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Barbara Huelat: Empathy for Dementia Caregivers and Effective Interventions

According to the NIH, an estimated 6.7M Americans 65+ are living with Alzheimer’s dementia. This number could grow to 13.8 million by 2060 barring the development of medical breakthroughs. Today, you’ll learn why dementia is not a disease, but a symptom, and what caregivers go through, experience, and need – especially from their managers and workplace colleagues.

I talk with Barbara J. Huelat about what dementia is, how emotional interventions are more effective than cognitive ones, and how to create more healing environments in hospitals and workspaces. You’ll gain empathy for your colleagues who are dementia caregivers, as Barbara shares her personal experience caring for her mother and husband, and she talks about what workplaces can do to better support caregivers in the office to help them continue to perform and do their best work.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Emotional memories are those with our senses – these memories can reach a person with dementia where language or cognitive memories cannot.
It is critical to prepare your helpers and part-time caregivers if you are away to give everyone the best chance for success, much like having a disaster plan.
Be flexible, don’t try to change reality, and give information rather than asking questions. You can go far with that, even when there are mistakes and challenges.

“Be understanding of what they’re going through. There’s a very large emotional drain on the person. The caregiver is often considered the second patient as their health risks skyrocket while taking care because it’s long-term chronic stress that doesn’t go away like acute stress.“

— Barbara Huelat

About Barbara J. Hiuelat

Barbara J. Huelat is a prominent Human Centric Healthcare Designer, author, and speaker. She has created healing environments and solved health challenges for more than 300 healthcare organizations and serves as a healing environment consultant to healthcare facilities, product manufacturers, academia, institutions, and the architectural design community. By placing humanity at the core, her pioneering mindset proves that human-centric designs impact healing, improve the human experience, affect health outcomes, and are cost-effective.

Ms. Huelat’s latest work, Taming the Chaos of Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide to Interventions that Make a Difference, provides a compassionate and insightful guide to those facing the tumultuous journey of dementia, offering solace, support, and practical strategies to navigate this challenging path. Currently, she shares human-centric designs globally via lecturers at international conferences, universities, and organizations and through research collaborations with government agencies and universities, contributing to white papers and research articles. Always fascinated with the beauty of science and the science of design, she believes human-centric design experiences can mitigate human misery.

Connect with Barbara Huelat

Website: barbarahuelat.com

X: x.com/huelat92456

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/barbara-huelat-fasid-aahid-edac-89061213

Facebook: facebook.com/barbarajhuelat

Instagram: instagram.com/bhuelat

Book: Taming the Chaos of Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide to 9 Interventions that Make a Difference

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

PRE-SALE SPECIAL! Pre-order 1 to 99 copies of Maria’s new book, The Empathy Dilemma for your leaders, exec team, (or yourself?!) and GET 30%! bit.ly/TEDSpecialPresale Offer ends August 27, 2024!

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Barbara Huelat 03:28

you so much. And thank you for inviting me for this afternoon, and I look forward to it.

Maria Ross 03:34

So tell us a little bit about your story. We just heard your bio, how did you even get into this work? And how did you get into the work of being a healing environment consultant and an expert on dementia and caregiving?

Barbara Huelat 03:48

Okay, well, my career has been in architectural design for health care facilities. So for the past 40 Some years I’ve designed health care facilities for hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes and senior living facilities. But then it’s been the relationship of my personal experiences as a caregiver first with my grandmother with vascular dementia, my mom with dementia from Parkinson’s and my late husband who had Alzheimer’s. So with those, I learned a whole different side of caregiving and the environment or feeling space spaces from a very personal side.

Maria Ross 04:34

Wow. And I can’t imagine there are many people who have not been touched by dementia in their families or their circle. I know I had a maternal grandmother that lived with us in her last years. And I actually didn’t know her without dementia as a child. And so, and I didn’t understand it, and I think that’s probably true of a lot of people who are not sure what they’re dealing with? are they dealing with just someone getting older and forgetting things? Or they’re dealing with someone who’s had a brain injury, that I had a brain injury? It impacted short term memory? Or are they dealing with dementia? So can you please share with us? What is the definition of dementia? And how is it different from things like Alzheimer’s?

Barbara Huelat 05:18

Yes. Well, dementia is an overall term for all types of diseases with cognitive impairment. And so yes, it can be from from a stroke and brain injury from diseases like Parkinson’s, and but the biggest cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. That’s what we’re dealing with today. That is the largest cause. But dementia is actually a symptom. It’s not a disease. But it’s a symptom of all of these diseases that they and the symptoms are quite common, regardless of which disease you have. There’s very little bit of differences. Some are actually treatable, but the majority are not correctable.

Maria Ross 06:08

And I don’t think that’s well known that that’s a symptom, not a disease. I know, for example, when I had my brain aneurysm rupture, I thought that a brain aneurysm was an event. But a brain aneurysm is a thing. And only if it ruptures, does it usually cause major issues? So it sounds like dementia is very similar? Where we we use it in terminology as if it is its own diagnoses? Yes, its own disease.

Barbara Huelat 06:35

It’s very common people asked the difference. Well, what’s the difference between dementia and ultimates? Is it the same thing? And no, it’s it is it is part of the disease, but it is not the same thing. And you really can’t, it’s used interchangeably, but it doesn’t work that way. And so when

Maria Ross 06:57

you talk about your new book that not so new now, but it came out last November, taming the chaos of Dementia Caregivers guide to interventions that make a difference, what are caregiver interventions? And why are they necessary? Well,

Barbara Huelat 07:12

it could that’s a great question, thank you. Be intervention is something that a caregiver can do. It’s a positive, actionable item, that something that you can do. We think of most interventions like pharmaceutical or surgical or PT, these are interventions to change outcomes. But there are so many interventions that caregivers can do that don’t fall in those categories. And that’s because dementia is not a disease, like we talked about earlier, it’s a symptom. And the things that are hard to deal with are the symptoms. That’s what makes the diseases so difficult, because they are disruptive behaviors, they are hard to manage, you can’t give them a pill to stop it. And understanding really how dementia works. And how it impacts the memory is really crucial. And it’s one of the first things that we need to do to understand dementia. When we talk about cognitive impairment that we said is the primary symptom of dementia, we’re talking about memory, cognitive brain is our our data, the things we learn through life, you know, the math, the spelling, the language skills, but they’re also the filters that we have, we’ve learned that this is correct. And this is an incorrect way of working or being. So dementia impacts those cognitive impairments. But on a positive side, there is also the emotional memory in our brains. And dementia doesn’t affect this as much, really not until the end. And so the emotional part of the memory is that pivotal portal that caregivers can have to reach those with dementia. So

Maria Ross 09:19

give us an example of that. What would it What do you mean by emotional memory? And what are some of those interventions that caregivers especially caregivers, listening who are taking care of someone in their life in dementia,

Barbara Huelat 09:30

those emotional memories or those with the senses, our sight, what we see what we smell what we hear an example a great example where there’s a great deal of research is that on music, how music can reach a person with dementia, where language in that language is a cognitive skill. Music is an emotional attribute. So when we use music and art and color and tact Little things, fuzzy blankets of funny puppies, various emotional things that trigger the emotion, you can get a response, even when cognitive leveling is really not available to us.

Maria Ross 10:15

That’s fascinating. And I know, I know, I’ve seen research around music and the power of music and not just even with dementia patients, but with autism with other with other. I don’t want to say diseases because autism isn’t really disease, but other afflictions that occur where sometimes there’s parts of our brains that we can’t access, again, in sort of a logical way, in effect based way. And so being able to access that emotional portion makes a lot of sense. And so were were you aware of that when you were in the caretaking phase, as you mentioned? Or was this did this come later?

Barbara Huelat 10:54

Yes, and no, I think I first became aware of that, in designing facilities, and health care design. When I talk about in my early work, early books, healing environments, it’s about the emotional connection to Being Well, staying well. And it’s about how, how healthcare institutions often don’t make us feel, well, they’re very intimidating, they’re scary. They’re terrifying. So how do you transform a medical environment to help the person heal, and to be able to move beyond their illness or surgery or wherever they’re in the hospital. And so I learned that there’s a connection there early, but I didn’t really realize how profound it was until I was a one on one with my mom was trying to climb a fence out of the nursing home, or leading a coup to get the other residents to leave with her, or my husband, who was throwing sticks over the fence at a neighbor. how important the emotional aspect was to connect with and connect with really what they were trying to express that did not have the cognitive abilities to deal with it. So what what are some

Maria Ross 12:17

of those? What are some of those tips around creating a healing environment? What were some of the things that you did in your design,

Barbara Huelat 12:24

in the design will use color as intuitive Wayfinding, for example, help people get through a hospital system, using art and music, from the lobby through the procedures, using aromatherapy, for example, in MRIs to help the body to be able to deal with the noise and the terror of going through some of these procedures. So I use elements of this throughout my practice. And when it when it came to dealing with them personally, I was able to modify them to be very personal to impact the person. So my husband was a great photographer and an architect. And when he had dementia, what harmed him was giving him a box of photographs to sort through, and it couldn’t tell you who they were in the pictures. But it gave him a lot of satisfaction going through his own photos. So by combining some of the elements that I knew and personally adapted to, yeah, he had more reward and pleasure from from those last days. Well,

Maria Ross 13:42

I wonder if there’s a lesson to be learned here. We often have talked about the redesign of office space, especially pre pandemic, a lot of workplaces. were redesigning workplaces to be more collaborative and innovative and inspiring and reconfiguring. Using space and using furniture and using layout as a way to create more innovation create more productivity, do you still think there’s space for that in the workplaces that people are going back to but also in the workplaces? They surround themselves in at home? What do you think are some mistakes that offices or people with home offices might be making that they don’t even realize are detrimental to their mental state?

Barbara Huelat 14:30

though? That’s a great question. Yes, I know in my work in office design, but the some of the healing factors in that was getting as much of nature in as possible. Access to Windows, everybody wants to be in an office with a window, why not just for status, it feels better, they can see the light of day if it impacts their circadian rhythm that’s going to impact their productivity. Now Nature is essential for us feeling good, being able to be more productive, more engaging, and for all those creative acts that we need in part of our workplace. And, and yet, there are still many windowless offices people work in. And that is, that really impacts their productivity.

Maria Ross 15:21

So I always, I always feel for the people, especially during lockdown that, you know, like, if I had had the studio apartment that I had, in my early 20s, I would have gone stir crazy because I had a window, but it was facing a wall of the building right next to us, there was no room to separate work and life, not a lot of natural light. And you know, people have had to work in that environment for a long time. But then on the other hand, there’s people that have really outfitted their home offices as an example, to be an oasis for them to be a place where they are, where they are their most productive, when they where they feel inspired, where they feel invigorated and where they can separate their home life from their personal life a little bit by separating their work area in their home.

Barbara Huelat 16:09

And, and also, I think, the reluctance of piece people going back to work, though, there’s, I mean, there’s empty offices all over, especially in the big cities, people don’t want to give up on windows for their pets, or their cat can sit on their desktop. And there’s elements in that, so much of it comes down to the nature and the biophilic need that we have to be one with nature, it just makes us feel good. And we’re going to be more productive when we feel good,

Maria Ross 16:45

right. And there’s so there are a lot of companies investing a lot of time and thought into reimagining their workplaces. Companies like box companies like Salesforce like Google, where they’re trying to make it a very attractive and nurturing and innovative environment, to encourage people to come back into the office and collaborate together. So I love that this is something that people are paying attention to, and leaders are paying attention to. I want to shift gears because I’d love to talk about, you know, your work is so much with supporting caregivers. And first of all, can you give us an insight into what caregivers are facing caregivers for dementia patients? What are they facing? What are they dealing with on a daily basis? Because what I want to segue into is how we can better support our employees or our colleagues that work who we know or might not know, are caring for a dementia patient. So can you give us a little behind the scenes of what their worlds are like and what are they dealing with in addition to having to work or lead teams or

Barbara Huelat 17:51

produce? Aha, that’s another great question. Caregivers have a lot on their plate, especially the primary caregiver. They’re the one that’s responsible. It’s like being a parent, and you have the child at home and you have to deal with daycare. I know when I was working and and my husband had dementia and was at home. I had to find caregivers to stay with them each day. One day a caregiver showed up drunk, what was I going to do? And you know, do you call in sick? Or do you bring him into the office like people do with children? And I think there has to be that understanding because caregivers are going to increase and everybody’s going to be a caregiver here and there. If not a primary caregiver, they’re going to be asked by a neighbor, hey, I’ve got to go into the office. Can you stay with Joe this afternoon, I really are I have an important meeting, I have to do this. And I need some help. So your caregivers, you might think of them as like parents of small children, they cannot be left alone. Once the the person with dementia enters into the phase where they can no longer do the activities of daily living on their own. They have to have a caregiver. And so that is that’s a piece that I think offices and corporations need to understand that there’s going to be an increase of caregivers out there. They have to provide meals, transportation, they have to get them to the doctor, they have to provide entertainment for them to do while you’re gone. They have to have help dressing they need up taking their meds, they need help keeping them in the house and just all of these activities together, in addition to taking care of their finances. So they could no longer do those on their own. So it’s I think the best way to think of it as taking care of a small child right and what that means needs to do while working

Maria Ross 20:01

well. And it’s extra complexity because you are dealing with an adult. And like you said, the issue of finances, things like that. And, and the issues of the blowback of that, especially if someone doesn’t, can’t properly assess their own cognitive state, you’re dealing with that. But also, I think there’s a assumption that if you are, if you’re caring for an adult, there might be a small window of opportunity that you could leave them by themselves. And that’s just not the case. You can’t you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not even like with a kid that you could give an iPad, there’s, it’s more complexity, and what you’re describing is a whole other full time job. And I think that that’s what we need to remember, not to mention, the emotional toll of watching who might have been appear to you or apparent to you previously, is now someone that you have to take care of you, we expect that as parents that we’re gonna have to take care of our child. What happens when the person that used to take care of us is now the person that we have to take care of that role reversal? Takes a big emotional toll, I’m sure. And so, on to my second question, what do you think workplaces and leaders could be doing to better support caregivers who are working for them? So that, you know, we talked before we started recording that? Yes, I mean, time off is great. But they also need support while they’re working. So what are some things you suggest, one of

Barbara Huelat 21:31

the big things that actually jazz was was most helpful for me was to allow me to bring my loved one to the office occasionally, not all the time, but when an emergency happened, to be respectful of when you need to work at home, then not I mean, I think you don’t want to always work at home and the caregiver needs to get out it’s Well, I was always grateful to have an office to go to to help clear my mind. Also, things that could help clear the mind times of respite. Just being understanding of what you’re going through, it is a there’s a very large emotional drain on the person. Person also has trouble sleeping at night. Usually, counseling therapy is really, really helpful. Because the caregiver is often considered the second patient, their health risk skyrocket while taking care of because it’s a long term chronic stress, it doesn’t go away like like an acute stress. So in understanding being able to have access to therapy and counseling, depression, anxiety is really important. And just having access to knowing who is a caregiver, just like snowing, you have a child that’s coming home from school at three o’clock, and the parent needs to check on that make sure that they got to their destination or their after school activity or whatever. There are times that the person though the the worker will need to check in at home and with their loved one, and be on the phone when there is seemingly a crisis. And it may not be this. But I remember one time I got a call and says Mom won’t come in the house. She doesn’t think it’s her house. How do you deal with this? Right? Right? You have to take the call and talking on through it and and calling my brother to help him talk her through it. How do you deal with that? Continued? issue? So I think being understanding, being open being creative, not you don’t even know what you can and is a possibility. And that’s what some of these interventions that I talked about in the book, and how we get a person through that particular disruptive behavior or mill? Or what

Maria Ross 24:09

is some of your best advice around someone who is caretaking for someone with dementia and they’re at the office? And they get that kind of call? Is there any advice you can give to anyone listening now that might find themselves in that situation? What might be the best way that they can approach it and sort of coach themselves through that situation? Let’s say they’re in a meeting and they’re in the middle of presenting and they get a call? What do you what’s, what are some suggestions you have?

Barbara Huelat 24:38

Okay, the probably the biggest suggestion that anybody can do, and it’s important that they have these conversations with the time caregiver, before they go into the office is what are the effective interventions for this, your particular loved one because it’ll be different with your mom or your spouse or My grandmother, whoever it is, but going through and the most effective intervention is a positive distraction. And a positive distraction works in all dementia is because the person with dementia has their short term memory is gone. So is if you can move them away from the awful event that is happening momentarily. In a few minutes, they’ll be okay. Like for my mom that wouldn’t come in the house is nice, I just did take her for a walk around the block and talk about everything that she sees. And you get to her house, and this is her front door. And this is her swing that she used with dad and talk about them. And by the time she gets to the door, walk right in and aborted because she forgot that she thought that wasn’t her house. And so by distracting the person using that intervention of short term memory, and relying on it, it almost always works or at times, nothing works. Right, right.

Maria Ross 26:14

But that communication with your caregiver or with your part time caregiver, or your part time support is so important that it almost sounds like I might be dumbing this down a little bit. But it almost sounds like having a disaster plan. Like if this should happen. While I’m presenting my big meeting today. Here’s what you might want to go through, you know, almost having that that sort of disaster recovery plan in place so that they can maybe do all the interventions they can do before it’s time that you’ve got to leave and you’ve got to come. Right,

Barbara Huelat 26:47

those conversations are so imperative. I remember, I went on a retreat, much needed retreat while I was caregiving. And the first time I did this, I didn’t leave those instructions with the my support team. And they call several times during the retreat, and the retreat was absolutely almost worthless, because I was so interrupted on the retreat. I did it again. Am I prep the caregiver, do not call me if this happens. Paul, my daughter, Paul, my brother, and I gave her a whole list of things to do. And that important meeting coming up a caregiver, do not call me between two and four o’clock in the afternoon today. Major happens, this is what you need

Maria Ross 27:44

to do the take these steps try these interventions. Yeah.

Barbara Huelat 27:47

And whenever I used a notebook and put those everything in the notebook and whoever was caregiving that day, and often it was not the same person, right? Get it from an agency, somebody’s sick, or something else, there were alternatives when they needed to have the same information. But your disaster plan? Perfect. That is? Well,

Maria Ross 28:13

and I think that that’s another challenge to point out is that unlike childcare, which is normally a little bit more predictable, you have the same nanny or the same daycare agency or the provider, that can be very different and stressful. If you have a worker who is the caregiver for someone with dementia, if they are relying on agencies that staff differently, they’re relying on part time support, if they’re not necessarily relying on a consistent, relative or friend. To do that. That’s just another layer of stress and complexity that these caregivers are dealing with. Yes. So what is your as we kind of wrap up here? What is your what are some final gems you want to share with us about how to make life and work easier for caregivers of dementia patients? Okay,

Barbara Huelat 29:04

but I think the best advice is to go with the flow. And that sounds overly simple. But you’re not going to you’re not going to cure the dementia, no matter how badly you want it and needed and to work with the way the person with dementia feels things and their reality, not yours. Not to question because the person with dementia, that cognitive side isn’t working. They don’t know how to respond to a question. And often questions as well meaning as they are can lead to really disruptive behaviors. Simple things like what do you want to eat? They get overwhelmed. Yeah, it’s too big of a question. And putting something in front of them that Oh, this smells good. I heard you love the cinnamon on the oatmeal. And it’s delicious today and giving them information about it is so much better than asking questions. So don’t ask questions. Don’t try to change the reality. And use emotions, especially the senses and nature are real positive lengths, as well as positive distractions. And you can you can go really far with that, and there will be mistakes, we all right, there will be meltdowns and challenges, but you don’t, if you realize you’re really not going to change it, and you can make it better, then that’s the way you want to go the path of least resistance.

Maria Ross 30:51

Exactly. I love that go with the flow. Well, thank you so much. We’re gonna have all your links in the show notes, and especially a link to your book, taming the chaos of Dementia Caregivers guide to interventions that make a difference. Barbara, thank you so much for coming on today. As I mentioned, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes. But for folks on the go, where’s one place, they can find out more about you and your work? Probably

Barbara Huelat 31:14

my website. And there’s also a lot of helpful resources on my website, books that are important organizations, focus groups, a lot of resources for a for those caregivers at my website is very simple. It’s www and my name Barbara hewlett.com. And

Maria Ross 31:37

that’s Hu E, la,

Barbara Huelat 31:39

la T.

Maria Ross 31:41

Wonderful. And again, we’ll have those links in the show notes. But thank you so much for your time today and your insights.

Barbara Huelat 31:46

Thank you Maria with such a pleasure. And thank

Maria Ross 31:50

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

July Hot Take: How Thoughtful Decisiveness Shows Your Team Empathy

Today we’re diving into Pillar Four of the 5 Pillars of Effective Empathetic Leadership featured in the new book coming September 10, The Empathy Dilemma – Decisiveness.

Yes, factoring in various viewpoints is the way forward for empathetic leaders – and enables us to see more opportunities and avoid more risks. . But we must combine that with swift and decisive action to make a call. Leaving your people in limbo or avoiding difficult conversations is unkind. And leaves your people paralyzed, unsure what to believe, do or expect next.

In our dive into decisiveness today, I talk about what decisiveness is and why it is important. And I’ll hone in on six strategies that you can start using today to be more decisive. More details, examples, and tactics to try can be found in The Empathy Dilemma, so don’t forget to snag your presale copy now at TheEmpathyDilemma.com.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Avoiding employees until you have something to report isn’t empathetic – get in the habit of giving status updates, even if it is just “we’re working on it.”
Dithering over your decision does not demonstrate empathy. Not knowing what decision to make, no matter how you mask it, demonstrates fear and insecurity.
Learn to be clearer more quickly. Talk openly about the choices you’re making whenever possible.
Put a deadline on your thoughts. It’s not about making good choices, it’s about making good choices in a timely manner.

“Perfection isn’t the goal, even when it comes to high-stakes choices. Don’t succumb to analysis paralysis. Instead, gather input, decide, and move forward with a sense of curiosity and experimentation.”

— Maria Ross

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

PRE-SALE SPECIAL! Pre-order 1 to 99 copies of Maria’s new book, The Empathy Dilemma for your leaders, exec team, (or yourself?!) and GET 30%! https://bit.ly/TEDSpecialPresale Offer ends August 27, 2024!

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hello, everyone, it’s Maria here. Welcome to this month’s our take how thoughtful decisiveness shows your team empathy. As you know, the book is coming September 10 is the day that the empathy dilemma how successful leaders balanced performance people and personal boundaries, hits shelves, hits your ears and audible hits your Kindle or other device in ebook, and will help you as a leader center around people focused practices to get the best performance possible so that you can balance the demands of the business with the needs of your people. And as you know, I’m so excited to share this with you. If you’ve been with me the last few months, you know, I’ve been devoting a hot take episode in the months leading up to launch, showcasing one of the five core pillars of effective empathetic leadership outlined in the book. Because the reality is that we want a more human centered workplace culture, but we have to get actual work done. You can do both, but only when you’re able to show up fully and have capacity to take in other perspectives without fear, stress or defensiveness. So today, we’re diving into pillar four of the five pillars decisiveness. And I feel like this one is the most least understood in how it correlates to empathy, because we can often think about decisiveness as dictatorship, right. And that’s not what we’re going to be talking about here today. Before I dive in, I do want to remind you that there is a special presale offer for the book going on right now. If you purchase between one to 99 copies of it from porchlight, my amazing bulk distributor, you can get, as I said, 30% off until August 27. So stay through to the end, I’ve got some information for you. I’ve also got some information for you in the show notes. And there’s some bonuses that go along with the pre sales, including allowing me to crash your next video meeting to have a discussion about empathy and balancing empathy with performance and accountability. So that is a limited time. Now again, before I dive into today’s pillar, I know I’m teasing you, the book is a direct result of all the feedback that I’ve gotten from my previous book, the empathy edge. And from attendees in my training sessions, conference attendees at my keynotes, and all the company talks I’ve done, people have reached out to me to say, okay, Maria, I’m on board with this whole human centered new leadership paradigm. But here’s where things get challenging for me, here’s where I get stuck. And it’s usually around the either or thinking I’ve mentioned in past episodes that we we hold this either or binary thinking that holds us back, I can be empathetic or high performing, I can be compassionate, or hold people accountable. Right? I am promoting a both and philosophy. And that is the crux of my work to show us that we can hold two seemingly opposite things to be true at the same time, if we have the right strategies, if we employ the right tactics, and if we have the right mindset. So that’s where the five pillars of effective empathetic leadership come in. And these came about from common traits and behaviors that the successful empathetic leaders I’ve interviewed or spoken to or advised, have shared with me, and it’s how I see them balancing people performance and personal boundaries with such grace and dexterity. So again, decisiveness is the topic for today. It’s the fourth of the five pillars in the book, and let’s dig into it. What do we mean by decisiveness? decisiveness is taking thoughtful that’s important but swift action that doesn’t leave people hanging, addressing issues before they fester and blow up synthesizing input and perspectives to make timely choices, and practicing radical and kind. Honesty is not enough to practice radical honesty and be a jerk. You need to also be kind and respectful. So why is decisiveness important? Well, keeping people in limbo is one of the least empathetic things a leader can do. And it can feel risky to commit to decisions quickly. But dragging your feet to avoid hurt feelings will only erode trust, I see this time and time again, you’ve got a difficult decision to make, you’ve got a crunchy conversation you need to have. And your approach is to delay is to procrastinate is to put it off thinking you’re being kinder thinking that you’re being empathetic. And that is not the way. So addressing choices, performance issues, action plans, and pending questions as soon as possible, is the most compassionate way to operate. Now, it doesn’t mean you fake an answer. It means that you get back to people, it means that we’re going to talk about this today you’re transparent in the process, but avoiding them until you have something to report is not empathetic. Get in the habit of giving status updates, even if the status update is we’re still working on it. Doing this shows your team members that you’re paying attention and you want them to know what to expect. It helps them fully understand what’s happening around them and feel good about it and feel safe. decisiveness helps leaders maintain team momentum, cultivate trust, and build a culture of open and consistent honesty. And most empathetic leaders strive to hear and implement input from all their people. But sometimes, sometimes endlessly soliciting everyone’s feedback for unanimous agreement can drive your team mad. And I share a story in the book about a brand story client I had way back when the team was paralyzed and frustrated, because the CEO would simply not make an important decision about distribution priority, which impacted who our brand story needed to primarily speak to and attract. And in the name of wanting to solicit all perspectives. The CEO dragged his feet on making the decisions. And by this point, the team was like, can we just decide and move forward already, they were frustrated, they were unsure. They felt like if they moved in one direction, it was going to change tomorrow, because they weren’t sure what was happening. And really what this came down to, even in the name of quote unquote, empathy. It was about fear and insecurity on the part of the CEO just not knowing what decision to make. And he was masking it with this veneer of Well, I just want to make sure everyone’s on board, I just want to get everyone’s opinion. So you want to avoid that. Here are we’re going to talk about today, six strategies to try to be more decisive. And we’re just the tip of the iceberg in this podcast today, there are going to be more details, examples and actual tactics to try that can be found in the empathy dilemma. So don’t forget to snag your copy now at the empathy dilemma.com. So let’s get into the six strategies for being more decisive and thus more empathetic as a leader. Number one, revisit your goal and purpose. Often, so much of the time leaders get caught up in the drama surrounding important decisions and they lose sight of the goal of that decision. Because of all the input they’re getting right. ensure everyone is on the same page. So when the decision is made, you can put it in context of the goal. It helps people understand that their input is valuable, but that it detracts from the goal it may not be the right course of action. However, it also keeps you honest, to not get caught up in people pleasing and keep your eyes on the prize. Second, practice transparency, there is no need to make all your decisions in a secretive way and unveil them only when they’re fully baked. There might be some that are more sensitive and confidential, obviously. But for the most part, the business decisions that you’re making that impact your people don’t need to be made in a black box and then revealed like some home improvement show. So learn to be clear quicker, and if possible, talk openly about the choices you’re making and have made. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Don’t be afraid to say I don’t know. But let’s find out together. This ensures that folks know what you considered and can trust you in the process. Third, third strategy for being more decisive and thus more empathetic as a leader is to solicit and synthesize input quickly and fairly. You want to get skilled at gathering facts and opinions and knowing the difference between those giving others a voice so they can point out opportunities or risks that you may have missed. People see different sides of the different facets of the diamond. So it’s important to get multiple points of views, especially from diverse voices. And you want to give others a voice and then sort through all the inputs and come to a conclusion. Be clear that once that decision is made, naysayers will be asked to disagree. But commit, and I talk about this concept in the book a lot. At a certain point, we’ve all got to move forward together and still be committed to the mission. But if you you know from the previous strategy, if you practice transparency, and people understand how the sausage was made, so to speak, they’re more likely to understand how and why and when you were able to implement some of their ideas or when you had to, you know, not implement their ideas. Fourth strategy for decisiveness is put a deadline on your thoughts. So decisiveness isn’t only about making good choices. It’s about making good choices in a timely manner. If you tend like me to ruminate endlessly, you need a mechanism to get yourself unstuck, such as setting aside a block of time to make a decision, which is itself a task. Get in the habit of setting deadlines for decisions that trip you up. If it’s a small decision, say picking a spot for a business lunch, give yourself a few hours. If it’s weightier, like a big investment or strategic pivot. think more in terms of days or weeks. Fifth strategy for decisiveness is build trust, and an environment where trust has been cultivated and built. People are more willing to trust a leader decisions, even if it’s a tough decision for them to swallow. So if your people don’t trust you, they’re less likely to think your decisions have been reached fairly with everyone’s input and overall best interests in mind, right? If you don’t trust someone and they make a decision, you’re always going to be questioning their motives. Now, this may not link directly to your ability to make decisions as a leader, but it’s vitally important to ensure that those decisions are accepted, instead of questioned and picked apart. So building trust is very important to being able to make tough, difficult decisions. And finally, adopt a design thinking approach. This is your sixth strategy for being more decisive and more empathetic as a leader. Now we know Design Thinking asks us to experiment and try things out to see if they’ll fly in the real world. And if you force yourself to consider every option until you’re absolutely sure you’re selecting the perfect one, you may never make a decision for fear of being wrong. Perfection isn’t the goal, even when it comes to high stakes choices. Don’t succumb to analysis paralysis, instead, gather as much input as you can decide, and move forward with a sense of curiosity and experimentation. Right? Most things can be undone, we can look at things from sort of a scientific perspective that, hey, let’s make this decision. Let’s put it into action. Let’s test it, let’s tweak it, let’s measure it and see what we need to change or keep, you know, keep that design thinking approach in mind. And it will help you make decisions faster because it won’t feel so loaded every decision that you make. So to better understand all of these deceptively simple strategies, which I’ve presented again, just the tip of the iceberg on if you want to understand them in detail, then please check out the empathy dilemma. Because I’ve got stories from leaders in there. I’ve got actionable tactics for each of these strategies, so that you can put them into practice. And you can pick one or two tactics and try them out for a few weeks at a time and see if that helps improve your decisiveness or your clarity, all your all your self care all the pillars that we’re discussing, I promise you that these five pillars will transform how your team engages, performs innovates delivers for you and your customers, but you want to be smart about it and you want to experiment and like I said, try a few of the tactics that are in the book to help you improve on whichever pillars need improving. For some people, it might be pillars, one, three, and five. For others, it might be pillars two, four, and five. But that’s why self awareness is the first pillar because you need to understand your strengths and your blind spots. Check out more about the book and link to presale bonuses and all the things at the empathy dilemma.com And don’t forget about that special presale offer I told you about because when you submit your receipt, you also get invited to a VIP Launch event that’s happening in October, and there will be swag, it is still to be determined what that swag will be. But I promise there will be swag for pre sales. And again, go to the empathy dilemma.com to check out everything you need to know about the book. And I’d love to come in and bring the book to life for your team, for your company for your conference for your event. So if that is of interest if you want to do an interactive workshop, if you want to do a keynote, if you want to do an erg talk, please come find me at red dash slice.com and go to my Connect page, my contact page and let me know what’s going on and I’d love to help so I hope you enjoyed today’s solo hot take I hope you’re enjoying the heartaches let me know. And until next time, when you tune into another episode of the empathy edge and more with my amazing guests. Please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Esther Goldenberg: Imagining Deborah’s Untold Story with Empathy

What does it mean to tap into empathy and reimagine the life and experiences of someone only mentioned in a few sentences in history, whose story remains untold.

My guest is Esther Goldenberg, educator and author of the Biblical fiction novel, The Scrolls of Deborah. We discuss how a few lines in the Bible sparked Esther’s curiosity to imagine this woman’s entire life story and perspective, how seeing historical events from other points of view can be so valuable and fill in gaps or change hearts, and how books and stories help us nourish empathy and relate to others from a safe distance. We also talk about how writing can be a lonely endeavor and what creating something for the world that only exists in your head feels like.

Esther even reads us a passage from the novel that is a shining example of an empathetic conversation so pay attention to that debrief as well!

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Build a practice of engaging in literature, music, documentaries, movies, and other media created by people and about people who have different life perspectives than you. It will build and foster empathy.
As human beings, we can become numb to large numbers surrounding tragic events. By bringing it into the story of one person or one family, such as in historical fiction, it can remind the readers that it is about the one, even among the many.
Scenes in books and movies can model empathy for those who do not necessarily see it in their daily lives.

“Through fiction, people get to really see themselves in the characters and see the characters as people who they get to know. And that really creates fertile ground for empathy.”

— Esther Goldenberg

Episode References:

Shira Guru and the unSTUCK method
The Empathy Edge podcast: Chris L. Johnson: When Leaders Pause, They Win

About Esther Goldenberg, Educator and Author, The Scrolls of Deborah

Esther Goldenberg is a native Chicagoan, author, educator, and mother. Once a reluctant reader, but always someone who enjoyed a good story, she developed a passion for writing. Her much anticipated Biblical fiction novel, The Scrolls of Deborah, is available in paperback, e-book, and audio formats. Esther continues to write and teach students of all ages, with most of her workshops now tying in with themes from her book.

Connect with Esther Goldenberg:

Website: EstherGoldenberg.com

Book: The Scrolls of Deborah: amazon.com/Scrolls-Deborah-Esther-Goldenberg/dp/195590541X

Facebook: facebook.com/EstherGoldenbergAuthor

Instagram: instagram.com/EstherGoldenbergAuthor

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Esther Goldenberg 02:57

Thank you so much for having me, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. And we

Maria Ross 03:02

should mention how we know each other because years ago, I worked with you and helped you with brand messaging around a publishing firm that you were starting to help elevate voices that might not be able to be traditionally published. And so now and here, you are now publishing your book. That’s true.

Esther Goldenberg 03:21

I mean, you and red slice, you were so helpful to me in figuring out what my message was what it was, I was trying to say, and then how to say it. It was really great to be supported in that way. You know,

Maria Ross 03:35

absolutely. And I unless I’m misremembering, I think you were talking about working on a book at that time, or maybe you had plans to write a book at that time.

Esther Goldenberg 03:45

It’s interesting, I probably had recently written a book or, and, or was about to write a book. And I had discovered the world of self publishing, which I’m really a fan of, actually, I think there’s a lot to be said, for self publishing. And at that time, what I wanted to do was help other people who didn’t want to make a career out of their books, get their books into the world, you know, sort of like a side, not a side gig, really, but just a passion project. And so I started this publishing company, because I now knew how to publish a book thanks to learning how to self publish. Now, I’m not doing doing that anymore. And this book, the scrolls of Deborah is being traditionally published by row house. And it brings me back to what I said earlier about how great it is to have support in the process. Because right now my job is to write the books and talk about the books and read the books, and it’s somebody else’s job to do the messaging and the covers and the formatting and all the things that go into creating books

Maria Ross 04:50

100% And I love that you’ve always had a passion for sharing stories, whether they were your own or other people’s and a passion to be a catalyst for enabling those stories to see see the world because we talk a lot on the show about the fact that stories help increase our empathy and help us get to know people we never would have necessarily had contact with, or experiences we never would have had contact with. So let’s talk a little bit about the book and tell us what it’s about. And let’s talk about the genre because we were talking before we started recording about that, obviously, there’s different genres of books. And especially when I talk about embracing reading, or watching documentaries, or going to the theater as a way to strengthen your empathy, people asked me well, like what kinds of books do they only have to be biographies? Do they only have to be nonfiction? So let’s talk a little bit about the scrolls of Deborah give us a little taste, and I know you’re gonna do a reading for us and a little bit, but give us a little bit of taste of what it’s about how you got the idea for the story and tell us about the genre?

Esther Goldenberg 05:58

Sure, well, the scrolls of Deborah can be categorized as biblical fiction, that basically means it’s historical fiction that takes place during biblical times and has appearances walk ons, or major characters who are also in the Bible. Now, Deborah, some people who are familiar with the Bible may have heard of Deborah as a judge. And this is actually not that Deborah. So the Deborah in the scrolls of Deborah is from the book of Genesis, and she has one line in the book of Genesis, only one so I’m not going to call her major character from that story, because I don’t think she was right. He was mentioned in Genesis chapter 35, verse eight, it says, this is a paraphrase now that Deborah Rebecca’s nursemaid died and was buried. Wow. That’s it. So nothing about her life, except what we can deduce from that one sentence that she was Rebecca’s nursemaid. Now, what does it even mean to be Rebecca’s nursemaid? And why is her death mentioned but not her life. And, you know, it’s just really like right in there, this one sentence, Deborah died, says where, you know, you’re near Beit El Bethel and English. And she was buried under the crime tree.

Maria Ross 07:18

And then we move on. And, but important enough to mention her death. That’s is that what intrigued you that

Esther Goldenberg 07:26

really intrigued me like when this story was being written, who was this character, this person, Deborah, who was not really air quotes, important enough to get a story written about her, and yet she was important enough that her death was mentioned. So that really intrigued me. And it also gave me a really great opportunity to use my imagination, because basically boundless you know, it’s like, there was this woman, Deborah, and she was Rebecca’s nursemaid, and she died. I mean, I get to make up everything. Yeah, because there are no details about her life. Other than that she was Rebecca’s nurse night, and we don’t even know what that means. So it was a really fun opportunity, kind of to just say, well, who was Deborah. And if we know that she was with Rebecca in some way that makes her privy to some of the stories that we might be familiar with from the Bible, as well as stories that we would not be familiar with from the Bible, because they’re not included. And one of my favorite parts of the Bible, or the parts that aren’t included? I don’t know if that can be considered one part. Yeah, what one of my some of my favorite stories about the Bible are the stories that aren’t in there. Yeah, Deborah is just one example. Because if you take a more major character like Abraham, his birth is mentioned, along with the important information like who his father was. And then the next thing that’s mentioned about him is that he was married. So here we have even a major character in the Bible with a lot of gaps in the story. So according to my version of the story, Deborah was not around at the time of Abraham’s youth. But she did overlap with him with all the patriarchs in some way, Chair Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as well as with the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, and as well as other characters who just might not have heard of in the Bible. So this gave me the opportunity to really get this sort of insider’s view on both characters who we might be familiar with and brand new people as well.

Maria Ross 09:51

Okay, I love this and just to take a step back for people not familiar, Rebecca was Abraham’s wife, Rebecca I

Esther Goldenberg 10:00

was Isaac’s wife, Isaac’s wife, and she was the mother of the twins, Esau and Jacob. Got

Maria Ross 10:06

it. Got it. And so just wanted to level set that for people. I always joke that I’m Catholic, so I don’t know the Bible very well. So I what I love about this is it’s very similar to where people have taken stories about characters or people in history, we don’t know a lot about, like, if we look at Downton Abbey, and people’s fascination with the staff, the servants in these royal grand households, people are sometimes more intrigued by the people that are on the periphery of the story and what they’re privy to, and what they learn and what they hear and their perspective on the events that we may know about, or hear about, you know, like, for example, Downton Abbey, it’s, you know, taking place within the landscape of real events happening in the world. And I can’t remember, I think it’s Hilary Mantel, I’m gonna get that name wrong. She who does the historical fiction around the monarchy, and around, you know, Anne Boleyn, and Henry the eighth, and all those people. And so it is fascinating to see events you feel like you’ve heard about, but see them through the lens of someone else, which, right there is a practice of empathy, trying to see things from a perspective, we’ve never seen them from before. And so I’m curious. Well, number one, speaking of curiosity, your curiosity about Deborah is, isn’t an empathic practice of just not overlooking her and going, hmm, I wonder what’s going on there. I wonder what’s not being mentioned. And I wonder what her story could be. But how? And you know, not to describe everything in the book, because we want people to get the book. But how did you think about what her perspective was going to be on events that people may already know about? Did you have a particular she’s going to have a very skeptical lens, or a very naive lens, or, you know, as she’s observing events, or as she’s being a part of events that are well known, and are perhaps mentioned in the Bible characters as well? Did you have a particular mindset for her of how she was going to approach observing those events and observing those people?

Esther Goldenberg 12:18

That’s a great question. I don’t think that I had intentionally thought of what her perspective is, I don’t think I could have labeled that when I started writing. A lot of that is because I felt like I was almost like going into her eyes and just seeing it from her point of view. And so how would I label it? And she’s also in some ways, being a historian, because she, this scrolls are called the scrolls of Deborah, because she dictates her story to Joseph, who some people might know of the many colored Dreamcoat. He’s younger than she is by a couple generations, and he’s learning to be a scribe. And she dictates her story to him, and he writes them down here. So for her when she’s getting started, this is, let me tell you my story. Because you’re just a little boy, and you know, your grandmother, Rebecca, and you know me, but you don’t really know who we are. So let me tell you my own story. And then as it goes along, I think I discovered that I viewed Deborah as a wise woman. So she’s kind of the woman who I might want to have around to ask her opinion, because she has lived so many experiences. And so she might have a story to tell actually, about when something similar happened to her and then be able to give some advice. So I think I see her as a wise woman, even though she might see herself, in some ways more of an observer. And in the book, she acts as an observer in some situations. So for the burn example, there’s a fairly well known story about Abraham taking Isaac to sacrifice him on the top of the mountain. And Deborah does not witness that. But what she does witness is Isaac retelling that event. So in the scrolls of Deborah, there’s the story of Abraham taking Isaac to the top of the mountain for the sacrifice. And so this brings me back to Deborah being a witness of events and having them written down for the purposes of other people knowing what happened and of course this is still through her eyes.

Maria Ross 14:36

I love this and I know people might be listening going this is not your normal podcast episode Maria because we’re not talking about business or leadership or culture. And the reason why I wanted to have you on Esther is because again, this is such an important practice of, of looking at art and reading books and viewing documentaries and listening to music from people that don’t have the same life experience that you have and why it’s so important to build that practice of it. You know, as you’ve talked about sort of in a safe space, where it’s less loaded, there’s less on the line, it’s easier for you to sort of slip into the perspective of someone else, and not feel defensive and not feel scared or angry, or, you know, fearful of what might happen. And so, when you think about writing, fiction versus nonfiction, like, what does that mean to you in terms of building empathy for helping people build empathy by reading a book like the scrolls of Deborah?

Esther Goldenberg 15:38

Well, I think that through fiction, you have a really nice opportunity to get to know a character and become attached to them. And I think this is the same whether it’s books or movies, or TV shows, even, you know, you see these characters and sort of the design behind it, is that you should identify with them and put yourself in the story because frankly, otherwise, it’s not interesting, right? So, you know, it’s sometimes tell the story of the movie Titanic. So I refuse to see that movie. Because I know what happens, the ship sinks, the people die. Right. And to me, this doesn’t hold any emotion right now. It’s a fact from history. And it’s sad, and unfortunate, and there’s a lot going on there. But if I were to see the movie, then when that happens, I would be crying, I wouldn’t be kneeling, the loss, because that’s what the movie is designed for. And I want to have that experience of sadness. When I go in for fiction. I personally, like they’re all different genres, and people like different things. Personally, I like something a little bit happier than the scrolls of Deborah isn’t like a fairy land kind of story, it tells the story of her life, you know, a couple 1000 years ago was not easy. But I think that through fiction, people get to really see themselves in the characters and see the characters as people who they get to know. And that really creates fertile ground for empathy. And at the same time, there is that safe distance of this isn’t happening to me, this isn’t a scholarly report. So I don’t need to decide whether they’re right or they’re wrong. Do I think they’re right? Or they’re wrong, which really can charge your own emotion, you know, also, but this is this allows you into the shoes of the characters

Maria Ross 17:35

100%. And actually, I, I see what you’re saying about Titanic, because I, you know, the whole story of Titanic fascinates me. And I knew it’s so tragic. But I actually did see the movie. And that, to me was an example of taking an event where people are sort of nameless, faceless figures in history of this thing that just happened and humanizing it. And I think that’s an important role, especially even for books like yours, where it’s whether it’s historical fiction, or biblical fiction is taking these events that happened and putting a person at the center of the narrative at the end of the story. I think that’s really powerful for building our understanding and our empathy for events that we, you know, I hate to say it might just gloss over and however tragic. And so I love that idea of being able to I mean, not, like you said, you kind of have to be in the mood. Are you in for a cathartic situation or not? But I think that that’s such a powerful way to get people to humanize people involved in difficult events or experiences, and also increase our understanding of groups that we may not know very well, or, you know, oh, I always thought this about this particular group of people or that particular group of people, because you had no exposure to anyone in that group. And so it is so powerful. I don’t, right now, I don’t write fiction books I did when I was a kid. But I write nonfiction books now. But that’s always been the appeal of fiction and historical fiction for me is being able to humanize a situation or an event, perhaps one that I’ve heard of, and go oh, that that’s right, that really impacted real people. And there’s, there’s there are studies out that show that we can get very numb to large numbers, when we hear of an event where large numbers of people are hurting or they’re suffering. But an mpr does a great job of this, of doing the story of one person and humanizing that entire event. So it’s not so because our brains think oh, like 10,000 people or 12,000 people or whatever. It’s too big. But when we can learn about the experience of one person, it kind of brings it home, and then we can start to understand and create that connection. So I love I love this conversation I want to talk about, I want to shift gears a little bit and give people empathy for the act of writing. Because you talk about writing as a very lonely endeavor. So tell me about your experience, as an author and as a writer. And if it’s lonely, what keeps drawing you to it? Sure, well,

Esther Goldenberg 20:29

when I was dreaming up the scrolls of Deborah, if you will, because I don’t really know a better way to describe it. When I was dreaming up the scrolls of Deborah, I was living my life, here on Earth, as well as living my life, in my head, or in the past, or wherever this dream was taking place. And nobody else was in that place with me. So while I would have these imaginations, I don’t know what the word is imagining for something that happened, you know, maybe Deborah and Rebecca and the other women are sitting around a circle with drums and the moon is full, and there’s a little bowl with water reflecting it. And it’s amazing. And they’re singing, and they’re dancing. And it’s sort of like, I’m the only person who knows this, I’m the only person who can see it or think it because it’s all in my head right now. And then my job is to put it down on paper, so that I can share it with others. But the process of it being in my head, and then getting to other people, is just a very long process, and sometimes a very solitary process, because this is happening only for me right now until I could share it. And I was very lucky along the way to have friends that I could talk with about it and share some ideas or thoughts or even, you know, a couple pages here or there while it was fresh. Yeah. And that helped. That helped because I got to share this world. I mean, it’s also it’s an incredible world. It’s an exciting world, it’s grabbing my imagination and keeping me interested. So it’s the kind of thing that you really want to share. Now, hey, I have this exciting thing who wants to hear about it? Nobody. Almost nobody wants to hear about it. Because it’s just me saying bla bla bla, bla bla, you know, like this little split, and

Maria Ross 22:27

you put it in a book and people want to read it. Exactly. When you

Esther Goldenberg 22:31

pull it all together, you know? Yeah, people get to hear the whole story.

Maria Ross 22:35

Do you ever feel like I know, I feel this Even sometimes when I’m writing nonfiction, but that I’m never going to be able to tell the story the way I truly experience it and envision it in my head. Did you ever feel that way during the writing of the book?

Esther Goldenberg 22:50

Sometimes I felt that way. But more often, I really felt like this book was gifted to me, I really felt like it almost just flowed through me sometimes. And they say you should write about what you know. And I wasn’t there. I don’t know what. So how do I how do I write about what I know in this circumstance? And interesting stuff happened. Like, I’ll give you one example. There was one day when I found a praying mantis outside on my balcony, and it was dying. And I don’t know if you’ve seen a praying mantis up close, but they’re just stunningly gorgeous. They’re just really beautiful. And the face is so clear. And it just looked beautiful. And it was sat like what am I going to do with this praying mantis? I’m not the kind of person who can step on a bug. I’m just not good at that. And then if you see this thing, it’s like the size of a mouse. You know, it’s like big. It’s not an ant. Yeah. So I picked up the praying mantis, we you know, with paper in a bucket or something, whatever I did, and I brought it down to the soil. And I put it next to a little bush, and it was still dying. And there’s nothing I can do about that other than be there with it or not be there with it. And much to my surprise, that day, I found myself sitting beside a praying mantis that was on the soil and singing lullabies to this praying mantis. I mean, if you had asked me, So Tomorrow’s Tuesday, what are you going to do? I never, you know,

24:26

like, I could go card. Yeah, right. And

Esther Goldenberg 24:29

then it happened. And then it became a part of the book. So there’s a scene in the book, where Deborah and Rebecca find themselves singing to the praying mantis. And this sort of came through as a scene by itself and then took me to the next steps in the next places.

Maria Ross 24:50

Wow, that’s so cool. All right. I want us to hear a little bit from the book, especially where you have parts of it that are very rich and empty. See? So if you could read a section to us, I believe it’s one person helping another with feelings of inadequacy, but providing empathy and compassion, can you grace us with a little bit of a reading of from the scrolls of Deborah?

Esther Goldenberg 25:15

Oh, I’d be delighted. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So readers of the scrolls of Deborah do not need to know anything about Bible stories. It’s a totally a book that stands on its own. But because I’m going to read from page 257, I want to give you just a couple sentences of context here. So Rebecca is the mother of Esau and Jacob Issa is the older one. And Rebecca this whole times ever since the boys were born, had been living under the impression that Jacob would be the more important one. And what just happened before this scene is that Jacob got his older brother’s blessing from his father. And Rebecca helped him trick his father into giving him the older book, older brother’s blessing. So that’s what happened right before this. And now Rebecca has been feeling like, she’s not really sure that she had done the right thing. And she has basically isolated herself in the camp because she’s so upset with what she’s done. Meanwhile, both Esau and Jacob have now left the camp for different reasons, based on this blessing mishap, okay, so she’s feeling very, very alone. And it’s actually Isaac, who says to Deborah, okay, this has been going on long enough, can you help her feel better? And that’s the scene where we are now in with Deborah is going to try to help Rebecca feel better. Got it. So Deborah says, Come take a walk with me. To my pleasant surprise. She left the tent for the first time since Jacobs departure, and walked with me in silence. When we reached the top of a hill, we sat together in the shade of the trees and looked below us at the camp. Rebecca, I said, Tell me what is bothering you. Rebecca cried again. I had seen her cry daily since Jacobs departure, but this was a different cry. This one was loud, not with a few tears, but many. Her body shook, and she spat and pounded the ground with her fists. When her gasping finally returned to easy breathing. I invited her again. I have done terribly wrong. She said, I have worked for a lifetime to prepare Jacob for receiving his father’s blessing. Since the time that ye spoke to me in my dream, I knew Jacob was the important one. The older will serve the younger, I would do everything I was able to make Jacob worthy of that blessing. And now I have ruined all of that. I have turned him into a trickster and a fugitive, oh, Deborah, she resumed her sobs. And do you wish to hear the worst part of it all? She did not pause for she knew she had my attention for anything she would say. The worst part is that I have both failed at preparing him and I have failed my firstborn son. In all of my efforts to guide Jacob. I did not think of Esau for his whole life, right up to betraying him in his moment of earned pride and glory. Oh, Deborah, I am the worst mother ever lived. I have ruined both of my children, and I shall not even have more chances to do a good job with a new baby. This sounds terrible, I said. I paused so that she might have a moment of sympathy before I continued than I said, yet it is not true. Rebecca looked at me, as Jacob not become a skilled Shepherd. Has he not learned to read and to scribe I asked. And are those not skills of great importance? She nodded. Do you not watch Jacob with pride? Did you not watch Jacob with pride as he strode to his quiet places every evening to talk with ya? Is that not a great practice that you helped him build? She nodded again. Does Esau not feed his wives and children and laugh with them and love them? I asked. She had to agree for he did. When Esau returned from the hunt. Did you not raise his patience and persistence as well as the flavors of his food? When he returned with a swollen arm? Did you not cook the herbs for the purpose and wrap his bandage every morning and evening? I did. She said and did you not catch his very first son on your knees and insist that he circumcise the child himself? And had that not happened for all of Aesop’s boys thanks to you. It has she said. These are just a few examples from a lifetime. Perhaps your sons are not ruined. I said I was not pleased with her chicory, but I was proud of the skills that the young men had acquired. Do you think you can call yourself the worst mother who has ever lived? Surely there is one mother or possibly two who have done worse, I could see that she was still thinking of ways she had failed. But she also laughed or she heard the absurdity of it. Perhaps in a distant land, I added, giving her hand a squeeze, perhaps one Far, far away she can seated there, probably not as many as two. Now she gave me a small smile. I could see her pain was still there. But she was making room for it to leave. Oh, Rebecca, I said, Can you please see yourself with my eyes, I see a mother who has loved her children the best she knew how she fed and clothed them, licked their wounds and sang them songs, made them with a generous and kind father, who has taught them not to mention a generous and kind auntie, who has taught them many things as well. Rebecca, put her head on my shoulder and let her quiet tears fall there. Can you do that? I asked. Can you see the mother that? I see? I would like to Deborah, I believe you would not lie to me.

Maria Ross 31:11

Oh my gosh, so great. What a great example of an empathetic conversation. Just giving someone space to feel what they’re feeling and listening and, and offering a perspective I love especially the part where she says, can you see you through my eyes? That that’s so powerful. So what does that what does that mean to you in terms of the ability to show empathy in when someone’s in distress? Mm hmm.

Esther Goldenberg 31:42

Well, I love this example. Because I feel like what we were talking about before, like, we have that safe distance. So we can view these two people from the outside. But at the same time, I can see myself beating myself up for a poor decision, and not being compassionate with myself. And then perhaps needing somebody from the outside to say, okay, you know what, maybe that wasn’t one of your homerun decision. But, you know, that was one thing, out of a whole lifetime, that maybe you’ve had one thing, maybe a dozen things, or whatever, but you also have a lot of great things, you’re still a good person. And so to be able to see that conversation from the outside, I think allows me as the reader, excuse me, me as the writer, as well as other readers, to be able to look at ourselves as worthy of compassion, as capable of receiving empathy and giving empathy. Because there are so many, I mean, countless, Deborah and Rebecca’s out there who have made mistakes, or done things that their closest people and even themselves have disagreed with. And yet, they’re still rounded people, you know, with so many experiences, and to help us not judge ourselves and others, based on this one little sliver of information that we know, but rather to see a person as a whole person who’s maybe struggling as much as we do with just life, because there’s a lot of amazing, wonderful things in life and a lot of really challenging things in life. And so to be able to see characters in a book like that, and then maybe take it in to ourselves and go, You know what, I’m a little bit like that maybe, you know, in this case, I could say, I’m a little bit like Rebecca, I could also say, I’m a little bit like, Deborah, you know, or wouldn’t it be nice to have a Rebecca, who says this to me, or a Deborah, who says this to me? You know, there were many times throughout the book that I felt connected with Deborah, there were many times that I felt connected with Rebecca, or with the other characters, because I could see their actions and their choices and their feelings as parts of a whole person. And so with this particular scene, I think, for me, I like it as an example for people to be able to read a scenario where even in a challenging situation, even when you accidentally caused harm, that you can still receive compassion.

Maria Ross 34:27

Absolutely. Oh my gosh. And, and such a great not even just an opportunity to develop your empathy for, for Deborah, or Rebecca or think about people in your life who might be experiencing what they’re experiencing, but also a model of an empathetic conversation. I think it’s so important because, unfortunately, what many people lack are healthy models of empathy in their own lives, and that’s where their empathy muscle atrophies because they’re not seeing it modeled on a daily basis and it’s an not, it’s not something where they say, well, that’s just what you do when you when someone is in a crisis, or someone’s feeling bad about themselves. And then there’s people who continue to be empathetic. And then they don’t even know why they don’t even know what they’re doing. I interviewed a lot of those people for the new book, to try to unlock their secrets. And I found some, some themes, which is what I talked about in the new book, The Empathy dilemma, but many of them had to really think about why they were empathetic. Many of them didn’t think of themselves as empathetic leaders. And so sometimes it does just come naturally for people. But I submit that that’s because they have been in an environment where it’s been modeled, and it’s been rewarded. And it’s been celebrated. And so it is innate. I mean, it’s innate to all of us. But it’s innate to them, because they don’t know any other way. And so what’s wonderful about scenes like that, in books or scenes like that, and movies, is that model is for people that may not have that in their daily life.

Esther Goldenberg 35:57

Yeah, I want to give a shout out if I may. Yes, the Shira Gora, who created the unstuck method, which is a method that goes on an acronym of the word stuck S T. U ck, I won’t explain the whole thing here. But I’ll say that S stands for stop. And in this scene with Deborah and Rebecca, they actually went through that five step program, but without saying the five letters, right. But really, I think the key is to start with a stop. And at the beginning of the scene, Deborah said, Will you take a walk with me, and we know from the laws of physics, that an object in motion stays in motion, right? And the same is true, I think, for our thoughts, right, we can go down that rabbit hole of thoughts. And that’s just the direction we’re going just sort of like a ball rolling down a hill. But if there can be something to stop that, whether it’s an internal reminder or an external assist, the stop that for a moment, then we can be in a position to have a conversation like that, you know, and show empathy to those who are around us. And instead of just letting those thoughts cycle and build up, we can stop and ask ourselves, you know, where can I show empathy at this moment? Where can I feel empathy, look for that part, because it’s there, right there.

Maria Ross 37:23

I know this, I’m gonna put a link to that in the show notes, as well, as you’re reminding me of a link to another conversation we had on the podcast with Chris L. Johnson, where she talked about the power of the pause for leaders in helping them regulate their emotions, but also be able to more effectively handle tough conversations and tough decisions is if we’re going going, going, going going, we’re never refilling the tank. And the importance, it’s such an important thing that you said, because that importance of that pause is so important. It’s something you know, I try to work on daily, because I I can fly off the handle with my nine year old or my husband or whomever. And I’m really focusing on trying to take that breath, trying to take that pause, regulate my system, before I move forward. And I love that that’s such a perfect example of you know, just I’m thinking about just situations where you might be at work and you’re having a difficult conversation. Go outside, go for a walk. If you’re if you’re on Zoom, my husband does these with people that he works with go on a walking zoom call, where you both get out of your house and you’re walking around, it just changes your perspective. Yes,

Esther Goldenberg 38:35

yes, it does.

Maria Ross 38:37

I love it. Well, thank you so much, Esther, for sharing your insights for sharing the story. We will put a link to your website to the book the scrolls of Deborah, I’m sure it’s available. I’m assuming it’s available in all the places basically everywhere. Yes, basically everywhere. So definitely check that out. And we’ll have all your links in the show notes as well. But for folks on on the go, where’s the best place they can connect with you or find out more about

Esther Goldenberg 39:03

you? The easiest place to find me is that Esther goldenberg.com.

Maria Ross 39:07

And let me just spell that for folks. e S T H E R, G, Olden b, e r g. That’s it. Wonderful. Well, thank you again, it’s been so wonderful to reconnect with you.

Esther Goldenberg 39:20

Thank you so much, Maria. This was great. And thank

Maria Ross 39:23

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

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

Dr. Nicole Price: From Engineer to Empathy Revolutionary

How do you get analytical, process-driven people like engineers, lawyers, and doctors to see the value of empathy and human connection? It’s not that they CAN’T embrace it. It’s just that they see the world and how to solve problems differently.

My guest, Dr. Nicole Price believes two things: 1) everyone wants to do a good job and 2) empathetic leadership is critical to helping to leverage that desire. Today we talk about how she became an empathy revolutionary, how to open up a broader path to empathy, and why diversity doesn’t work when saddled by apathy. Dr. Price shares how a traumatic event opened up her capacity to connect through emotion and better impact performance – and why she now helps others understand that those who are emotional can also be logical. We discuss how to link accountability to commitment and why her role as a translator helps logical thinkers understand they don’t have an empathy deficit, but that there are multiple roads to empathy that are a better fit for the way they experience the world.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

When people understand people better, it transforms them from the outside in. They don’t need to be practicing empathy for the right reason initially, but it will change most people eventually.
It is not unusual for doctors, lawyers, and engineers to think they are better than those who are not at the same level as them. This is a barrier to empathy, but one that can be overcome.
Empathy is a method of information gathering. For some, they will be attracted to that rather than the emotions of empathy. There is no wrong way to begin your practice of empathy.

“Engineers are taught to listen for accuracy. But when I’m trying to be empathetic, listening for accuracy is not helpful to me. I’m supposed to be listening for understanding.”

— Dr. Nicole Price

Episode References:

Dr. Nicole Price, CEO, Lively Paradox and author of Spark the Heart: Engineering Empathy in Your Organization

Dr. Nicole Price believes two things: 1) everyone wants to do a good job 2) empathetic leadership is critical to helping to leverage that desire. She is an empathy revolutionary who teaches leaders how to build more empathy in organizations. Her clients range from manufacturing facilities to school districts. She is the author of seven books centered on being an exceptional leader—most notably Spark the Heart: Engineering Empathy in Your Organization.

Connect with Dr. Nicole Price:

Email: nicole@livelyparadox.com

Lively Paradox: drnicoleprice.com

X: twitter.com/DrNicolePrice

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nicoledeniseprice

Facebook: facebook.com/nicole.denise.price

Instagram: instagram.com/drnicoleprice

Threads: threads.net/@drnicoleprice

Book: Spark the Heart: Engineering Empathy in Your Organization

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Dr. Nicole Price 02:47

welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to it too.

Maria Ross 02:50

So we want to hear your story and how you got to this work, and especially how an engineer becomes an empathy, revolutionary,

Dr. Nicole Price 02:59

kicking and screaming. No doubt. Interestingly enough, I have spent most of my professional career working, helping difference to get along. So people on teams who don’t understand each other, how do I help them to just embrace the different ways people think their lived experiences so that the team can gel and make progress on their objectives. But somewhere along that journey, I realized that none of this was going to work if people were saddled with apathy. So I felt like intellectually, I felt like someone needed to embrace this idea of empathy and teach it to technical professionals. But almost all of the work that I was running into involved a bunch of exercises and things that engineers just will not do that. They are not going to sit on the grass in empathy circles, and listen, without any kind of understanding for what that’s going to deliver. Although I’m here for nine day retreats, I’m here for all of those kinds of things. But it was truly just an academic exercise for me until I had a traumatic life event. And in my traumatic life event as these things happen to do. I started to feel people, it was almost like, I would walk around in the world. And it was something written across my forehead that said, tell me that you are suffering. And like I had never had it before. I certainly did not have it before. But after the grief that I had been suppressing related to my mother’s traumatic death, she was killed by a drunk driver and the murder trial associated with that. Just me getting in touch with some of my own feelings, I think, started to project out into the universe that I was a portal that was willing to receive. I think I have that language now, but I did not have the language when it first started know that oh, my gosh, I had no idea why this was happening. And then just short, just briefly. I had been An amazing employee in my organization. But after I came back after a pretty sizable leave of absence, my leader who wasn’t very nice person. And so I didn’t want anybody to think that she was not nice and kind she was, she asked me about my mom and how I was doing. And I shared, but then immediately after that, she pulled out her legal pad and was like, Okay, let’s talk about your projects. And there was something about the timing of that, that just felt off. And so I had my personal experience, but I also had my professional experience, just both of them at the same time saying, we need an we need an empathy revolution. But I absolutely thought that somebody else should be doing. I think that some shouldn’t be me. Right? Every time I went to try to say, Hey, someone should be doing this, for this particular group of people, the answer kept coming back that what if it is you maybe it should be shouldn’t be you? Hmm,

Maria Ross 06:03

wow, that is powerful. And I, you know, relatable, I think for a lot of people that sometimes we have this preconceived notion of what empathy is, and the role that it plays in our lives, and then something traumatic or catastrophic happens. And I believe we do give off this energy when we’ve been through it, that people can sense and they sort of find a kindred spirit. And it’s really interesting that you so descriptively, articulated that of like walking around in the world, like you had something on your forehead that said, I will listen or bring it on, or whatever it was. And so I think that there is an energy around that. And it’s so interesting to me, that you, you come from the traditional left brain analytical world. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that those folks can’t tap into empathy or aren’t empathetic, I think sometimes there’s a really negative stereotype out there. But I also think that in that, in that world that they operate, sometimes it’s not really understanding what it is and what it isn’t. And, like your work, my work is all about helping people understand it from a very non scary and non threatening point of view. So that’s why I’m so drawn to your work. So I want to talk a little bit about why do you think that path that you went on, and that epiphany that you had is so important to the broader conversation of empathy? Did it help you realize something was missing in the empathy conversation and wasn’t reaching? Everyone it could reach? Like, what? What was that journey? Like?

Dr. Nicole Price 07:32

Yeah, I think for me, it’s translation. So engineers, are actually taught not to be empathetic. And people are actually shocked when I say that. But if you make one item, and then I have to make 50 million of that item, by the end of the week, I can’t personalize people and think about their individual situations and stories. I’ve got 50 million parks, I have to get out by the end of the week. And so we’re taught to think in systems, not individuals, in fact, individuals get in the way of a well oiled process. You need standardization in order to get 50 million of anything out by the end of the week. And what I was not aware of was that, that Systems Thinking caused me not to think of consider people as individuals, they did become cogs in wheel. So even though we would all say people are not just cogs and wheels, if Sue is sick that day, I need to be able to put Tom in her spot, and Tom needs to be able to just keep going because I have to get 50 million parts out. And one I was not aware of that. So what I did have had no awareness of it. And to me, like I said earlier, while I am completely open to a spiritual path, many different ways of learning information. I think I understand the difference between kindness and niceness and empathy and all the different types. Most people are just like, hey, can empathy be taught or not? Do you have it or not? Like, what does it look like to practice it or not? Why should I care? How do I hold these people accountable and still be empathetic? That’s what people say. And so I just said, Alright, how can I translate? How can I be a person who translates really important nuance? I think it doesn’t matter that effective empathy doesn’t come from the same part of the brain is cognitive empathy. Absolutely. That matters. And most of my clients don’t care. They just want to know, how am I gonna get my 50 million parts out at the end of the week? And how are people going to feel connected to me? And how do I keep them engaged and want to keep them motivated? And so instead of arguing against that, I thought, how can I translate this in a way that people will receive it? Well,

Maria Ross 09:46

let’s talk about that. Because you wrote sparked the heart and engineering empathy in your organization. So what are some of the ways that you help folks that and I don’t want to I am a little hesitant to use this word but that are Lee worry of embracing empathy because they think it’s going to detract from the system from the goal that they have to accomplish. What is that? That blueprint idea that you’re providing for people? Can you share a little teaser with us? Because we obviously want folks to get the book, but what what is the thinking behind creating that blueprint? And how does it help those people?

Dr. Nicole Price 10:20

I think Leary is the right word. And let me tell you why I think that I have had clients tell me that we can’t even name my session, anything related to empathy, because they don’t believe people will come. So Leary is kind of a nice word.

Maria Ross 10:36

I think that a squared of Yeah.

Dr. Nicole Price 10:40

Yeah. And I, what I did in the book, which I think is masterful, I’m biased, is I shared all the ways, the practical ways that I did not demonstrate empathy as an engineer, and as a leadership, development expert, and also as a leader inside large corporation, was important for me to just describe what it could be what it could look like without putting anybody else on Front Street, but showing how I have dropped the ball on being an empathetic leader, and how we can all be different. So one of the one of the examples that I share is specifically about being in a parking lot at one of my manufacturing clients. And I actually, when I was even telling that story in the book, had to check myself because I wasn’t being empathetic to their situation, they had decided that they were going to do a shift overlap, when there was an overlap. Turns out there weren’t going to be enough parking spots for the people coming to the plant. But I don’t believe everyone knew that. So of course, there’s some people when they get there, there’s nowhere to park. And so they were parking in the visitor thought, well, if you park in the visitor lot, a certain number of times your car’s gonna get towed. So the day I was there, a lady’s car gets towed. And I just happened to be in the room, when they’re talking about, well, why are these people just like, not like parking in the visitor spot? And I asked the question, you know, Curiosity is an important part of being empathetic. Well, are there enough spots? One guy says, of course, and another guy says, well, actually, for about 15 minutes, no. Well, none of the senior leaders knew that. And then I’m a visitor, there’s 25, visitor spots available and open. Long story short, this woman was car getting towed was going to be about $250 to her. And then the next day, you know, there’s an additional fee, and it just keeps. So she left she asked her union leader if she could leave to go get her car. And she did. Well, that stopped the line. Well, stopping the line cost millions of dollars. And so she was going to get fired. And I was there, trying to figure out, okay, what is the best empathy exercise here, and I call it the empathy walk I just made, I just borrow that term. But it comes from the engineering concept of the gimble walk, which means to go and see the real place. And in practical terms, it just basically means if you’re going to cut somebody’s hair, they should probably be in the chair. So you cannot change any process without going to see at first. This was an exercise in understanding poverty for people who actually have jobs. So I just asked, Would anybody in the room be willing to share? What are the kinds of things that could make you late for work if you didn’t have money, and the people in the room had been working with these folks for sometimes decades. So these are people that they know, but they’ve never thought about the fact that they were born or maybe had lived in, in poverty at some. So there’s a woman talking about what her life was like after divorce, there was a person who had grown up where her parents were working, but they were just, they’re poor. And they shared things like having your lights turned off. And so you don’t, you know, you got to figure out where you’re gonna go take a shower, if you want to take a hot one, things like the babysitter didn’t come our school was ran close, or you went outside, you had a flat or you went outside and somebody had siphoned all your gas out. I mean, they were just sharing story after story. And so then we just walked through, what does that mean, then if you happen to get to work, and it’s the 15 minutes where there’s the overlap, what are you going to do? And so at the end of that, like empathy, walk just in our minds, the plant manager decided to pay to get the woman’s car out and to also, you know, restore her her job. And I think those are kind of the practical ways in which I’m trying to get people to buy into what does it look like to understand what somebody else is thinking, feeling, believing and experiencing? Because before we started, you and I were talking about how people can use empathy for bad reasons. I grew up a car To the street from a pennant, and people are surprised to know that but I regularly tell people that in fact, I did a TED talk on pimps are very empathetic. And people are usually shocked to know this. But how do you get someone to do what a pimp is trying to get them to do without understanding what they think, what they feel? What, what motivates them, who you can pimp it, who you can’t pin, in order to do that, for any length of time, that career requires you to understand people very well. It’s just a more tactical form of cognitive empathy. And I’m just trying to get people who have some shred of compassion, to embrace these ideas and these concepts for good. Yeah, they do. I think it can change the way we work, the way we learn the way we just experienced the world.

Maria Ross 15:49

So I love this because I’ve mentioned this a few times on the show, I did a TEDx talk about how to trick leaders into being more empathetic, I taught I called it how to Trojan horse leaders into being empathetic. And it’s the whole reason I wrote the empathy edge, it was the business case, for the ROI of empathy. And that rubs a lot of sensitive people the wrong way, or people that are naturally empathetic and can tap into their empathy, because they think, oh, that’s manipulative, that’s, you know, we should be empathetic, because it’s the right thing to do. And I agree with that, except it’s not working. Like the mineral imperative doesn’t work for many people. And so if we have to show them, this is the marketing part coming in, if we have to show people what’s in it for them, if they embrace empathy, so be it because there are lots of, you know, tangible, ROI pieces that come out of it. And once they embrace empathy, they’re doing it. It doesn’t matter how they got there, if they’re seeing, you know, if they see my point of view, and they respond in a way that recognizes my point of view, it doesn’t matter why they’re doing it, I was in a hospital that, you know, followed a very empathetic philosophy of care, patient and family centered care, they did it to lower costs and increased profits. But the experience to me as a patient was still amazing. I still felt seen, I felt heard, I felt valued. And so it kind of didn’t matter to me. But more importantly, and I’m sure you’ve seen this in your career, getting people there and getting them in the room to have the conversation or see the other point of view, there’s no way that can’t change them. There’s no way that they can’t walk away from that experience going, Ah, there’s something to this. Let me try it again. Let me have more interactions this way. So do you agree, it sounds like you and I are kindred spirits on the like whatever it takes to get

Dr. Nicole Price 17:41

empathy? He absolutely agree. And I and I was over here nodding. And I know the listeners can’t see this. But it’s just like, think about the fact that pimps are using this preachers are using this politicians are using this people shampoo peddlers are using what we think feel and believe and experience in order to motivate us to do what they want. And I had I had not considered this actually. Because I had a life changing event that caused me to also be more sensitive, that I considered that oh, there are people who use empathy for bad reasons. I was given a keynote. And a gentleman walked up to me at the hand and he said, I’m doing everything that you say, but I’m not doing it. Because I care about people. I’m doing it because I’m trying to make a sale. And that was when I had my epiphany like, Oh, yes, you can absolutely do everything I’m saying and you can use it for good, or it’s like a hammer being used to build or to break. Yeah. And I see leaders struggling all the time, not able to naturally get people to be engaged or use hospital systems, patient outcomes just aren’t what we need them to be. Well, who is not going to be smarter about people, if they can understand people better, right? For me, let’s get them there. And when people understand people better eventually I think sometimes the feeling comes later.

Maria Ross 19:11

I agree. I think it transforms them from the outside in because I spoke in the in the first book about being around executives, when I worked at for a cable network, being around executives at a cable affiliate, who were doing a community event at a at a local food bank. They were doing it for PR. They were doing it for press, they were doing it for customers, but there they were stocking shelves in a food bank, and having conversations with the customers with the clients of the food bank to learn what their life was like. And many of them decided to keep volunteering with the food bank after that day. Many of them had gotten exposed to people that they never would have been exposed to before. And so it did transform them. And does it happen all the time? No, there’s definitely going to be people that are like I’m going to use this today. it’d be late everybody. But that doesn’t mean we all give up on it. Right? So I want to get back to the book and this idea of other examples that you have of how you’re bringing, like, what do you think is the unique challenge with engineers? Other than what you’ve talked about? And where do they, you know, barring a traumatic event for them? Where is the epiphany for them, where they start to go, oh, I don’t need to be so leery of these human connections of considering the individual, I can still get my work done well, and balance performance with people. Where do you see that unlocking for engineers? And why do they have a unique challenge in that

Dr. Nicole Price 20:42

the doctors, lawyers and engineers have some of the most difficult training in terms of just the profession? And what does it take to get through the education that’s required to be in those professions? So you’re dealing with people who are incredibly smart, typically not. Now, of course, there are exceptions to this rule. And whether this is on purpose or not, the general population is just not thinking in the same way as doctors, lawyers and engineers. And so when you’re like, hey, I have designed this thing, you, I made this, I was prescribed this medicine, just take it. I have told you what the statute is like, do you want to sue or not? Like the process? Is this follow it or not? And when people don’t do what you’re thinking, subconsciously, you might go? Not smart? And then how do you end up showing up for people who you think are not smart. And I don’t believe any of this is conscious? I don’t think so. But I think you end up thinking that you’re better than talking down to people, not necessarily wanting to be in their circles. My experience in a manufacturing plant was that the engineers set at the tables by them, like differently separate and apart from manufacturing workers are the were our offices where we’re like looking over the manufacturing floor with glass, and it’s beautiful. The manufacturing floor is hot and sweaty, and dusty, and dirty, even just structurally how we were engaging with each other was very, very different. And so I think we shouldn’t just think that people are inherently empathetic or not, how do we create these people who lack empathy is part of the our responsibility, I believe, for us to to own. But when I think about Patrick Lencioni, his work around The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, many leaders automatically go to how do I hold these people accountable. And it was Lencioni, who I first heard, say, you have to go back down the pyramid, the you have to make sure that you have created a trusting environment where people feel like they can be heard and have healthy conflict. And then you can ask people for commitment. And then you can hold people accountable to what they have committed to. But you can’t come in to people who don’t trust you, you don’t hear anything, they have to say if they say something you don’t listen, they’ve never even given you their commitment to buy into your mission or vision or other, but you want to hold them accountable, you’ll always see your results kind of faltering. And typically, I can get engineers to buy into a logical point, a logical idea. And I don’t take the moral compass route, right? In fact, I say, overtly, listen, there are two ways to learn empathy. One is painful, and one is not. And I took the painful route by learning through life experience. I’m here today to help talk about what it looks like to learn it, you know, hearing, right, that’s one method for engineers, doctors and lawyers I use but the second one is, I never hold people accountable to something just because I think it’s the right thing to do. I do think it’s the right thing to do. But I asked people to consider the three or five three to five leaders they appreciate they love, they think they’re and they’re amazing leaders. And then I asked them to describe those leader, give me 10 characteristics of those three to five leaders, like, take the time and write down 10 characteristics. And what do you notice? Once you start looking at your list? Are those people just hard nosed and hard drivers? Typically not? They have empathetic competencies, and that’s why I like working for them. That alone Maria has usually causes my entire audience to shift and say, Okay, let me hear what you have to say. Because you’re right. The people I follow are empathetic and their leadership approach, right. So I never walk in and say you need to learn empathy, because you never, right. Right. And

Maria Ross 24:48

it’s also just that understanding of like we kind of referred to what it’s not, you know, it isn’t. It isn’t all holding hands and crying on the floor together. It isn’t it It isn’t even agreeing with people. And I think that gives folks a huge weight. It takes a huge weight off their shoulders, because of all the things they think Empathy means. That’s what they’re fighting against. And when they understand like you, I talk about empathy as a method of information gathering, if I’m going to have a productive conversation, or I’m going to move a project forward, if someone if we, if we have tension or conflict, I need to understand that person’s context to understand why they think the way they do and get information. Yeah. And so again, it’s like when you talk to those hard driving folks, it’s like, don’t look at it as a touchy feely emotion, look at it as a method of information gathering. They’re like, Oh, okay, that makes sense to me. Yeah, that’s something I can do. Right? Now,

Dr. Nicole Price 25:48

if I have a lot of time, I also try to push this idea and I am trying to push it. If I’m just being honest, that just because you have emotions, that does not make you a less logical person. Because as an engineer, I used to think that if I were emoting that I was not being logical. And it was life altering for me to realize that I’m not a more logical being because I haven’t cried since I was eight. That actually, I’m not as smart because I’m not taking in the information from other people. If I can look at you and know that you’re smiling, but you’re not happy. That has been critically important to me just being a smarter human.

Maria Ross 26:34

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why so much of this requires us to you, the first step is getting present within ourselves. And in the new book that’s coming out in the fall, the empathy dilemma, that’s the first step is self awareness. What am I bringing to the interaction? What am I bringing to the table? What, what is preoccupying my mind, so I can’t make space to notice your facial expressions, or notice the tone of your voice. Or notice those little things that are going to give me cues on the conversation that we’re having and the interaction that we’re having.

Dr. Nicole Price 27:08

If I had one request of most of my HR partners, it would be to stop assuming that some people just can’t do empathy. And I have air quotes over here, because of their profession. Yes, I have not met many people who don’t have spouses or partners who don’t have children who don’t have siblings. And if we can help them build this competency at work, it can help transform their lives outside of work. Yep. And I think I have been shocked at the number of HR professionals who think techies just can’t get it, like they just can’t get this. What I will say is probably more true is that they can’t get doing these kinds of things for moral reasons, that they’re, you

Maria Ross 27:55

know, and, and also, they just approach it differently. I mean, we had a whole I was on a group discussion yesterday with a group of empathy experts. And we were being presented to by a woman who was presenting a systems based model of empathy. And it’s this idea that, yes, empathy is innate to human beings. But that’s also very, that’s also not the whole story. It’s we all tap into empathy in different ways. And your way of tapping into empathy may look different from mine may look different from someone else. And so there’s no sort of one right way to help you have that connection with someone else. And for some people, it is a little bit more analytical and logical for other people, it is more squishy, and emotional, and woowoo, and whatever you want to call it, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, right.

Dr. Nicole Price 28:44

And then we’re going to show up with the same amount of diversity as we do with every other competency in the world. It was helpful to me to learn that I already had high levels of somatic empathy that I can’t watch. I can’t watch a, a even a fictional boxing match that I feel it in my butt like I can’t watch that. Because, again, a life of you’re not very empathetic. You make decisions with logic and reason you don’t make it. I mean, even the Myers Briggs test says, Nicole price does not make decisions based on empathy and compassion. That’s what the tests that I made. Yeah. And so you might start thinking that you have some kind of deficit and i That’s why I love assessments that help people see that there are multiple types of empathy and you don’t have to have 100% of any different kind. There are many bridges to get to being able to understand people better. It was helpful to me to also read this book called never split the difference by Chris Voss, he’s the hostage negotiator. He talks about cognitive empathy, and he renamed it as tactical empathy. Because trying to understand a hostage, a terrorist so well, then by then but they have released the hostages, they don’t We don’t have to kill them. There’s a way to do both. And now I’m like a master negotiator, centering empathy, to be able to save lives. Mm hmm. I think we can use empathy to get a couple of parts out by then

Maria Ross 30:21

to solve a budget crisis. Yeah, exactly. I don’t you know, it’s, that’s my whole thing is this idea of everyone looking so binary at it. And it’s like, it’s empathy. I choose empathy or efficiency. I choose empathy or high performance, I choose empathy or sustainability. It’s both and, and, and the funny part. And I don’t know if you found this in your research, but when I was researching the new book that’s coming, the conversations I had with leaders about and pulling out what were the five pillars, the five common threads to what helps you be both and most of them didn’t realize they were doing it. Many of them were like, Yeah, I don’t know that I call myself an empathetic leader. And but then you talk to them about how they interact with their team. And that is the definition of empathy. So sometimes even the most empathetic people don’t label themselves as empathetic. Because it is a little bit more innate for them. Well, like, of course, I’m going to get to know my team because I have to motivate and inspire them to do what I need them to do. Like, they often have to reflect and think, Well, why? Why just that work? Why am I good at that. And that humility, is so important to embracing empathy, because humility blocks empathy, because it says, We have nothing left to learn. If you don’t have humility, we have I have nothing left to learn. I know everything. My perspective is the right perspective. It’s the humility that unlocks the questioning. Yeah.

Dr. Nicole Price 31:51

And thinking that you’re smarter than everyone else, that lack of awareness that there’s many different types of intelligence, too. Yeah. I love what you’re doing, because it did it. You mentioning it made me think of something else that I had to work on. And that was how engineers are taught to listen, we’re taught to listen for accuracy. Because when you’re not accurate, the bomb doesn’t go off when it’s supposed to. There’s a little bit too much of an active ingredient in your, your medicine, I have to be accurate. But when I’m trying to be empathetic, listening for accuracy is not helpful to me. I’m supposed to be listening for understanding. Someone might be inaccurate in how they’re explaining something to me. They might say something happened Thursday instead of Wednesday. It’s not my time to interrogate does it even matter that it was Thursday instead of Wednesday? Engineers struggle with that lawyers and judges, that difference means you’re lying. And now I can’t trust you, you know. And so it took the biggest gap I had to close was shifting from listening for accuracy to listening for understanding, that probably took me almost five years to become good at because my mind goes well, it wasn’t Wednesday.

Maria Ross 33:11

I love that you just brought this up, because I am the world’s most horrible author and researcher in terms of citing the data that I have researched. Because if you ask me what the percentage was on that particular study, I will say something like I think it was like 60%. I don’t have my notes in front of me. But I know that the end result was x. And I would probably drive a room of engineers crazy or lawyers crazy, because, but it’s just so funny that that’s actually something I’ve realized about myself, that I just don’t cite numbers, like my brain just doesn’t grasp it unless I’ve completely completely memorized it. What I grasp is the is the point it’s making non the actual numbers and what you said was so important that for certain groups of people that erodes trust, and

Dr. Nicole Price 34:00

I’ll tell you my employee engagement score scores to the 10th of a percentage from 2005.

Maria Ross 34:07

So I need part of your brain, I need to like, meld that into me.

Dr. Nicole Price 34:12

But it’s not helpful, right? Like when I think about my, my relationship with my son, if he says, Hey, we didn’t spend any time together last week, and I go, What are you talking about? We were just on a plane together, we went to Atlanta, and I’m hurting it our relationship because what he means is he wants to spend more time with me. And my ability to be able to hear what he’s trying to say. One of my first coaches told me I needed to learn how to read the tea leaves. I didn’t even know what he meant, but that’s what he’s talking about. Like what is the message behind the message and I just listened naturally. Listen to what you say. I can repeat back exactly what you say. And then conversation I want to have but that is not empathetic listening.

Maria Ross 35:01

No. It is reflective listening, though. So there is there is some benefit to that of, can you reflect back to someone what they’ve said in a way that’s non judgmental, and and just, you know, so what I hear you saying in the conflict that we’re having, let’s just make sure I understood what you said. You said the sky is purple and frogs are falling out of the sky. Is that Is that accurate? Then at least if you can confirm the accuracy, accuracy for me, you can feel heard like, Oh, she did hear me. And also I’m not saying it dripping with judgment of just like, here’s all the reasons you’re wrong. Before we get to that. Let me just make sure I heard you. Right. So there’s, there’s kind of a time and place in empathy for that. But it can’t end with that is what I hear you saying? Right? I

Dr. Nicole Price 35:47

have to know that whatever it is, you’re trying to tell me about the purple frogs falling from this?

Maria Ross 35:55

You know, what is? What is the point? What is your experience? And what is the point that you’re trying to make on that? I love that. So can you give us what you think? Or can you share with us as we wrap up, I guess I should say, what is one thing that you wish more people understood about empathy, especially if they are under the belief that they can never be an empathetic person? Or, or that it doesn’t have value for them to be an empathetic person?

Dr. Nicole Price 36:23

You know, if there was one thing that I want people to know, is that you? Can I say two things? Maria? Yes,

Maria Ross 36:29

absolutely. It’s there’s that accuracy coming in.

Dr. Nicole Price 36:35

It’s still one is that empathy can be taught, which means it can be learned, that’s one. Two, is it’s almost like anything else you you’re trying to do. That’s difficult. It’s going to take time. And and so when I hear my clients are like, Okay, we’re gonna do this empathy class. And then they expect that

Maria Ross 36:55

they will, I’m sure is going to be transformed. Yeah.

Dr. Nicole Price 36:59

I don’t know if you heard me say it took me almost five years to learn how to listen in this empathetic way. But the person who was working with me on it, I think he knew our relationship was going to be much longer than five years. So why wouldn’t he? And when I think about tenure at it, some organizations, there’s still some organizations that have some pretty lengthy tenure of their employee. And if you’re gonna have people for 10 years, if it takes them three years to learn something, isn’t that beautiful? Last seven, like, like working on this? And what does it look like if I start building your empathy muscle while you work for me, when you go someplace else, you’re in a better position than when you came to me. And I would love for us to embrace that idea that this isn’t, this is not something that you’re going to see a drastic change overnight.

Maria Ross 37:50

Well, I love I had a past guest, Rhonda George Denniston. She’s the Chief Learning Officer at TBWA, worldwide. And she spoke about the fact that which and she started out as an executive assistant at that company. And what she loves about their investment in people is precisely that, like, we know, you’re probably not going to be here for your whole career. But it doesn’t mean we don’t invest in you. It doesn’t mean we don’t contribute to your professional development, because we want you to look back at this job and think this is, this is the best job I ever had. This is where I had the most impact. And they they’re realistic about the fact that they’re not necessarily going to have lifers there. But they’re not expecting instant transformation. And they’re not saying we’re not going to invest in you, because you’re going to leave in three years anyway, for the three years that they’re there. They want them to be at their best. And they want them to produce their best work, which just makes bottom line sense, right? So all these organizations that are in the rush to cut costs are cutting, whether it’s empathy training, or professional development or communication training. They’re doing themselves a longer term disservice. And I understand that difficult choices have to be made. But to think that that’s a nice to have and not a must have. just boggles my mind, because every day, your interactions with people are dictating whether the company makes money or loses money. Absolutely.

Dr. Nicole Price 39:15

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And when you as a marketing person, you know, it’s good for people to have had a good experience when they worked for you. It’s perfect for the brand.

Maria Ross 39:25

Mm hmm, absolutely. Okay, so this is awesome. This has been I could talk to you for another hour, but we’re running out of time. The book is called spark the heart engineering empathy in your organization. So any of my listeners who think they can’t embrace empathy or shouldn’t embrace empathy, I want you to pick up Dr. Nicole Price’s book, we will have all your links in the show notes. And I just want to thank you for your time today and your insights and for being in conversation with me. For folks that are listening while they’re working out. Where’s the one best place they can find out more

Dr. Nicole Price 39:57

about your work, Dr. Nicole price.com

Maria Ross 39:59

I’m easy enough. I love it. Thank you so much.

Dr. Nicole Price 40:02

It’s been a pleasure. I appreciate you. And

Maria Ross 40:04

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

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

Amy Koford: Hypnosis for Self-Awareness and Overcoming Trauma

We talk a lot about the importance of self-awareness and self-care in helping you be a more empathetic and effective leader. In fact, those are two of my five pillars in my book, The Empathy Dilemma because they are vital to being a more effective leader and human. You may think of the traditional modalities, but have you considered hypnosis?

Today, my guest is Amy Koford. We discuss how Amy got into this work, the power she’s discovered in how hypnosis works, why it transforms lives, and she busts some myths about hypnosis. Amy talks about how trauma can show up, how to take traumatic memories and replace the associated emotions, how people show up as work based on who they are and what they’ve been through, and how you can embrace forgiveness through empathy to rise above past trauma. She’ll share how you can show up as the leader and colleague you want to be.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Everyone can be hypnotized, it may take different forms for some people, but it does not negate the potential benefits.
Insecurities are a bigger deal than many realize. Many successful people are extremely insecure and those insecurities push them to prove themselves to others and fill the void of the insecurities, but still be in turmoil inside.
A lack of empathy often causes many social misunderstandings and team dysfunctions, but the root of that is usually fear.

“People don’t want to grow up to be a jerk or to be an annoying person at the workplace. That’s just not what they really want to be…When we’re in the workplace, it’s important to understand that people are the way they are for reasons and very good reasons. And that helps you have empathy.”

— Amy Koford

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge episodes on trauma:

Katharine Manning: How Trauma Impacts Performance – And What Smart Leaders Can Do

Charna Cassell: Recognizing And Regulating Trauma At Work – Yours And Others

About Amy Koford, the Happy Hypnotist & author of Hardwired to Rise

Amy, The Happy Hypnotist has been a professional hypnotist, public speaker, hypnosis show performer and more for several years to transform the lives of numerous people. She’s the creator of The Trauma Protocol which takes individuals from traumatized to optimized in just weeks. Amy is the author of, Hardwired to Rise: Eye-Opening Truths about How Fear Holds You Back, Causes Suffering – and How to Liberate Yourself to Have the Thriving Life You Deserve.

She has traveled the world to attend hypnosis conferences and has been trained, mentored, certified, and taught mastery skills from the top hypnotists on the planet. Amy specializes in happiness and peace with various techniques that are effective in helping people resolve and let go of the past and change their center to become positive, confident, empowered individuals who know their amazing abilities to live their best lives.

Connect with Amy:

Amy the Happy Hypnotist: amykoford.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amy-koford-012637184

Facebook: facebook.com/amythehappyhypnotist

Instagram: instagram.com/amythehappyhypnotist

Threads: threads.net/@amykoford

Book: Hardwired to Rise: Eye-Opening Truths about How Fear Holds You Back, Causes Suffering – and How to Liberate Yourself to Have the Thriving Life You Deserve

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Amy Koford 03:03

Thank you so much. It’s great to be here, Maria.

Maria Ross 03:06

So before we get into the nuts and bolts, let’s talk a little bit about how you got into this work. What is your story and what makes you so passionate about the work you’re doing? Helping people through hypnotism but also helping people overcome trauma and embrace empathy?

Amy Koford 03:21

Thank you so much. Yeah, my story is probably similar to many out there where I was frustrated with not getting results and seeking and seeking I’ve had, you know, illnesses. In the past I’ve had times where I was struggling emotionally, and the resources that I was turning to were simply not cutting it for me it just wasn’t working. So years ago, when I was struggling, I went to hypnotist as a client, and it worked for me. And so I turned around and certified. And then I continued to go to this hypnotist for a little bit of more deep work. And wow, I finally was able to learn how to love myself after a lifetime of not loving myself. So there’s I mean, there’s so much more that I could say about that about my story of why I turned to this. But what I realized is that people are like me, they want what works. And so they’re willing to try hypnotism as a way to work. I have many clients who have been gracious enough to post amazing reviews of what their experience was like. So when people are out there searching for something to help them feel better. Those reviews really help a lot. And

Maria Ross 04:31

what kinds of things are folks coming to you with? And do any of them relate back to the workplace and their work? Oh,

Amy Koford 04:38

yes, absolutely. Most people come to me for depression and anxiety. But with that comes a whole world of other issues right low confidence, low self esteem, and with that comes not as much productivity as they wish. And so yes, it definitely relates to the workplace. A lot of people that come to me or business as owners, or professionals and so yes, what we notice is that as they feel better about themselves, that confidence radiates out of them. And when they love themselves that radiates out of them, and it helps other people around them feel better about themselves too. So they get along better with coworkers, with family members with friends, it improves their productivity in the workplace, their confidence in the workplace. So yes, it absolutely relates to the workplace.

Maria Ross 05:30

And I love this because this is a modality we haven’t talked about on this show before, we’ve talked to psychologists and trauma counselors and folks like that, that are in the more, you know, quote, unquote, traditional realms. And so I’m curious, what you feel is unique about hypnotism for helping people with self awareness, which is, is one of the pillars of my new book that’s coming out in September, the empathy dilemma is that self awareness and self care are both two of the five pillars to help you be an effective empathetic leader, and not burn yourself out or lose your personal boundaries. And so a lot of what I talk about in the book is about taking care of your mind, body and spirit in whatever way that is suitable for you. And I give some suggestions. But what do you think about hypnotism that makes it so unique and so effective for people to engage in that kind of activity and reflection? Yeah, well,

Amy Koford 06:26

I appreciate that. And you’re right. I love what you’ve brought up. You’re absolutely right. Another thing that I’ve learned is that nothing helps us have empathy, the way that going through our own difficulties does. Wow, does that open our eyes, doesn’t it and our hearts to know how other people feel and what it’s like to go through something extremely difficult. So the thing that’s unique about hypnotism is, first of all, people need to understand that the subconscious part of the mind is far bigger than the conscious mind. And that that is the part of our mind where all of our memories are stored, and our emotions. So when someone is doing traditional therapy, they are trying to solve a subconscious problem with their conscious mind. And it’s a lot harder to do. And it takes a lot longer. So what I do with hypnotism is that we’re going into that subconscious part of their mind to solve the subconscious issues. Now, when someone has difficult experiences, that we need to resolve and work through the emotional part of it is what we’re really targeting. Because events are just events in life, right? It’s, it’s the feelings around that that are connected to the events that make it so traumatic and difficult. And again, emotions are in the subconscious. So we’re really working on helping them be okay with a number of ways in the subconscious, I can help their memories be dissociated. So in other words, they still remember them, but it feels like they’re distant, like they’re 1020 feet away. They can’t relive it anymore, the emotional way that they used to the traumatic way that it used to be. So it really works so tremendously well, because we’re fixing where the problems lie.

Maria Ross 08:18

I love that. And so what would you you know, like with this platform, what, what myths would you like to debunk about hypnotism?

Amy Koford 08:26

Yep, there’s a lot out there. There’s a lot of misunderstandings. And often, when someone comes for their first session, they’re a little nervous, because they’ve seen so many misrepresentations on TV shows and movies and so forth. So it’s actually very relaxing. And the myths are that I’m going to make them cluck like a chicken or bark like a dog something like, right, so I have to assure them no, that’s not why you’re here. Now I do hypnosis shows as an on that, yeah, I can get them to do funny things. But in hypnotherapy, it’s so different. And so I’ll also address other fears like maybe that they’re worried that they can get stuck in hypnosis and they won’t be able to come out of it. So I have to let them know that that’s not going to happen that it’s a very natural state of mind. Just like you wake up from when you’re sleeping, you’re going to wake up from this. Another fear is that some people think that they cannot be hypnotized. And so I’ve never had a single person ever that cannot be hypnotized. But some people take a little longer or a little bit different approaches than some there’s no right one way to be hypnotized or one way to feel so I have to individually work on that in my office.

Maria Ross 09:45

And is it a myth that you can’t remember what you’ve done while you’ve been hypnotized?

Amy Koford 09:50

Not no not entirely now. Okay. shows I do have some people that when they come out of it during the after the show, they don’t remember that they He got up and said swear words. It’s like that, yes, that has happened where they don’t remember. However, in hypnotherapy, they tend to remember quite a bit. And I do record their sessions and send them to the client, and have them listen to the session as they’re falling asleep every night. So that it’s really getting reinforced into their mind and helping them sleep better. So that way, if they don’t remember it, then they’re listening to it again and again and saying, oh, yeah, okay. I realize that Amy said that to me during the session. So let’s

Maria Ross 10:35

talk a little bit about a methodology you have called the trauma protocol. Because we’ve done previous episodes on this show about recognizing trauma, especially among colleagues or your teams in the workplace, and how you can be there for them and how you can properly respond. We’ve done some episodes about how you can process your own trauma, and I’ll put links in the show notes to all those past episodes. But you have something specific called the trauma protocol. Can you tell us what that is?

Amy Koford 11:02

Yes, absolutely. I’m really pleased with this trauma protocol. It’s specifically designed, it’s a program of mine, that is engineered to take someone through all the different ways of letting go of those difficult feelings connected to the past events and memories, and replacing all of that with extreme positivity. So every single session, there’s eight, every session has different ways of approaching their subconscious mind, to be able to let go of those very difficult emotions. And like I say, dissociation, and just a number of different ways. So that when they finish those sessions, wow, they are just feeling like a rock star like they are so incredibly transformed. So my little tagline with the trauma protocol is traumatized to optimized. And that is the goal, like when they’re done, they have been able to do a ton of just life changing, dramatic improvement. I love that.

Maria Ross 12:12

Because I just want to interject here because, you know, before we started recording, we were talking about the fact that a lot of this has to do with getting to know yourself, getting to process your own trauma, getting to understand your own emotional triggers, for example, but all because who we are and how we were raised, and what’s happened to us impacts how we show up in the workplace, how we show up as a leader, you know, so, so folks that think, well, why are we talking about this on a business podcast, we talk about these kinds of topics interchangeably on the show all the time, because you cannot park your humanity at the office door when you come to work every day. And so being able to not only understand for yourself to be a more effective colleague and leader, but to understand and recognize these things in people around you, that you’re working with, so that you can better support them and you can better collaborate is so important. And so I love that you know that this protocol, and I know you’re going to tell us more about it. But it’s this idea that these things that have happened in your personal life cannot really be compartmentalized as we’ve been taught, and not interfere or impact your work, your leadership, the way you show up the way you deliver the way you perform. So sort of that step is just even that’s like a game changer of being able to go from traumatized to optimized and what that means for your not just your life and your happiness, but your daily performance as well. Absolutely, yeah.

Amy Koford 13:45

If you have traumas in the past that have not been resolved, it will show up in various ways. It will. I know, you know, everyone wants to hide it stuff at a way never think about it or try to pretend like it doesn’t exist, but it will show up. And so one of the things that you and I were talking about that’s so important. You know, one of the steps of the trauma protocol is forgiveness. But the way that I help people forgive even the most drastic, awful things, is to understand that when that person was a kid, they didn’t aspire to hurt. That wasn’t their goal in life. You know, that wasn’t their aspirations, that they have to understand that, yes, we go through difficult things. And people don’t want to grow up to be a jerk or to be an annoying person at the workplace. That’s just not what they really want to be. But they have these struggles, these battles internally, that make it really hard sometimes for them to be the one that they want to be or they don’t even realize that they’re being not very nice, you know, it, it does show up and So, when we’re in the workplace, it’s important to understand that people are the way they are for reasons and very good reasons. And that helps you have empathy.

Maria Ross 15:11

I love that because, you know, I’ve written in the past about, we’ve talked a lot on the show about psychological safety. And I’ve written an article about what psychological abuse at work feels like. And, you know, now that I’m older and wiser, and have studied empathy and worked on myself, you know, this experience was decades ago, I have more compassion for that, that leader that was making my life miserable. And it’s Yeah, exactly. To your point. It’s, it’s removing yourself enough and your own emotions, enough from the situation to be able to say, what happened to this person. And this is what I the approach I try to take when I run into people who are being mean, or rude, or, you know, hating me on social media. It’s like, wow, who hurt you? Exactly, no. And so we’re what hurt you or how are you hurting yourself? I it is, I have to say forgiveness is hard. It is you have been through trauma, or you have been through psychological abuse. Taking a little bit of a turn here, what kinds of things can people do if they’ve been in a traumatic workplace or personal environment? To begin those steps of forgiveness? Yeah,

Amy Koford 16:28

well, it’s important that I just bring up something real quick that comes up in my book, I have a whole chapter about insecurities. And insecurities are a bigger deal than people realize a lot. You know, you were the reason I wanted to bring this up as you were talking about leaders. Interestingly, what I’ve learned in what I do, and in all my reading, and everything I’ve done, is that a lot of people that are very successful, are incredibly insecure. And those insecurities, push them and drive them to prove themselves. And so you know, they can end up being wildly successful, but still super conflicted and in turmoil inside. Because those very insecurities are what’s just pushing them to burn the candle at both ends. And to succeed, they absolutely, we must succeed in order to prove themselves to others, and to fill that void of the insecurities. Hmm, so true. Yeah. So yes, the steps to forgiveness, it is very hard to forgive when someone has hurt you deeply. And I get all kinds of clients who have had just atrocious things happen to them, you would be shocked. But the forgiveness is for the client. Okay, so it’s important that they start to understand that this is not for them, this is not letting them off the hook. This is for you to be at peace, and to have freedom. So the steps are that you have to first understand that number one, that person did not aspire to hurt you. Okay? They had a crappy childhood, or they had whatever it was right. Like they had difficulties, experiences, events, traumas that brought them to say what they said to you, and do what they did to you. Okay, so that’s super important to understand. And once the client starts to get that bigger picture perspective, that helps so much, because then they realize, you know, that’s true. This loved one or this person that I knew, or the stranger, they probably did have a lot of really difficult circumstances in their lives that caused them to do this, or say this. And so once I can get the client to do that, and this will help everyone, you’re on your way to being able to forgive. But the other thing is to just totally know, it is for you, right, forgiveness is for your peace, for your happiness and your ability to put the past behind you and move forward in a very empowering way.

Maria Ross 19:11

I love that. I love that. And you know, since you mentioned the book, let’s kind of round out the conversation and reminding people again, the book is called hardwired, hardwired to rise, eye opening truths about how fear holds you back causes suffering, and how to liberate yourself to have the thriving life you deserve. So tell us what your hope is for this book. What do you hope this book will do for people or that they take away from

Amy Koford 19:35

it? Thank you. Yeah, my big thing is that I have learned in the many 1000s of sessions that I’ve done over the years, that fear is the base of all negativity, okay, every issue that someone comes to me for is fear based. And that’s something that I realized, you know, throughout my sessions, depression, all of it, the insecurities and so what I’m trying to do is help bring awareness. Because I do get a lot of people. In fact, just yesterday I had a new client, who I asked her what would your life be like without fear? And she said, Oh, I don’t have fear. And so I went through some of the things that she had told me, I said, Well, you know, your, your rating your confidence very low, that’s fear, you are raising yourself low, very low, that’s fair piece you rated at zero out of zero to 10. So, it really I saw her sit there and start to get the light bulb turned on, oh, I’ve never thought of that as fear. So my book is creating awareness that even those people that are fearless, you know, I’ve had lots of clients who do rock climbing, and all kinds of, you know, skydiving, all kinds of really fearless kind of things, but they still struggle with fears that they did not realize. And, and so as we work through that, it is so eye opening to them. So almost alarming, and just really surprising to some clients who felt that like they were completely fearless to learn, no, sorry, you actually were having a ton of fear inside about other things that people would never know, right. And so it’s first of all, creating awareness about how fear is hurting us individually and the world. But every single chapter has exercises and techniques to let go of fear, plus a ton of other things. And as we go through the book, it’s all about letting it go. Overcoming it, and just breaking out of that prison of fear and shining and living your life to the fullest and reaching your full potential. So it really just is all about fear. And let’s just we deserve better than this. Yeah, absolutely. Not only individually, but as the world, you know, and I talk about what is fear doing to the world right now. And that’s going to be really eye opening to some people and saying like, as a world, we deserve better. We are hardwired to rise above fear, and to face challenges with courage not to let fear oppress us and stop us and limit us.

Maria Ross 22:16

Well, if you I mean, many social misunderstandings, many dysfunctions of teams, many of those issues. I you know, my stance has always been, they’re often caused by a lack of empathy, but there’s a lack of empathy because there is fear. So even the most aggressive bully, the fear is not being accepted, not being liked being seen as not worthy of their leadership position, being worried that they’re going to lose, you know, being fearful that they’ll lose control, all of those things. When you see behaviors like micromanagement, or aggressive behavior at work, a lot of that is completely fear based. And it makes sense, because underneath they might not admit that. But what it is, is it’s a fear of something, otherwise, you wouldn’t be acting that way. Yep. And one of the things

Amy Koford 23:05

I bring up in my book is really, the ultimate fear is our needs not being met. And we’re fulfilled. We all every day, every minute of our lives is spent filling our emotional, physical, spiritual mental needs. And so really, fears are all about our needs not being met. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, you’re right, exactly what you say is spot on. Well, I

Maria Ross 23:29

hope folks will check out the book and check out your work. And I thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today. And again, the book is called hardwired to rise. And we’ll have all your links in the show notes. But where’s the best way for anyone that’s on the go right now listening to the podcast? Where’s the best way they can connect with you and find out more about your work?

Amy Koford 23:50

Okay, yeah, thanks. They can go to Amy cofer.com that has all my contact information, and you can just contact me directly through the website. And I have a free gift for everyone that visits my website on the top, you just click on the Download the free happiness and peace checklist. Now that’s 41 items that I have found really works. In my years of being a happiness and peace expert. I have narrowed it down into that list and put it all in there. And everyone that uses that list, it will work. Okay, I absolutely know that if you use that list, you are going to feel much happier and much more peaceful and I want that for all of you listening. I want you to feel better. I love that. I

Maria Ross 24:35

do too. And it’s Amy coleford que ORKOFORDKLNY Say o f o r d.com Thank you again, Amy. It’s been wonderful to connect with you. Oh,

Amy Koford 24:48

thank you, Maria. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Maria Ross 24:51

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

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

June Hot Take: How Clarity Makes You an Empathetic Leader

The book is coming! September 10 is the day that The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries hits shelves to help leaders dedicated to people-centered practices to get the best performance possible and balance the demands of the business with the needs of their people.

I am so excited to share this with you! For the next 5 months, I’ll be devoting a Hot Take episode to one of the 5 core pillars of EFFECTIVE empathetic leaders, outlined in the book. Because the reality is that we want a more human-centered workplace culture. But we have to get actual work DONE! You can do both, but only when you are able to show up fully and have the capacity to take in other perspectives without fear, stress, or defensiveness. So today we’re diving into Pillar Three of the 5 Pillars – clarity.

Clarity is the key to being an empathetic leader while also still holding people accountable. Learn more about why this is such an important pillar to creating an empathetic – and high-performing – culture.

Today, I share are five strategies to try to be more clear. More details, examples, and tactics to try can be found in The Empathy Dilemma, so don’t forget to snag your presale copy now!

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Five strategies (though not a comprehensive list) include:
- Revisit Purpose and Values
- Clarify Roles and Expectations
- Link Clarity to Accountability
- Tell People Why
- Ask Better Questions
Lacking a reason why can create an empathy gap between leaders and the rest of the team. Even if they don’t like the reason, people want to know why they are being given tasks or goals.
Without clarity, there is no accountability. People cannot be appropriately held to standards that they know nothing about.

“Resentments build where misunderstandings thrive…Clarity helps people feel seen, heard, and valued, reduces the likelihood of conflict, and enables everyone to work together more effectively.”

— Maria Ross

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hello everyone. Welcome to the June hot take. How clarity makes you an empathetic leader. I’m so excited to share the second pillar of my five pillars for effective empathetic leadership from the new book, and the book is coming. Don’t forget, September 10 is the day that the empathy dilemma, how successful leaders balance performance people and personal boundaries, hits shelves to help leaders like you, dedicated to people, centered practices, get the best performance possible and balance the demands of the business with the needs of your people. So I’m excited to share with you, as I mentioned, these months that we’re in, I’ll be devoting a hot take episode to one of the five core pillars of effective, empathetic leaders that are outlined in the book, and because the reality is that we all want a more human centered workplace culture. I have not spoken to a leader that would disagree with that statement. However, people struggle because we have to get actual work done, and you can do both, but only when you’re able to show up fully and have capacity to take in other perspectives, without fear, stress or defensiveness. So today we’re diving into pillar three of the five pillars, clarity. Now this is the hurdle that gets in many a leader’s way. They think they have to choose between empathy and high performance or compassion and ambition. They don’t think in terms of both and because it is both, and it’s not either or, and many leaders never realize that empathy is the catalyst when it’s actually being shown that leads to performance, engagement, innovation, results, loyalty, revenue, all the things right now, speaking of the new book, there’s a Special pre sale offer, you can purchase one to 99 copies of the book at porchlight, my amazing bulk distributor, and get 30% off until August 27 so stay through to the end, and I’ll tell you how to get discounted copies for your team. Get some swag, get invited to a special VIP launch event, and potentially have me crash your next meeting for an empathy discussion. As I’ve said before, what I loved about writing the book was interviewing so many leaders who are actually doing it, being authentic, empathetic, tuning into their people, while never losing focus on why they’re there and what they’re being tasked to do. As one of my interviewees shared in the book, their number one goal is to make the business successful that but that doesn’t mean that it has to be at the expense of showing empathy and humanity for their team. In fact, because they do show those things, their teams are loyal to a fault and would go through fire for them. But how? How can leaders balance performance, people and personal boundaries? You might ask, that’s where the five pillars of effective, empathetic leadership come in. These are common traits and behaviors that I see over and over again in the leaders I’ve interviewed, I’ve spoken to, I’ve advised in the research that I’ve done, and even among those who are truly empathetic leaders by everyone else’s estimation, but they don’t label themselves as such. So the five pillars are really a result of all that research, all those interviews, and I found them to be the common threads across all those who are empathetic and high performing. And that’s why I wrote the book. Is to help you as a leader and, quite frankly, even as a colleague, be able to firm up your foundation so that you can show empathy for other people, and you can be empathetic in those moments where it matters most. So clarity is the third of the five pillars in the book The Empathy dilemma, and let’s dig into it. Clarity is the key to being an empathetic leader while also still holding people accountable. And this important pillar is needs some definition, right? What do we mean by clarity? Clarity is ensuring everyone is on the exact same page through clear communication, expectations, feedback and other. Understanding of job roles, all of which roll up to an actionable mission statement and meaningful company values. So why is it important? Why is clarity important? Resentments build, where misunderstandings thrive. One of the biggest reasons leaders and workers butt heads is a lack of communication on mission roles and responsibilities, and I would also add unsaid rules and cultural norms right when people know what’s expected of them, including in emergencies and on an as needed basis, they’re less likely to become disgruntled or even feel entitled. Clarity helps people feel seen, heard and valued. It reduces the likelihood of conflict and it enables everyone to work together more effectively. Clarity is so underrated and woefully underused, sure, plenty of leaders talk a good game about its importance, but plenty more shy away from actually creating clarity when things get diplomatically dicey. So here are five strategies to try to be more clear. Now, of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more details, examples and tactics to try in the empathy dilemma. So don’t forget to snag your presale copy now. So the first strategy is to revisit your purpose and values. Clarity on minutia won’t mean anything if your teams don’t have foundational clarity on the company’s purpose and values, and neither leaders nor employees will be able to act compassionately if the shared purpose and values are confusing or vague. Strategy number two, clarify roles and expectations. How many people review their job descriptions after they’ve been hired, the number probably approaches zero, except during annual review periods. Right? Given that, consider what you can do to ensure your team members understand and agree to their roles and responsibilities on a continuous basis, think beyond the job description to how you can clearly articulate the team’s rules of engagement. Have these discussions, document them and revisit them often, three link clarity to accountability. You can’t hold people accountable if they’re not clear on their expectations and goals. Otherwise, what are they being held accountable to? Everyone on your team should be able to say this sentence, I clearly understand my contribution. I clearly understand that I’m accountable for this piece of the puzzle, and I’m accountable for how I show up every day. Number four, tell people why leaders are busy and overwhelmed, which means they often convey what needs to be done, and then they omit the reason why, lacking a reason why people feel disrespected or kept in the dark, this amounts to an empathy gap and one that can be closed quickly and easily with clear explanations. They may not like the answer, but at least they understand why the ask is being made and why it’s important. And finally, ask better questions. So little known fact, clarity doesn’t come from having the right answer, it comes from asking the right questions. This can include knowing the right prompts when someone approaches you with a concern or a problem. So again, tip of the iceberg, right to better understand these deceptively simple strategies in detail and find tactics you can employ. Hear stories of people putting clarity into action. Please check out the empathy dilemma for stories from leaders and all those crucial tactics so you can put these things into place. These five pillars will transform how your team engages, performs, innovates and delivers for you and your customers. So again, you can enjoy special pre sale and launch bonuses. Just go to the empathy dilemma.com that’s the best place, because it links to everything. It links to the pre sale offers. It links to where you need to go to submit your receipt when you purchase pre sale, so you can get in on all the goodies. Because when you pre order, you will be able to be invited to a VIP virtual launch event. You will get some swag, TBD, and if you order 25 or more books during the pre sale or at launch, you can get a free 30 minute virtual author, Q A with me on your call for your team or your organization. So I can crash your event if you want more than 99 copies. There are bulk volume discounts available too. So again, you can go to the empathy dilemma.com and that will link you to all the places. So I hope you enjoyed today’s hot take. Next month, we’ll be digging into pillar number four, which is decisiveness, very important one. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. Mind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathyedge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Michael Bach: What Exclusion is Costing Your Company

The research is clear: investing in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging contributes to your bottom line. I hate to be so crass about a topic that should just be something we care about as humans connecting with other humans, but with all the recent backlash about diversity and equity initiatives, we have to get executive attention somehow.

Today, you will hear about what’s driving that backlash and how we can fight against it through empathy and understanding. And why quite frankly, exclusion is bad for business.

My guest is the charming Michael Bach. Michael shares how he got into this work, the stereotype of DEI practitioners, how to think about disability, the more dangerous role of apathy in fighting back against exclusion, the difference between diversity and inclusion, and he gives us a short primer on the Alphabet Soup of LGBTQ2+ initialism.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

If you’re trying to create any change, you need to understand how the organization operates from the inside.
Disability is not one thing – there are hundreds of disabilities under the umbrella term. It needs to be considered as a range, not just one form of accessibility.
It is not a competition. If we’re creating safer environments for everyone, regardless of how they identify or what they need, it creates a safer more inclusive environment for everyone.
There is a big difference between having diversity and being inclusive. The company is the soil that needs to be right for the seed of talent to thrive.

“It’s very difficult to quantify, but if you just look at it simply you can figure out that exclusion is just bad for business. And the reality is that most employers have figured that out.”

— Michael Bach

About Michael Bach, CEO. IDEA Hub Consulting, IDEA thought leader

Michael Bach is an author, speaker and thought leader in inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility (IDEA). He has worked globally in the IDEA field, including as the Deputy Chief Diversity Officer for KPMG International. He is the founder of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion (CCDI), CCDI Consulting and Pride at Work Canada.

He is the author of the best-selling and award-winning books Birds of All Feathers: Doing Diversity and Inclusion Right and Alphabet Soup: The Essential Guide to LGBTQ2+ Inclusion at Work.

In 2023, he was named as one of the 10 Most Influential DE&I Leaders Revamping The Future by CIO Views Magazine.

Connect with Michael:

IDEA Hub Consulting: michaelbach.com

Books:

Birds of All Feathers: Doing Diversity and Inclusion Right

Alphabet Soup: The Essential Guide to LGBTQ2+ Inclusion at Work

New book: All About Yvie: Into the Oddity

X: twitter.com/themichaelbach

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/themichaelbach

Facebook: facebook.com/themichaelbach

Instagram: instagram.com/themichaelbach

Threads: threads.net/@themichaelbach

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Michael Bach 03:09

Thank you for having me. Maria Ross, it’s good to see you.

Maria Ross 03:13

It’s good to see you too. And we should mention as I do with my other fellow page, two authors that we are also page two fellow authors, we are working with the fabulous publishing team that’s there. So let’s talk a little bit about your work. We heard your bio and all your great credentials in the intro, but why don’t you tell us a little bit more of your story? And how you come to this work?

Michael Bach 03:37

Great question. So I’ve been doing this work for nearly 20 years professionally, long story, but opportunity came up for me in while I was working for KPMG in Canada. In the IT consulting practice, I ended up moving into a role in diversity there. Aaron was in that role for seven years, was also the Deputy Chief Diversity Officer for the company for a couple years and then also left and ran another organization for another 10 years. I have been doing what we now call diversity and inclusion work for my entire adult life. I was raised in a very sort of social justice be a good person type environment, taught to have a high level of empathy. And, you know, even when I came out as gay, that began my journey, like I started volunteering for different LGBTQ organizations. And so it was always something I did was always part of my life, whether it was it was the LGBT space, whether it was with women, people with disabilities, newcomers, it was always part of my life. It just wasn’t a job. No one was paying me for it. Yeah, it was some or at least not what I wanted to make. It was something you did as of volunteer, and then you sold your soul to the corporate evil. And that’s how it worked. And then all of a sudden, I had this opportunity to do the work I loved inside the corporation. And that was just this magical merging of things for me.

Maria Ross 05:15

Okay, I love that story. Because I think there’s a perception that just because you are part of the LGBTQ two plus community, that you’re going to be drawn to this kind of work. And so clearly your work before that was something else. What role do you see that played you getting into this as a full time job? And again, trying to make money from it, but also trying to do it as your calling as your vocation?

Michael Bach 05:44

Yeah, you are right, that is a bit of a myth that, you know, all members of any community, right, you could talk about women, you could talk about people of color, you could talk about anything, that they’re all drawn to doing this work in this space. And that’s, you know, ridiculous. It’s like saying that all straight white men not living with a disability want to be truck drivers. I mean, random stereotype. But yeah, that’s not the case. Obviously, it had always been something that I would have done, but there just wasn’t a job. And so I went into it. I graduated university and 1940 Something kidding, it was the early 90s. And it was the career right like this, and I had already done a college diploma and it and it was like a language I spoke. So it was a very natural career for me to be in. And it was good money. And right. So it wasn’t until this opportunity at KPMG. Were, all of a sudden, they were saying, Well, we’re gonna hire this role. And, you know, the company, you know, I knew the organization, I’d been there for a couple years, I knew who the players were, and how to get things done. And I think as as idea practitioners, that is far more important than Do you understand what like Muslim burial rights are, or reconciliation with indigenous people, you learn that stuff. But knowing who the CEO is, and how things happen in an organization is critically important. So I think it was I was in the right place at the right time, with the right skills,

Maria Ross 07:36

right. And that’s such an astute observation, because so much of it is about, yes, doing the work and being passionate about it. But if you’re trying to make any change and create any sort of transformation, you need to understand how an organization operates. And I think that’s why unfortunately, so many times that someone is brought in from the outside, with all good intentions, and all the right skills, if they don’t have those relationships within the company. If they don’t really know how things get done, they’re, they’re going to be very limited in their ability to have an impact. And I think that’s a really, really important point. And it’s interesting that you say this, because I started out in the Big Six consulting firms as well at Anderson Consulting, back when it was called Anderson, so I am dating myself as well. But we had made recipes. We had a change management group, I was in the Change Management Group, which was the people side of the work that you did, we would take what the IT developers and programmers were doing and make it understandable to users. But we had I remember this, this was 1994, we had a Diversity Committee. That was sort of an extracurricular if you wanted to join it, and I joined it, not really knowing I thought it was more about, you know, just cultural differences and understanding it wasn’t sort of the the scope that it is now. And we were able to do some things, we were able to bring some awareness and have some programs. But it was sort of this thing on the side, there was no one actually championing championing it I can ever say that word within the organization from a policy level from a hiring level from a values level. And so what how interesting to be in the line of work that you’re in and to see that evolution of wow, this wasn’t a thing before. And now it’s this big thing. Right? So that was originally

Michael Bach 09:27

90s. At least in my experience, those committees didn’t exist in every

Maria Ross 09:31

organization. No, no, it was very unique. Yeah,

Michael Bach 09:35

I worked in a big bank. And there was an I’m talking about a big global bank, there was nothing right there was no conversation about this. Right. And again, it was just that right time, right place right skills. And boy, am I lucky that the this KPMG took a chance on me I didn’t really know what I was doing. Like truth be told, I got the job and went, Oh, heck, how do I do this? What do I do? Right? And I just happened to be somebody who’s, you know, got a lot of gumption and I just picked up the phone and called other people who were in these roles at different organizations who were in the same situation. They already just because a lot of them, yeah, oh, no, there were probably at the time. So 2006, there were probably 50 people in Canada, with diversity in their title 50 out of 35 million people. And in the States, it was a little more, or it was a little more mature of the profession, largely because of things like affirmative action. And the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kennedy was a little late to the party on this one. But I just call people and said, How do we do it? What do I do and got a lot of advice, and those people are still my friends to this day. But if to your point, had I been on the outside of the organization coming in blind into a brand new role? I would have failed. Guaranteed failure? Because I didn’t know I wouldn’t have known how things happened in a big fork accounting and consulting firm. And that information was critical to my success.

Maria Ross 11:20

I love it. Okay, so let’s talk about this because you talk about your work not as Dei, an idea, i e, AE. Can you tell us what that means? And then I have a follow on question about why is it under attack right now.

Michael Bach 11:40

So, I use the acronym idea. Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and accessibility. And there are lots of different versions of this initialism or acronym you’ll hear EDI di idea, sometimes you’ll hear like, dei A, which is the same as idea but it’s mixed order. D ay b. Sometimes they’ll throw a j in there. They all essentially the same thing. A justice. Oh, okay. Okay, B is for belonging. That’s yeah, I should also so belonging EIB before.

Maria Ross 12:16

Yes, yep. And

Michael Bach 12:19

they all essentially mean the same thing. They all essentially are the same point. We’re trying to make inclusive, equitable, accessible workplaces, so that everyone can succeed. Everyone. In order to acknowledge that that is a requirement, you have to acknowledge that there are some people in society that don’t have the same opportunities as others, that bias exists, that discrimination occurs. Things like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti semitism, pick your, your terminology, that all of them exist, and those things hold people back. So to your follow up question. And I will say, I use I use idea because as a person who lives with a disability, it’s really important for me that the A is in there, because I find that people with disabilities notoriously get left off. They just don’t find their way to being included. They’re a secondary citizen in the inclusion conversation. And

Maria Ross 13:28

I feel like that’s the next frontier. I feel like I’m hearing more and more of the groundswell around that. I don’t know if you are, but I feel like that do need to come to the forefront with even just from a very practical level, people looking at websites and saying, you know, is it accessibility approved? Is it you know, is this accessible to all people? Are we using alt tags? Are we using all these things? Those were things people weren’t even talking about five years ago?

Michael Bach 13:52

I do. Yeah, I agree. And a lot of that is being driven by, frankly, a lot of really big names coming out and talking about being neurodivergent or living with depression or anxiety. And so the celebrity status piece is kind of attached to that. The question is, when the noise from Instagram dies down about that, will we still be talking about accessibility? You know, we live in a highly inaccessible world. And you have to think about disability as not one thing, but a combination of things because of course, there isn’t one disability. There are hundreds of different disabilities that are included in this umbrella term disability. To come to your follow up question, why is it under attack? So I believe that there is a small minority of people who are feeling empowered, thanks to a former president whose name shall not be used, who have been pushed into a corner they don’t feel included. eluded, they’re scared, they hear the data that says that white people are on the decline. And that’s true white people are in decline in terms of the population, because of other ethnic groups, racial and ethnic groups that are growing, whether they’re Latinx, Hispanic, Black, Asian, you name it, we are on the decline, we are not making enough babies to keep up. So they feel threatened. And it’s that combination of being threatened, which they that’s not new, add into it change, which, generally speaking, people are uncomfortable with and don’t enjoy change. And then that empowerment piece where they feel like it’s okay for them, to apply their belief system to a society. And when I say a small minority, I’m talking about maybe 20 to 25% of the population share beliefs, that would be considered exclusionary, they believe that their identity, be it as a man, be it as a cisgender, person, white, able bodied, whatever the case, English speaking, American Canadian, that they are entitled to something and that other people are less than that if you are a member of the LGBTQ plus communities, if you are a person with a disability, if you are an immigrant, that you somehow are less of a human being than they are. And it’s a combination of those things mixed in with a very individualistic me against the world, everyone for themselves. attitude and the lack of empathy. Where they don’t think they don’t see human beings on the other end of this conversation. They see sub human beings, and so they’re not empathetic. They’re very selfish. And I think it’s a, it’s a combination of all of these pieces. And, you know, when I say 20 to 25%, I’m looking at all of the research that shows us that, you know, 70, some odd from companies like Gallup and big research company, something like 75% of Americans support LGBTQ inclusion. So that’s a majority. It’s not a minority, right.

Maria Ross 17:38

But they’re just really loud. They’re

Michael Bach 17:41

really loud, and they’re really getting

Maria Ross 17:43

the airtime they’re getting the media attention. It’s It’s shocking. So it’s clickbait. It’s all the things but what I find so interesting, to be kind with with that word choice, is just the impact of, you know, like the book bands going on. And the like, we’re not going to talk about black history as it happened in our schools, we’re going to get rid of affirmative action, the proactive dismantling of the information, thinking that it’s going to somehow influence or taint someone into a behavior or a life choice that they actually don’t subscribe to. Case in point. The whole thing about the book bands, and taking out books, especially around stories, involving LGBTQ to a, I’m looking down at my notes plus, folks, this this whole thing of getting them out of schools, because they’re inappropriate, is not because they’re inappropriate. It’s because there’s a fear that it’s going to turn my kid gay, or turn my kid trans. We were listening to an NPR story in the car. This was about two years ago with my son, so he was about seven. And he was asking what was going on? And I said, Well, there’s certain places that are banning these books. And he had been exposed to books around transgender kids, I found book children’s books, a great way to open the conversation without it being so loaded with him. So it would just normalize it like, oh, we could refer back to that book reread, and that protagonist we read about. And he said, why would someone think that reading a book about a gay person would turn them gay? Seven years old? And I said, Exactly honey, I go, you read a book about a trans child, Are you trans? And he goes, No, I like being a boy. I’m like groovy. You do you like this is a conversation with a seven year old who can grasp this? Yeah. And it’s it’s this fear that it’s going to turn someone into someone they’re not that I just, I’m trying to be empathetic and understand, but I don’t think it’s grounded in reason.

Michael Bach 19:55

I agree. It’s not grounded in reason. And listen, I was raised by straight parents. I did not have any LGBTQ plus siblings, relatives, I did not see any books. You know, I’m a child of the 70s and 80s, there was nothing, I still turned out to be gay. So that logic doesn’t work at all. No, or the one that kills me is drag queen storytime and how they’re, they’re influencing children and grooming children. Because there’s nothing that says to a child. Here is a middle aged man, heavyset Harry in a dress, sweating his tits off, that you think, oh, that’s what I aspire to? Are you kidding me? Nothing about it. Oh, my gosh, I drag queen to a child is a very feminine clown. It’s just nothing different. It is fun. ETF? You know, the other piece of the puzzle that really confuses me is the willingness to ignore all of the data that says that, you know, when you look at people who are convicted pedophiles, the vast majority I’m talking 90 plus percent identify as heterosexual. So even though they are sometimes, you know, having sex or committing pedophilia, with children of the same sex, they don’t identify as homosexual. Well, so let’s target the drag queen. Yeah, because that makes sense. Right? It is confusing. It lacks empathy. And I think we have to introduce another word into this conversation. And that’s apathy. Hmm. Because these vast majority of people who say that they say, whether it’s LGBT inclusion, whether it’s a woman’s right to choose, whether it’s inclusion, they’re sitting on the sidelines, saying, Oh, it doesn’t impact me. Right? Doesn’t I don’t I don’t, you know, I don’t need to deal with this. So when the Marjorie Taylor greens, or the Ron DeSantis ‘s of the world are oppressing people, they’re not doing anything. Right. And I think this is where the pendulum of reason has swung way too far to one side. And we have allowed the, the this small minority of people to take over the narrative, and we as a society need to push back. And I think the example I would use to say, to show how that works is Kansas. Stay with me for a second, the Republican Congress or state legislature in Kansas was thinking they were so smart, and they were going to entrench it into their constitution that abortion was a should be banned, and it’s illegal. And it over whelmingly failed, and is now required, they have to entrench it in the Constitution, because they put it to a referendum. And their laws state that they have to do that. So the vast majority of people in that instance came out and said, Hold on a second, no, my body my choice. And that’s what needs to happen is the vast majority has to stand up to the Ronda Sana, I call the governor Rhonda Rhonda Santas because I think that’s just funny. Like, that’d be a great drag name, Rhonda Santas that Rhonda needs to have a little awakening where the vast majority of Floridians because we know he’s not making the he’s not winning this one, stand up and say, yeah, not okay. You’ve gone too far. You’re oppressing people. We’re taking things back. And I think that, you know, not to get political, but I think the Republican Party is going to end up being pushed into the abyss by this very far right, social conservative voice, where they’ve just they’ve lost the narrative. Yeah, really? Well, I think on a tangent,

Maria Ross 24:16

no, it’s all good, because it’s all related and it and it impacts workplace policies and and the progress that we have made on inclusion. And you know, people are already saying the data around the Supreme Court’s decision around affirmative action. They’re saying, here’s what’s going to happen. And it’s not good. It’s not good for organizations. You know, I know a lot of your work is talking about what is what is the cost of exclusion, and what is the upside of inclusion? And again, there’s so much data there. So can you share a little bit with us about, you know, what are companies losing when they don’t embrace inclusion when they don’t embrace policies that can Help them diversify their workforce and make their workforce more accessible to more people, what are they losing? From that stance? Yeah.

Michael Bach 25:10

And it’s a lot. And I, you know, I come from a technical background, a data background. And I do a present number of keynotes. But one of them is on the business case, for LGBTQ inclusion, the cost of the club, and I use that as one example of how employers are losing money. And I have a whole set of data that I put up and I, essentially, if a person’s in a closet, they’re wasting 15 minutes of their day, doing something that isn’t their job, explaining about their sexual orientation, or their gender, or hiding it, whatever, 15 minutes a day, that’s 65 hours a year of wasted time for something they’re not getting paid for. And then I add in the average salary, etc. And I have calculated that in Canada, the United States, just on the LGBTQ file alone, we’re wasting over a trillion dollars a year in salary for people doing something that isn’t their job. That doesn’t take into consideration, higher levels of voluntary turnover, lower levels of engagement, productivity, innovation, safety, incidents, absenteeism, presenteeism, all of the costs, that are impacting both top and bottom line. In organizations, you add in all of the groups, I put in air quotes that are included under the diversity, umbrella women, people of color, people with disabilities, indigenous people, or Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians, people within the LGBTQ community, newcomers etc. We’re talking trillions and trillions of dollars, that employers are wasting, because they’re not creating inclusive and equitable environment. It is a and I, you know, I am throwing out a really big number. And it’s, it’s very difficult to quantify. But if you just look at it, simply you can figure out that exclusion is just bad for business. And the reality is that most employers have figured that out. And the Supreme Court can do what it likes. But they’re going to figure out ways to make sure that they are tapping into the widest possible talent pool. And that those people are engaged, that they feel like they can be themselves in those organizations that they’re going to give their all to wherever they’re working. And the CEOs and executive directors and whatnot of the world are saying, Yeah, I you, okay, we affirmative action, which, frankly, is been a disaster since it was brought out fine, that’s not allowed. But I can still ask my people how they identify, and I can track the data, and I can make sure that I’m that I’m representative of the communities that I serve, and I’m not missing out on a talent pool. That’s gonna happen. Yeah,

Maria Ross 28:19

that’s chickens still diversify their hiring, they can still put their own corporate policies in place and have their own corporate values they they are adhering to, and they can create a safe haven, but they can create a safe haven that actually benefits them financially. Absolutely. And I have no trouble. I know, you don’t either. Talking about both of those things. Simultaneously, I got some criticism of my TEDx talk, talking about tricking leaders into being more empathetic by showing them what’s in it for them. But if that’s how we make change, and how we make the world better, fine, if that’s what’s going to help somebody see things differently, and gets them to the table that gets them in the room to have the conversation, and then be changed by that and say, Wow, I didn’t realize what I was missing out on. They can’t unsee it. You don’t you don’t learn how to be empathetic, you don’t learn how to be inclusive, and then not be that way anymore. You’re sort of transformed from the outside in is what I always say. And so this is why I’m so drawn to your work. And I feel like I have a compatriot here in this idea of Yes, unfortunately, I know that, for me, it’s empathy for you. It’s inclusion is supposed to be something like this moral imperative. We don’t want to taint it by talking about business that’s not working. So it’s never worked and make it work. Yeah, we’ve got it we’ve got to meet we’ve got to meet people where they are. We’ve got to be empathetic about it and say what’s going to impact you to change as

Michael Bach 29:50

human beings we are innately selfish. We are going to do things that are in our own best interest. It’s very, very difficult, and you have to be a very evolved person to operate from a place that isn’t self involved. So, I always say to people, I don’t care how I get the horse to the water, but I’m gonna make the damn thing drink. And if if that’s focusing on the business imperative, great. The social justice imperative hasn’t worked. We’ve been at it for 5060 years, and it has not worked. And I think the difference being is it? Are we talking about the infamous corporate social responsibility? Or what’s now called ESG environments as environment, social and governance? Or are we talking about business imperative? Are we talking about what’s good for our top and bottom line? We are in the people business, you got to have people and, you know, all of the science shows us that we have to have engaged people back so that we can have productive people and safe people and, and if the CEOs of the world are looking at this from a selfish perspective, to say, this is how I can make my company make more money, okay? Because we as a society win, right? And all those people when

Maria Ross 31:17

you get, they get to work in a psychologically safe, inclusive, welcoming environment where they can do their best work, they can innovate, they can be creative, they can solve problems, they can have successes, and yeah, yeah, we all win, we all win. And it doesn’t have to be the moral imperative. No, and it also the other thing, too, is none of this says that we have to punish straight white people. In order to make this happen. I feel like that’s always the fear of they’re going to be impacted negatively, somehow by this. And it’s the rising tide lifts all ships, right, it’s going to create a better workplace for you, for you to shine and you to bring your best work. And this, you know, imaginary scenario that people always have about, like, it’s going to come down to me, and a gay person for the job, or me and a black person for the job, and they’re gonna win out just because it’s never that black and white. It’s never that it’s, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s not that binary. Exactly. When

Michael Bach 32:20

you look at job interviews, promotions, it’s always a competition. Yeah, someone wins, someone loses. It should always be about the skill. But we have to accept that bias exists, that people make decisions, not based just on who is the best candidate who has exactly the skills that you’re looking for. And there is usually something that pushes someone over the top. So if an organization does, let’s say, you’re hiring a VP of sales, and if if that organization has decided that they want to diversify their customer base, and maybe attract more customers from the Latin X Hispanic communities, then wouldn’t it make sense to hire a VP of sales? Who understands the Latin X Hispanic community? So yes, the VP of Sales should be a person from that background. I had a conversation once with a company, one of my clients got big, big insurance company, and their head of operations in Asia, was a white person who had never lived in Asia, and they wanted to focus on that market. And my if somebody they parachuted in, they didn’t speak the language, they didn’t understand the market. Yeah, you got the wrong person for the job. No disrespect to that person. But you have to, you know, you have to understand the market. This was a bad business decision. And, yes, it was a white man, who was the wrong person for the job. But it could have just as easily been a black woman who was the wrong person for the job, you cannot give someone a job because of the color of their skin or their gender, that is absolutely the wrong decision. That is a bad business decision. You have to choose the right person, but you have to accept that there are some realities that we have to work within. And that if if my goal is to attract more people of color into the job, I’m an ultra I’m gonna focus on people of color.

Maria Ross 34:34

So what do you say to clients you work with? Or audiences that say we want to do that, but those are not the people applying to our jobs? What do you say to that? Because I hear that a lot. It’s like, I don’t know where to find those qualified people. What’s your answer to that?

Michael Bach 34:50

Well, first of all, they’re not hiding. It’s, they’re not no down on an island somewhere being like, oh, no, they can’t see us every year. They want the opportunity. The question Should I ask is why aren’t they applying? So one of a couple things is, is happening. One, they don’t see your organization as a potential employer, keeping in mind that we’re all competing with one another as employers, and there’s the shiny objects of companies like Google and meta and not Twitter anymore. But you know, big organizations that are competing, you’re competing against, and everyone wants to work for those big brands, because they think it’s actually going to be a better job. It’s not. So people are not seeing you as an employer, or people are not seeing themselves within your organization. So they’re opting out of applying to jobs in your organization, because they don’t think that they can be successful. Whether that’s because you don’t have anything on your website about your work and diversity and inclusion, or all of the pictures look like me, a very, very, very handsome, very white man. Emphasis on on handsome, you know, they’re opting out, you have to actively go out and change the perspective, you have to make sure that your website is reflective of the people that you want to hire, not the people who work for you, you have to make sure that you have a focus on diversity and inclusion, that you’re making your environment inclusive. Can I interrupt

Maria Ross 36:22

you right there, because I think that’s another big missing piece is just bringing underrepresented and diverse populations into your organization does not mean the work is done. Because if they get there and they feel highly uncomfortable, they’re going to leave. So what are you doing within the within the structure of the organization and the values of the organization where they continue to feel welcome?

Michael Bach 36:46

There’s a big difference between having diversity and being inclusive. And I use the analogy of a, a garden, when you plant a seed, and the seed doesn’t grow? Is it the seeds fault? Or is it the soils fault? It’s the soil. The seed is the seed, it’s nothing does it grows, it doesn’t grow. But it it it is based off more often than not on the impact of the soil. In this analogy, the seed is the diversity and the inclusion or the the soil is the inclusion. And if the work environment is inclusive, then people won’t stay. I was wearing one client was very proud of this talent attraction program, they had to bring in people of color, because it was a very wide organization. And we looked at their voluntary turnover rate. And they had twice as many people of color going out the back door as they did coming in the front door. So we stopped the program, we focused on the inclusion and their volunteer Terry turnover rate went down. So they could start again, focusing on not just focusing on exclusively hiring people of color, but making sure that they’re hiring a diversity that is reflective of the community that they serve, and the talent population. You know, it is a lot of work. But doing nothing gets nothing like getting a gym membership and not going I promise you nothing’s going to change. I speak from experience. Wish we have to put in the effort. You know, the the ship has left the station. You can try you can ban books, go for it. It’s not going to change anything. You can try to oppress people. As a society, we have a long history of that, look where it’s gotten. I love it.

Maria Ross 38:32

So we’re running short on time. And I know really quickly, what I did want you to share was a couple of highlights because you talk about this in your book, alphabet soup, The Essential Guide to LGBTQ two plus inclusion at work. But let’s give people a little amused Bush, can you help break down some of the definitions for us? When we’re talking about transgender when we’re talking about gay when we’re talking about queer when we’re talking about non binary? Just can you give us a brief rolling glossary here and then I’m going to invite people to check out the book for more to dig deeper into this.

Michael Bach 39:06

Sure. So the first thing that people need to understand is that we use initialisms like LGBTQ two plus or any of them and they’re all fine. Everyone needs to relax them which initialism is the right one. But when we say LGBTQ two plus, we’re talking about two or three distinct things and I’ll correct I’ll explain that. We’re talking about sexuality or sexual orientation, that’s the L, the G and the B. Those are exclusively about sexual orientation. We are talking about gender, which is the T for transgender or trans identified or just trans. That is an umbrella term that covers a lot of different identities. Transgender is a very specific thing, whereas trans or trans identified is an umbrella term that covers all four forms of gender. Diversity. And then we’ve got a Q and A two. Now some people are probably thinking what’s the to stand for it stands for to spirit, which is a term used by some North American indigenous people, First Nations people who are also part of the LG BTQ. community. So the two in the queue can be either a sexual orientation, or gender identity. Now, I mentioned that there’s a third and that sometimes you’ll hear the AI, which stands for intersex, which is a person born with some combination of both male and female reproductive equipment. That’s a terrible word, but you know what I’m saying. And the AI is a sex assignment, not a gender. So we can be talking about sexual orientation, gender, and sex assigned at birth, you can be a combination of those letters. So you can be gay and trans. You can be non binary and a lesbian. You can be intersex and straight. It’s a combination of things. We are not talking about a single community, we are talking about a community of communities. And that’s why I in the book, I refer to it as the LGBTQ plus communities, because it’s a whole bunch of different identities that are stuck together under one Initialism. And it is I honestly do feel like we did a bit of a dirty to people who are not part of the community because we stuck all the letters together and said he figure it out. And we didn’t do our job and explain it to the broader population. And I think we do. You know, I think part of my work now is trying to correct some of that. I

Maria Ross 41:42

love that. I love that. Well, we’re gonna have links to all your books and to all your work to to but I do want to take a left turn and talk about your new book that’s coming out June 19. It’s kind of related but not really about tell us about that book. It

Michael Bach 42:02

is a it’s kind of related is the best way to put it. It is called all about Evie into the oddity. And if you are fans of the show, Ru Paul’s drag race. This is the biography of Evie. Oddly, winner of season 11 of RuPaul drag race. And I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working on this book with Evie. And I’m very excited about it. It’s it’s a total change for me writing wise, because it’s the biography, right? It’s not a business book. And it was a big shift in my writing style and the war and how to pull it together. But it was such a treat. And I am so proud of this book, because I really do think my goal was to create kind of a love letter to the fans, and give them the opportunity to get to know evey in a much deeper way. And I feel like we achieved that.

Maria Ross 42:54

Let’s see, this is how it’s connected. Because when we humanize when we tell stories, and we don’t just refer to these groups as these blanket groups that are inhuman to us, and create these legislations and these policies that impact real people’s lives, books like that. I’m a huge proponent of building your empathy through documentaries, films, music, art, biographies, autobiographies, if you don’t understand this group, read a book like this. Yeah, read their story, get to know them get to that point of empathy, where you might not still quote unquote, agree with that lifestyle. And you know, frankly, those people don’t care. But you can at least get insight for yourself and educate yourself on what this is all about, and how these folks are just like us, and they live like us. And we’re all human beings. And we all just have different stories. So it actually is very related to your work because you shining a light on this one person, yes, a celebrity, but still shining a light into the life and the story of this one person that others might not have that same experience in life. That’s how we build that empathy muscle.

Michael Bach 44:05

I absolutely agree. And it it it definitely is connected it what is about that empathy piece. And you know, we’ve you and I’ve talked about this that it’s so critical to the work in idea. And I really wanted people to understand because Evie was very controversial winner and I really wanted people to understand Evie better as a human being beyond what was shown on television. And it is, I think, a beautiful book so you can pick it up and learn a little more about EB oddly. Yay.

Maria Ross 44:42

And we’ll have a link to that as well in the show notes. But as we wrap up, Michael, you know, again, we’ll have all your links but for folks on the go or who might be on their peloton right now as they’re listening to us. Where’s the best place they can find out more about you?

Michael Bach 44:55

You can go to my website at Michael bach.com Or on the social medias. I am the Michael Bach, the

Maria Ross 45:01

Michael Bach. I love it. Oh

Michael Bach 45:03

my God, the One and Only

Maria Ross 45:04

thanks for your insights. It’s always so wonderful to talk to you. I’m so glad we connected and we were able to do this. Thank you so much for including me. And thank you so much for listening to another episode of the empathy edge. If you like what you heard you know what to do. leave a rating and a review and share this episode with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, remember that cashflow? Creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

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

Jessica Swank: How Box Navigates the New World of Work

Post-pandemic leadership can be challenging. With the current market and increased expectations workers, leaders, and mid-level managers are squeezed, balancing the needs of the business with the demands of their people. This is why I’m excited to talk to a Chief People Officer of a global organization that is doing the work, navigating the journey, and experimenting with ways to better support their people.

Today, I talk with Jessica Swank about how her company’s leaders are navigating the challenges and still taking care of themselves and their people. We discuss the importance of clarity and support when setting high expectations, and how transparency, communication, and listening are vital with hybrid and remote work experimentation. We discuss specific ways Box integrates values into their decisions and develops and enables their managers to be more successful. Whatever your culture, Jessica offers her best advice on where you can start supporting your leaders.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

In your organization, you cannot be clear enough. Hold high expectations, but also give a clear understanding that you’ll be supporting your team and that you’re available for that support.
Actions speak louder than words and other people notice. You continue to show your empathetic culture every time you talk about caring for each other and empathy in service and follow it up with actions.
Setting boundaries is both self-care and empathetic. It gives you space to recharge and be more present in the difficult conversations that need to be had in business.
Work-life balance is not real. You need to understand priorities and boundaries to ensure you’re healthy with your life in the season you’re in.
It is a journey to understanding and managing the needs of your team. Be willing to take that journey and gather information from your employees on what is working and what is not.

“It’s not just up to the business to say, ‘Here’s what I need from you.’ It is incredibly valuable for every person to have that open dialogue with their managers, ask them when they need support, clarification, feedback, not just sitting back and waiting to be told, but also engaging in that dialogue.”

— Jessica Swank

“It’s all about juggling, and you’re going to drop some balls, just make sure that the balls are going to bounce versus shatter.” — Jessica Swank

About Jessica Swank, Chief People Officer, Box

Jessica has a proven track record of helping companies define and amplify their people and culture strategy (including diversity, talent development, employee experience, workforce planning, people analytics, and internal communications). She has been with Box since December 2018, and currently leads all People (HR), Belonging, Community (including Box.org), Places (workplace services and real estate), and Internal Communications. Prior to Box she led the People team at Blue Bottle Coffee, a high-growth global coffee company. Previously, Jessica led HR for Aruba, a fast-growing subsidiary of HPE, and spent ten years at HP/HPE in a variety of global HR roles. Her early career included executive search and recruiting for CEO’s, CFO’s and other key leadership positions.

Connect with Jessica Swank:

Box: box.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jessica-venner-swank

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: red-slice.com

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Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast & book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Jessica Swank 03:24

that’s a great question. So I actually grew up philosophizing a lot with my mom around, like, what makes people and what makes leaders and really just curiosity around that human behavior. And I actually didn’t want to go into HR because I thought at the time, way back when I joined, it was a lot about just like Personnel right back in the day. But I just I love solving problems. And I love business. And I love people. And I love problem solving. And so it was never an intentional, like something I set out to do. It was always about curious and learning and raising my hand when opportunities came knocking, and then box. So I have had incredible opportunities. Again, I’ve just been so fortunate. And yet, to me culture, community leaders absolutely are what matters. And so that’s what brought me to box in that what keeps me up box pressure.

Maria Ross 04:13

I love it. I love it. And so tell us, you know, again, from your vantage point, as an H as an HR leader of a very large organization, how are your leaders doing post pandemic, we hear all the reports, we see all the studies about how leaders are kind of being squeezed from both ends. I know you and I have talked about that in the past. How are they doing in terms of navigating the new workplace and and all the the newfound demands of the business with the demands of their people? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 04:41

I think this is an incredibly challenging time for leaders, for managers, for employees, just because the rate of information right it’s just it’s just Mach speed to just try and keep up with technology, the pressures of the business to perform to deliver you know, Wall Street Being a global public company, something that we grapple with, you know, this sense of caring, compassion listening to our boys, right? I think we just are asked to do a lot. And we’re all human. I mean, I find my that, you know, you and I’ve talked about this a little bit Maria. But it’s hard. Some days are hard. And some days, we don’t want to show up as leaders or as managers. And yet, we do our best to just show up regardless, though, want to take

Maria Ross 05:24

completely. And that’s the thing is I always talk about empathy going both ways. And we have to remember that it’s not just from leaders to employees, it’s up and down the chain. It’s having empathy for the people that are in charge, who are have to have to make these tough decisions who have so much on their plate. And you know, and it’s funny, because I’m asking you that question as if you’re removed from it, but you are a leader who is raised in the middle to write as, and I think we forget that about HR sometimes is we forget that they’re dealing with the same issues and crises that the rest of the business is dealing with. But we always look to HR to sort of solve our problems for us.

Jessica Swank 06:00

Yes, yes, I remember a silly story. But I remember the fall, my husband had COVID, my daughter had been in, here’s a drop off, like it was just horrible experience. Bono, my dog had diarrhea all over an adult present. And I just remember being like, Okay, you put it on, right? You just you show up. And that sense of like, everybody has good days, everybody has bad days. But we’re at the end of the day, we’re all human. And I think again, just going back to that sense of, how do we connect? How do we just make sure that we’re starting first with where people first and yet then we all are in this together to you know, kind of come together within our business or organization.

Maria Ross 06:37

I love that. And so part of the reason why I’m so excited to have you on again, being in the trenches is, what are some ways that box is putting that into action. So as you’ve as you’ve sort of tried to get your own feet as an executive team on Okay, how are we feeling? But also okay, what do we need to do in the business to support our leaders? What are some initiatives that you’re doing to support leaders right now and help them better balance this, this juggling act they have?

Jessica Swank 07:05

Yeah, so we talk a lot about having really high expectations, but a high level of support at this end. So it’s both of those things, saying be very clear about this is what we expect, here’s our priorities, and yet saying, but we want to enable you, we want to help set you up for success. So from a leader standpoint, we have a lot of kind of group activities. So we have what we call our executive leadership team, our FLT all of our directors, and above, where we have a monthly call, with our CEO with our, you know, kind of all of our leaders just to make sure we’re all aligned business strategy, we have what we call a monthly manager power hour where it is, is, you know, essentially enabling managers on kind of topics. We have listening circles, or depending on the various topics, we have a weekly basis, what we call Friday lunch, and that is also our opportunity to come together as a business and know our Theo shares, Aaron Lavie, we also use the opportunity to bring in customers again, hearing that customer perspective, yeah, we give them boy and Doctor update. So we try and really focused on very high level transparency, a lot of communication, and again, a lot of alignment on what are the business goals, and then translating that down into Ingles, and then individual goals.

Maria Ross 08:28

Okay, I love this so much. Because, as you know, with my new book, coming out the empathy dilemma, it’s talking about five pillars that are essential to be both empathetic, but also high performing and accountable at the same time. And you’re basically hitting all of them. So this, but this idea of, like, what some might deem as excessive communication, and collaboration, it’s never too much like, this is why clarity and decisiveness are two of the five pillars in the book, because we can’t, we can’t be clear enough, like, and what I love about what you said was this idea of holding both high expectations, but also the expectation that you will be supported. Because I think that’s where especially clarity is so important is that we’re going to be crystal clear with you, whatever level you are at the expectations we have of you. And then we actually inkind you don’t get off the hook, you actually have to be accountable for being clear with us about what support you need. And we are going to make a commitment to you that if it’s if whatever is possible, we will do to support you, instead of just let me set the expectations and throw you in the water and hope you swim, which is I think, easier, quote unquote, for a lot of leaders to do, but it’s not sustainable, and it actually doesn’t lead to high performance.

Jessica Swank 09:49

Yeah. And a couple of things to build on what you said. And I completely agree, though we talk a lot as part of our performance cycle that we major both what are we getting those high expectations measured by quarterly OKRs. But we also talked about the how. So we have four leader mindsets we call business team, self, and community all anchored on our values. And it was, again, that expectation, as we say, we we have incredibly high standards. But just as important is what you do. It’s how you do it and exemplifying our values our culture, again, contributing to not only be the business, but to your team, and your community. And so I do think that sense of asked to be bold. And you also said something that I think is incredibly important. It’s not just up to then the business to stay, here’s what I need from you. It is incredibly important and valuable for every person, to have that open dialogue with their managers, ask them when they need support, ask them for, you know, clarification, ask them for that feedback. 360s. Right, making sure that it’s not just sitting back and waiting to be told, but also engaging in that dialogue.

Maria Ross 11:01

I love that so much. And, you know, you brought up another point in terms of not just what the what but the how, because, you know, going back to like my brand strategy work that I’ve done. It’s making value, and mission and purpose, useful and actionable. So it’s not just the pretty poster on the wall that we never revisit, ever again. But how do we tie that to the actions and the goals that we have in front of us right now. And it’s not just going to be enough to meet that goal, because this is where you get toxic rockstars, right, they might achieve the goal or make their number and they’ve like, scorched the earth behind them, right. And they’ve made it a horrible work environment for everyone else around them. And if a company still reward someone like that, what they’re saying with their actions is that that value doesn’t mean anything. And that’s what you know, we all say actions speak louder than words. Other people notice, like, yeah, the company saying that caring about each other, or empathy or service is important. But then that person’s getting ahead. Every quarter, they get promoted, they get acknowledged, they get recognized, just for meeting the goal, not for how they met the goal. And I think that’s such a key part of empathetic cultures, which is so good to hear that you you tie that together every time you talk about it

Jessica Swank 12:18

every time and I think two threads with that. One is the cultures have to be embedded into every single thing that we do, right? Your point, it can’t just be a poster, we have them on the back of our badges, right? Yes, that is important. But it is the tip of the iceberg. So you know, we have awards that we align on. So we have our you know, cloud Awards, where we exemplify boxers who are exemplified in our values are a value we have, you know, a lot of, again, it’s integrated into every single thing that we do. And yet, in those difficult decisions, right? It’s easy to do when it’s you know, everything’s going well is when really, you have that really, you know, we used didn’t label athletes not even very recently, anymore. About four years ago, we had to make a really difficult decision with one of those rock stars. And compared to every other company, this is the first one is still actually a pretty darn good person. It just wasn’t yet to our level of expectations. And so again, it’s making those very difficult decisions. Otherwise, it erodes the trust and the credibility and I think it’s easier, better, probably not going to say something, you’re not going to actually be willing to stand behind it.

Maria Ross 13:27

Right? Well, and sometimes leaders conflate not saying anything as empathy, they conflate avoiding the conflict and hurting someone’s feelings as Oh, I’m doing the empathetic thing. But they’re actually not being empathetic to everyone that person has to work with.

Jessica Swank 13:43

And and I would also say, not even empathetic to that one person, right? Because right, is that helping somebody learn and grow and move past something that’s hindering their success? Again, doing it in a thoughtful, compassionate way. Totally. That I think is where some real magic comes from the trust of you know, an organization and people because they can say, hey, I’m growing, I’m learning. I might not get feedback. That’s always easy to hear. But does it actually make me more effective and a better person or a better, you know, kind of employee? Absolutely important, and

Maria Ross 14:16

those are crunchy conversations. But that’s where, you know, you and I were talking, we were talking before we started recording that it takes courage. And this is why I laugh when people say I don’t want to be an empathetic leader, because then people will think I’m weak. And I’m like, empathy actually requires strength, because you have to make these difficult decisions and be able to make them with compassion and be able to support someone and sit with someone, but you’re not necessarily changing the decision. Correct?

Jessica Swank 14:43

Yeah. It’s making those difficult decisions with with as much kindness which is a thoughtfulness, right, right consideration or everybody involved. One of the things that our family we say every morning is clear eyes, full heart, but does that sense of you know, you have to Go into it, you have to look at it clearly and with, you know, but also at the same time, right, having a full heart to approach it makes such a difference.

Maria Ross 15:09

Well, and I know, you know, I want to recognize that even though I say empathy is innate to all of us as humans, it looks different for some of us based on neuro diversity or past experiences, or, you know, it’s not always as accessible, that muscle is not always as toned for some of us. And so how does the company support leaders and really anyone at any level, to build that emotional intelligence to build that ability to self regulate? To see another person’s perspective? What are some of the things that you do as a company that might be some ideas for leaders listening? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 15:44

it’s really important, right? And it needs to, and I think we also have to have that empathy to, you know, that shows up differently. Exactly, yeah. And it’s not always going to be one size fits all. So a couple of things we do is one, we do a lot around our values in our learning. So we have a make mom proud session where we talk about it, which is one of our values, I’m wearing my T shirt here, make mom proud. But that sense of what does that value look like in action in real life. And so it goes through we use Apple real life box examples from the past, does not just theory. So that’s one example, to we really emphasize, again, kind of listening circles and hearing both ways and role playing, you know, and so that manager enablement, kind of, it’s not just, you know, reading a manual, but it is like, it’s this because it is a muscle, and it takes this and ongoing, you know, you can get rusty, and then you have to kind of you know, kind of reengage with it, we also do executive coaching for some of our individuals, we really believe somebody has a lot of potential, or maybe they have, you know, a blind spot that’s getting in their way. We also, you know, provide some of that, we also look a lot to some of our benefits, modern health is one. So we provide, you know, kind of coaching where somebody can go and talk to somebody professional, because again, I think sometimes looking at yourself, and then learning how to do it for the team and individual. So yeah, we try and look at it across all bases. I love

Maria Ross 17:17

that. And that’s bringing in some of my other pillars, which is self awareness and self care. And start it. You know, sometimes it’s counterintuitive to people that are seeking to be an empathetic leader, they want to put everyone else first. That’s their instinct. And that’s not exactly empathy. That’s a little bit of submission, a little bit of people pleasing. But if we start with ourselves, and kind of I always like to use the phrase, get our own houses in order, and understand what are our blind spots, what are our emotional triggers, the more we can have that courage in the moment to be able to be with someone on our team, and take in their point of view and their perspective, without fear or defensiveness. Because we know ourselves so well, we know how we show up in conversations like that. And so it’s kind of counterintuitive, but the first step to empathy for others is working on yourself.

Jessica Swank 18:07

100% Yes, I totally agree. And I think that understanding, I always say that self care is also knowing and drawing your own boundaries. Yes. He says to me, I think it’s so easy to think like I to your point, I’m just going to take care of everybody else all the time, but then we’re depleted. And so knowing where and when it does, again, doesn’t look the same for everybody, but what are those supercharging moments where we get to fill our own tank, so that we can show up the best way possible for others, you know, so, you know, recent example. So I am a very passionate person. And I also, you know, I work really hard on staying super objective. And the other, you know, night, I was in a pretty intense call over something that was really difficult conversation. And I said, we, this is so important, can we talk about this tomorrow, and it was so hard for me to call the conversation. But then the next day, we picked it back up, and we had a really productive, healthy conversation. But I knew in that moment, I was like, okay, all my flags of like, I’m not gonna show up the way that I want to, or we’re not getting the best outcome out of this one,

Maria Ross 19:13

right. And that requires knowing, recognizing that those triggers are starting to happen for you. And there’s so many people that sort of go through life, like a bulldozer, just not not seeing what’s happening to other people, but also not being able to recognize what’s happening for themselves. And, you know, that’s also part of the clarity that we that I talked about is clarity and setting those boundaries. So you need to be self aware enough to know what those boundaries should be. Take care of yourself to respect those boundaries, but also clearly be able to communicate that as well. Yeah. So I love that that’s so great. And you’re reminding me of, you know, again, kind of back to that self care issue. One of the things I write about in the book is that, you know, self care is not Manny’s and Petty’s it’s not massages it can be but that’s more self maintenance, right? Self care that the way we’re really talking about Audit is how to understand what recharges you or where you need rest or what energizes you. And so it can be very active. It can be, you know, for some people self care is running a marathon, or, you know, when when I was working in corporate, I love doing independent theater. And I was in a very supportive workplace where it wasn’t like I had to miss work for it. But they knew like I had to leave at certain times when I was going to rehearsals because I had to go to rehearsal. And then my team came and supported me at the performance, right? So it was really fun. And there was another woman in our group who is a trained opera singer. And she really needed to sing, she wanted to do this summer opera program, this summer music program, and got the support from management to do it, and then stayed many, many more years with that company, because they were able to support her in herself care. Yeah, which is, you know, sometimes it’s hobbies, or passions or whatever. That’s part of our self care. I think we overlooked that sometimes when we talk about self care for leaders, because they think, Oh, it’s too selfish.

Jessica Swank 21:07

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think do I really believe that if you’re writing personally, it actually helps you thrive professionally. And that symbiotic, right? And if you’re really thriving and finding those areas that are really new up and adding to, you know, that rejuvenation, then you can show up even more effective. Now, I’m also a big believer, and it’s, you know, I think people asking me about work life balance, I actually don’t think there’s any such thing. It doesn’t exist.

Maria Ross 21:36

It’s a myth.

Jessica Swank 21:37

I call it you know, kind of like work, work integration. Yeah. Because to me, like, you know, I, it’s really important for me to spend some time with my daughter. But that also means that sometimes then I get back on later, you know, in a day, and so it doesn’t always mean like, Hey, here’s my, you know, I don’t answer a call after five o’clock. And that’s my boundary, and I’m gonna stick to it. But it’s knowing where and when and how to set those boundaries and really prioritize within your kind of the work life and the personal life. I

Maria Ross 22:05

always joke that if work life balance was real, we would be giving like 11.1% to everything in our lives, right? It would all be equal. But sometimes, different levers have to go higher and lower. Like, if you’ve got a family emergency, your family has to come first, right? If you’ve got a deadline with a client, you might have to work late. And I think that there’s something to be said, in workplaces to help new people in the workplace understand that because I think that many people have, I don’t want to say like, morphed the definition of work life integration, but they think it means one thing, like you said, like just being hard and fast with that boundary and never changing and never allowing for anything. But life is not like that. No one’s life is like that. And no one’s work is like that. So being able to understand that like, Okay, we’re gonna go hard. And I might have to work a weekend to solve this crisis at work. But then I’m going to make up for it in two weeks, I might take an extra afternoon off, like if that’s what we mean by work life balance and having boundaries, correct.

Jessica Swank 23:10

Seasons, we each have these seasons. Exactly.

Maria Ross 23:14

And I think that that’s important, too. I love that the new generations in the workplace are changing the conversation and changing the paradigm. I also think they need to be mentored a little bit about some of the hard and fast rules they have around things. And so you know, where they can where they can take that and say, like, No, my boundaries, I never work after 5pm ever, right? Life at work is not like that. It’s not that discrete. And so it’s like, okay, let’s figure out a way to make this work for everybody, and be able to integrate your work in life. So I think there’s something there, we need some sort of a little like, life coaching module for everyone in the workplace on what work life integration means.

Jessica Swank 24:00

having empathy for blue eyes, right? You just say like, this is what I need. And it’s all about just what I need. Right? What do I need was my team need? What is the business need? What is my customer need? Right? Again, sometimes dialing up and down depending on that, but and go both ways. Completely

Maria Ross 24:18

completely, because like, I love what I love the term you used about there are seasons. Right? So um, so let’s talk a little bit. I just want to switch gears, as we’re kind of wrapping up and talk about what are the challenges or the opportunities that you have all found at box around, experimenting with hybrid remote work in this new world of work that we’re in? Because what I love hearing is the journey of companies have like, you know, we haven’t gotten it all figured out. But these are the different things we’re trying and this is what we have found to be a good mix for us. Where are you guys are in that journey? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 24:55

well, a couple of words that you said that I think are spot on. If it isn’t a journey. It is The biggest experiment that I think we’re all going through my gosh, on the journey, and we’re doing some things well, and then we’re like, oh, that didn’t work so well is trying to different ways. So where we are on the journey is, we believe that we need and have it all. We do have workplaces that are absolutely instrumental to our culture, to our sense of community. And we want people to be able to come in and what we’ve found and the research that, you know, kind of what we’ve experienced, but also have heard is, you know, it’s not necessarily your direct gain connections that strengthen when you come together, it’s a lot of the loose connections, it’s the social capital of cross functional teams learning from you know, mentoring, observing, that is really important. And so again, I think that serendipitous piece of coming together, and yet, we also really want we are going to always have remote folks, it whether it’s because their role, so we have, you know, sales folks who are out in the field, their job is remote, or people who have chosen to be remote and are in roles that can be effective remote. And so what we’re trying to do is create these norms. And you know, what we’re trying to call it is like, this is just how we work. This is how we are as an organization, and then again, the looping not into all things, you know, how do we from a diversity standpoint, make sure that we’re thinking about that, you know, the experience of the remote Doctor versus the person who’s coming into office? How do we think about it as we scale and as we grow? So yes, we’re doing a lot of experimenting. But again, I love you know, a lot of times we it’s, I would say we’ve we’ve come a long way, yeah, being able to bring people together.

Maria Ross 26:39

Yeah, well, and I love from, you know, when I met you many, many months ago, what I loved was that box was willing to do that experimentation, and say, Okay, we’re doing something, and maybe this isn’t working, let’s try something else. That adaptability. And that resilience is what’s required. And I know, for a lot of companies that have leaders that just kind of want to go back to the way things were right, because it was easier, and they didn’t have to think about it. And I have empathy for that, right? It’s hard to constantly be adapting, it’s exhausting. But that willingness to do it, I think, is what’s going to be the marker of successful companies going forward, because we’re not going back, like people have seen a new way that they can innovate and create and get work done. And we’ve just got to find a happy medium, between, you know, like, with all the benefits that we get when we’re together. And, you know, all the benefits that some people get when they’re able to work out of their home and deal with whatever they’re dealing with at home or their own, you know, potentially different needs, that they have physical needs, mental needs, whatever it is. And so the willingness, I was just struck by the willingness of box to take that journey and say, we’re going to try it, we’re going to try different things. And you do so many wonderful things within your workspaces to make it a very collaborative and inviting and inclusive environment. And I know that that’s, that’s from listening to your employees, and not just trying to figure it out in a closed door session without any input from anyone. So I just wanted to like say, shout out to box for doing it that way. What do you think was, uh, you know, kind of as we as we do wrap up here, because I could talk to you for three hours. What do you think was part of that way of gathering that information from employees and finding out what was working for them? What wasn’t? Was that already part of your culture? Or is that something that, like, Can you give any advice to someone listening of like, how do you even start compiling, getting accessing that information so that you can be listening and all voices are heard in those conversations? Yeah,

Jessica Swank 28:45

so it’s a great question. One is I do think it was part of our DNA in many ways, but that we’ve built on and figure it out, right? What’s working again, and what’s not working. I’m a big believer in experimentation. So a couple of things. We did a lot of listening circles and listening circles from impacted, you know, all different spectrums. But we also have an annual blog called Dr. Experience survey. And so we included a question on that, you know, and what we found, actually, last year was, the flexibility was top of the list of what boxers appreciated about our approach so far. And so that’s something even as we continue to refine that sense of flexibility of being able to say, you know, whether it’s a which day you work from home and or which hours you work, and, you know, kind of going back to that integrating of lives, and little things, you know, some of it is we’ve gotten a lot of asks, and some of them were saying, Thank you. That’s a great suggestion. However, we’re not able to do that. But here’s the reasons why. And again, I think that going back to clarity of kindness, and that sense of like, we hear you, however, a b and c, right, and just being able to have that very open and transparent conversation, not just kind of pretending like you know, bla bla bla, I don’t want to hear it. Yeah,

Maria Ross 30:00

exactly putting your hands over your ears. Well, and I love that, because that’s also very good to celebrate, and to acknowledge people being feeling safe enough to give the feedback. So you don’t end up discouraging future feedback. Because what could easily happen is you go, No, that’s a terrible idea. We’re not doing it right, which how some companies are actually reacting to their employees, you have now you have now stifled any future contribution or idea that that person is willing to make. And so I love the approach you said, which is super empathetic, it’s like, that’s a great idea. Thank you so much for bringing to us, we’ve looked at it. But here’s why that’s not going to be feasible right now. Or you may find that someone gives an idea. And initially, that’s not workable, but there might be pieces of it that you can implement from into going forward. So I think just constantly encouraging people and thanking people for their feedback, because what I often hear from leaders is, yeah, but if I ask everyone for their feedback, that they’re going to assume that I’m just going to do what everybody wants. And like, you know, you don’t have to set that expectation, you can set the episode station that you’re going to consider all the input, and make sure that you encourage and thank for the input in a genuine way. Not not because you know, you’re never going to do it. But and then really get humble and say, Is there something in this that could be useful? Rather than I already know that my mind’s made up, but you guys have two weeks to tell me what you what you think about it, because that’s what happens is, again, in the expediency trying to like, let me just get this over with and tick a box that I asked everybody what they thought, it’s doing it in a very genuine way where that is factored into your decision making. But and I write about this in the new book, you have to be able to synthesize an act and decide quickly.

Jessica Swank 31:43

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, sometimes that’s the hardest part, right? It takes a lot more time, a lot more energy. But I’m a big believer that the outcome and the results pay off in spades if you do that. And that’s also right balancing what again, what a an individual employee might want, but also the realities of the business, right, we get asked a lot or No, I would love to give everybody everything that they would have on the wish list. We just the business realities of where we have to allocate resources. And so we’ve been very clear and trying to say like, Okay, this is not going to be the top of the priority. Here’s why. But yeah, if we can, you know, hit a revenue hit our business priorities, here are things that then are going to be next on the list, like, why does this travel? Right? Our employees have been begging, like, we want to see each other, not just the people that are, you know, in the same city, but we want to be able to see each other around the world. And so we’ve been building in, you know, kind of more travel budget, based on the realities of kind of where we are. Right, right. I think

Maria Ross 32:44

building a culture of why and knowing that for every decision being able to explain why tracks back to clarity. Yeah, yeah, sure. And that trust, and trust for sure. 100%. Last question, for real. Notice sort of the one piece of advice you would advise. So maybe there’s a really frazzled CHRO or head of HR listening to this right now. And they say, Oh, my gosh, all this stuff sounds great. But we don’t have any of that foundation in place. Where’s one place they could start? Or one piece of advice you would have for them on how to best support their leaders right now?

Jessica Swank 33:20

It’s a great question, I would say, find a couple of opportunities, both that would be low hanging fruit, something that would be relatively easy to implement. But then also find the one that is probably the more difficult, but that it’s going to be harder, but there’s gonna have the biggest impact, and maybe choosing one of each of those to then go and tackle. I’m a big believer in prioritization, I always say, you know, it’s all about juggling, and you’re gonna drop the balls, just make sure that the balls that they’re going to bounce prior to the shatter. So like, find some of those that if you can, like, you know, pick up or if you drop, okay, but then some of those where you say, yes, if I can go and execute and deliver on this with my business with our boys, it actually is going to make a big difference, right?

Maria Ross 34:07

And then you can always check on something else after that. We don’t have to do all the things all at once, right?

Jessica Swank 34:11

Absolutely. fail if you try.

Maria Ross 34:15

Once, in my humble opinion, I wrote down what you just said about like, we’re all going to be juggling the balls and the goal is to have the bounce rather than shatter. That is that’s a keeper thing. balls

Jessica Swank 34:24

that are gonna bounce back up. We’re gonna create the bigger mess.

Maria Ross 34:30

I love it. I love it. Well, thank you, Jessica, so much for your time and all your insights. Today, we’re gonna have all your links in the show notes. But where’s one place that folks can get in touch with you and learn more about what you’re doing?

Jessica Swank 34:41

Yeah, so I’m actually not super into social media for my own personal well being. Um, however, LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Great.

Maria Ross 34:50

And for those listening, just look under Jessica Venner swing. And remember to be a good LinkedIn user and write her note about what You are connecting and where you heard her so she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something.

Jessica Swank 35:04

I would love to hear from you. Yes, thank

Maria Ross 35:06

you so much and continued great success at box and all the work you’re doing thank you for sort of being a leader in the in the empathetic culture space right now. Well,

Jessica Swank 35:16

and thank you for what you’re doing and helping to write about it and just brand this incredibly important topic. And again, not having to be just, you know, soft and fluffy, but really the impact that it can have on our business on our customers, our employees, and I think about us, each of us personally, so for sure, I’m excited for your new

Maria Ross 35:34

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

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

Gautam Shah: Exercising with a Snow Leopard: Video Games to Engage Wildlife Conservation

Visiting snow leopards in their natural habitat or hanging with penguins in Antarctica is a life-changing way to engage with nature but it’s not within the grasp of most people. So how can we leverage technology to offer that exposure and foster empathy for wildlife conservation? My guest today, Gautam Shah, figured out a way to combine his passion with entrepreneurship to connect people with wildlife in fun, unique ways.

Today we talk about why public engagement with wildlife is so important, and how using games can be more effective than current conservation tactics. Gautam shares some very cool examples of work they’ve done with partners such as Adidas and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We talk about empathy vs. caring, how “behavior change” is not the primary goal of this work, and why many current conservation messages can derail efforts to engage everyday people by not having empathy for them. Toward the end, he candidly discusses the challenges entrepreneurs face to balance purpose with profit and the hard choices that one has to make to keep the organization alive and sustainable for the long haul.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

If everyone had the opportunity to sit with an endangered animal, how many people would it change in favor of the planet? Though that’s not possible, there are ways people can engage individually in the change.
Compassion is empathy in action. Empathetic people don’t suffer from a lack of caring, but often from not knowing how to take action.
Internet of Elephants is using modern, creative ways to engage people in the story of conservation and making the stories told by the data gathered on the animals personal. They are making the stories of these animals personal to the individual.

“It’s a holistic process of thinking about the person and understanding their life before you can have any opportunity to think that you can introduce empathy for animals that might be very, very far away.”

— Gautam Shah

Episode References:

FathomVerse: https://www.fathomverse.game/

About Gautam Shah, Founder, Internet of Elephants, National Geographic and TED fellow

Gautam is the founder of Internet of Elephants, a social enterprise that develops groundbreaking digital tools to engage people with wildlife. He believes that engaging the public with nature and its conservation is the most important thing we can do for the long-term health of the planet and that we need to find modern mediums to tell stories and foster that engagement. Video games are the defining media of our time, so Internet of Elephants tells nature and wildlife stories through thoughtful combinations of mobile games, augmented reality, and data visualizations that use GPS and other data gathered about animals and the planet. In doing so, they hope to catalyze whole new approaches to engaging the public with wildlife. Gautam is both a National Geographic and TED Fellow.

Connect with Gautam Shah:

Internet of Elephants: http://internetofelephants.com

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

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ioelephants

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com

Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com

Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

X: @redslice

Facebook: Red Slice

Threads: @redslicemaria

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Gautam Shah 03:14

Thanks very much. It’s very nice to be here.

Maria Ross 03:16

And you know, I’d love to tell folks our story of how we know each other. We know each other from college at Indiana University. And it’s been decades since we’ve reconnected but you’ve gone on to do quite a few impressive things. So for just a quick couple minutes. Tell us your story and how you got to this work.

Gautam Shah 03:33

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I started my right out of college right out of Indiana University. The only job offer I got was from a big IT consulting company called Accenture. Well, at that time, it was called Anderson Consulting. Yep. So I took that I took that job. And for the better part of for the better part of 20 years, I was working as an IT consultant for for Accenture. What I’ve always loved though was was animal and wildlife. And that’s, you know, that’s something that I think we all have as kids, but for me, it was just maybe it was a little stronger. It was just something that I was able to keep in touch with a little bit more. And so I would spend all my holiday time and all my salary on wildlife vacation, and I would travel the world and I would be without them. And I’ve been you know, I’ve been with everything I’ve been with, you know, you name the animal I’d probably you know I probably had some experience with with that. And I remember that I remember the moment very, very specifically I was it was in Antarctica, and I was sitting alone at the edge and it was a penguin. And I could see the entire you know, the entire ocean. And this penguin I’m sitting on like this is so spectacular. And it’s so gluttonous. Like the only person that’s benefiting from this particular experiences is me. And it was really a moment that was like this is I can’t I can’t go I mean, it’s so amazing, but it can’t take along this way at some point in my life. I’m going to have to figure out maybe it’s in wildlife or maybe it’s, you know in something else, but I’m going to have to figure out how I can put myself to better use then, and then what I’m doing now, fast forward a few years I got sent to Kenya, as again, as part as as part of Accenture. And I started getting a lot more exposure to lots of other, you could call them nonprofit sectors in agriculture, education, health, you could not get US economic empowerment. And I had a role to play in all of those, even though I knew nothing about nothing about them. And that gave me the confidence that there’s a role for me to play in wildlife and conservation and applying this, you know, to something that I really care about. So the way I see it is I put my perfectly good job, and was like, Alright, let me get into wildlife conservation. And, you know, and started to try and figure it out from there. And also, given that I was already in Kenya, and from Chicago. It didn’t make sense to start, you know, to travel back to Chicago to start my wildlife conservation career. Exactly. Right. And so yeah, so I liked Kenya. And you know, that’s where a lot of you know, a lot of conservation work is going on a lot of the problems exist. Yeah. And so I stayed, and I’ve actually, you know, I’ve been in Kenya ever since. Wow. And

Maria Ross 06:08

so how did the idea for Internet of elephants come about specifically? Sure. Well,

Gautam Shah 06:15

if we kind of go back to that moment, that I was sitting with the penguin, and it was like this tacular, or the moment that I was sitting with grizzly bears over the Rocky Mountains, or you again, you name it, they’re really intense experiences. They’re very, they’re very emotional, at least for me, they’re very emotional. And so just getting back to like, What if everybody could have this experience? And of course, they can. Yeah, but what if everybody could have this experience? How would that change the state of the world, if everybody had that those moments, like, if you could pick up 8 billion people and let them spend an hour with Iran, your time, you know, in the middle of a Bornean, rainforest? With 10% of those people, then you know what, it just wouldn’t change them with the way they buy things with the way they vote with the way they donated with the way that they live? Would it change, you know, just reshape it in favor of the, you know, in favor of the planet? And that’s what kind of really got me thinking about, alright, well, again, that can’t happen. But what are the things that I that I could do that might be the next, you know, the next best thing, and that’s, you know, again, my brain, of course, being an IT consultant for that many years, just thinks about, you know, thinks about it, and a lot of what was what was happening at that time was there’s a lot of talk about the Internet of Things, and how everything is connected. And people are connected to other people around the world, people are connected to the refrigerators people are connected to their doorbells. And I just kept thinking, Yeah, but what if people were connected to Iran, batons? And what if people were connected to elephants? And what if people were connected to sniff? You know, whatever, whatever it happened to be again? How would that how would that change things? And that’s where it’s like, well, what if, instead of the Internet of Things, what if there was an Internet of elephants, you know, in a way, and every day, you would wake up and you’d check what’s going on with, you know, my story of the elephant in Kenya? And that’s really where I just started to think about like, Okay, well, that’s the, you know, the basis for the concept. I don’t know what the business is behind that. But that’s what we’re going to try, you know, that’s what we’re going to try and achieve, we’re gonna try and figure out what would it take for you to get up in the morning, first thing, leaned over, pick up your phone and find out what’s going on with an elephant, you know, halfway around the halfway around the. So I love

Maria Ross 08:30

that. And I know, we’re going to talk about a few examples of what the technology does for people and how how you’ve creatively found ways to create that connection. But, you know, the reason we’re here is obviously, because there’s a connection to empathy here. And we talk about empathy being made possible through storytelling, but also through proximity. And so what I’m hearing is that you are trying to find a solution to the proximity problem of being able to see and have the experience and be touched by these animals, for people that don’t have the opportunity to go to Safari or go to Antarctica and all these places. So it’s really interesting how you leverage your your already existing skill of technology, to that social problem. And for you, was it about you know, and the answer could be No, but was it about trying to create that connection and create that, that caring that empathy, so that people would make different choices?

Gautam Shah 09:30

I think 100 100% I think empathy is the, you know, happens to be the right word. Very convenient. But yeah, so it is, it is about empathy. I, I don’t think it’s about caring. And I think this is a really, this is a really important point. And it’s something that in fact, I think, if you want people to empathize, you have to come come at it from the point that they already do care because otherwise it’s condescending, right like that. Now, I’m not trying to create empathy. I’m, I’m saying, like, in this position, like I really care and I just gotta get you to care and if only you care Everything would be, you know, it would be better and and pay. That’s, you know, that’s very pompous and be it’s, it’s not true people do care. Yeah.

Maria Ross 10:09

A lot. Yeah, it doesn’t mean they connect and see a point of view, it just means they care. It’s like how we talked about Yeah.

Gautam Shah 10:14

But we’re gonna we’re gonna do it. I mean, there’s nobody that would rather Uranga tons die then longer tons, you know, then Rhonda, tons live right? Next, it’s not about that. So there is some aspect of proximity, there is some aspect of what can i What can I do about it? There is some aspect of how do you enjoy address the, you know, the, the anxiety that people that people have, or the ambivalence that you know, that people that people have about this. And so a lot of it is that you can’t create the empathy unless you can understand unless I have empathy for you. So what the only way to create the empathy between you and the animal is if I can have empathy in the first place for your life, you know, for your life and the things that these things, you know, the way that you may experience negative news about nature and negative news about climate and like, I live here in St. Louis, like what, you know, what am I going to do about it, but you know, in a longer time in, you know, in Borneo, and yeah, it’s a very holistic process of thinking about the person and understanding their lives before you can have any opportunity to think that you know, that you can introduce empathy for, for animals that might be very, very far away, but I’m never trying to get them to care. I always try and come from a position that you do care. I just wanted to help you express that. Yes,

Maria Ross 11:32

exactly. And, you know, I tend to use other words to help people make this real for people. But we talk a lot about how empathy is not the same thing as being nice. It’s not the same thing as caring. It’s a different lever. And you can have empathy. But if you don’t take action on that empathy, which is compassion, compassion is empathy, inaction. That’s where it can be paralyzing. And it can, it can deter people from even feeling the empathy in the first place, because oh, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’m just not going to be empathetic to the situation that’s going on. And so it sounds like you’re also trying to activate people, in whatever way it’s possible for them to take action. Is that correct? Yeah,

Gautam Shah 12:13

I think that that’s, that’s true. And we really, I guess, I want everything to come from you. Right? Like, I just want to enable it, enable it, I don’t want to tell you what you should do. I don’t want to try and change I like the term behavior change sometimes troubled me, I get it. Like, we all know what it means. But it’s also like, who am I to change your behavior, like, that’s not what you know, what we’re what we’re trying to do, I just want you to have exposure, and have access, and have a little joy in your life or a little sadness in your life or, you know, whatever that happens to be, you can make your own decisions about, you know, what you’re going to do with it. And that’s not going to happen overnight. I you know, I also don’t expect that like I never, we never try and make a game or a product, it’s like, okay, and then we’re going to measure this by how many people you know, change their behavior in two months. Like, that’s not how that’s not how these things work. That’s not how it works, or long, it’s a long term, you know, it’s a long term process, and it has to come from it has to come from you. I’m just trying to tease out these values that I think people have and just are always bombarded with most of the conservation messaging, I think that happens, actually has a negative effect. It has a positive effect for that small set of, you know, already converted. But if you’re trying to, you know, if you’re trying to broaden the tent, just constantly being poked with guilt, and constantly being poked with, like, awful images, or polar bears floating away on ice things are emaciated and ragged, that like that just, it’s just not going to, it’s not going to have it’s probably having a negative effect. Well,

Maria Ross 13:51

I love that, because that’s about having empathy for the people that are receiving the message and understanding that they are completely going to receive it from where they are. And, you know, I love how you’re balancing this, this, this purpose, with the entrepreneurial reality of you have to know your customer, you have to know what is going to resonate for them. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 14:13

and that’s what any business would do, right? Like every business would look at things from a customer’s you know, from the customer’s point of view, what is the customer data conservation sector serve, it doesn’t do that. It looks at things from their own point of view is like, Well, what do we need? We need these people to donate? What do we need? We know we need to it’s been one of the first things ever I wrote and published was it was about like, treating conservation, like a business, just from that point of view of like, how can we see things through the eyes of the customer of, you know, of conservation, and I’ve got to give a lot. I mean, I need to make sure that I give a lot of credit to a lady named Dr. Rene Eilertsen, who is the one that taught me a lot about, you know, the ambivalence that people feel the anxiety that that people you know, that they feel and I, when we message, and when we write the text in our games, and we talk with people, etc, that if we’re not taking that into account, we’re going to, you know, we’re just going to fall into the, you know, we’re going to fall into the same trap. So we’ve certainly learned a lot from from her. And all she does in terms of how she talks about climate anxiety and how, you know, we need to change the narrative, around climate around nature and so forth to be from the point of view of the of the person receiving it. Yeah,

Maria Ross 15:27

it’s absolutely I mean, I’ve done brand story work with nonprofits. And it’s, it’s getting them to have that shift of actually, the people or the group that you’re ultimately trying to help is important. But you are talking to the people that you’re trying to catalyze to help them and so they have different needs and different drivers than your actual, quote, unquote, end clients. And that is a huge epiphany for them to understand that, oh, we’ve been using guilt, we’ve been using the you know, in some cases, just the moral imperative. And like I said, about empathy, some, that’s not enough sometimes. And so it’s really about understanding where your people are, that you are talking to, and, and trying to give them that exposure and give them that story that could or could not compel them into some sort of action. But I love what you said about not wanting to be prescriptive about that behavior change, because that’s also off putting for people to from, from the social sector. right through it. Yeah, exactly.

Gautam Shah 16:31

Do this. Yeah, exactly. And especially like, if I think about like, Okay, we make games in many cases. And if it’s just very clear that this is a game that’s trying to get me to do something nobody wants, that’s not what people want, when they when they’re playing a game. That’s not what this is not what you you know, so my

Maria Ross 16:46

nine year old says that when we try to like, is this a learning game? Yeah,

Gautam Shah 16:50

yeah, exactly. Yeah. So.

Maria Ross 16:52

So let’s real quick dive into, you know, using these modern approaches, using gaming as a way to tell stories about nature and wildlife. So give us some examples about the things that the company does and the partnerships that they’ve built. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 17:09

sure. So funny. Also, to just say, modern approaches, it’s like,

Maria Ross 17:14

they’re actually not that mod is 2020,

Gautam Shah 17:16

these 2024, right, like, video games have been around since you know, whatever, the 50s. And they’ve been popular since the, you know, since the 80s. So so the idea that it’s even that is the people even still think that gaming is modern and avant garde, it’s such a sector, it’s crazy. There’s 3.2 billion people that play them. It’s a bigger industry than sports, movies, and television, you know, combined, but it’s still kind of in the in certain worlds. It’s still clubbed as you know, as well, I

Maria Ross 17:43

think what’s modern about it is the approach spirit to catalyze something. Where it to me, yeah, help people help improve help. Further purpose. I think that’s what’s sort of the modern approach is like, realizing there’s this hugely popular, hugely lucrative market have out there. But leveraging that for good.

Gautam Shah 18:05

In a way. Yeah. But yeah, it’s amazing that that is, you know, again, that that is considered something modern, something new. Yeah. What have we been doing? We’ve been doing, we just keep making films and documentaries and documentaries, and documenting how are we ignoring this channel, which is an amazing storytelling channel, which gets people deep into a story it gives them, it gives them agency, it gives them the chance to take, you know, to take actions, it’s measurable, it’s like every single thing, you know, that it’s it’s that, you know, that often is not but but yeah, sadly, it is still moderate. So let’s take Okay, so I’ll give you an example. You know, an example of something we didn’t build. But I think is, you know, perhaps that, you know, the best example of the of the way that we think about these things, I had always thought like, well, because I’m I geek out on the data. And there’s a lot of wildlife data that’s happening. And actually, as a company, we started by thinking, how can we tell stories from data, and there’s all this data that’s being collected by scientists and conservationists and find it’s being used for scientific purposes. But actually, it could be could potentially engaged, you know, an entire world. And so there’s a lot of GPS data on animals and how they in how they move. And remember what I was doing with me yesterday, just thinking about like, but wouldn’t it be really neat to like, I also have data from my watch that tells me how much I moved today. Like how many steps did I take today? Or how far did you know how far did I run? I wonder what that mountain you know what that snow leopard in you know, in Mongolia is you know, he’s doing on a daily basis as well. And I wonder like on a daily basis, like how many steps is he getting in? Yeah, just how many steps is he getting and how many stairs is he getting, you know, going, you know, going going up and down to a cigar. But that would be you know, that could be really interesting. And you could have animals at all sorts of different levels. And that’s how we should do that and there’s already fitness outside. out there, like, how am I gonna get people? This is where the business side of things comes in and you know, throws a big bucket of cold water on you. It’s like, yeah, that’s the coolest idea. But how are we ever going to get people to either add another fitness app to what they do or get them to move, that’s never gonna work. So I’m gonna go into the whole details of how it came about. But we partnered with Adidas, and they’re running app called Adidas, Adidas running and said, well, they already have a running app, they’ve already got 150 million people on it, why don’t we just incorporate the data into an existing, you know, into an existing app, and let their users you know, experience it through, you know, through something that already exists, of course, we’ll have to make some compromises on, you know, our ideals of how this should be done. But we’ll also have access to a lot of people that we would never otherwise have access to. So we partnered with conservation organizations on one side, to provide the data and the stories and the expertise when we partnered with adidas on the other side to provide that provide the platform, and we embedded these challenges into, you know, into the app that said, Okay, for the next 10 days, see, if you can run more than Google in this, you know, I’m going to use the Snow Leopard example, you’ll in the snow leopard from Mongolia, and you’re not going to know how much he runs each day. And we’ll use the actual data from, you know, what he did over a period of time. And every day, when you run, when you finish, you will then see, you know, at a particular time of day, in a in a way that you then, you know, submitted his own data, and a little photograph that he took while he was running. And then a little little storyline of like, you know, he just he wrote about his own thing. And I know, some people criticize it as being sort of, what’s the word anthem, more anthropomorphizing. And, of course, you know, of course it is, but at the same time, it’s a straight storyline about their lives, and what they go through and the conservation, you know, issues that they that they face. And you have millions of people that are every day getting a little bit of light into, you know, the life of a snow leopard, or an elephant or a pangolin, or, you know, a mountain lion or some of the other animals that we, you know, that we’ve done it with? And yeah, I mean, I think like I said, I think it’s one of the best examples of what we have what we do, because if we made that ourselves, it would have been way better. And a couple of 1000 people would have, you know, a couple 1000 People would have played it, because the list of getting people to use a different fitness app would have would have been on you know, unachieved. Right. Right. So I think yeah, it’s a good example of the right way to think about it from a business point of view from an impact point of view from a reach point of view from you know, from from from all those point of view, and I think like one of the, we get a lot of press on it. But the coolest press was Runner’s World. And, and that is because Runner’s World is writing about snow leopard. Right? Like their audience, our runners, their audience, our athletes, they want to read about the newest gear and they want to read about the newest running round Central, but Runner’s World is writing about is running about snow leopard. So in that small way, we’re creating this connection between an audience demographic that I guarantee that conservation you know, like nobody’s thinking about how do we reach runners, and we’re bringing, you know, the these animals in this wildlife, you know, to this to this demographic that again, they loved it. Right. Never think about snow leopards. But if you give them the opportunity to think about, you know, think about snow leopards and do it in a fun way that already reaches them, where they’re gonna go for a run anyhow, they will think about they will think Well, well, and it’s like what they do with it is a different story. But yeah, exactly. Least it’s there. Yeah,

Maria Ross 23:42

it’s like all the best principles of education is that is tying the thing the kid doesn’t want to learn about to something they are interested in, right? Like if all of my son’s math and essay writing assignments could be tied to anime shows, or, you know, Pokemon or whatever. Yeah, he’d be, he’d be way more interested in it. And it would it would open the aperture for him of what’s possible with those disciplines. And that’s what I see you doing there. It’s like, this is tied to something you already know and love. And now we are exposing this animal, their story, the conservation issues around it, but not in a heavy handed way. Exactly. Yeah. So what what’s one that you guys have developed that you’re pretty proud of that? Yeah. Is that a good example for us?

Gautam Shah 24:31

I think probably the one that I’m most proud of is a game called will diverse, which, sadly, again, is you cannot play it anymore. But when you could, it was an augmented reality mobile game. So it was, yeah, was straight mobile game, augmented reality. And it was focused on ape conservation. And we told this we picked again, we partnered with two conservation organizations, one in Congo, and one in Indonesia. Borneo, and we focused in on four animals, you know, in Iran Catan, a gibbon, lowland gorilla and the chimpanzee and they were real. You know, again, these were real animals that real researchers were really observing with real stories. And we use the game to bring those stories to people. But the game was, you know, sort of this futuristic situation where those researchers could beam the environment to where you are. And you could help them in the research that they were, you know, that they were doing. And at the end of the day, it’s a hidden object game where you’re up, but it’s a 3d hidden object game with augmented reality where wherever you are preferably outside, you’re going around this, this, this virtual forest, and you’re looking for clues. And ultimately, you’re trying to find the Iran Catan, you’re trying to find the gibbon and you’re getting the clues, and you’re having conversations with these researchers, all the while, kind of learning what it’s like to be a researcher, learning the conservation issues, learning the individual storylines of the animals that you’re trying to find, but also just kind of having fun, looking around your, you know, your background or your parking lot, you know, trying to find the poop trying to find, you know, the fruit, the fruit that’s been thrown on, and then hopefully, eventually, you know, finding the wrong button and the you know, as the Gibbons, you know, in the trees, I just, I feel like, it was really, really thoughtful, it could have been more fun. We could end and that’s okay, we could have done that, if we had had the funding, we would have, we would have made it you know, round two or version two would have, you know, would have made it would have made it more fun. And everything that we did there was, you know, is really just kind of the first time you know that it was done. But, again, and Renee had a lot of insight, she worked with us on that project in terms of how we message and how we treated people, like we were the guides, we weren’t teachers, we weren’t professors, we weren’t, we weren’t telling you what it was, we were that we were like, if you’re going to take a walk through the jungle with a guide, that’s what you know, that’s what the experience was. Like. And we touched on really difficult topics. We touched on zoos, we touched on you know, oil palm, you know, plantations, we touched on things that many people often have this very black and white reaction to like, never eat anything with palm oil, that’s a disaster you’re killing around your towns, right? Or zoos are bad because they’re, you know, they’re caged animals. But we brought a lot of nuance into these things. And again, we weren’t trying to tell you that we were just kind of introducing through the storyline information that could you know, help you understand, you know, how you felt about it, even asking you, you know, in the game, what do you think about zoos? And you know, and there are ways for you to kind of communicate your own, you know, your own feeling? You know, for example, we partnered with zoos on this, how

Maria Ross 27:49

was it distributed? Where was that?

Gautam Shah 27:52

It was distributed through the app stores. So you could get it on Google Play? Or you could get it on Apple? The marketing strategy was to partner with the zoos. So we partnered with Chester Zoo, and with Zoo Atlanta, both of which were zoos that have very strong ape, focus. We, and so what was going to happen was that anybody that went into those zoos, and you know, they get a couple million people, you know, each year, they were gonna see that the game was available and that you could download, right? That was actually a pretty, it was a pretty physical analog marketing strategy, which is what you would think of, and the release date was April 2020. For an outdoor game that’s meant to be played outdoors. Nobody was going outdoors and be the zoos reset for you know, for six months. And when the zoos were reopening it, like their top priority wasn’t, you know, marketing, you know, again, so we got really, you know, we got we got pretty unlucky with the timing. Yeah, how that Yeah, with the time that the time Yeah.

Maria Ross 28:55

How do you How do your projects come to you? Is it you guys coming up with developing a concept and then seeing is it you know, which is the right conservation group to approach which is the right marketing partner to go through? Is that how it happens? Or do you get zoos and aquariums and conservation organizations coming to you saying, Hey, how can we gamify for this concept? I don’t know. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 29:19

we get both the projects that? Well, okay, we did a project with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is, you know, which is out and available. That’s probably the only example where an organization came to a lot of organizations come to us, but we almost always talk them out of doing what they you know, of what they want to what they want to do. So most of the things that we put to life have been things that we’ve, we’ve come up with, and then we think about who’s the right Deck, just like you say, who’s the right conservation partner, and therefore the beneficiary and what’s the right marketing partner to make this happen? And then yeah, what’s the right you know, what’s the right funding partner to to make it happen?

Maria Ross 29:56

Tell us about the Monterey Bay Aquarium project.

Gautam Shah 29:58

Yeah, so Monterey. The aquarium project. So it’s a product called phantom verse. And it’s the only citizen science project that we’ve worked in students is straight citizen science project. And what they’ve essentially got these rovers that are traversing the sea at all, and all sorts of deaths, taking pictures and videos of every single thing that you know that it encounters. So, you know, mostly a lot of worms. Right? Like, it isn’t like pictures of sharks and dolphins, and they might show up, but you’re talking about like crustaceans and crabs and more. And they’ve got millions and millions of the, you know, these have hours of footage and photographs. And they of course, want to identify everything, rather, they want to be at the end of the goal is to identify every single thing under the sea and see what type of new species you can find. And of course, AI plays a massive role in that, but AI needs to be trained. And with millions of images, and like five people kind of going through each of them, you’re never going to you know, you’re never going to you it’s going to take you dozens and dozens of years to even get to a place where I can where I can do the job that it needs to do. So they came to us and said like, how can we gamify this experience ident identifying under you know, underwater images, sometimes spectacular sometimes boring, sometimes on you know decipherable. But what could we do that would make that a fun experience so that we can open this up to, you know, a pretty big audience, probably people that already are interested in the ocean. But, you know, that’s everybody that goes to aquariums. So, you know, that’s essentially what we what we worked on with them. It’s like, okay, it’s really kind of getting into what’s, you know, who’s the audience? How are we going to prioritize the scientific benefit, versus, you know, the gamification and that’s always that near, especially in citizen science things, it’s that tension between, well, if it’s not scientifically valuable, then that’s not, you know, as a science organization that doesn’t help them. But if it’s not super fun, you’re never gonna get enough people to get enough data for it to be scientifically valuable. So, you know, that was a big challenge on that part, it wasn’t as much storytelling, there’s not as it’s not a big narrative, you know, type of game, but it’s one of those things that I get, like, how do you get people to be interested in wanting to identify non charismatic animals? Like, you know, like worms under, you know, under the ocean? What is it that you can evoke, in somebody’s sense of adventure, somebody’s sense of like, finding, you know, a new, you know, a new creature exploring the ocean? How do you evoke these things in a way that would make somebody wants to be, and what we came up with was, was blissfully productive. So they know that you don’t want to fool them. You don’t want to insult anybody’s intelligence by making them think they’re doing one thing, but actually, you know, actually, something else is going on. So how is it very voluntarily, like, this is so enjoyable to do? And, you know, it’s, you know, it’s helping, you know, it’s helping us, you know, discover life under the light under the ocean. And so yeah, that’s, that’s something that anybody, you know, anybody can pick up and play on their, on their mobile phone right now,

Maria Ross 33:14

that’s great, we’ll put we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. So as we as we kind of wrap up, I just want to, you know, want to take a little bit of a left turn here, because you, you are the founder of a social enterprise. And there’s a big purpose, as you described behind what you’re doing. There’s also the reality of creating a sustainable business out of it. So how do you balance? You know, to, to reduce it down? But how do you balance purpose with profit? So that you can keep having the impact that you want? Yeah. And I

Gautam Shah 33:47

wonder if it’s even about balancing purpose and profit, you know, as a, as a startup, you’re not even thinking about profit, you’re just thinking about staying alive to the next day and getting getting this project out there you can do so that you can do the next one. And at least for us, it’s like, yeah, profit, like, at some point down, you know, at some point down the line, we’ll you know, we’ll get there. But, you know, it’s just like, how do we just how do we survive off? Yeah, how do we survive? Yeah, and it’s really just as a survival instinct. And so then it becomes a lot more like, as an entrepreneur and as somebody you know, is how do you imbalance the anxiety that you have about dedicating your life towards something and I think when you I’ve been thinking about this is like, if you and it might sound a little bit arrogant, but if you choose to have a purpose driven life, you know, however you want it to find that are you at risk of never being satisfied because that purpose is never going to be achieved? Right, because it like, it can’t imagine the purpose of you would ever just get to a point like yep, we did. We did it out. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like with a for profit business there, there’s this metric, you’d be like, Yeah, I made a ton of money, I sold the company, it went bankrupt, you know, whatever it happened to be, but there’s something a little bit more concrete about your ability to measure whether you you did it or not, are they getting enough, I’m gonna go switch to another company, or we’re starting, you know, starting another business. But when you’re thinking about, you know, again, with, with impact, and what you’re trying to solve for, like, the balance is knowing that you’re never going to solve it. Right, with still going forward and accepting the small wins, you know, small wins along the way. And how long can you you know, how long can you you know, how long can you keep that up? And that, I haven’t figured that out? Yeah, and I have to take breaks, I have to take breaks sometimes, like sometimes, like, if, for me, personally, if I had like three or four, failed partnership conversations or investment conversations that you know, that don’t go my way, I need to take, I need to take a break. Like, I’m not the type of guy that can just pick myself up and have the fifth one. Where is it really, there’s plenty of people that it just rolls off of them. And they you know, and they just do it, and I’m not I need to take these breaks and be like, alright, just consult, make some money, help help out where you can, and then you know, and then you know, and then pick it up,

Maria Ross 36:20

that’s super healthy. I mean, that’s like what I talk about in the new book that’s coming out in the fall, the empathy dilemma is how you balance people, personal boundaries, and performance. And that’s actually signed, it’s very healthy, because the first two pillars of the five pillars in that book are self awareness and self care. Because otherwise you will burn out. And it won’t be sustainable if you can’t do the rest and recharge cycle within the work that you’re trying to do. So that’s actually very healthy, that you know that about yourself. And you’re saying, Okay, if I want to do this work for the long haul, I am going to need to take a break at this point, and sort of like switch gears for a little bit and work on this. And that’s what’s going to help me continue to have impact and continue to keep things sustainable. What isn’t sustainable is burning yourself down to the ground, and then you’re of no use to anyone. Right. And I just want to I don’t know, think you meant you mentioned a really interesting thing about the purpose. Because in my brand work, when I’m working with clients, we talk about the difference between vision, mission and values. And vision, I, I challenge my clients to think of a vision, that is a world that would make their organization obsolete. That is the end goal, right? That’s kind of what you’re talking about. That’s never gonna happen. Yeah, the mission is the steps and the actions that I take every day in pursuit of that vision. Yeah, it’s the mission that actually keeps you going. Because you’re probably unfortunately, never gonna get to the vision. Right. So that’s kind of life kind of feel like mission and purpose are the same things. But vision is that larger, like, this is what we’re doing all this for. And we may never get there. But it’s about it’s about the impact that we are having, and the progress that we are making. Yeah,

Gautam Shah 38:09

I think yeah, I think that that’s, I think that that’s right, we were we talk a lot about North Stars, or I, you know, I think a lot about North I think about our North Star. And I think about a rocket ship and I think about a flight path. And I know that my I know that my Northstar has never changed. But I know that my rocket ship and my flight path, you know, we still haven’t, we still haven’t figured out what’s the we kind of know what the rocket ship is. But the flight path is kind of the hardest part, but even the rocket ship. Right?

Maria Ross 38:36

Well, that’s about agility and resilience. So that’s a good thing, right?

Gautam Shah 38:42

So I think I think you’re right, I just want to say like, I do feel like, okay, to self care, I happen to have the luxury to be able to do that. And in order to have that luxury, I had to make some very tough decisions, because I had a team of six people, and you can’t have a team of six people and then just be like, Hey, guys, you know what, I’m just going to take a break for a while. Yeah. And that sort of means no projects are going to come in. So you know, find something else. Like you can’t, you can’t do that. So I had to actually, at some point, make a really difficult decision and say, Are we actually going to we’re going to take the we’re going to bring the company down to just me until you know, I’m in a position to you know, to bring it up and yeah, I think in the self

Maria Ross 39:27

care is that drastic. I’m not saying that it’s more like self care is understanding what recharges you as well and being able to, but not all self care is that drastic of like, I’m going to take care of myself by shutting down the company and laying everybody off. In a

Gautam Shah 39:41

way I had to not necessarily take care of myself but even just take care of like this company just needs the opportunity to reinvent itself. Yes. And now because it’s just me for a little while. Yeah, I have some I have some luxuries about taking care of myself. Otherwise I’m not gonna I’m not going to be able to rebuild it. Very

Maria Ross 39:58

true. Well Thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing your work. It’s amazing, soft spot in my heart for social entrepreneurs that are pursuing building a company, but also trying to do good in the world at the same time. So I love what you’re doing. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes go down, but for folks that are on the go or exercising along with their snow leopard, where is a place that they can find out more about you or the work? Yeah,

Gautam Shah 40:26

I think the best place is to go to the website. So it’s web. It’s Internet of elephants.com. Perfect.

Maria Ross 40:32

All right, and thank you so much. It was great reconnecting with you.

Gautam Shah 40:35

Thanks so much, Marie. I

Maria Ross 40:36

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

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

May Hot Take: Why is Self-Care Core to Empathetic Leadership?

Self-care is more than just manis, pedis, and massages. It is vital to helping leaders embrace empathy while also making tough business decisions, holding people accountable, and setting high-performance standards. It matters because depleted leaders are ineffective leaders.

To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Key Takeaways:

Empathy requires fertile soil to take root. If you’re stuck in self-preservation and not feeding your own soil, you won’t be able to meet others with curiosity and empathy.
Use pillar one, Self-Awareness, to start taking better care of yourself so you have a greater capacity to look outward.
Check out more about the book at TheEmpathyDilemma.com.

“It can be tempting to shoulder additional burdens in the name of empathy, but, in the end, you are doing yourself and your team a disservice.”

— Maria Ross

Episode References:

Enjoy special pre-sale and launch bonuses: http://theempathydilemma.com/book-offers
Check out more about the book here: www.TheEmpathyDilemma.com
Sign up for the FREE Masterclass: The 4 Step Framework to Craft a Captivating Brand Story that Attracts Your Right-Fit Clients: https://bit.ly/4StepBrandStory
April Hot Take: Why Empathy Starts with Self-Awareness: https://red-slice.com/the-empathy-edge/april-hot-take-why-empathy-starts-with-self-awareness

Join the community and discover what empathy can do for you: http://red-slice.com

Connect with Maria:

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