Saira, for your time today. Your insights. We could probably talk for two more hours but trying to keep the podcast tight. But everyone, please check out the movie deconstructing Karen, check out the book called white women everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better that Saira co-wrote with Regina Jackson, and check out Race2dinner as well. Sara, where can folks best connect with you and find out more about your work
Saira Rao 54:27
www.race2dinner.com. And the two is the number two. Everything is right there.
Maria Ross 54:32
And we’ll have all your links to the book to the movie to the website in the show notes. So, check those out. Thank you again and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you liked what you heard, please share it with a colleague or a friend. Don’t forget to rate and review and in the meantime until our next amazing guest please remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
You don’t have to wait for empathy to strike.You can intentionally choose to engage in what my guest today calls Purposeful Empathy to change the dynamic of any interaction. But how? And how do you maintain your own boundaries when being empathic is part of your job? Today, my guest, Anita Nowak, shares what purposeful empathy is, how and when to engage it, and even how to step back and reclaim your boundaries when empathy could burn you out. We both share personal stories of when we’ve actively chosen empathy in tough situations and how it transformed the exchange. We discuss the physiological changes to our bodies that occur when we are engaged in empathy – and how empathogens, or certain psychedelics that have been shown to increase empathy, could be applied for therapeutic treatments to heal trauma, control aggression, or other instances where human connection can be challenging.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
We are born empathetic creatures, that is how our species has survived. For those who think they aren’t empathetic, that muscle has atrophied and can be rebuilt again.
Our brains cannot be in a state of anxiety or stress and in the state of empathy simultaneously.
There has been a resurgence of research on the study of psychedelics and the potential it has for therapy. Previous research showed a positive relationship between taking these drugs, being accompanied by a trained professional, and outcomes as a result.
“When it comes to the way we design our world, the way we design public policy, the way that we think about foreign aid, the way we think about how we treat each other and our families and our relationships across political divides, that we need to engage in empathy on purpose.”
— Anita Nowak
“If you’re feeling triggered by emotions, and you want to down regulate or self regulate, one of the best on ramps to empathy is through a little visit of gratitude.” — Anita Nowak
“We, as human beings, want a sense of belonging by nature. That’s how we survived as a as Homo sapiens. We really need to draw on that.” — Anita Nowak
About Anita Nowak, PhD, Author of Purposeful Empathy
Anita Nowak, PhD is passionate about leveraging empathy for personal, organizational and social transformation. She is also dedicated to teaching and mentoring the next generation of changemakers.
She is a two-time TEDx speaker and author of Purposeful Empathy: Tapping Our Hidden Superpower for Personal, Organizational, and Social Change (Broadleaf Books, April 2023). She hosts a podcast and YouTube series by the same name, dedicated to amplifying the voices of people from around the globe who understand the world needs more empathy – and are doing something about it.
For the past fifteen years, Anita has held various leadership roles in higher education at McGill University dedicated to social innovation. She teaches Leadership, Ethics in Management and Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Desautels Faculty of Management. She was named Professor of the Year in 2014 and 2019 and recipient of the David Johnston Faculty and Staff Award in 2021.
As a certified personal and professional coach, she helps purpose-driven leaders and organizations create cultures of empathy through her boutique advisory firm, Purposeful Empathy by Design. Anita also advises High Net Worth (HNW) families to translate their philanthropic goals into social impact.
You don’t have to wait for empathy to strike. You can intentionally choose to engage in what my guest today calls purposeful empathy to change the dynamic of any interaction. But how and how do you maintain your own boundaries when being empathic as part of your job? Anita Novak is my delightful guest today to talk about her forthcoming book, purposeful empathy, tapping our hidden superpower for personal organizational and social change. It’s coming in April 2023. But it’s available for pre order now. I need a Novak is a PhD passionate about leveraging empathy for personal organizational and social transformation. She is also dedicated to teaching and mentoring the next generation of changemakers. Anita is a two-time TEDx speaker, host of the purposeful empathy podcast and YouTube series, both dedicated to amplifying the voices of people from around the globe, who understand the world needs more empathy, and are doing something about it. Anita teaches leadership, ethics and management and Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation at McGill University. As a certified personal and professional coach. She also helps purpose driven leaders and organizations create cultures of empathy through her boutique advisory firm, purposeful empathy by design. Anita also advises High Net Worth families to translate their philanthropic goals into social impact. Today, Anita shares what purposeful empathy is, and how and when to engage it, and even how to step back and reclaim your boundaries when empathy could burn you out. We both share personal stories of when we’ve actively chosen empathy in a tough situation, and how it transformed the exchange. We discussed the physiological changes to our bodies that occur when we’re engaged in empathy, and how and pathogens or certain psychedelics that have been shown to increase empathy could be applied for therapeutic treatments to heal trauma control, aggression, or other instances where human connection can be challenging. This was such a delicious conversation to have hope you enjoy it.
Maria Ross 03:37
Welcome Anita Nowak to the empathy edge podcast. This interview has been a long time coming. Welcome.
Anita Nowak 03:44
Thank you so much, Maria. I’m so happy to be here.
Maria Ross 03:47
So, you and I are fellow empathy activists, empathy advocates, whatever we call ourselves on a given day. And I’m so excited for you to talk about purposeful empathy, your book that will be coming out, which will be coming out in April 2023, but will be available for preorder anyone interested after they hear this wonderful conversation? Tell us a little bit. You know, we heard about all your accolades and your and your, your roles. Tell us a little bit about how you came to this work. What What’s your story?
Anita Nowak 04:20
Yeah, the origin story, I can thank my thesis advisor, I was doing my PhD on one topic, and moonlighting as a professional fundraiser. And I was head hunted to take on a new mandate and raise funds for girls’ education, which was exciting. And I said to my thesis advisor that I needed a year off off from my PhD and he said, please don’t do that. Like you’ll never finish and I said, No, no, no, I will. He’s like, no, this is when everybody drops off the bandwagon. Anyways, he had me in his office six months later, and I didn’t come in with any agenda. He said, what’s new, and I told him that this would place this actually in the spring of 2008. And that summer, I was going to go to Kigali, Rwanda to work with a women’s collective, all 400 genocide survivors and help them raise my launch of microfinance project, essentially. And I was really excited. And I was telling Michael all about this. And he stopped me and he said, you’re lit up like a Christmas tree. And the only way you’re going to finish your thesis is if you actually are as passionate about your topic as you are about this trip you’re taking. So, he gave me advice, he told me to go home and find the box or the file or the folder that I keep stashing stuff into. He’s like, go find it, and then explore what’s there and come back to me with your real passion. And I walked out of his office, really irate thinking, how dare he question my passion about my topic, right. But I actually had to do a filing cabinet, a metal, an old-fashioned metal, metal filing cabinet, and I rifled through it and I came across a miscellaneous file that I didn’t know that I had, even though it was my handwriting. And I spread the contents, and I discovered all sorts of clippings. And, you know, I had been to a few different speakers’ events, and I couldn’t make sense of it until I came across one little article about a boy in elementary school who decided to go to school for an entire week without shoes, because he’d learned about childhood poverty wanted to know what that felt like and wanted to educate his classmates. Oh my gosh, right. And that’s when I started to notice the common theme across all the little doodads that I had, which was I was attracted to people who were trying to learn about others step into their shoes and create positive change as a result. And the word social entrepreneurship was not part of my vocabulary. But I discovered my peeps, as soon as I discovered, oh, there’s this change making group called social entrepreneurs, social innovators, let me understand those better. So, I ended up doing dozens of interviews about with social entrepreneurs about their lives. And I asked them the same standard questions, including their backstory, like you’ve just asked me. And one of the things that came up, like across the board, with no exception, was the reason they decided to become social entrepreneurs and pursue the work that they did, when they had a lot of other opportunities. These are all talented, gifted, hardworking entrepreneurs. But the reason they were driven to do the work that they did was because they felt a sense of empathy for others, and a need to act on that empathy. So, I have fallen in love with empathy as a driver for social change since then, that’s the backstory.
Maria Ross 07:34
Wow, wow, that’s amazing. And like, you know, it’s often the people that make us the most irate in our lives, that brings us the epiphanies. So, kudos to your professor, for putting you on this path. So tell us a little bit about what you mean, and why you titled The book purposeful empathy? How is that different from regular empathy? Why is it important? How do we apply it?
Anita Nowak 08:00
Yeah, as you would know, as an empathy aficionado, as well, there’s a lot of different ways people define empathy, and unpack empathy. And I guess sort of the most common two ways of looking at the phenomenon is through an effect of empathy, the feelings we have that happened to us versus cognitive empathy, which involves our neocortex and sort of perspective taking, imagining what others are experiencing. And so, I put a fine point on purposeful empathy. Because I think we need to engage empathy on purpose. I don’t think it’s enough that we just have the capacity to empathize. And in the moment, when somebody’s telling us a poignant story, we feel a resonance with them, our mirror neurons are firing, we’re feeling affective empathy. I think when it comes to the way we design our world, the way we design public policy, the way that we think about foreign aid, the way we think about how we treat each other and our families and our relationships across political divides, that we need to engage in empathy on purpose. So that’s why.
Maria Ross 08:58
Yeah, gosh, amen. And I love that because there is this notion of many people. And I’m sure you’ve dealt with this in your talks, as I have where people say, Well, I’m just not naturally empathetic. And we know from science that we are actually born empathetic creatures in our DNA. It’s how our species has survived. And barring a few psychological anomalies, we are born with it. But the muscle atrophies. And so, I think many of us expect empathy to just show up for us versus tap into it. So, I like this idea of being intentional and purposeful. What are some ways people can do that? How do you advise especially in the book or in your coaching models, you know, if they go great, I’m on board, I want to intentionally activate my empathy. Where do I start?
Anita Nowak 09:51
Well, I can do that with a story that happened to me. So, as I was learning about the neuroscience of empathy and the whole idea that we have neuroplasticity so we can really literally rewire our brains by thinking different thoughts and behaving in different ways. I did a lot of different personal experiments. And one story I like to share, which I still think is a powerful example of, you know, making the decision to be empathic in the moment. I was standing in a long lineup at a FedEx in about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, so before mobile phones were, you know, part of our appendage, and so there was nothing to distract us. And it was the lineup during the holidays, 30 minutes, I was waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, get up to the counter. And the woman who greeted me at the FedEx counter was rude. And I mean, like, capital are rude and unnecessarily rude that she, she triggered me in a way that I thought I was just gonna like, oh, well, you think I’ve been there? Yeah. But in that moment, I had a flash, I’m like, okay, let me test this empathy thing. And so I took a breath, and I looked at her and I asked her, Are you okay? And when she realized that I was not being sarcastic, and I was being earnest. She broke down straightaway into tears. And she said, I have been working double shifts for two weeks straight. I have a son at home, who’s got a fever, I’m catching the flu. I haven’t had a lunch break. It’s 3pm. I’m just flat out exhausted. And I we read a reached out for hands across the counter, we locked eyes, we were both crying, I got her a mint tea came back. And then she served me with elegance and grace and my parcel went off to the world. But that was just a moment of getting goosebumps just talking to it’s a moment that has served me so often to say, how can I flip the switch in this moment, because we are all, you know, wandering around as perfectly resilient, amazing human beings. But we have so many things going on in our lives below the surface that we just don’t know, even coming across colleagues on a regular basis. And just taking the time to kind of check in with somebody and change the dynamic of a conversation with the gesture of empathy. It’s available to us all. And once you get into the habit, you start looking for ways to do it. And it just becomes part of your way of being in the world. And honestly, it makes you a happier person. That’s what I’ve discovered.
Maria Ross 09:51
A hundred percent and this just happened to be a few weeks ago, ironically, when I was flying back from delivering an empathy and leadership training session, there was a massive flight delay in Dallas to get me home. And it ended up being delayed hours and hours and hours, and then they bumped the flight to the next day. So, talk about angry people. But it was one of those moments where you could tell there was just chaos going on at the airport, all over the place anyway. And I could tell dealing with the gate agent, even though I was pissed, right? I was like, she’s just getting it from all sides. So, I same thing I sort of like how could I flip this? And I spoke to her in a way of like, how are you doing? Like, I know, this is not your fault. We’re all really frustrated, I actually offered to get her an iced tea, I offered to get her a drink. And I said, well, obviously not an alcoholic one. But you know, whatever. And I was still really angry about the situation I was in. But two things happened. One was I felt happier in the situation. It was like me being empathetic with her and reaching out to her made me feel better. The second thing was it enabled me to have a clear enough head that I even mediated somebody else yelling at her to say, okay, I think everyone’s frustrated, we all need to just take a breath. Like, it’s not your fault. It’s not her fault. And it didn’t make either of them, you know, shake hands and hug. But everyone at least took a beat. Right? And so, and that was actually really hard for me to just get out of my own anger and frustration and getting home to my son and whatever. But it made the exchange better.
Anita Nowak 14:05
For sure did and that you shouldn’t upgrade yourself. If you feel triggered, we all feel triggered. We have emotions, right? That’s part of life. But I think what I’ve discovered is having self-awareness that there’s an opportunity to change the circumstances, and taking a minute to just breathe. And sometimes, you know, you might even need a few minutes. You can do it in a nanosecond. But you know, our brains cannot be in a state of anxiety or stress and in the state of empathy simultaneously. So if you’re feeling triggered by emotions, and you want to down regulate or self-regulate, one of the best on ramps to empathy is through a little visit of gratitude. So, if you think about something that you are grateful for, well, like, okay, the flight is delayed. What does that mean? That means I’m not going to be on a plane that’s going to land with a crash. Let me be grateful for that. Let me be grateful for the fact that I don’t work in a place where I can have you know, really people yelling me all the time. Right, then all of a sudden empathy can open up.
Maria Ross 15:04
Right? Right. And I think too, it’s, it’s also, you know, I, you probably get this question a lot too of like, well, what if I’m trying to be empathetic with someone who’s not being empathetic to me. And I often say, well, it’s not your job to change them. If you are the one that’s realizing there’s a lack of empathy in the exchange, it’s actually your job to step up and model it, and see how it changes the dynamic of the exchange. And so, it’s almost like, I hate to phrase it this way. But it’s almost like the person who’s a little bit more emotionally secure in that moment. It’s kind of incumbent upon them to engage in purposeful empathy, because maybe the other person just doesn’t have the capacity for it at that moment.
Anita Nowak 15:46
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
Maria Ross 15:48
Love it, love it. Okay. So, what are I mean, we’ve talked a lot on the show about different benefits of empathy. But let’s let’s get to the very individual level, and whether it applies to you as an individual in your personal life, or you as an individual in your work life and your workplace. What are the personal benefits of extending empathy, but marrying that with it not crossing over into what you call empathy fatigue? Because that is a big question people have, especially if they are overly empathic.
Anita Nowak 16:19
Right. So, the benefits are really clear. The neuroscientists who have studied what it means to be in an empathic embrace tell us through their sophisticated fMRI machines, that our pleasure and reward centers light up this same way they do if we’re eating fantastic food, high on psychedelics, or even in a post coital moment, I don’t know how they measure that.
Maria Ross 16:47
From the studies from Masters and Johnson, probably, yeah.
Anita Nowak 16:52
But what happens to our bodies, physiologically is that cortisol drops. So, and cortisol is a hormone, a stress related hormone that causes all sorts of inflammation in the body that’s, you know, connected to a bunch of chronic diseases. And as the cortisol drops, what grows in our bodies are hormones like oxytocin, and the feel-good hormones that we experience when we’re feeling really connected to someone. And with that comes a whole host of benefits where our breathing stabilizes, they say our immune system functions better. So, there’s just a ton of evidence that shows that when we are in an empathic embrace with someone, we’re feeling emotionally connected, it is soothing to our system, and to our psychology and to our spiritual nature. So that’s beautiful. But there are limits to that, right. And we see it most obviously, in people who are in the service professions, right? Anybody who’s a front care, health care worker, Frontline, health care worker, teachers, to a certain extent psychologists, social workers, humanitarians, even social entrepreneurs, people who are extending empathy, as part of their job, have to find ways in which to also create spaces for self-empathy. So, like the rituals of coming home and taking a bath, or being in nature, there’s great research coming out of Japan on I think the Japanese word for forest bathing is shooting yuku, which is just wandering through nature has a health like tonic to us. And so, there’s lots of ways that we can recharge our batteries. But we really must, because when we reach a saturation point, and we can no longer you know, we don’t have the capacity to empathize, we actually can become really mean,
Maria Ross 18:36
Right, while the well runs dry at some point, even even for the best-intentioned people. So, what I hear you saying is that, not only do we need to be intentional when we practice empathy, we also need to be intentional when we need to back off and, and refuel.
Anita Nowak 18:52
Hundred percent.
Maria Ross 18:53
I love it. I love it so much. So, what are some other advice you have for people about overcoming empathy fatigue? What can they do to set better boundaries, from actually taking on the feelings and the anxiety and the fear and the all the things from other people that they’re trying to create an empathic connection with?
Anita Nowak 19:17
Sure. So well, one of my favorites is known as a metta meditation. So metta is a Sanskrit word for loving kindness. And it’s something so beautiful to practice, which is it’s a four-step process. So just imagine we’re going to do some metta meditation together. So right now, we’re going to both think about people we love, okay, our family, our siblings, parents, children, our beloved, and we send them loving kindness. What does that mean? We send them, you know, just we want them to have a great day. We want them to catch the green lights when they’re in a rush. We want them to find that perfect pair of shoes on sale, whatever, right?
Maria Ross 19:58
Right.
Anita Nowak 19:59
Then as a second step, we think about all the people we really like. So that could be our colleagues at work that could be our neighbors, people we went to high school with, just send them the same kind of loving kindness. Then the third step, and you do this for like a minute or two, each category. So, the third group is strangers, we send loving kindness to strangers, we think about, I don’t know, a fisherman in the Philippines, or a farmer in Idaho that, you know, had the wheat on his farm that’s in the bread that you ate with your breakfast, and you just send loving kindness to strangers. And then the fourth category, which is of course, the toughest but worth doing is you send loving kindness to people who may have disappointed you, or hurt you, or that you disagree with on a fundamental or political level, and you even send them loving kindness. And this flexes the empathy muscle that all of us as human beings are worthy. You know, I heard one of the things that I remember learning that struck me the most and has always stayed with me comes from a Islamic arts historian. She has a PhD in Islamic art. She’s originally from Turkey, she now lives in Washington, DC. Her name is Philip […] I hope they got that right. And she I asked her an interview I said, what is it about? Is there anything in Islamic art that actually has informed her thinking about empathy? She writes prolifically about empathy herself. And she said, Oh, yes, the circle. And I said, really the circle? And she said, what’s that about? And she said, well look, it the most basic geometry is connecting two dots right into a line. And then if you connect three dots, you got to triangle four, it’s either a rectangle, square, whatever, because you can also have a collection of dots that make no shape that has a name, and you can connect them all. When you spread, when you stretch, like imagine stretching out all of those little dots to its furthest end point, they all end up in a circle, they can’t No, no shape can be stretched out further than a circle. So, circle encompasses everything. And she said, when you think about a circle, it’s made up of an infinite number of dots along its circumference. And if you think about humanity as each of those dots, okay, so there’s 7 billion of us almost 8 billion, imagine eight, the 8 million dots on this circle, all of us, all of us are equidistant to center, all of us. And no matter where we are on the circle, either side by side, or across the way, we all have a different perspective towards the center. So, I find that an amazing metaphor for empathy, because we all have different lived experiences. And yet we all share this common humanity. So, I think you know, something like a metta meditation, if you get into the habit of doing it, if even if you’re in traffic, or you’re washing your hair or whatever, you don’t have to take like, an hour of your day to meditate. But I think it’s a really good way of, of flexing your empathy muscles in a way that is also kind to yourself.
Maria Ross 22:59
Oh, my God, I love it. I mean, it reminds me so much I read a book, I can’t recall the title of the book. But it was a book on leadership from the Dalai Lama, but it was actually written by somebody else, and it’s escaping me, but I will find it and I will put it in the show notes. And he talked a lot about that about sending love and blessings and good intentions to the people that have hurt you the most to people that you perceive as enemies, because it actually changes your mindset, it changes your not just your mood, but also it sounds like from what you’re saying physiologically. And that’s, again, the hardest thing to do. And I think in our very divisive world right now. It’s something really, really hard to do. And I, I have tried to do that with you know, this is a little bit personal, but even in my in my prayers, like trying to say prayers for the leaders that I find repulsive and cruel and mean of just, I hope their heart heals, I hope they find their way. Because when they find their way if if good things happen for them in terms of them healing, that’s actually good for the rest of the world, because of the actions they will take as a result of that. So I try to I try to find that in my prayers for what’s going on in the world right now. You know, in between the cursing and the getting mad and all of that,
Anita Nowak 24:26
Right. That’s right, and it’s Canadian Thanksgiving coming up this weekend. I know that yours as we’re taping this and, and yours is coming up in about a month. I think thanksgiving has changed in our lives because we don’t talk about politics or society because we’re so afraid of the divisions that it might cause and sort of the animosity at the dinner table. And I think we can’t allow different political opinions to break down our social fabric. We as human beings, want a sense of belonging by nature. That’s how we survived as a as homosapiens right, so we really need to draw on that. Well,
Maria Ross 25:05
So much good stuff. All right, I have this last question for you, because I’m so intrigued by it. Can you talk a little bit about empathogens, and the relationship between empathy and psychedelics?
Anita Nowak 25:16
Yeah. So, I read Michael Pollan’s book, how to change your mind, which is about psychedelics. And I was curious to understand the connection with empathy, because it struck me that when you’re when you are high on psychedelics, you know, all sorts of new ways of seeing the world and new ways of seeing relationships open up. And it turns out that pre-Nixon era, there were a lot of researchers that were studying LSD, and psilocybin and MDMA in order to understand what the what potential it had for therapy for things like alcoholism, PTSD, and there was just a ton of research showing a positive relationship between taking these drugs being accompanied by a trained professional, and outcomes as a result. But of course, all that got shut down by the Nixon administration, right enemy public enemy number one is drugs. And then there was the whole incarceration movement and sort of the what is it called the I forgotten the word but it’s the prison industrial complex, right. Also at the same time, it in the meantime, we’re now seeing a resurgence of research. And if you look at any of the research centers at the ivy, League’s they all have them, even the best hospitals in your country are looking at them. And that’s wonderful news. There’s a lot of new funding going in the direction of psychedelics to help with therapeutic, you know, there’s not been much movement in therapy in a long, long time, most of it is all just through pharmacology. But now there’s another pathway that’s opening up so in pathogens is a word that was coined by a Harvard professor actually to talk about the state that we’re in when we’re using certain drugs. And MDMA was actually originally called, it’s now known, the street name is ecstasy. But it was originally called empathy, because of the state of feeling that we were in and it was only in Los Angeles, a man decided that he would rebrand from empathy to ecstasy, because he thought it would sell better and he was writing Wow, permeated the, the club scene, and it took off. And then of course, it was shut down by the FDA.
Maria Ross 27:38
So you’re saying that the research showed that when people were on that drug, they displayed more empathy, they felt more empathy? How did they measure that?
Anita Nowak 27:46
Yeah. Personal anecdotal feedback about how did that feel to you that people just felt a sense of like, connection, resonance, and I feel you and I hear you. Yeah, that’s what’s Wow, there’s now new research and something that I’m personally very interested in is how can I don’t mean like, let’s all get stoned and live a better life. I mean, leverage psychedelics, to open up neural pathways that might allow us to see the way we are all connected our interconnectedness, our connection to the planet and to me, and that there might be an opportunity for us to actually kind of see past a very materialist and and me-me-me culture.
Maria Ross 28:32
Right? Oh, my gosh. And, you know, that brings up so much. I mean, maybe this is a little controversial. But what it sparks for me when you say that is therapies for rehabilitation of violent criminals, for example, not that we would force them to take psychedelics, but the opportunities within hope, you know, hopefully, rehabilitative therapies that they’re hopefully going through, would, would maybe help with that, and then also to head off more dangerous tendencies and someone that’s starting to display those those traits, and then now they’re in therapy, you know, a way to marry that with the with the talk therapy that they’re doing or whatever of their behavioral therapy that they’re engaged in.
Anita Nowak 29:15
I think the potential is that anybody who has experienced trauma, most of us have some way or other, it’s a new modality of healing and opens up for us is, as you said, you know, earlier in the conversation, we were saying, you know, both of you are triggered, but maybe one of you has the capacity, the wherewithal, imagine if, you know, we could develop the capacity to heal past our pains, so that more of that empathy was accessible to us.
Maria Ross 29:45
Oh, my gosh, I love it. I love it so much. Well, this has been a very enlightening conversation. And I’m very excited for the book. I’m going to read the name of it again here purposeful empathy, tapping our hidden superpower for personal or organizational and social change. It will be out in April 2023. But available for pre sale now. Yes, correct. Awesome. And we will have all your links in the show notes. I need it as well as some of the things we talked about in books we referenced today. But for folks listening on the go or exercising while they’re listening to the podcast, where’s a great place, they can learn more about you and your work or connect with you.
Anita Nowak 30:23
Two simple places you just put into YouTube purposeful empathy, and you’ll find me I’ve got YouTube series and also my websit, Anita Novak, and oh, wak.com
Maria Ross 30:37
Awesome. Thank you so much for your insights today, and best of luck with the book.
Anita Nowak 30:41
Thank you Maria. Have a wonderful day.
Maria Ross 30:44
And thank you everyone for listening to another great guest on the empathy edge podcast. If you liked the episode, please don’t keep it to yourself, share it with others. And don’t forget to rate and review if you have an opportunity. Until next time, please always remember our mantra here. cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Racism was designed to keep us apart, It was designed to create conflict and a scarcity mindset. When we’re socialized to hide our authentic selves and not bring who we really are to every interaction, we just cannot connect. Leaders, whether tackling diversity and inclusion or just everyday engagement and performance, can learn a lot of lessons about how authenticity and connection lead to better outcomes.
My guest today, Berwick Mahdi Davenport, and I tackled big questions for amazingly useful insights. We discussed what is the ultimate human need, what role authentic connection plays in satisfying that need, and how listening is the hardest but most effective practice for leaders. We defined honesty, vulnerability, and authenticity in meaningful ways you can apply to your leadership right now, and how the lack of them gets in the way of effective performance. Finally, we talked about how racism and racial inequity play out in the workplace and society, preventing us from creating together and making smarter decisions.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
When you talk less and listen more, your leadership will transform.
The ultimate human need is significance – this can look like a job package, a job title, a connection, relationships, love, and so much more. But it is all the same thing – they want to matter.
When we are not authentic to ourselves and to those around us, people notice and feel that, and it causes a disconnect within ourselves.
Everybody deserves to have the respect and space to grow. Nobody gets to where they are now overnight.
“What we have to realize as a leader is that you cannot pay people anything of equal value, no matter how much it is, to their life. Please don’t forget to live, because this thing happens so quickly.”
— Berwick Mahdi Davenport
About Berwick Mahdi Davenport, CEO, Soul Focused Group
Mahdi, CEO of Soul Focused Group, brings over thirty years of experience as a practicing life coach and anti-racist organizer, facilitator, and spiritual teacher. Mahdi’s primary focus has been and continues to be facilitating human connection that helps people recover and heal from racism and other forms of mental and emotional trauma. This expertise and passion allowed Mahdi to expertly hold space for leaders to explore and heal from the cultural programming that allows racism to sustain.
Mahdi brings patience, wisdom, and lightning-bolt directness to his mission. He is an alchemist at creating space for healing to make a new way of seeing possible.
Mahdi’s honest, transformative, and healing approach at facilitating human connection gives birth to genuine relationships, friendships, and partnerships. People who once didn’t see eye to eye find themselves standing on common ground. The shift happens on common ground.
Racism was designed to keep us apart. It was designed to create conflict and a scarcity mindset. When we’re socialized to hide our authentic selves, and not bring who we really are every interaction. We just cannot connect. Leaders whether tackling diversity and inclusion, or just everyday engagement and performance can learn a lot of lessons about how authenticity and connection lead to better outcomes. My guest today, Berwick Mahdi Davenport and I tackled big questions for some amazingly useful insights. Mahdi as he is known is the CEO of soul focused group, and brings over 30 years of experience as a practicing life coach, and anti-racist organizer, facilitator and spiritual teacher. Mahdi’s primary focus is facilitating human connection that helps people recover and heal from racism, and other forms of mental and emotional trauma. This expertise and passion allows him to expertly hold space for leaders to explore and heal from the cultural programming that allows racism to sustain. His organization provides workshops, keynotes, and facilitated gatherings to crack open tough conversations and find human solidarity, which he believes is the solution for ending racism, and enabling us to be stronger, more successful leaders. We discussed what is the ultimate human need, what role authentic connection plays in satisfying that need? How listening is the hardest but most effective practice for leaders, and he’ll tell you about his talking diet with his team daughter. We defined honesty, vulnerability and authenticity in meaningful ways that you can apply to your leadership right now. And how a lack of them gets in the way of effective performance. Finally, we talked about how racism and racial inequity play out in the workplace and society, preventing us from creating together and making smarter decisions. I loved this conversation and hope you will to take a listen.
Maria Ross 04:02
I’m excited to welcome Berwick, Mahdi Davenport, otherwise known as Mahdi, to his friends and best podcast listeners, the CEO of soul focused group, welcome to the podcast.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 04:14
Thank you for having me, Maria, I really appreciate this opportunity to talk to your listening audience and to really just get down to business in terms of business of empathy, right?
Maria Ross 04:24
The business of empathy. I love that that was actually I think in the mix for the title of my book, but and I just want to bring listeners back to the fact that I found you through DJ John, who was on an episode previously, which I will link to in the show notes, really educating us on the difference between racism and race and the history of where racism comes from. And talk to us about a lot of the great things that soul focus group does, but now that we’ve got you here, let’s remind our listeners what is soul focused group What is your mission? And what’s your story? How did you come to this work?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 05:04
All those are very good questions, I would say, you know, the sole focus group, our mission is to eradicate racism, right? Through the creation of human solidarity. Right? Try to put it in in basic nutshell. What brought about the sole focus group was the idea that me and my business partner Dustin Washington had been doing anti-racism, organizing and facilitating workshops, we’ve facilitated over maybe five to 6000 workshops, we’ve trained hundreds of 1000s of people literally. And what we found was that there was something missing from our work. And what was missing was our relationship with ourselves. So we were sacrificing our families who were sacrificing our health. There were people among us in the movement who were suffering from addictions, suffering from financial issues, health issues. And we all learned to just ignore ourselves because our job was to change the world, right. And essentially, what we said to ourselves is that we’re going to put living our life on hold, until racism has gone. So so much about what we will focus on. So, it’s about everybody else, not about ourselves. And things got so bad for us that we realized that we left the leader behind, right. So, we are leaders, right. But we had left ourselves by and so we say we left the leader behind was, so we had to go back and get the leader, right? Go back and reclaim our lives, because we had essentially gave our lives up to do this work. And so we created sole focus, because we wanted to bring about a completeness in this work while we do this work, but we also are balanced with taking care of ourselves, and aspiring to live our lives to the fullest in the face of racism. So we’re not waiting for racism to be over, to live out to live our life to the fullest and to be the best leaders that we can be. We’re doing it now.
Maria Ross 07:05
Oh, my gosh, there’s so much to unpack there. I mean
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 07:08
Yeah, there is.
Maria Ross 07:09
It’s just a what an amazing story. And what an amazing revelation that you all came to early on. It sounds like,
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 07:17
Well, it wasn’t
Maria Ross 07:18
Wasn’t earlier. It wasn’t early on. Okay,
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 07:20
No. This is like 20 years.
Maria Ross 07:21
Oh, wow. Okay, 20 years down the path. Okay. And what you find yourself repeating what other people have done. And people are not really questioning everything. I think one of the things that we struggle with the most is being able to confess what we see that’s not working, but we’re doing it anyway. Because the people that came before us did it. Right. Right. Right. So, we felt we, as leaders, we felt a certain degree of any effectiveness. And we had, the biggest challenge among us was to come clean with ourselves about the fact that we weren’t being affected. And that we would have to change our strategies change our approach at doing this work. And when you bring yourself back into the picture that was once out of the picture, it changes everything. Because now you having to have more complete strategies that are not just about focusing on the other people, but it’s about how do I bring myself How do I bring ourselves into a place of health, happiness and joy? While we’re doing this work, right? When you start seeing people completely differently, when you are happy, healthy, you know, how you see people, how you engage with people, as a leader, completely transformed well. And you also fill your well, so to speak, of being able to sustain the work because I think, you know, this is so true of empathy, as well, very empathic individuals tend to burn can tend to burn themselves out if they don’t set those boundaries or practice self-empathy. Definitely. So, with all those good intentions, I was just doing an interview recently, where we talked about the fact that especially in jobs where empathy is required, there, you need to have those those abilities to step back to focus on yourself in an unselfish way. Yes, and build up your reserves, just like we charge up our phones every night. Right? It’s, it’s having that ability, otherwise, you can’t do the work anymore.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 09:19
And that’s, that’s so true. Maria, I remember, there was a speaking engagement that I was invited to, to speak to a group of fathers, right. And I have three beautiful daughters. And at the time, they were they were babies, and the oldest was in high school. So, I went to speak to this group of fathers and, you know, I thought I did a real good job, you know, and tooting my own horn. They thought it was a great presentation, brought them to their feet in the standing ovation. And so, after was over, I picked up my oldest daughter from high school. She was in high school at the time, she was only 16. And I would pick up on a regular basis and when she would get in the car, I would ask the standard question. Just as a father, how was your day? She would start telling me about a day and I would immediately get on the phone with someone. You know, as a life coach, I was always working with people. And so, this was what I did on a regular basis. I never thought twice about it was just my routine, our routine. So, I thought, but this particular day, I said to myself, I really want to know something. But what I wanted to know was I wanted her to really pat me on the back, like the guys at the speed, the speaking engagement that I did. So, I asked her a question and I said, sit Nasha. Daddy wants to ask you a question. And I said, I promise I won’t get upset. I just want you to be honest with me. I don’t care what you say. I just wanted you to be honest. So that short that I’ll be honest with you. So, as I said, Nasha, am I a good father?
Maria Ross 10:46
Wow.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 10:46
That was the question, right? Now, here. Here I am. As a leader, I’m about to put my foot in it. I don’t know it, though. But as a leader, I’m ticking. I’m taking that, that risks. While at the same time my ego is saying, I’m no she’s gonna see you doing a great job. So, I was looking for that pat on the back from her.
Maria Ross 11:04
You are looking for the validation.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 11:05
Oh, yeah. I mean, I thought it was coming. It was like, if someone would have told me it wasn’t coming, I would have been like, no, you You don’t know my daughter know, right. So, she says to me, Sure, Dad, I’m glad you asked me that question. Because I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Well, I kind of said back and you know, in the driver’s seat, and I’m like, what do you mean by that? And I was like, don’t worry about it. Just forget it. Just just tell me. Am I a good father? She says, to be honest with you. You are a lousy father. Everything stopped in my world.
Maria Ross 11:37
Wow
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 11:38
I have my head. Everything stopped. And my voice raised. I got upset. And I said, how, how dare you say something like that? All that I do for you. I can’t believe you would say that. I’m a lousy father. And then I caught myself. And I was like, wait a minute, I promised I wouldn’t get upset.
Maria Ross 11:56
Actually, you promise you would get mad. Yeah.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 11:58
So at that moment, I apologize to and I begged you to tell me why Give me one reason. One thing that makes me such a lousy father. And she says, and I’ll tell you the thing that she said makes me a lousy father is the same thing and makes us lousy leaders. She says, Daddy, you don’t listen to other thing. And I said, That’s not true. She says you’re not listening right now. I said, yes, I am. And we went back and forth that for a minute. Then I said, Wait a minute timeout. Can you give me one way that you know that I don’t listen. She says, Daddy, I come to you all the time and share things that are very important with me in my life. And she says I was sharing with you to come back and ask you about it later, you have no recollection of it. And she says you do that all the time. And she said, I’ve come to three conclusions about you. From you not listening to me. Number one, you really don’t love me. You you are doing what you have to do. Because as a father, it’s your responsibility. Number two, she says I tell you tell people all the time that we are so close, stop telling him that we are not close at all. And the third thing she says, I hear you telling people that you know, you know me, she says you don’t know me. And that moment, I was like, Oh my god. So as a leader, I’m getting a self-evaluation done.
Maria Ross 13:18
You are and you’re like, I’m sorry, I asked
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 13:20
The same time when she said that. At first, I was thinking about myself, right? And then for a minute, I showed someone empathy, and connecting to what this must mean to her. Right? And what impact has me not listening to my daughter hat on her perception of our own voice? In a patriarchal world, right, where I’m out in the world, supposed to be representing what? A male in recovery. Right recovering my femininity, recovering my meat, understanding what it what it means the feminine energy, even the means right now in the workplace. That when she said that, to me, I was I started thinking about how she stopped feeling. And I felt something distance between us. But the first time I was became aware of that distance, because before I wasn’t, I tricked myself. I thought we I really thought we were really close. And when she brought that to my attention, I realized I start seeing the science in my head, how much distance there was between us. And the last thing I wanted was to lose my daughter to the world, you know, for her to start looking to, you know, the outside for advice, versus being able to trust her parents being able to trust her father. So, I made an agreement in that moment. And I said, I don’t know how that’s gonna work. But I said, I promise you, I’m going to do this. I’m going to go into talking diet. And I said in this talk and diet, I said, I’m going to only talk 20% I’m going to listen 80% And I said, I can’t tell you exactly what is what’s that going to mean in real time. But I know I’m gonna practice it. And I gave him my word. And I dedicated myself for three years to literally listening, listening the majority of the time, which is 80%. And I will talk very little. And what I discovered was my leadership transform. Because I was leading from a place before, I’m not listening to people. So now, the first year was like torture, I felt like a two-year-old put in timeout. Because the way I approached the world was more like, I thought, I was the only voice that was that mattered in the room. So, it was about you listening to my voice, not me listening to your voice, right. And we know that you don’t find connection with people, if you don’t listen to their voice. If you always have an expectation of them listening to you, but you’re not listening to them, you don’t create connection. So when I started becoming aware of just how disconnected I was from people, you know, that diet transformed my entire life, it transformed my relationship with my daughter, which was priority. But more and more importantly, it transformed my ability to lead people because what I started becoming present to is that people when you listen to him, tell you how to lead them. So essentially, people are leading themselves, oftentimes not taking responsibility for the direction that they’ve given themselves. And so as someone they look up to, you are giving them permission to follow what they know, instinctively to follow, anyway.
Maria Ross 16:32
Well, so there’s so much in that because we’ve talked so much to too many guests on this show about humble leadership. And this idea of humility being a necessary ingredient to being great leader.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 16:45
Yes.
Maria Ross 16:45
And someone recently spoke to me about the difference between an authoritarian leader and an authoritative leader. And I think we all are striving to be an authoritative leader where we, we are guiding we are showing the way we are mentoring; we are imparting knowledge and wisdom. But sometimes it comes out as authoritarian. Yeah, leadership my way or the highway, right? Yes, I’m the only one that can have the right answers here. Yeah, so you’re getting to just the crux of the essential ingredient for being an empathetic leader, which is the ability to be curious and actively listen. Because people will tell you what their perspective is, they will tell you what their experience is, if they know you’re listening, and if you’ve built up sufficient trust for them to feel it’s okay to share that.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 17:39
What the thing is, there’s no way to build that trust without listening. Alright, that’s the gateway, the minute you really show people that you are listening to them, it transforms the way that they come to you. You know, because on a spiritual level, listening creates a vortex that sucks their voice into you, right? I would say to people all the time, there is nothing more important to a voice than being heard. So, if I come into the room with listening, I come into I come into the room with some serious attraction. Right? People are highly attracted to me, because I listened to people on a regular basis. And I’ve you know, I’ve got a lot of billable hours of listening to people. So So I have a I have strong muscle. Now, what did I didn’t have any muscle at all.
Maria Ross 18:26
Right. And I love this idea of a talking diet. Like I think every leader who’s having challenges with their team needs to look at that as maybe an intervention step. So, you know, with the work that you do around, you know, the very just, you know, simple mission of eradicating racism, right?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 18:44
That’s simple.
Maria Ross 18:44
That’s what I mean, being sarcastic. Like, that’s all you’re trying to do is just
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 18:50
Yeah sure, sure.
Maria Ross 18:52
You know, that you talk a lot about creating human solidarity. And also, you know, this idea of what is our ultimate human need that we all share, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, what is the ultimate human need that we all especially as leaders?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 19:14
Right
Maria Ross 19:15
Understand that we need to help people fulfill?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 19:18
Yes, the ultimate human need, from my experience from working with hundreds of 1000s of people is significance, right? And sometimes significant significance comes in the package of a job title, or position, connection, relationships, love, but it all it’s all doing the same thing. They want to matter. Yeah, it’s putting us in touch with the fact that we matter. We want to know that we matter. When you look at the level of energy and participation people put into their lives or into their work. It goes up the more that they know they matter. The less that they think they matter when they start doubting that they matter participation goes down. Authentic participation. People you know, we’ll find themselves in the workplace going through the motions all the time, but they call quiet quitting. Right?
Maria Ross 20:04
Right.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 20:04
There’s a lot of people quietly quitting because they don’t know that they matter. And there are some employees, some employers that have not really made it their business to let their employees know that they matter for real, has been more of a like a show. You know, in authentic show, today, people are really reexamining how they’ve been living their lives. COVID put us in touch with how much we have neglected ourselves. So as people reengage the workplace, they are coming from a whole different place than they were before. So employers, leaders have to be more than bosses to people, they have to be more than bosses more than overseas, more than supervisors, they have to be people who are invested in the growth and development of people’s lives in a balanced way. Right. So, the job can’t be the only the top value in people’s lives. That’s the new that’s the new landscape, right?
Maria Ross 20:59
Well, I love that. And it gets to you know, when when you hear leaders being fed up with their teams, or saying like, well, they just they don’t get anything done, or they take so long to do all these things, or they just don’t seem engaged. It it’s not just thank you for doing your job. It’s, it’s more spiritual than that. It’s I need to know that it matters that I’m here that I’m contributing, that I work side by side with you, even when I mess up.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 21:29
All right. You know, what you’re saying is so, so, so true, Maria, what we have to come to realize as a leader is that you cannot pay people anything of equal value no matter how much it is to their life. Right. But we have quantify the worth of life by how much we pay people. And we have not really gotten present to the fact that what does it mean, if a person is at work 60 hours a week, 40 hours a week? How does that impact their family, their children, we have not thought about that. For years, this has been you know, the status quo. What so what we do, because work is our highest value, I’m not saying work is a bad thing. What I’m saying is now we have to put it into context, in the context of living a life, right? So how do you live a life if you always at work? We don’t end up not living a life. Right? So I tell people now, in my work as a life coach, and as a, you know, a practitioner of human solidarity, please don’t forget to live. Because this thing happens so quick. I remember when I was in my 20s and 30s. No one told me, look, by the time you hit 40, this thing will go so quick. Gonna be like what happened?
Maria Ross 22:41
It seems to accelerate after 40. Does it does? So you know, with all your work around anti-racism and D and I belonging create helping people create inclusive cultures, whether in their own community or in their workplace? What role does forming authentic human connection play in satisfying that ultimate need of significance? And if you are not someone who readily can make authentic connections, whether you feel it’s because you’re introverted, or because you, you know, had some past trauma? What role does that ability to create those authentic human connections play? And if that ability is not your strength? How do you advise leaders to still help satisfy their people’s ultimate need?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 23:39
Oh that’s lot of stuff
Maria Ross 23:39
I mean that’s a big question.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 23:39
A lot, a lot of good stuff you asked? Where do I start with our stuff? Yeah. Well, I want to start with a clarification around authentic, right? Because I am, doing a lecture at Columbia University in New York. And I was working with a group of graduate students, and I was talking about authenticity. And they said to me, you know, all of them, like raise their hand at the same time. And they said, you know, to be honest with you, we really don’t know what authenticity is. Right? So a lot of people say, We want you to be authentic self, and we really don’t have a grasp on what does that mean.
Maria Ross 24:15
Right. Right. So also, we also think it’s an end state that looks the same for everybody.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 24:21
Exactly.
Maria Ross 24:22
Actually, is I go on this rant all the time when I talk to clients about being an authentic brand.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 24:27
Right.
Maria Ross 24:28
Whatever is authentic to you.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 24:30
Yes.
Maria Ross 24:31
It’s not a thing that everybody that’s authentic looks alike.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 24:36
Thank you for saying that.
Maria Ross 24:37
I’m sorry. I just got so excited.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 24:39
Because that’s so true, because authentic is different in every moment. Right? Right. And we make authentic linear. We make it where we think is something as a way to be all the time, right? It is and it isn’t. Right? So, it’s a way to be spontaneous, unpredictable. Right? And all in, like in every moment in every moment of your life, if you being all in that what is being all in, feel like and look like, it looks like you accurately representing your own internal reality. Right. So that is our responsibility. Every human being is responsible, whether you are introvert or extrovert, you are responsible for the same thing. No one knows what is unfolding inside of you. So, it is your job to accurately represent what is unfolding inside of you. So, let’s say I have a desire, and that’s what makes us leaders. That’s the first thing and it makes us leaders, that we all leaders of our own life, because we are responsible for accurately representing ourselves, right? So now let’s let’s talk about what happens if I inaccurately represent myself? Right? Because we have this conversation often around racist.
Maria Ross 25:49
Well, or when I try to look like I have all the answers, or I try to look like I’m not scared or edge looks like I’ve got it all together.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 25:57
Yes, yes. When I show up as an imposter, right, right, because I think there’s some kind of way I’m supposed to be. That’s not who I am. In that moment, right. So, when I talk about the idea of, you know, you have to completely be willing to represent yourself, because if you’re not representing yourself, then what you have was doing what was going on is you’re not building authentic connections. Right? So here’s what happens. I call it the volcano syndrome. Every time you hold back, suppress what you really want to say about your inner reality, because you want because that’s the drive in us to represent it accurately. And every time we misrepresent it, what it does, it builds up resentment, we build up resentment inside ourselves. So it starts interfering with our connection with ourselves. And this, what happens is, it happens so often, then what I call mad day happens, where you can’t take it no more, you’ve suppressed yourself as much as you can. And you let it all out all at one time. It acts like a volcano, you spew all this hot lava on people.
Maria Ross 27:04
It’s a great analogy.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 27:05
You know and then what happens people back off from you. They really reserved about you. And in some cases, they want to get rid of you. And you try, you’re trying to figure out well, what did I do wrong? So what we tend to do is blame it on our authenticity,
Maria Ross 27:19
Right. Because it all came out at once.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 27:21
Right.
Maria Ross 27:21
You think oh, that’s what happens when I share who I am.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 27:24
Exactly. It’s not the authenticity is the fact that you’ve been practicing suppressing your authenticity.
Maria Ross 27:29
And now you just shocked people, because where did that come from?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 27:33
Not only not only shocked, he’s what they shocked about, they thought the person you were being was real. They thought what you were sharing with them was accurate. And now they’re having to rethink what comes out of your mouth. So, every day that we practice, we show up in our imposter syndrome is a day that we wouldn’t have to give account for because the minute you come clean, people gonna stop making the connections about what you said before. So that’s the thing about inaccurately representing yourself, you have to keep up with those in misinformation, you got to keep up with it in your mind, it puts pressure on your mind, baggage. And you know, it’s my grandparents used to say all the time, if you tell one lie, you, you got to tell two you got to tell one for yourself and one for the other person. And what they meant was a lie cannot stand by itself. It needs other lies to support it. So, we keep embellishing versus just coming clean and makes it harder and harder. The more we embellish, the harder it is to come clean.
Maria Ross 28:36
You know, you are sparking this thing for me, I don’t even know what to call it, you know, just relating this to me with my own eight year old son. And just the times when I try to, you know, with good intention, I try to pretend I’m I’m calm in the moment and not he’s not getting to me. And I’m trying to get him to either, you know, tell me something or you know, like, especially when he lies frequently. You know what I’m trying to go ahead just tell me what bla bla and then when I lose it, and I go and the real the real emotion comes. You can tell on his face. He’s like, okay, so I know that that wasn’t genuine when she was trying to get me to tell her the truth or saying that I wouldn’t get in trouble or whatever the thing is, and you’re just like, you’re creating this parenting moment for me of like, that’s what it is he’s not connecting with with me being inauthentic instead of me just admitting I’m getting really frustrated right now. And I you know; I really want you to tell me this but you’re not and so I’m gonna walk away for a little bit and then when I come back like that’s authentic because that’s actually what I’m feeling in the moment.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 29:45
Like that connection.
Maria Ross 29:45
It’s not a big deal. Just tell mommy it’s okay. Like I won’t get upset.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 29:51
That’s not real. And there’s, there’s something about us. You know, we are spirit beings. First of all, you know, we are nothing but energy. And that energy connects naturally with other energy at a certain vibration, right? So, when we when we are not being authentic, that means the level of vibration that we are giving off, will not connect with someone who is who is real. So, the more real we are, you know, the more distance a person creates when they’re not being real, you, you almost like can feel it, you know, and children feel it more than anybody. They pick up on it.
Maria Ross 30:35
They are truth detectors, they’re […] detectors.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 30:38
Exactly.
Maria Ross 30:39
So how does this relate to? This is kind of a rogue a question for you, I tend to do that with my guests in the anti-racist work that you do. And in the DEI work that you do, how do you pull apart for people, when they’re really being authentic? Or they’re putting on a show of being an ally, because they know that they know that how they’re feeling isn’t what they should be communicating? And so, they’re, they’re putting on these inauthentic guys. Is that does that lead them to ultimately embrace that authentically? Or, you know, how do you help teams navigate that?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 31:14
Well, I would say it is that, first of all, it’s a process. And part of the narrative that racism has given all of us, regardless of what our race is, is that we can’t show up as our authentic selves. That’s a that is our narrative across the board. So, what racism has cleverly done in our processing, it is made our authentic, our authentic self of the problem. Now, that’s, that’s deep. So, we are always working on changing ourselves, because racism has gotten us to believe that who we are, is not enough. So if you’re white, that’s not enough. If you’re a person of color, that’s not enough. We all are reexamining and critically examining who we are. And the we feel like the work is moving through the false examination that that racism has gotten us to do allow ourselves to really get in close to who we really are for real, right, and to be able to embrace our true self, and learn that it’s good enough, right? Because most of the conflict that we experienced in ourselves a struggle is coming from us being in conflict with ourselves, and us being afraid to articulate that to other people. Right. And there’s so much strength that comes from me being able to come clean to you about what I really what I really feel about myself first. Because I tell people this look honesty, it really is the best policy. But honesty is not about telling the truth, telling the truth about you. Honestly, it’s about telling my own truth. It’s about giving your accurate location about where you really are, what you really feel and think and owning it and taking responsibility for it yourself. A lot of people think in this work, anti-racism work, they always want to tell other people’s truth. There is no power in me telling your truth. Why you did this, then, you know, got my hand in your face, that there’s no power in it. But there is power that is restored in me if I step forward and say look, this is what I’m really feeling and thinking and I’m going to own that was essentially honestly puts the spotlight on you. I can’t be honest for you, and you can’t be honest for me. So honestly, has has a medicine as a spiritual medicine in it. That returns us to our power almost instantly. I’ve seen people in rooms, right big rooms of people, community people, and one person come clean. And it creates a I mean,
Maria Ross 33:41
Well, it opens it invites other people. They’re like, hey, it’s safe to do it, too. Yeah, I’m gonna do it too. Yeah. That is very cathartic. I think for me it is. You just need that one person to be brave and one person just open right?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 33:55
It’s like Adam has been cracked open the atomic bomb right goes.
Maria Ross 33:59
That’s why if a leader can set the tone Yes, for that. I mean, I I’ll put a link in the show notes to a podcast I did early on with a leader Paul Mirabella, who was seen about leading during major crises. He was a CEO during 911. He was the CEO during the financial crash. He was a CEO during cocoa, right? All of these things and he said what he learned number one was what you started this interview talking about was how self-care helped sustain him that he couldn’t be Superman and he had to take care of himself and his family before he could be a good leader for his teams. And number two, the fact that vulnerability, I always talked about it as confident vulnerability. You can be confident in your vulnerability and not be just like a heaping mess of tears on the floor. I must genuinely feel but he was talking about the fact that when I started to share with my teams that I didn’t know I was scared to. I wasn’t sure how we were We’re gonna get through this, and just can’t lead from that place of like I’m admitting to you my vulnerability. He said it changed the dynamic of his team’s relating to each other and to him because he has the model as the leader made it. Okay?
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 35:15
Right.
Maria Ross 35:15
You admit your honest truth […]
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 35:18
Maria, how can I be with you, or you be with me if I don’t give you my accurate location?
Maria Ross 35:20
Right.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 35:25
And to me, that’s what vulnerable being vulnerable is. I’m telling you where I really am emotionally and mentally, which gives me the opportunity gives you the opportunity to be with me, it gives the people in your life an opportunity to be with you. I’ve worked with people in my coaching practice, who were married 20 something years, and they were so far apart from each other, because they didn’t practice giving the accurate location. So something comes up, they hide it from each other. And then they literally hide in each other’s face. You know, they think the person is right there next to him, but who they really are, is not next to their body is next to you, but who they are is not next to you.
Maria Ross 36:04
Such good stuff. You talk about human solidarity as the solution to ending racism, can you define for us what you mean by human solidarity? And why is that the solution,
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 36:16
I would say a human solidarity is authentic human connection, that solid, right, and that we have a practice amongst each other. authentic human connection is solid, well, we all are working to stay to stay current. So when I show up, I show up as myself, I’m not showing up as an imposter. I’m being as current as I possibly can, so that you can know me and I can know you. And then what we find out is that we have so many similarities, right? And then we have differences. And those differences are strengths, they are not threats, because when racism has gotten us to think is that those differences are threats, when we don’t realize that we are living in the same world. And if we really saw the truth about people’s differences, and saw the strengths, and what we can really do with all the difference that we have in this country, right? We have, we have so many beautiful, unique expressions, that if we opened the door to the possibility of, you know, doing something different than what we always do, right, and having that, that convergent thinking, well, we always gone to the same thing all the time, and try some divergent thinking opened the door to some some diversity for real, right, you know, not just use the word but really open the door to what that looks like. I mean, we could be totally effective. We could transform everything.
Maria Ross 37:41
Well, I mean, the research out there, we’ve we’ve spoken about this on several shows, too. It’s the data is there that when you have a diverse executive team, a diverse leadership team, you make better, more profitable business decisions, because you’re not all caught in making the same mistake you’ve got, you’re looking at the picture from different angles, and you’re considering all the options before you make a decision. And you might consider an option that no one else in the room thought of or avoid a risk. No one else in the room saw coming. Yes. And so you know, the more we the reason I wrote the empathy edge was to give the business case for empathy to skeptics to say it actually look at how it improves the bottom line. Now, my heart and my soul just want us to be in a more empathetic world, right. But if we can meet skeptics where they are, and convince them to give it a try. So it’s the same thing. I’m like, I’m trying to you know, as much as I can get that data and that research out there that diverse thinking makes better decisions.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 38:44
Yes, definitely.
Maria Ross 38:46
I mean, fear it. We don’t want to be surrounded by Yes, people, you know,
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 38:51
We’d get past get pass or out of our ego, right. And I talk about that a lot in our work about having an assigned ego. So through socialization, indirectly, we are all assigned an ego. It’s something that we heard in our childhood growing up, either from our parents all from school teacher from somewhere in society, that we latched on and start trying to thought that being that person, that personality, would get us what we need in this world, right? What get us up a leg up in the world. And so we take that personality on, and it’s not until maybe 30 or 40 years down the road, we realize this is not who I am. This is what the world gave me to be. Right.
Maria Ross 39:38
Right.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 39:39
And so a lot of leaders operating from that place. Right? Supposed to ensure I’m supposed to do this.
Maria Ross 39:48
These were the rules. I was taught how I got to be successful. Yes, I say this all the time about us having empathy for leaders, especially in this new world of work, this future of work where we do We do want people to bring their whole selves, we do want them to bring emotion, we do want them to bring vulnerability. If we’re being empathetic about the more seasoned leaders, that’s a big paradigm shift for them. And they’re like, but wait a minute, for 30 years, you were telling me I had to be this way at work. And now all of a sudden, you know, Gen Z comes along, and now I have to change, right? And I think that empathy goes both ways of like, yes, they still need to change. But be empathetic at the fact that that’s a big change. They can’t change on a dime. And interestingly enough, I don’t know if you’ve found this in your work. I had an interview with another DEI expert. My heart who goes by heart, he runs the heart learning group out of DC. And he he talked about the fact that sometimes it’s the hardest for him and even him as a black man practicing as a DEI professional. He said sometimes my the biggest, most obstinate the most obstinate leaders are actually sometimes the leaders of color. Oh, that’s because he said, because now I’m telling them to change all the rules that they like you said their assigned ego had ascribed to for years. Yes, yes. He said, versus being a little bit more agile and flexible, like the younger generations are. So, it was it was a fascinating conversation. He said, sometimes, that’s where I have the biggest barrier.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 41:23
Well, I would, I would agree to that. And I would say that what I had to wake up to as a leader in this in this field, was that nobody grows in your face. And everybody deserves to have the risk, the respect and the space to grow. None of us who are doing this work got to where we are overnight, we all saw ourselves grow and go through challenges away from everybody else. So people didn’t get a chance to see the messy stuff that we experienced in our lives. Right, right. Because then we’d show up in front of the audience. And we clean up really well, in front of audiences, everybody think we have it all together. But people don’t know the story behind like, I tell people all the time you go see a movie, and you don’t realize it took five years to to put this movie together. And if you saw the steps and stages it took to put it together, you would understand more about the reality of your own life. But well, we are always presenting a movie. So we’re like, we’re going to do this presentation, Lights, Camera Action. And the person you’re seeing is not the person that it’s not the whole person. Because we we got to learn to be able to express ourselves in a way where we’re being vulnerable, as you talked about, right? So that’s, that’s a big thing. Because we right now, we all been asked by the universe to make some shifts. Yeah, I’m at the sole focus group, we say, number one, we honor mistakes. Mistakes are have high value in our company. Because we want people to feel it’s okay to come to our workshops, and make mistakes. Right? We are not afraid of your mistakes, right? We have been trained, though, through our socialization, to not only be afraid of it, but to attack a person for the mistakes they make. Right. And so, we’ve transformed that totally, because we want people to feel like, we want to embrace your growth, we want to we want to be supportive of your growth, because we know that where you starting at, it’s not going to be where you end up. But but the thing I was ready to tell you was some time ago, I had this big epiphany around this right in the epiphany was when I was in my early 20s. I read a psychology book that said a whole bunch of things. But there was one line that stuck out to me for all these years. And the Lion said, it is next to impossible to get someone to believe what they don’t want to believe. And I was like, oh shit, right? That’s huge. Because racism is a belief system. Yeah. So how do you change a belief, you can’t force someone to believe something they don’t want to believe it is the power left up to that person to choose to believe something different. So when I got that, for real, I stopped bringing to the idea that we are sharing our perspective. I’m not trying to change what you believe I want but I want you to see my perspective. And I’m willing to see yours too. Because what this conversation has been missing is us being able to share each other’s perspective without attacking each other. We are so afraid that if we listen to the other person’s perspective, it may change us
Maria Ross 44:37
Right or we’re condoning it.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 44:39
Exactly.
Maria Ross 44:40
Yeah.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 44:41
They’re just listening to it, you know. So, we could just listen to each other’s perspective. And then we all still have the power as adult learners to choose to believe or not believe. Because racism is not afraid of evidence. Racism is not afraid of the truth. And it’s not afraid of proof. You could bring all All those things because racism exists in the realm of belief in the realm of belief. It’s not about,
Maria Ross 45:04
Right. It’s like religion.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 45:06
Exactly. All the truth you want, you could say all of the, all of that you could provide all the evidence, and we’ve done it for years. And it’s not going to move a person, if they are in a place of believing it. Because racism says, I don’t care if you for me or against me as long as you believe in me. Because even those who are against racism, believe it helped to keep it alive. Our belief in it keeps it alive.
Maria Ross 45:31
That you know that that concept was brought up during the pandemic for people trying to figure out how to reach people who were her who were anti-vaccine. And the whole point what they, you know, they came around to was like, throwing more facts at them is not going to change their hearts and minds don’t move, don’t move. It’s about listening. It’s about sharing stories. It’s about maybe getting them curious enough to to seek out a different alternative to the narrative they’ve been telling themselves.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 46:02
Yes. When are people most likely to make a change in the scope of a relationship with someone else?
Maria Ross 46:10
Someone they trust.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 46:12
Exactly right. When people, that’s when we all you know, somebody comes into our lives, and they become this, this this, this force that demonstrates that they care about us beyond what we thought was possible. And we almost immediately start feeling a need to grow. You get I’m saying almost immediately, but happens in the scope of relationships. That’s why we say human solidarity is about human connection, authentic human connection, that solid because in connection, we influence each other, and we grow in a more healthy way than outside that connection.
Maria Ross 46:48
So much good stuff, how, what is soul focused group doing to further this movement? You deliver workshops, do you go into companies,
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 46:57
we deliver workshops, we go into companies, we do keynotes, we, we meet with anybody we can be with, because we realize that people have become so accustomed to fighting. Right? So, we say creating is the new fighting, right? Because we don’t want to say that fighting is wrong, because it has its place. But when you fight all the time, at the end of the day, you have nothing to show for the fighting, right, because the fighting is a destructive energy, you tearing something down, but you’re not creating something. So we say let’s replace fighting with creating, we are working to create human solidarity. And we do it through these workshops, these lectures, podcasts, you know, coaching sessions, you know, we meet people where they are.
Maria Ross 47:43
Right. And basically any group can come to you if they want to have some sort of facilitated session, whether it’s a workplace group or community group, or school group.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 47:53
It is all of it, we have, we have all of it. We have diverse leaders from different backgrounds, we’ve worked with, you know, in different disciplines that are capable of bringing this conversation in a way that’s really heartfelt, connecting, and respectful, right? We don’t we don’t shame people, right? When we feel people feel guilty, we are not trying to change anyone, we actually trying to get you to be more of yourself. And we’re saying racism has done a good job of moving us away from who we really are. And we need to move back to who we really are. So that we can really see ourselves and and see each other. You know.
Maria Ross 48:33
I love it. I love it. Mahdi, this has been such a great conversation. I know we get in a few different directions, but I love it. And I love the work that you’re doing with so,
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 48:43
Thank you so much Maria.
Maria Ross 48:44
We need more of that I can I can think of like five different places you guys need to get in and facilitate. But for you know, we’ll have all your links in the show notes so people can connect with you and find out more about your work. But for those on the go, where’s a good place that they can check out your work.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 49:02
Where they go to our website, soulfocusedgroup.com And check us out we have we’re getting ready to launch a new website. We you know, we’ve retooled our toolboxes and we were excited about it. So soul focused group.com
Maria Ross 49:18
Check that soul focused F O C U S E D group.com. Mahdi, thank you so much for this conversation and for sharing your insights and I just really, really support your work.
Berwick Mahdi Davenport 49:32
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
Maria Ross 49:33
And thank you everyone for listening to another great guest on the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, please share it with a friend or colleague. Don’t forget to rate and review. And as ever, always remember our mantra, cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
Great leaders are self-aware about their own strengths and encourage their teams to be as well. They harmonize everyone’s strengths, including their own, so folks know when to lean in or rely on others. These leaders actively leverage strengths to achieve high performance, but it starts with being willing and curious about your strengths.
Today, Brandon Miller and I talk about the GALLUP Clifton Strengths Finder – and I share a little about my results from 2016, and how they led to researching and writing The Empathy Edge! Brandon shares why you as a leader should care about strengths-based development, and the role emotional intelligence plays in it. We discuss the strength of empathy and how it influences organizational outcomes. And Brandon tells us about times when he’s had to recommend decision makers use empathy to support their teams. We even talk about the shadow sides of some of the strengths. It’s a fascinating discussion all you leaders and aspiring leaders will just love – and Brandon has a very special offer for all of you at the end, so stay tuned.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Emotional intelligence, at its core, is thinking with our frontal lobe. It’s just thinking logically, carefully and, at times, slowly, through situations.
The strength of empathy and the dictionary definition of empathy are not the same thing. Even if you do not have the strength of empathy, you can be empathetic.
Utilizing the strengths finder will allow your team to have a common language to talk about your strengths.
“Any effective psychometric assessment gives the gift of self-awareness. I get to know myself and my best place, my worst place, and everything in the middle. If I can get to the point where I know myself that way, without judgment, I have climbed the ladder of emotional intelligence.”
— Brandon Miller
About Brandon Miller, Author, Certified Strengths Coach, CEO
Brandon Miller is one of the FIRST 7 Certified GALLUP Clifton Strengths Finder Coaches in the world. Over 15 years ago, he was a very early practitioner of Clifton StrengthsFinder using it as the Executive Leader for a non-profit organization. He has since coached hundreds of leaders to find and leverage their strengths for themselves and their teams. He is the CEO of 34 Strong, a coaching and consulting firm dedicated to improving employee engagement. He has nearly 15 years of experience providing specialized leadership training, coaching, advising, and facilitating.
Brandon is also the Co-Founder of Incredible Family, a consulting agency that educates, empowers, and encourages working parents to take a strengths-based approach to parenting in order to unlock their best selves and raise strong, happy children and teens. He and his wife Analyn Miller are successful business owners, parents to seven children, and authors of Play To Their Strengths and Incredible Parent.
Brandon’s Special Offer!
If you’re interested in taking the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment for FREE to learn more about your strengths, please email Brandon at brandon@34strong.com for complimentary test access.
Great leaders are self-aware about their own strengths and encourage their teams to be as well. They harmonize everyone’s strengths including their own, so folks know when to lean in or rely on others. These leaders actively leverage strength to achieve high performance. But it starts with being willing and curious about your strengths. My guest today is Brandon Miller, author certified strengths coach and CEO of 34 Strong, a coaching and consulting firm dedicated to improving employee engagement. Brandon is one of the first seven certified Gallup Clifton Strengths Finder coaches in the world. Over 15 years ago, he was a very early practitioner of Clifton Strengths Finder, using it as the executive leader for a nonprofit organization. He has since coached hundreds of leaders to find and leverage their strengths for themselves and their teams. Today, Brandon and I talk about the Gallup Clifton Strengths Finder, in case you don’t know what it is, and I share a little about my results from 2016. And how they lead to researching and writing the empathy edge. Brandon shares why you as a leader should care about strengths-based development, and the role emotional intelligence plays in it. We discuss the strength of empathy, and how it influences organizational outcomes. And Brandon tells us about the times when he’s had to recommend decision makers use empathy to support their teams. We even talk about the shadow sides of some of the strengths, a fascinating discussion that all you leaders and aspiring leaders will just love. And Brandon has a very special offer for all of you at the end. So, stay tuned.
Maria Ross 03:17
Welcome to the show, Brandon Miller, thanks for being on the empathy edge.
Brandon Miller 03:22
Thank you, Maria. It’s great to be here today.
Maria Ross 03:25
I’m excited to have this talk with you about strengths and the role of empathy. And we were just talking before we started recording that you are one of the first seven certified Gallup Clifton Strengths Finder coaches in the world. And it was a Strengths Finder assessment. That led me down my path to writing the empathy edge. And now doing this podcast because empathy showed up, shockingly to me in one of as my one of my top five strengths. So yay, to the strength’s finder.
Brandon Miller 03:59
Yay
Maria Ross 04:01
So, tell us a little bit about your story and your work.
Brandon Miller 04:04
Sure. So, I learned about Strengths Finder. In a fun way. I was sitting at my desk one day, and I was a leader in an organization more of a middle type manager. And one of the executives came in and he said, Hey, I found this book in the airport. And I think we should do this, which was always code for you should do this. Yeah. And so, I grabbed the book, and it says, Now discover your strengths. And I thought, huh, how interesting. And so, I tore into it. And I quickly found out that if once you read through the introduction, there’s like this little tear out at the back. So, I didn’t read it all, just jumped to the back, grabbed the tear out, went online and took this assessment. And I gotta tell you, I got these results back these words and as I’m reading the descriptions, I’m literally saying to myself, did somebody follow me? Like did somebody like crawl into my head because I had never used the word maximum Laser arranger activator as words that I would say describe me. But these were so accurate and so detailed. So I, I was hooked, I thought, oh my gosh, this is awesome. And then I was invited to a half day training. And the training was essentially someone connected to our organization that had had a training from Gallup directly. And this was at a time before certification was even an option as a portable certification. So, I got to go to the class and sit in be a fly on the wall, get all the data. And so then we had our whole team in the organization take it, and I got to be the one to talk about all the results. And as soon as I don’t know that three month period was over, I just said, I, this is what I want to do just want to do for a living. I want to talk to people about their strengths. I want to help position them to do what they do best every day. Because why would we want to spend so much time talking about what’s wrong with you? This makes no sense. And that that does play into me being a maximizer. That is that that’s just a part of who I am. Naturally, I’ve learned. And and so then that blossomed into a business.
Maria Ross 06:06
So, tell folks who are not familiar with the strength’s finder give us a 32nd description of what it is because we’re both throwing throwing on terms that people are familiar with. So just quickly
Brandon Miller 06:17
Thank you.
Maria Ross 06:17
Recap it for us
Brandon Miller 06:18
Thank you. Thank you. So, for those listening, this Clifton Strengths was developed by a gentleman named Dr. Donald Clifton. So, it’s been called Strengths Finder. And then some years back, they rebranded to Clifton Strengths for his legacy. And Dr. Donald Clifton, in his graduate studies, and this was around the 1950s. So, he had just come back from World War Two was in his doctorate program for psychology. And he had he had a burning question. His question was, why is it everywhere I turned, every book I read, seems to be focused on human disease and neurosis. And his question was, where are all the books that tell us what’s right with people? Where’s all the research around human greatness and talent? And so that was it. The that was the flip that switched in his mind. And that was going to be his life’s work is dedication to understanding human excellence. And so, he went on the greatest talent search in the history of talent searches, 2 million people worldwide were surveyed. And it wasn’t just random, it was people known to be really strong, standout performers. And then they would try to understand what is it that they did that helped them to be successful, and they work backwards. And they understood those to be talents, simple patterns of behavior that could be productively applied. And from that they built what today is a psychometric assessment, I’m leaving out a lot of the math and a lot of the detail, but they boiled it down to 34. Clifton Strengths are strengths. And when a person takes this assessment, they can be ranked in order from their most intense strength number one, to their least intense strength number 34. And it’s wonderfully comprehensive list of what is it that you do great, but also, some areas to know, this is probably not for me, it’s not an area that I thrive in probably need a partner here, probably this system gives that kind of insight.
Maria Ross 08:13
Yeah. And what I love about it is it’s really great for groups, because it’s really understanding group dynamics, and the ability to collaborate and why certain groups, you know, just perform an innovate and do all the things and other groups are just a train wreck. And when you realize that maybe you have too much of one strength in a given group, or you’ve got these untapped strengths in a group that you’re not leveraging, right, because of the strengths of other people crowding that out, you know, so it’s really under I love it’s just understanding like, the makeup and the psychology of what everybody’s bringing to the party. That’s right. And it’s like the best kind of horoscope you could ever you could ever get. Because I you know, you’re so right, it does tell you things that you’re like, Hmm, I never would have you know, if asked what my strengths were, those would not be you know, one of mine was Winning Others Over. Whoo. Right. And I never would have described it that way. Or even that wouldn’t have been like my top of mine thing. If I was being asked by someone what my strengths are. What I love about the strengths finder is it uncovers these things. And then you start to look back at your career and your successes and your challenges. And you realize where those strengths were present the entire time, you just didn’t know what they were called.
Brandon Miller 09:31
Yeah. Was a fan favorite. So every room we go into the train, we got to know the whoo
Maria Ross 09:37
Whoo I love it. And wait for the Whoo. Well, that is incredible. And it does explain for everyone the meaning of your company name 34 strong. So, let’s get into it. What role does emotional intelligence play in strengths-based development? Because that’s the thing where people fall back on like, oh, emotional intelligence is just not My strength or empathy is just not my strength. And they I kind of find they use it as an excuse not to develop that skill. True, what do you find is the role of emotional intelligence when you’re trying to assess your strengths.
Brandon Miller 10:12
So, I think the greatest gift that StrengthsFinder gives to the world is a very neutral vocabulary that one might use to describe themselves. And it gives you insights into where your greatest strengths probably lie, but also where your greatest liabilities potentially lie. And I think any psychometric assessment that is effective, gives with it the gift of self-awareness, I get to know who I am, I get to know who I’m not, I get to know myself and my best place, probably my worst place and everything in the middle. And if I can get to the point where I can know me that way, without judgment, I have climbed the ladder of emotional intelligence, I am, I am now able to look at myself objectively, which allows me to then look at you in that way, as well, I’m developing, you’re developing, we can have compassion on each other for the journey. Because progress always, always is going to be more measurable and more important than perfection. And in the in the, in the world we live in where comparison is so deep, so built in with so much exposure to so many sources, I think the gift of allowing yourself to be who you are, and grow into the greatness that is within you, is a fantastic way that this really connects to emotional intelligence. And we were talking about this a lot, because we think that for leaders in particular, the one skill, they share that and it’s the only one in fact, this was uncovered in some of gallops work with Dr. Donald Clifton as well. The only trait shared that successful leaders have is self-awareness. It’s the only one, you could have all kinds of ways to get to success and leadership. That’s the one. And it’s the one I think that we all have equal opportunity to invest in and grow.
Maria Ross 12:12
I love that so much. And so much of my work and even other guests I’ve had on the show, we always start from that place of if you want to be a good leader, it’s actually the internal work the inside job you need to work on first. It’s not what more can I do or get out of my people. In order to be a better leader, it’s got to start with that self-awareness, that humility, that ability to say, here’s what I’m good at, here’s where I need to shore up those skills, and also where I need to practice emotional intelligence, so that I can be that empathetic leader and I won’t take everything defensively, I won’t every different point of view as an attack. Only leaders that have that presence and that emotional regulation, are able to see different ideas and new points of view for the value that they they offer. And not as just like, Well, that didn’t come from me. So, you know, it’s not a valid idea,
Brandon Miller 13:09
Right. I think because this paradigm lives in the positive psychology space. It’s what causes it to be so attractive to teams. Because the idea that, Oh, we’re going to talk about what’s right with all of us, we’re going to build on our strengths. We’re going to move away from focusing on my inadequacies, my weaknesses, that’s a break. Can we do that more often? Yeah. And that’s, and that’s the draw. Right? And I’ll Gallup did is they made the business case for it. They just simply showed, hey, guess what, when you talk to people in a positive way more about what’s right, and what’s wrong with them? Crazy thing, they like you more, they trust you, right, you work harder, they stay engaged with you at work, it’s good business. And I think that’s, that’s the beautiful part of this is that as leaders grow in their emotional intelligence, to where they can start to see the benefits, so recognizing this actually works for me, but it works for me in such a beautiful way because I’m, I’m helping this person to engage, and I’m probably impacting their personal life outside of work are impacting the friend and the parent in the in the child and the human being they are outside of work, I get to do both.
Maria Ross 14:20
Right. Right. And like you said, you know, it’s refreshing to think about what we’re doing right versus what we’re doing wrong. Let’s talk about situations that you’ve encountered. We talked a little bit about empathy being one of the traits that’s in the strength’s finder. And can you give us a definition from the strengths finder of what it means when it says one of your top strengths is empathy?
Brandon Miller 14:45
Sure. So, is really important to mention disclaimer, that that the 34 Clifton Strengths are an intact vocabulary. So, the strength of empathy isn’t the dictionary definition of empathy. And that’s important because people can be empathetic, who do not have the strength of empathy. So they meaning I like to tell people, I’ve met leaders and empathy is number 34 out of 34. And, and I have to reassure them, this assessment did not call you a sociopath, I promise It didn’t do that, hopefully,
Maria Ross 15:23
I think, yeah,
Brandon Miller 15:25
let’s both hope, meaning, if empathy textbook is I can put myself in your shoes, I can feel what you’re feeling. And out of my compassion, I can take action I can do I can say I can give, I can share. All of us, every human can do that, differentiating that to the strength of empathy. So these are people that can sense the feelings of others without asking or even being invited to it, they can pick up on the nuanced behaviors of people in their sphere that they know and others they don’t, or just the general mood of the room. And paths have the ability to leverage that knowledge to build trust, create intimacy, open doors, thoughtful listening, some of the best listeners, I know are very high in empathy. And they’re very good at tuning in. One of the other parts of that strength is mirrored neurons. So the ability to listen with their heart, and to mirror back, the posture, the tone, even sometimes the rhythm, the Keydets in such a respectful, soothing way that the listener knows I’m being being thought of here. So that, that it’s such a broad, beautiful strength, it when we think about one group in particular, we work with is in the medical field, many nurses, high empathy, many of them, and what they share is that this drink is so cute at times that they’ve actually had to learn how to turn it down. Because it flows so strong, they’ve had to learn how to turn it down. So, they’re not over internalizing,
Maria Ross 17:01
Right. And they have to set boundaries very clearly. Otherwise, they lose themselves and
Brandon Miller 17:07
Or exhaust themselves, right, or it’s it because it’s literally, I knew my children at different stages. One of them in junior high had a friend, and my daughter said, Gosh, she cries all the time. And we would go I wonder why. And she goes, she doesn’t know. And so, she got over, I was so curious, I bet this kid is really high in empathy. Sure enough, just really in tune to sadness and happiness. And the moments that make not all the way sure how to filter him yet not always sure how to know when it’s me when it’s not me. And then that’s how the strength is grown the talent, the recurring pattern of of that ability to pick up nuanced behaviors, tone, posture, movements, is something that happens raw, but as it’s grown, wow, has such powerful use as a strength for effectiveness in human human development, human relationships.
Maria Ross 18:03
It really does. And we’ve talked a lot on this show about the fact that, you know, Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. And, you know, if you are, if you are a leader at work, who is curious about, you know, you’ve got a growth mindset, you’re curious about how things are done, you’re curious about how people are feeling you’re curious about what motivates individually, each of the members of your team? Yeah, you know, I would be willing to bet that you if you are a curious leader, you probably have some empathy and you some empathy, strength, some empathy, talent, because I think that’s really about getting outside yourself, and being willing to be curious about someone else’s experience or point of view or idea or how something is done. You know, when we lack that curiosity, we don’t even engage, we think we have all the answers inside of us. That’s right. So, I love that. What situations have you had where you’ve had to recommend decision makers use empathy to support their teams? What’s one of the processes you’ve shared with them to achieve a healthy emotional intelligence? I bet that’s the million-dollar question. Everybody listening wants to know.
Brandon Miller 19:12
Well, I think there’s a couple really important points in the first one is a watch out. So, we encourage leaders to be very aware of when they move to frustration, start to have a sensitivity and awareness of what brings you to frustration,
Maria Ross 19:29
What triggers you, yeah.
Brandon Miller 19:31
What’s the doorway before anger, what moves you there? And sometimes it’s a trigger other times it’s because you didn’t have breakfast? Like, what is it? What is it that that causes? Because frustration in the space of curiosity that you’re describing can be turned to fascination? I wonder why I’m feeling this way. Wonder what’s happening here. And I can maintain objectivity because emotional intelligence at its core, is thinking with our frontal lobe. That’s just thinking logically and carefully and at times slowly through a situation so I can see the whole field. When we move out of EQ we move into to enforce. Yeah, very much. And now we’re reacting. And we’ve lost our creativity, we’re moving away. So, the first is a watch out, pay attention to those spaces, because it’s possible that what is moving you there isn’t that someone is doing something wrong. It’s they’re doing something different. And differences, when not understood can be annoyances, when well understood are advantages. And so high leaders that want to excel and empathy, really, as you said, very well, they become interested and curious. And I want to I want to know, in that discovery mode, what is it that helps move you on the on the more proactive side empaths. In You said this will also take a customized approach to human development. They recognize that a one size fit all that one approach is very ineffective. It’s good for establishing standards, such as human resource policies that we should all follow. Not great for coaching, not great for individualizing an approach to help people succeed. So, empaths have a an opportunity, because they they do naturally want to do that as a strength, those who don’t share that as a top strength, can learn how to ask, learn how to pay attention learn. As one point, we talked about learning styles, different ways that people are going to process and retain key word retain, just because you taught it doesn’t mean they got it. That’s not a given. Because some people have to get their hands on it, others need to just talk it out. Others just read the book and off they go, they can study it and go, Well, that’s three very different styles of learning and paths become attuned to that. What style works best, and how do I help you get there. And I’d say the last one is conflict resolution. And paths have an incredible ability, especially if they there’s a string called Harmony, especially if they also share this, they’re very good at seeing each person’s point of view, very good at it sensing where the frustration is, I can hear that in you, I can hear this in you let’s think about and look at and work through, where the where we’ve, we’ve lost, we’ve lost the intelligence side, we’ve lost the cognitive approach, we’re now at base emotional responses, let’s try to get up to where we can all see the field, understand where we’re all coming from. So, we can move forward with some level of intent and focus.
Maria Ross 22:44
So, much good advice to unpack in there. That’s wonderful. What would you say is the biggest hindrance you found in leaders, if you found it in leaders, being told they should strengthen their empathy? Maybe should is a bad word. But, you know, in this, has there been any rebuttal objection from leaders that you’ve heard about why they shouldn’t strengthen their empathy?
Brandon Miller 23:13
So this is slightly in jest, but true, if, if the person is narcissistic, it’s very difficult, right? So if if I have to be right, if I if I, the same time, and just as strong cannot be wrong, I cannot be wrong. Empathy will elude. It will elude because that’s, that’s base, you know, impulse emotion. And it’s tough. So, ego leaders can struggle with empathy, because their filter runs back to self, it runs to self. So, leaders that need the cards to always fall in their favor, struggle with this idea, because to them, empathy equals weakness. It’s not a strength, it’s me somehow capitulating my power situation, and I don’t want to let go of my power. What I love to see in the working world today is we’re starting to see a dismantling of that erroneous paradigm that your power is not found, in the position that you hold the title you keep the the volume of your voice, the threats that you can make, that’s not where your power is. Your power is in followership. How many people line up gladly and willingly to follow you and not just because you Pam, but they they believe that they can trust you. They believe you care about them. They think that you’re a safe place. You’re a safe person, you create an environment that’s safe, and that you inspire them. You motivate them for their future and leaders who can see the power of that influence, have have great success on the lifetime journey of emotional intelligence that they see themselves on a sojourner on the road. This is a whole life journey, and I’m making progress As I go, and I’m okay when I’m wrong, and I’m okay when I’m right. And I can look at both without judgment and just keep advancing.
Maria Ross 25:06
Right. And we’ve seen examples of, of well-known leaders like Mark Cuban comes to mind, someone who admits that early in his career, he was not that guy. He was not about empathy. He was about just getting it done and being successful and, you know, take no prisoners. And he has sense, he has since seen what went wrong in those situations and where it actually impeded his success. And now, you know, it’s sort of like he’s turned over a new leaf, and said, you know, no, empathy actually is important for leaders. And to your point, you know, we talk a lot on the show about debunking the myths of empathy. Empathy is not being nice, it is not just doing what people ask you to do. That’s submission. That’s not empathy. And it’s also not agreeing with people. So, you can have, you can make really tough business decisions as a leader, but you can do them with empathy.
Brandon Miller 25:59
You know, and it’s a great point, because there’s, there’s paradigms of leadership. So some leaders naturally start permissive, and some start authoritarian. And we all aim for authoritative or strengths based because that combines the right level of directive, the accountability piece with the human warmth, and building human connection. So, empaths, can at times start permissive they can, they can start more of the I want you to like me, not just follow me. And then other strengths can start more authoritarian, you’ll do what I say, Because I said so right? Well, both styles, as time goes by are not effective. They’re not authoritative leadership tries to combine both. And it’s a journey for many of us. And it requires a healthy dose of emotional intelligence to move there. Because even to operate in a strength space, I need to be able to look at you and see your potential and acknowledge that you’re not there. And it’s my job to help you get there. Well, that’s, that’s the work of the work, that’s the hardest thing to do as a leader is to help people grow and develop because you can’t do it for him, you do a lot of things for him can’t do that cannot grow for them. And so that influence and impact help them do that. An authoritative strength based approach, what it simply does, is it has me trying to sort through the things that keep you from that space, build trust with me that I really do want to help you get over here, and here’s better than there. So, if you’ll trust me, I’ll help you get to here. And that might be here as in still with me and accompany, or here in your next adventure beyond. But that’s my interest. And that’s when we can all, you know, think about the aspirational part of leadership is growing into those places.
Maria Ross 27:45
Well, and I think, you know, let’s not gloss over what you’re saying, also, as part of it, I see that you can get there is part of it, I’m going to show you that it’s possible, right, there is a motivating factor there, you know, you are not a lost cause. And you know, in some cases, the empathetic leadership play is to realize that someone’s in a role that might not be capitalizing on that person’s strengths, because nobody wants to come to work and fail every day either. And so, there’s also space for if I understand your strengths, and I understand your motivations, and I’m looking at this role you’re currently in that you’re flailing in, you know, a good leader can see why, and might be able to say, okay, maybe we need to put you in a different role. Maybe we, you know, whatever needs to be done.
Brandon Miller 28:36
You know, I, I’ll share with you that in that paradigm, we do see that quite a bit. It’ll depend on economic realities, and how much people need a job. But people will sometimes say what they have to say, to get into a job and recruiters role here and repeat what they want to repeat to help people get the job, right. So, all of that plays in. And then you end up with folks. And this is the absolutely the broadest part of the market, that are taking jobs because they need to put food on their table. And they’re working in more of a blue collar or production or different spaces. And even in those cases, recognizing maybe you didn’t think about this job, when you thought about what you wanted to be when you grow up, but it’s respectable, and you can work hard. And I can respect you in the process and show you that I do care that you do a good job and find the parts of the job that you find more fulfilling than others and even then build into the strength of the role as much as on the professional side. I can even then look for places where this might not be a fit. Let’s talk about an off ramp that’s that that feels good to both of us. It’s not scary, who I’m letting you go. It’s let’s transition. Let’s help you move to another place.
Maria Ross 29:50
Well, and the thing I like about the StrengthsFinder too, is that it gives everyone a common language. So, you know if we if we as a team, all take the strengths Find her. That’s actually something that’s bonding us together. Yeah. And I know, you know, Brandon, there’s your Wu coming out again, you know, like I can we can even use it to defuse tension or conflict. If we understand, you know, we have that common language to talk about our strengths. Have you? Is there a story you can tell us about a team that was maybe like, the most transformative culture that you worked with? I mean, I’m sure you have many, but can you give us a before and after?
Brandon Miller 30:29
Sure. So, we do a fair amount of our a fair amount of our work in the government space. And then we work in private sector, mostly mid-size, mid family, privately held businesses type situation. So government has some very difficult circumstances. And and what can occur is that people can get into positions for life, I mean, that they are in those positions, and they’re very well regarded at times protected. And so, a level of disengagement can set in that when we go to measure it, it just over indexes in the wrong way more disengagement than they do have engagement. So, we’ve come into a situation where on a scale of one to 100, ranking the team, they were a 1%, Team 1%. And the meaning we had, the best I had for this leader was well, we have nowhere to go but up. That’s the best for you today. And we’re going to start the climb right here. So, what what got us here isn’t going to get us there. So now let’s begin to really dig in. And to this leaders credit to this team. They really did. They really wanted to understand why their team was where they were and how they could engage us over the course of coaching and workshops and training and focus grouping and really, reshuffling how they approach leadership. Within two years, they went from 1% to 90%, top rate team, and they and they stood out because they’re this this this building that housed 1000s and 1000s, of civil servants. And this team was like a curiosity. Like, what in the world happened to these people? What did you put in their water? What what happened?
Maria Ross 32:20
Exactly. This is what I’m always talking, I’m so excited, I’m gonna interrupt you. This is what I’m always talking about, about the fact that these these, the ability to create a micro culture of empathy and find success, doesn’t rely on your CEO making a mandate. If you start operating with empathy and succeeding, people are gonna go, Oh, I like the way Brandon operates. What’s he doing over there? What’s exactly what’s in the water over there. So, I love that this is a real life example of that.
Brandon Miller 32:48
So, that leader went on to a higher level of influence, and was given the ability to take what had happened with their team to the entire department. And so now the entire department is endeavoring to to follow a path that worked with relative micro team compared to the department. And now that’s that’s what’s more, but it’s built upon proven success. This process works. It does take time. So for those that are, come on, how come it hasn’t happened? Because people don’t respond. That way. They didn’t get here fast. They’re not going to leave here fast. It takes time. And what they really want to know is Are you for real? Yeah, are you for real? Because empathy. Here’s here’s the, here’s the piece about empathy Empath leaders know that Empath followers sniff out BS like nobody’s business. And when you lead teams, and you will always have because empathy is a common strength out of the 34 empaths. will know are you snowballing this to look good? Or do you really intend for this to be our culture and we like to say if you can, if you can convince the empath, you have a chance Yeah, because if they believe you, yeah, and they can see through the veneer, but they believe you you can you can start to win over and you just got to pass the 50% market engagement once you get more people engaged in the not engaged. Now you’re running downhill with the wind at your back, you have momentum, and it’s all going to come down to believability, which as you and I know, Empath leaders are believable, because you actually like you think they genuinely are sincere about the change that they’re they’re initiating.
Maria Ross 34:27
Absolutely. Okay, I’m gonna throw you a curveball question just for fun. Do you ever look at famous leaders and try to guess what their strengths are on? Grindr? Sure. So, can you give us an example?
Brandon Miller 34:38
Oh, sure. I used to look at President Obama. And I mean, what strikes you as he’s such a powerful speaker is oratory. I mean, just so well put together so in strengths language, I would say he has very high strategic is so fast on his feet so quick. You cannot catch him without a quip or a comment. He’s very good. Very good soundbite guy right very talented. But high communication has strengths to find it because he can weave it into a story. He can he can show emotion so I I used to watch him with on go wow, look at those strengths just work how quickly He’s spinning and moving, which I know politics is a lot of you got to gotta stay gotta stay nimble because they’re coming in all directions, right? And then I mean that respectfully, like you just, it’s just the way of the world that you gotta you gotta move. I was intrigued by that, with his adaptability do that.
Maria Ross 35:31
What about any business leaders that you know?
Brandon Miller 35:34
So, one who’s pasty jobs? We like to say that he’s the poster person for the strength of ideation. So, someone who could take, you know, this device
Maria Ross 35:45
That was not a top strength for me.
Brandon Miller 35:48
Yeah. So, when I, when I look at, like this device, I’m not holding in my hand that I that that just it calls it it, you know, allows me to use it as computer respond to things it plays music, it does all these things. The person who envisioned this, it’s just it’s amazing. And that’s it. Ah, they don’t live in the confines of our way of thinking they’re always stretching us what’s next? And they add to tell Ada, it can’t be done is to challenge them, to show you all the ways that can to add to say, it’s just how we’ve always done it idea to like, oh, no, it isn’t no more. And so, ideation futuristic, is something that you can see what jobs because he was looking ahead, while while while just, I mean, literally, I did a training for a group at Tesla. And this group at Tesla, half of the room had come from Formula One, and the other half had come from Apple. It’s like, super tech geniuses, meet supercar geniuses. And it was so interesting to hear the stories about jobs, and then to hear the Formula One people and then it talks about Elon Musk was like, wow, and just how they all interpolate and work together was pretty, pretty amazing.
Maria Ross 37:05
That’s cool. Is there any strength? On the strengths finder? I know they all have shadow sides. Because I know I when I worked with my strength coach, we talked a little bit about that. But is there any strength? And the answer could be no. That’s problematic.
Brandon Miller 37:24
To an extent they all are in the context that would facilitate that. So, one of the strengths that I think has almost no problems at all is positivity. Right? They’re so good at taking a situation and finding hope in finding light and finding truth. And then there’s times where they just need to put that in their pocket. Because people need to mourn. And so instead of cheering up in that moment, just wait positivity. Let them mourn. Yeah, it’s okay to mourn. Sadness is a valid emotional.
Maria Ross 38:01
Right. We can let ourselves feel those things. We don’t have to gloss it over.
Brandon Miller 38:05
Yeah, we can feel pain, you can feel sad. So so but but I tell many leaders like I can almost say that that little downside, at its amazing. Others are very much more polar. So, one of the really powerful strengths is command, just think of the word command. Yeah, so the strength of being direct and decisive and cutting through emotion and finding the clarion call to action. And you can think of all the places where that’s really helpful, and really necessary. And command can be horribly misunderstood. Because it can come across as pushy and bossy and brash. Oh, up to me caring. Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s an because it’s so strong in its approach. And this is why I think, when we look at the global landscape of strengths, command is very rare, less than 5% of people will have it were strictly positivity, much more common, many more of those you’re going to meet, probably for good reason. When you just think of, you know, how about, you know, all our genetics and how we all got here? Probably healthy. We don’t need as many of you, you know, you’re special. And we need you when we need you. Right? It would be that amazing command which I happen to be a top 10 command like know how that works, but also know when now the perception is turning on you now it’s not as
Maria Ross 39:35
effect now. It’s not helping you it’s hurting you.
Brandon Miller 39:37
Every strength has that potential.
Maria Ross 39:39
Alright, so I know you as we wrap up, I know you have a special little surprise for our listeners. And can you tell us about it? Yeah, absolutely.
Brandon Miller 39:47
So we like to give the gift of strengths. We’re in a position right now where we’re meeting different people through different opportunities. And we want to share with them the opportunity to learn their strengths. And so if someone reaches out to me at the information I shared with you. And in a message simply indicates, I’d like to learn my strengths, happy to provide it’s complimentary. And then if they would like additional conversation, they’d like to learn more. We’re happy to share that with them as well.
Maria Ross 40:17
Yeah, because normally you pay to take the StrengthsFinder. So, you’re offering it for free, correct, complimentary version. Great. Well, I will put Brendan’s Brendan’s email in the show notes. And you can email him directly at Brandon @34 strong.com. Again, I’ll put it in the show notes. If you’re interested in taking the strengths finder for yourself, and see where you land. And you’ll have to let me know where you’re where your strengths lie. So, Brandon, thank you so much. Where can folks other than the you know, I’m going to put all your links in the show notes, as we mentioned. But where can folks that are on the go find out more about you?
Brandon Miller 40:51
Sure. LinkedIn is a great place. I’m on there quite a bit.
Maria Ross 40:55
Great.
Brandon Miller 40:55
So, Brandon Miller 34strong. There’s only one of me.
Maria Ross 40:58
Awesome. And I have a personalized note to let him know that you heard him on the podcast.
Brandon Miller 41:03
Yeah, and I want to connect when we drop a lot of content. They’re very rich things that people use and seem to find enjoyable and happy to share.
Maria Ross 41:11
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. It was great talking to you.
Brandon Miller 41:15
You as well. Thank you.
Maria Ross 41:16
And thank you everyone for listening to another great episode of the empathy edge podcast. Please share it with a friend or colleague. Don’t forget to rate and review those are important. And until next time, remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™
It’s already time to make space in your exceedingly full schedule to plan your goals for next year. So why does this happen to us, every year? I propose it’s because we go about planning all wrong. We start with all the things we think we “should” want, rather than focus on what’s already going right and setting intentions into motion that not only get us where we want to go, but give us more ease, flow, and clarity.
Today,I share how you can set meaningful goals based on your values and some different ways you can look at planning for the new year. And how a new perspective on asking the right question can lead to more joy, ease – and success.
Happy holidays, in whatever way you celebrate and catch you in the new year. Thank you for being part of my community!
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
Your values can support your goals, rather than being contorted to fit after the fact.
You can set meaningful goals for your business, just like you can for yourself, you just need to understand who you, as a company, want to be in the next year.
When you ask questions about how your employees and stakeholders feel about your organization, the goals that are made after that understanding will be supported by the understood culture and mission.
“It is possible to holistically align our professional and personal goals for more joy, but only if they’re supported by asking the right questions.”
Ah, it’s that time right? It’s already time to make space in your exceedingly full schedule to plan your goals for next year. Oh, we all know the tired new year goals language that’s supposed to inspire. Crush your New Year, live your best life ready to write your book or scale your business? Get that promotion have the perfect relationship become an activist, bake homemade cookies for your kids school? Not me. exercise more. I mean, I’m exhausted already from social media, aren’t you? So why does this happen to us every year? I propose it’s because we go about planning all wrong. We start with all the things we think we should want. Rather than focus on what’s already going right. And setting intentions into motion that not only get us where we want to go, but give us more ease, flow and clarity. And stay with me. I’m going to be talking about how this relates to business. This year, my good friend, women’s coach Jamie Greenwood and I did things a little differently. We decided to gather a small group of power women together business owners, execs, entrepreneurs, to articulate our values first, so that we can infuse them into our work and our business or professional brands. We split the retreat called nourish into two days, one in December, and one in February of next year. Because seriously, the new year only gets going in February if we’re being honest, one day to reflect on what went right this past year and where we shined or needed support, to articulate our values, and then another day to set goals and turn those values into action. And I’m sharing this because it’s not just beneficial for women to plan this way. It’s good for anyone who is human. See, it is possible to holistically align our professional and personal goals for more joy, but only if they’re supported by asking the right questions, questions other than how much money do you want to make this year. You can absolutely set goals for the new year that are achievable, joyful and more aligned with who you are deep at your core. But only if you give yourself or your organization, the time and space to reflect, recalibrate, reconnect and remember yourself without any need to maniacally jumpstart your year. my eight year old has a book called Who do I want to become? It was published by my amazing publishers page to up in Canada. And I think it should be required reading no matter what your age. Let me read you the description. A class project is due and Dylan is struggling with the question. What do you want to be when you grow up? Ultimately, he realizes that it is who you are that matters the most? Who do I want to become as a refreshing new take on a question as time and time again, one that invites us to discover something wonderful about ourselves, that has nothing to do with what you want to be and everything to do with who you are and who you want to be. So good, right? Wow. Who do you want to be as a colleague, a partner, a manager, a leader? Who do you want to be as a company? What impact do you want to leave? What will be your legacy? So instead of asking what you want to do next year, start with who do I or who do we want to be? Start with character. Start with values. spend more of your time thinking about that. So when it comes time to setting goals, you’re mapping them to how you want to live and can help you achieve becoming that person. Yes, you can even do this for your business. That’s what we’ve been talking about on this podcast, humanity and empathy and values. and compassion in business. Of course, you have to set growth and revenue goals. I’m not insane. But could you first articulate what type of culture you want, what values you hold dear, and how you want employees and other stakeholders to feel before you get into the tactics, set your growth and revenue goals in a way that support your values and character. Just try it. Humor me. See what questions get asked and goals turn up. If you work this way, instead of the way you’ve always done it. And watch how much your relationships with colleagues, partners, customers flourish as a result, which will ultimately help you reach and yes, perhaps exceed those revenue and growth goals. Your values can support your goals, rather than be contorted, to fit after the fact. Have a great holiday whatever you celebrate, and however you celebrate. Thank you for being here for listening, for sharing and for growing with me on this quest to live in a more empathetic world and bring more empathy to our work. Happy New Year, may we have peace in our world, may the hearts of every human be filled with empathy and compassion, rather than hate for each other. And may you stay healthy, happy and fulfilled. See you next year.
