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Maria and Rob: Is Empathy an Emotion, Skill, Interaction, or Choice?

Maria Ross and Rob Volpe are back! Today, we talk about empathy like it’s an emotion: something that washes over you, or doesn’t. But what if you don’t feel it? Does that make you bad at empathy?

The science doesn’t offer a tidy answer. Some researchers show empathy is deeply felt, sometimes so intensely it leads to burnout. Others argue it’s a choice we make, turned up or down depending on who’s in front of us and what it might cost us. And at least one prominent thinker says we’d be better off with less empathy and more compassion.

Maria and Rob unpack the difference between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and compassion. They explore whether these are different entry points rather than a sequence, depending on how we are wired.

And they wrestle with a big question: if you can act with compassion simply because it’s the right thing to do, where does empathy fit in?

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The difference between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and compassion
Why empathy and compassion light up different parts of the brain, and why that matters for burnout
Whether empathy is something you’re born with or something you can build
How motivation and social norms shape how much empathy we feel
Acting with compassion when you don’t “feel” empathy, and why that still counts
How leaders can find their natural entry point and strengthen the others

“If you don’t have the empathy with somebody, you’re never going to be able to accurately imagine what they’re doing. Empathy is not mind reading. Empathy is about connection; it’s not predicting the future.” – Rob Volpe

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! retreat.therisingmastermind.com

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Episode References:

Rob’s newsletter: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/the-real-answer
Maria’s newsletter: red-slice.com/newsletter
Why Trait Empathy Is the Wrong Measure
Choosing Empathy: Conversation with Jamil Zaki
Jamil Zaki, “Choosing Empathy” (Edge.org conversation, with a response from Paul Bloom)
Jamil Zaki, “Empathy: A Motivated Account” (Psychological Bulletin, 2014)
Erik Nook, Jamil Zaki, et al., “Prosocial Conformity: Prosocial Norms Generalize Across Behavior and Empathy” (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2016)
Geoff Thomas and Gregory Maio, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman: When and How Gender-Role Motivation Helps Mind-Reading” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008)
Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki, “Empathy and Compassion” (Current Biology, 2014)
Klimecki et al., compassion and empathy training study
Karla McLaren, “Why Trait Empathy Is the Wrong Measure” (Psychology Today)
Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
Jessica Tarlov, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends

About Rob Volpe:

Rob Volpe is the Founder/CEO of Empathy Activist and the creator of The 5 Steps to Empathy, which he chronicles in his award-winning book Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. He is a recognized thought leader, speaker, and consultant in the improvement of communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes in all industries.

Connect with Rob:

Website: robvolpe.expert

Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation

X: x.com/rmvolpe

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpathyActivist

Instagram: instagram.com/empathy_activist

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Rob Volpe 01:00

Thank you, Maria. It’s so good to be here. I have a feeling we’re like the people that if you sat us next to each other in class back in school, the teacher would have separated us for talking. 100%

Maria Ross 01:10

100% Yes, I just shared with a group that I was doing a workshop with a group of school administrators and district leaders that I was the student that used to get put out in the hall for talking in class, and I was like, “Yeah. It

Rob Volpe 01:23

showed up on one of my report cards. I think my parents still have it. It says, “It’s like second or third grade talks too much.

Maria Ross 01:28

Talks too much. And now I have a podcast, and I speak for a living. So there you go.

Rob Volpe 01:33

Maria Ross 01:35

exactly, exactly. And today we are going to talk about something that we’ve been noodling on behind the scenes because this is something that comes up a lot for people when they’re trying to understand what empathy is and what it isn’t, and people, even empathy experts, refer to it differently. Of if it’s an emotion, is it a skill, or is it an interaction? And so that’s what we’re going to explore today in our conversation, and look at some studies that have been done, look at some different points of view, and then just talk about our own perspectives.

Rob Volpe 02:10

Yeah, and why it even matters,

Maria Ross 02:11

and why it matters. Why should you,

Rob Volpe 02:13

dear listener, care?

Maria Ross 02:15

Don’t give away our punchline. But yeah, so let’s get into it. Let’s talk about empathy, and you know, I know you do this. I know lots of other empathy practitioners who do. I do as well. We sort of create our own definitions that benefit the groups we’re talking to and the groups we’re writing for the best, so that they can make empathy real. And talk to us a little bit, Rob. Why don’t you break down for folks the different aspects of empathy that currently are out there in terms of cognitive empathy and affective empathy, and then compassionate empathy?

Rob Volpe 02:51

Yes. So, in the world, according to Rob, no, the way I talk about it is cognitive empathy, which is the perspective taking, emotional empathy, which is feeling the feelings of somebody else. I personally see those leading into the action, which is compassion. I think compassion and empathy are very they’re linked. I feel like compassion is an extension, though

Maria Ross 03:17

empathy and action. Empathy,

Rob Volpe 03:19

yeah, exactly. It’s the action piece of it, where I see people getting tripped up is the idea of how do you get it empathy,

Maria Ross 03:30

right?

Rob Volpe 03:31

And you know, are you born with it? Well, I don’t have it, so should I do something? You know, like they, yeah. How much does it actually? Like, what can I do about

Maria Ross 03:42

it? Right, right. I think that’s

Rob Volpe 03:44

part of what fueled my work in developing the five steps and coaching and training people and groups on being more empathetic and how that shows up.

Maria Ross 03:53

Well, it’s interesting because I, you know, when you say, “Does is it an emotion or is it a skill? I don’t ever say. I try to avoid the wording of feeling empathy because empathy involves feeling in my definition, right? But it also involves perspective taking. It leans into that cognitive component of maybe I don’t, I’m not an overly emotional, touchy feely type of person, but I can use my brain to try to imagine what your point of view might be like, or use my brain to ask questions and find out what your point of view is like. And so, is that a feeling that feels to me much more like a skill or a practice?

Rob Volpe 04:31

Yes, a couple of things in that, and hopefully, I will remember all of them. It’s I just in my recent newsletter, which we can link in the show notes. I wrote based off of the last episode of “What Does It Mean to Be Hun? Our limited sub series. I was looking at AI versus human emotion, and where AI is a predictive plausibility tool. Empathy is actually about understanding. Perspective or understanding feeling, so that you can move to a more positive outcome, is the way I like to talk about it. So, even that imagining, like if you don’t understand their perspective, you’re not going to be able to imagine because what we end up doing is creating this. And synthetic twins is a thing that’s come up in the marketing research and marketing industry where they’re taking mass amounts of data, they’re producing twins, synthetic twins based on the data, and trying to predict what you’re going to do. Which is, in my mind, and the studies are finding it’s not completely accurate because we’re human and you don’t know our perspective, and we make decisions off of emotion, and so even that active imagining-if you don’t have the empathy with somebody, you’re never going to be able to accurately imagine what they’re doing. So empathy is not mind reading. You know, empathy is about connection. It’s not predicting the future. You’re not, you know, Carnac, the Johnny Carson mind reader person, character that he used to do. You’re using it to put yourself into other people’s shoes to connect, so that you can better support them.

Maria Ross 06:10

Yes,

Rob Volpe 06:11

but then you were talking about feeling empathy, and you reminded me of a experience that happened 10 years or so ago. We brought a kind of a marketing consultant, social media consultant, into help ignite 360, and she spent some time doing what they do and talking with everybody. And she sent us the leadership team a note, an email the next morning, and she’s like, “I really appreciated you know the conversations with all of you. And she’s like, “I for the first time, I really felt empathy, and I was like, “What is she talking about? Like, is that something that you can feel? And I think where she was, what she was intending with that, and as I’ve talked with other people, it’s a so, Maria, if you have empathy with me, it is a two-way street. So you’re feeling what I’m feeling, or understanding my perspective, but I am then feeling supported, or I’m feeling heard or seen, and I think that is a there’s probably some emotional sort of reaction or sense that you have underneath all of that.

Maria Ross 07:17

I don’t know that that’s required though. Like I can still practice empathy and try to see things from your perspective without it, understand how you feel. And this is what I talk about when I get asked all the time. Well, what if I’m trying to interact with someone empathetically who’s not being empathetic to me? And I always say that’s actually not your job to change them.

Rob Volpe 07:36

Yeah,

Maria Ross 07:36

but you can get the information you need, and maybe you’re modeling for them how your relationship should go, right? And so there’s a feeling component, but there’s there is again there is that interaction component as well. And then is that really a feeling, right? Do we feel empathy just like we feel sadness or joy or fear or anger? And I don’t know that we do. I don’t know that we. It’s a feeling. These feelings are fleeting.

Rob Volpe 08:02

Feelings are fleeting, and by definition, empathy. If you go to the affective or emotional empathy definition, you’re feeling the feelings of somebody else. So,

Maria Ross 08:10

right,

Rob Volpe 08:11

if they’re feeling sad, you are feeling sad.

Maria Ross 08:13

Right, you’re not feeling empathy. You’re not being you’re feeling sad because you’re being empathetic toward them.

Rob Volpe 08:20

Right,

Maria Ross 08:20

right. So this is where it gets weird, right? And then there’s there’s experts who talk about it in terms of feelings. There’s experts who talk about it in terms of a skill or a trait. There’s experts who who think it’s not necessarily a trait because that implies that it’s there sometimes and it’s there not, right? And then you get people that talk about like Jameel Zaki, who talk about it really as it’s interaction based. You’re making the choice within the moment to be empathetic or not be empathetic, and that that’s a changing condition for everyone. It’s based on their capacity. It’s based on their frame of mind. It’s based on the context of the situation. It’s based on the person they’re interacting with, right?

Rob Volpe 09:02

Yeah,

Maria Ross 09:03

and so I really like I love kind of going down that path of like empathy is active because it requires you to make a choice and make a decision based on what’s in front of you at that moment in time, and it also implies that you can’t necessarily say I’m just not an empathetic person. You’re just choosing not to build that skill for the future interactions.

Rob Volpe 09:24

You’re choosing, you know, if you, I often use the muscle analogy. Yeah, got to train it up, or it’s a superpower, and so you let it go flabby if you don’t, you know, or atrophy if you’re not if you’re not using it, and that’s a choice. And you know, I I often talk about how empathy is this thing we’re born with, and if it’s modeled properly by caregivers, parents, other people in our lives, if we stay open to it, it will fuel the skill. That we use in our life, but even let’s talk about our adult life, and it works with kids too. But in our adult life, to communicate, collaborate, persuade, make decisions, build trust, reach forgiveness-all the things that you need to be successful. And it’s like so empathy isn’t-it’s not a. It’s not technically defined as one of the senses. You know, the five senses. It’s not a skill exactly, but it enables skills. So it’s. I’ve never, and I don’t know if you have thoughts as we’re talking. Like, I don’t know what the word is to describe what it is in that in between.

Maria Ross 10:39

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 10:39

it’s the fuel. It’s the you know accelerant that makes those things better.

Maria Ross 10:45

It’s like when I talk about empathy’s relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not the initiative. Empathy is not the initiative, right? The initiative is the initiative. What are the things that we’re doing as an organization to create, you know, to foster diversity, to create equity, to foster inclusion, but what makes those actually work is empathy,

Rob Volpe 11:09

right?

Maria Ross 11:10

Because otherwise, you’re forcing, you’re trying to policy your way to a compassionate culture or to a diverse culture, and that will never stick. The thing that makes it work for you to bring all these diverse voices together and help them all belong is that we see and understand each other and acknowledge each other’s different points of view, and that’s empathy. So it’s sort of, you know, pick your analogy. It kind of greases the wheels of enabling an inclusive culture. It’s not the same thing as if you have an empathetic culture and an inclusive culture. Those are two separate things.

Rob Volpe 11:42

Totally. And would you, you know, as we were talking about compassion as an offshoot or an action, an empathetic action in DEI, I think you would say like you have empathy, which is just recognizing you’re able to connect to the need. Like, yeah. Oh wow, there are things that we need to do here that are better across all every group and how you can describe them. This isn’t about one one group versus another. Anyway, you recognize, and I think that’s some of what’s happened now in the last couple of years, is going okay. Wait a minute, we’ve favored one over another, and that’s not right either. How do we help all? But you recognize that, and then you’re like, okay, I can take action. I can create a program. I can put policies into place that are meaningful or that are going to bring about change.

Maria Ross 12:31

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 12:32

and that’s a compassionate.

Maria Ross 12:34

Well, but if you don’t change the hearts and minds, is my point. If you don’t help them build empathy, so that they’re seeing the differences in a positive way and acknowledging them, so that the organization can actually reap the benefits of what an inclusive culture does for that, what diverse voices do. If you don’t have the understanding, I always say there’s it’s just a bunch of people who are different from each other and not understanding each other sitting around the table staring at each other. Right?

Rob Volpe 13:00

I’ve used that analogy too.

Maria Ross 13:01

Yeah, until you have that ability to at least connect and acknowledge and go, “Oh, I didn’t think of it that way, or “That’s an interesting perspective, or “Tell me more about that.” To the point of your book, right?

Rob Volpe 13:14

Yeah,

Maria Ross 13:15

empathy is required for that.

Rob Volpe 13:17

Totally, and and to put it in a different business setting, imagine if you are sitting across the table negotiating with somebody. To successfully negotiate, you have to understand what they’re looking for and they’re hoping to achieve, and how that lines up with your own objectives. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be sitting there, you know, pounding your fist on the table.

Maria Ross 13:40

Yeah, you just you’re butting heads at that point. I always say it’s you’re on opposite sides of the table versus the same side of the table, looking at it together. Right? Like, how do we figure this out together?

Rob Volpe 13:51

I like that.

Maria Ross 13:52

So it’s this interesting thing because again, you can get lost, and I did. I got down a rabbit hole between Claude and then other research I was looking at about all the different ways empathy is defined, and even my existing model of you know cognitive empathy, affective empathy can lead to compassionate empathy, which is your move to take action. There’s even debates on what that is because if you think about a compassionate act, and this is where I do agree with some of the thinkers on this, is that you can still do a compassionate deed for somebody, but your motivation might not be empathy, right? And I think Paul Bloom talked about this maybe in his book Against Empathy, where he said if you give money to a homeless person on the street that you’re passing, you’re doing it to sort of get them to stop bothering you. You’re not empathizing with them, but the outcome was that you actually did a compassionate act. You gave them money, right? Or gave them a gave them your lunch, or gave them whatever. And so, empathy is not always a prerequisite for a compassionate act, but. Empathy can often lead to a compassionate act because it’s the next right step that you take based on the information you’ve gathered from the other person. Does that make sense?

Rob Volpe 15:10

Yeah, kind of. I slightly disagree though, and I think it might be with the example. Even like you know, I live in San Francisco, and you’ve lived in San Francisco, and we have a homeless problem. And I’m a pretty compassionate guy, but I do not donate to every homeless person that I or panhandler,

Maria Ross 15:31

right?

Rob Volpe 15:32

Of which there are many at intersections and things like that. Although, note it has gotten a lot better in the last couple years, so don’t you know people don’t hold onto that old tape, but am I being? I recognize. I think I have empathy with.

Maria Ross 15:47

Well, you’re doing the inverse. You can still have empathy, but you you don’t in that.

Rob Volpe 15:51

I can still see the need, but I’m making the choice.

Maria Ross 15:52

You’re making the choice.

Rob Volpe 15:54

But that’s not how I’m going to spend my dollars. Right. I will support that community if I choose to support that community in another way,

Maria Ross 16:01

yes.

Rob Volpe 16:01

And in that moment, though, when I do help somebody out, there’s, I think, even a flash. Like empathy isn’t something you just sit in like a, you know, you’re marinating. Like I don’t think you always marinate in the empathy. I think it can be a flash, like an emotion.

Maria Ross 16:18

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 16:18

that you can have, and it’s and again, like okay, are we talking affective or cognitive empathy? And I can see, oh, that person is struggling. I can imagine that’s difficult for them. Now this gets back into my. I’m actually predicting things that I don’t really know because I’m not taking the time to ask the question.

Maria Ross 16:36

Right.

Rob Volpe 16:37

But I’m I’m making the assumption that oh they need help, and that’s leading to it’s bringing up some emotion, and I’m going into a compassionate action by giving money.

Maria Ross 16:48

Right, right. But I do think we could. I, from my perspective, I think you can decouple what is seemingly a compassionate action that has no empathy involved in

Rob Volpe 17:00

it. I’m just. I’m sorry. I’m laughing at the idea of like you’re bothering me. Here’s $20.

Maria Ross 17:06

Well, and maybe that’s a bad example, but you know, there’s all kinds of things that people do for that are seemingly compassionate acts, but they’re doing it for not empathetic reasons, right? They might be doing it for a tax write-off. They might be doing it because it makes them look good in their community. They might be doing it because, and we’re going to talk about this in a minute because of peer pressure. Like, oh, I’m in a group of people that if I don’t do this, take this act, or show this compassion, I’m going to be judged for it.

Rob Volpe 17:33

Yeah.

Maria Ross 17:33

So it’s a less pure motive, but it still leads to good. And I wrote about that in the Empathy Edge. I wrote about the fact that sometimes you have to get to empathy through selfish motives. That’s how we change behaviors as humans, right? So if you are trying to be a more empathetic organization because you want to experience increased retention and more engagement and more innovation, and you want to be judged, you know, the 100 best places to work, and you initially are engaging in empathy, and you put practices in place, you still get there because now you’re you’re forcing yourself to see other points of view, and consider other people, and so you can’t unsee that.

Rob Volpe 18:13

Yeah,

Maria Ross 18:14

doesn’t matter how you get the horse to water, right? Yes, but once you know, but that’s a bad analogy because you can’t make them drink when they when they get there. But yeah, do you see my point? Like that, I’ve always argued that, and that was my TEDx talk: was how to trick leaders into being more empathetic because I’ve seen the transformation of oh yeah, we’re only doing this because it’s good press, but now it got you in a room with people you never would have been in a room with before.

Rob Volpe 18:40

Right, right,

Maria Ross 18:41

and it has changed some hearts and minds as a result.

Rob Volpe 18:44

And yet, no amount of foosball tables or free snacks is going to long term win over your employees or feel seen and heard.

Maria Ross 18:56

That’s just Fungeneering, as my friend Rebecca Freese always calls it. It’s just trappings.

Rob Volpe 19:00

I love that.

Maria Ross 19:01

But I’m thinking of like you know when I used to do community events, and I wrote about this in the Empathy Edge when I used to do community events as part of the marketing for our channels at Discovery Networks. We would go into a cable affiliate and say, “What what are your goals? What are you trying to do? Because we were trying to get more of our channels on their on their system, right? This is back when it wasn’t so centralized, right?

Rob Volpe 19:23

Right.

Maria Ross 19:23

And oh, we want to do this community event. Oh, great! We have this offer where you can help fill a food pantry, and we bring a truck in. We organize all the logistics. We bring a truckload of food in. You bring your employees. We call the press. We get this food bank filled for the day, and they were like, “Yeah, we want to do that. And the story I wrote in the Empathy Edge was one cable affiliate that did that ended up being completely changed because of the people at the food bank. They had conversations they never would have had if they hadn’t been there for good optics,

Rob Volpe 19:59

right?

Maria Ross 19:59

And what happened was many of them volunteered for the food bank ongoing after that event.

Rob Volpe 20:05

Nice.

Maria Ross 20:06

Soyeah, were they doing it for selfish motives? 100% But did it help open their eyes? 100%

Rob Volpe 20:13

Yes. Yeah, but there was some empathy that you guys used with them and what was important to them generally to connect them to food bank,

Maria Ross 20:23

yeah, doing something for the community, exactly, exactly

Rob Volpe 20:26

to give back.

Maria Ross 20:28

So I want to talk really quickly about this whole, you know, when we’re talking about is it an emotion or is it an action or is it a choice, right? There’s a woman named Karla McLaren, and I’ll put a link to her Psychology Today article. She’s someone I definitely want to have on the podcast, and she argues that empathy lives in interactions rather than as a fixed trait. People can learn to choose it when it’s hard and turn down parts of it when it’s overactive. So that’s the argument to people saying, “I’m just not an empathetic person.”

Rob Volpe 20:58

Yes, it is

Maria Ross 20:59

actually something you can choose to turn on or turn off.

Rob Volpe 21:03

Yep.

Maria Ross 21:03

If you’re being intentional about it, and I really like that. Like, what? How do you feel about that versus whether it’s a social skill or an emotional skill or whatever?

Rob Volpe 21:12

You know, it’s like the you and I were talking before we started recording. It’s like the navel gazing that we sometimes do. Like, and empathy, you know, is the the social science and the research around it is relatively new, and a lot of things like the fact that a cognitive and an emotional thing are ascribed to the same word is just like a jumble of confusion.

Maria Ross 21:39

Yes,

Rob Volpe 21:39

you it might as well be explaining physics to a second grader, like right. It’s just like, huh? And so yeah, everything Karla is saying, yes, it is a choice. It is a feeling. The way you choose to interact with it, and it is situational.

Maria Ross 21:58

Yes, it’s situational, and it’s capacity driven. That’s why self care is one of my pillars. Because are you hungry? Are you? Did you not get a good night’s sleep? Are you stressed? Everything is going to feel like an attack in that frame of mind. I have. I am just trying to survive. I have no room in my head to try to understand Rob’s point of view.

Rob Volpe 22:18

Yeah, can’t do it today. Sorry.

Maria Ross 22:19

Yeah, sorry.

Rob Volpe 22:21

Where normally, yeah, you’ll. listen and and we’ll talk. And if you’re a highly sensitive person, one of the things I I share and have written about, you know, if you’re an HSP, a highly sensitive person, somebody who identifies as an empath, they’re taking it all in. You, your challenge is a little different, not a little. It’s a lot different from the person that isn’t choosing to be empathetic. You’re potentially being too empathetic or empathetic all the time, and so instead of like the way I think about it, if you’re boiling a pot of pasta, we’re both Italian, so we can talk about the noodles and the macaroni, and if you’re cooking pasta, when you finish, you pour it into a colander to let it drain out. The risk that an HSP or an empath has is that they will take that pot of water and pour it into another pot. So both the water and the macaroni are all hanging in there together, and then you’re adding another pot with the next interaction you have, and another, and another, and another, and you just end up with a really heavy pot. Instead, so what I tell people is think colander, where it’s about letting the excess stuff drain away. Yeah, you don’t need everything. You need. You may need to know. Oh, Maria is struggling right now because of this situation, but you don’t need all the surround of it. So, how do you, through the self care, let that kind of drain away from you? Yeah, but you still know, oh, Maria, Maria’s hurting, or I’m feeling this thing that Maria is feeling, and how do I support her?

Maria Ross 23:59

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 23:59

if you’re choosing to take a compassionate action, or you’re just recognizing, yeah, okay, Maria’s having this.

Maria Ross 24:04

Yeah, and I think that’s the they talk about this as the self and other line, where that has to be a distinction and empathy you feel with someone, but you still know if you’re practicing healthy empathy, you still know that that emotion belongs to them, that that experience belongs to them, and without that line, you get emotional contagion, what they call emotional contagion, or you get empathy fatigue, or you get compassion fatigue, whatever it’s called.

Rob Volpe 24:33

You’re catching an empathy cold, like you’re picking up everybody else’s empathy.

Maria Ross 24:36

Because those studies, that those mirror studies that they did with babies long ago, right? That is an that was a proof that we have this mirror neuron, but that is also something that shows emotional contagion.

Rob Volpe 24:49

Yeah,

Maria Ross 24:50

it doesn’t mean that they’re they’re under the baby’s not understanding the other baby’s point of view. They’re literally just mirroring it, and that’s what happens with a lot of HSPs. Is they that self and other line is blurred,

Rob Volpe 25:04

yes, and

Maria Ross 25:04

they can’t hold the container of their own emotions versus what is happening for the other person,

Rob Volpe 25:10

and being separate and seeing and being separate, understanding that it is separate, and then therefore, and I think this is what Paul Bloom gets into, and where he’s quote unquote against empathy is that if you are feeling all of those feelings, it can infect your decision making. Yeah, because it can impair

Maria Ross 25:30

you to focus on the one versus the many.

Rob Volpe 25:32

Yeah, and good decision making is the combination. If you think about the head as the many and the heart as the one, you want to have those things working together, so you’re you can be inspired by the story of the one, but you’re considering the impact on the many.

Maria Ross 25:49

Yes,

Rob Volpe 25:50

and I mean even going back to DEI, I think that’s part of the issue that came up. There was too much focus on the ones rather than like okay, society as a whole, and perhaps in that case, we needed to start there to bring bring up this bigger discussion,

Maria Ross 26:07

right, right,

Rob Volpe 26:08

in the workplace, in anything else that you’re doing, in the charities that you’re gonna, you know,

Maria Ross 26:13

right,

Rob Volpe 26:14

yeah, you need to to marry those two things up. I want to give money to this charity, but I can’t give $10,000 away because I don’t have that. That will harm the rest of my family. That will be the that’s putting the one over the good of the many.

Maria Ross 26:28

Right, right. And I want to get back to this thing earlier that we were talking about again, which is sort of part of this discussion: is this an emotion, or is it an interaction? Is it a decision? Is it a choice? Is it a practice? Whatever. When we talk about those aspects of empathy, and like we said, there’s the I look at it as doors you come through, and then ultimately, hopefully, your empathy ends up in an action that moves the relationship or the decision forward in some way, right? And I don’t want to say it’s like wasted if you practice empathy for somebody, and then it doesn’t lead you to action. But, like you said, contextually, that’s what it might call for. So, when we talk about the doors through which people enter empathy, right? There’s the cognitive door that my data-driven analytic types love, which is really just I can imagine what this is like for you, right? Then there’s the affective or the emotional door-that’s I can feel this with you-and that’s where there’s some disagreement on. No, that’s empathy, right? Some people are like, no, just that is empathy. But then there’s also like we were talking about earlier about when you get to that compassionate action. There’s actually a third door, and this is through me researching for this interview that I was like, “Huh, that’s kind of interesting. There’s the value store, so it’s the, and that can be a lot of things. I may not feel or fully understand it, but I know this is the right thing to do.”

Rob Volpe 27:37

Yes,

Maria Ross 27:37

or I may not feel or fully understand it, which we would be the peer pressure driven values door that we were talking about earlier. But this will make me look good, or this is what the group expects me to do.

Rob Volpe 28:03

Yes, or

Maria Ross 28:04

this is what all the cool kids are doing, right? And I want to bring up that idea of peer pressure because, as you know, we stumbled upon this interesting little nugget that Jamil Zaki shared, and we’re going to put links to all of this in the show notes. Of course, all of the places where we grab this, but there was a study done by Erik Nook and Jamil, along with colleagues, that they wanted to see whether conformity would impact the ability to generate empathy in people. Like, if you believe that you’re around others who value empathy, and this is this is very important to our society that’s gotten so polarized because it’s an echo chamber, right? Whether you choose not to be empathetic or whether you choose to be empathetic could be a function of groups you’re surrounding yourself with,

Rob Volpe 28:48

and who you’re choosing to be empathic with

Maria Ross 28:50

and who you’re choosing to be with. So they found that people were impacted by conformity in empathy. So if you we could, and it said if we convinced folks that their peers experienced lots of empathy, then our participants themselves reported more empathy and acted more kindly towards strangers, even if those strangers belonged to stigmatized out groups. And we think, and their conclusion was that’s a changing tide in our culture that can actually change the way we view empathy. So if you think about, like, if you think about the polarized groups in our society, when you have those people within those groups that are willing to reach out to the other groups, creating a role model, that actually has huge impact. And I’m thinking, you know, I can’t help but think politically about this when we look at Republican Adam Kinzinger, who spoke at the Democratic Convention, right? So he’s sort of trying to be that model within his echo chamber, within his community, of like, no, we can reach out, and almost trying to create that little bit of peer pressure that. Little bit of like, oh, there’s another way we can operate. So I just find that fascinating, and I think that’s well. Speaking for myself, that’s what I’m trying to do with my work: is elevate those spotlight and make it normalized that leaders and organizations are operating with empathy and succeeding, so that the ones who aren’t don’t become the role models; they become the outliers.

Rob Volpe 30:24

Yeah, yeah, and you know, it is empathy is something that we choose because we choose to practice. It’s it’s not just the context of the situation, but it is who we choose to practice it with. So I’m with a group of let’s imagine I’m a Republican and I’m with a let’s imagine I’m MAGA, and I’m with a group of MAGA friends. Like we’re all in a very similar value system, and we’re feeling that kind of connection and empathy and understanding each other, and I’m choosing to have empathy with them. But then through society and and messages that are coming through and the way media and and social media algorithms are constructed, I’ve made those other, you know, which could be the Adam Kinzingers, the Liz Cheney’s, the the Democrats, the Progressives, the the what is it the DSA Democratic Socialists, the far progressive. Anyway, they are very other, and I’m not going to have empathy with them because it’s just safe to be in my bubble,

Maria Ross 31:28

right,

Rob Volpe 31:29

with my people, and that feels good. And I gotta say too, and so Jess, so I bring that up partly because Jessica Tarloff, who’s a host on the Five on Fox. She’s the quote-unquote liberal, even though she’s a bit more moderate. She’s the liberal representation a few days a week with some very conservative fellow guests, and she wrote a book called “I Disagree” because she’s always disagreeing with them and then makes you know facts. But she talks about it’s empathy effectively. I was kind of like, damn! I wish I had sent her the five steps to empathy before. You know, who knew? But she also has a podcast called Raging Moderates, where she and Scott Galloway talk about current events and issues. And she is very empathetic. And one of the things that I’ve heard her talk about in her interviews promoting the book is how you know people on the left, which is where I tend to lean or exist, we’re just as, if not worse, about othering and refusing to even listen and giving

Maria Ross 32:34

100% Yeah, so

Rob Volpe 32:36

we’re not even seeing the humanity. We’re choosing not to have empathy or even trying to have empathy, and so I would challenge everyone to you know a little thought exercise to take make a list. Who are the people in your life, or the situations when you’re choosing to have empathy and choosing not to have empathy?

Maria Ross 32:56

Right.

Rob Volpe 32:57

And look, it’s a choice. I can’t say it’s right or wrong. The choice that you’re making, but have awareness of the choice that you’re making.

Maria Ross 33:05

Yes, absolutely, and that’s why

Rob Volpe 33:08

awareness gives you the power to maybe make a different choice if that is your decision.

Maria Ross 33:14

Well, kind of related to that, McLaren had a great quote in the article that I read that she wrote, and she said it’s unempathetic to exile people from empathy.

Rob Volpe 33:24

Yes,

Maria Ross 33:24

and it’s also unempathetic to grade empathy as if it’s a stable trait instead of a situation dependent and socialization dependent interactional behavior. So even us grading people on their level of empathy and accusing people of being unempathetic or overly empathetic is actually unempathetic.

Rob Volpe 33:44

Yeah, I I want to read more of her work. I love what you’re sharing about what she’s yeah.

Maria Ross 33:49

So I want to share this one other that we found really interesting that Jameel Zaki pointed out is one of his favorite studies was on the concept of gender roles and empathy, and this speaks to again this switch we can flip of intention and choice and decision in practicing empathy or not, and not just oh I’m just not empathetic, throw my hands up, I have no accountability or responsibility for understanding my fellow humans. There’s a study by researchers Thomas and Mayo that started out by demonstrating that on a standard empathy test, heterosexual men that they fared a little bit worse than women in terms of being empathetic, right? So they cite this study. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 34:32

I’ve seen that in my own research when I was doing the five steps.

Maria Ross 34:35

Yeah, and that’s probably a whole nother episode because I have different thoughts on that. But and that plays into the stereotype that women are more empathetic than men. But the study actually demonstrated that it’s not a constitutional difference between men and women. It probably represents a difference in their motivation to what we’re getting to, right? So, in a second study, the scientists conveyed. Men that women find sensitive guys attractive, and it turns out that that motivation eliminated the gender gap in empathy performance. So straight men who believed that being empathetic would make them more attractive to women became more empathic, and that was consistent with the motivation account under which people choose to approach avoiding empathy or embracing empathy based on their goals, so it’s almost something we can again. It’s a it’s a it’s a muscle we can activate. It’s a mindset we can trigger, depending on how intentional and how motivated we are to do

Rob Volpe 35:39

it. And the ultimate KPI, and I’ll be a little crass. I apologize, but like guys, you’re going to get laid if you’re empathetic. That is like such a motivator. But I and I again,

Maria Ross 35:53

what’s in it for me? But it but if it gets you there, I don’t know. Yeah, and I have a little bit of moral dilemma about. But yeah,

Rob Volpe 36:01

I wanna. I’m really curious about that because I’m like, how did they tell people in a way that’s convincing rather than, oh yeah, this researcher, you know, it’s like, yeah,

Maria Ross 36:10

yeah.

Rob Volpe 36:11

Did they slip into their DMs and go, hey, studies have found that you can be? Yeah, we would have

Maria Ross 36:16

to do more research on how they did the research, but I I find that interesting.

Rob Volpe 36:20

But this is actually, I’d love your thoughts on this because what I see in the corporations that I’m coaching and doing empathy programs with right now is like, okay, great, they’ve got the empathy, but we need to infuse it into the performance indicators.

Maria Ross 36:38

Yes,

Rob Volpe 36:39

it’s got to, you know, it’s got to come from leadership. It’s got to come from HR. And like in your review, there’s got to be some way of measuring how supportive are you of others in the group? How much empathy are you, you know, demonstrating? And you can, you know, an HR person would be great at teasing all that out.

Maria Ross 36:59

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 37:00

But that’s the same thing as what that study is showing. So when an organization says this is what we need to do, this is important, then you’re going to get people on board.

Maria Ross 37:10

100%

Rob Volpe 37:11

And that’s always been the. I think you and I have had endless conversations about. Oh my God, what’s the ROI on empathy? Right. And there are various studies that have found it’s actually quite sizable,

Maria Ross 37:21

yeah,

Rob Volpe 37:21

and in different ways, whether it’s consumers or your employees or whatever. But you, to

Maria Ross 37:25

your point, you have to operationalize it. It’s got to be infused in practices, in rituals, in habits, in how you hire, in how you evaluate someone’s performance. It there have to be supportive structures in place that reward or disincentivize the lack of empathy. Otherwise, it’s just the pretty poster on the wall.

Rob Volpe 37:50

Exactly, and performative empathy is the worst, in my opinion. Yes, worst type of empathy. People can see through it. Yeah, it’s you know I think there are plenty of examples of it happening or when empathy is being weaponized.

Maria Ross 38:09

Yes, to manipulate to

Rob Volpe 38:11

manipulate people, which is

Maria Ross 38:13

what sociopaths do, right? They’re very good at empathy because they they do they step they tap into something, and I want to. It’s interesting because I just had this conversation when I was doing a workshop recently. I want to be clear about the difference between performative empathy and practicing empathy, because what gets in folks’ way sometimes is I, I might need to start out with the script. I might need the three magic words. I’m about to sneeze. Hang on. Tell me more.

Rob Volpe 38:45

Yeah. Or

Maria Ross 38:46

your five words. Tell me more about that.

Rob Volpe 38:48

Yeah.

Maria Ross 38:48

And it’s going to come off as stiff and stilted at first. Of course it is because it’s not part of your standard operating procedure, right?

Rob Volpe 38:56

Yeah.

Maria Ross 38:57

But that’s okay. That’s not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about performative empathy because I think performative empathy is linked to your point-the weaponized empathy. I’m going to act as if versus I’m really trying. I’m act as if versus fake it till you make it. I think there is a difference in that,

Rob Volpe 39:15

definitely. And

Maria Ross 39:16

I want people to understand they shouldn’t take this as like what you’re telling me to practice these things and giving me these scripts and whatever, but then you’re saying don’t be performative. There’s a difference in intent there. I don’t know what you think about that.

Rob Volpe 39:30

No, there there absolutely is, and is the fake it till you make it. As long as you are making progress,

Maria Ross 39:38

yeah,

Rob Volpe 39:38

and you’re trying,

Maria Ross 39:40

yes,

Rob Volpe 39:41

different than the. I mean, it. The word “fake” is a little hard. It’s kind of like, you know, I always I share a list of words. You mentioned “Tell me more about that. Like, here’s some phrases you can use to show empathy. But I always tell people you’ve got to find the words that roll off your tongue naturally that sound like you, but. You can start here. Yeah, that happen, and I do. I agree with you. It is different. I think that sincerity is the key difference. You can fake it, sort of. You can let’s not call it fake it. Let’s say you can stumble your way through it, as long as there is a showing that you are trying and you’re making an effort. Yeah. Versus performative. So I’m I’m thinking about a manager that may ask, you know, how are you doing? Uh huh. And the the stumbling their way through it, they’re at least listening and carrying on the conversation. The performative is like the uh huh uh uh uh okay yeah that’s tough, and they’re like not even making the eye contact. Yeah, they’ve asked the question because somewhere they’ve been told that’s the right thing to do. They’re putting on a mask.

Maria Ross 40:48

Yes, yes,

Rob Volpe 40:49

and they’re just like, oh, I’ve seen other people do this, therefore I need to do it, but I don’t really care. I don’t think it’s really important.

Maria Ross 40:55

I think you hit the nail on the head. They don’t really care.

Rob Volpe 40:58

Yeah,

Maria Ross 40:58

I think if you’re doing it because you care and you’re trying to build connections and you’re trying to you’re trying to grow you’re trying to build that capacity for yourself, it’s because you care. Versus to me, performative is you nailed it. Is I’m just putting on a mask so people think I’m empathetic.

Rob Volpe 41:16

Exactly, and if you’re doing that, then people won’t trust you.

Maria Ross 41:21

No, it’s very short lived. It’s very short lived, and it makes

Rob Volpe 41:23

the whole thing even worse because then you are insincere and you just are the a hole that they have said that they said you were.

Maria Ross 41:33

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 41:33

I’ve actually I have seen that play out in organizations. It’s been yeah

Maria Ross 41:39

yeah. I want to talk a little bit about this idea of empathy when it’s the empathy that we want to avoid, right? Because I think that’s where the practicing empathy makes us feel a certain way, and that does evoke an emotion or or a feeling in us. Like if we are uncomfortable sitting in someone else’s grief or discomfort or pain; those are the moments that we avoid empathy because we haven’t effectively established that self and other line.

Rob Volpe 42:13

Right,

Maria Ross 42:14

right. So it doesn’t automatically. Sometimes it has to feel a little uncomfortable and a little gritty. If you’re going to engage in empathy with someone, because it’s going to evoke feelings in you that you’re not comfortable with, it doesn’t mean the feeling of empathy or whatever you want to call it is not worth pursuing.

Rob Volpe 42:36

Right, and there are things that I was talking with a friend the other day, and she had a former colleague, boss, and friend die by suicide. And she was quite close to that individual. They had a lot of he was opening up to her about some of his stuff. She’s highly empathetic, and in that moment, I was really working through how do I sit with this? How do I offer support to her without diminishing her experience? I happened, you know, it was early on a Monday morning. I was very open to the start of the week, and like, okay, I’m here for this.

Maria Ross 43:22

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 43:22

and so there are times like I think about sitting in the workplace when you’re dealing with people that are having something going on, and you may not have bandwidth or capacity to process it. And then what do you say? What do you say back to them?

Maria Ross 43:40

That’s an interesting question,

Rob Volpe 43:44

you know. And I think it’s like an ask the, and this may be going slightly off where you were taking the question initially, but because I have had people ask me, like, I can’t, I can’t, you know, that I can’t say I can’t imagine, I just can’t,

Maria Ross 44:00

yeah.

Rob Volpe 44:01

But you could say, “I can see that you’re hurting. Yes, I can

Maria Ross 44:05

see this is important to you. I can see that you’re hurting. I tell me,

Rob Volpe 44:08

tell me about you know, in the case like tell me what that person meant to you, or tell me more about them, or how are you doing with this, or thinking about it. I you know it’s sudden it’s sudden loss, and so I went into like my own experiences with that, and so yeah.

Maria Ross 44:27

I want to reference a episode I did. I’ve done a few episodes about grief and grief support, and one woman I spoke to, Ashley Jones, I believe, started a nonprofit that also is now she’s doing work around sort of helping organizations help and support employees who go through grief, and it stems from her own loss of a child born with a congenital condition that they knew was going to be fatal, and they had about two years with her, and they maximized those two years they had with her. But we got into a conversation in that discussion about the awkwardness that people have around trying to express empathy when someone’s going through something they have no idea of, right? And I was bringing up my brain injury experience and my recovery and how so much of the attempt of empathy in those difficult situations is to do what I call empathy hijacking, which is turn it make them feel less alone by trying to compare it to a situation you’ve faced.

Rob Volpe 45:34

Yeah,

Maria Ross 45:35

that is not even close, right? That’s actually the wrong thing to do, and that you know that’s not the best choice I should say, and the conversation we had was about when it gets uncomfortable when someone’s trying to support you and wants to be there for you and is bumbling their way through it. I think that people go sort of quote unquote off on empathy in those situations because they’re like, I’m just going to make it worse,

Rob Volpe 46:00

therefore I’m going to say the wrong

Maria Ross 46:01

thing. Therefore, I choose to do nothing. And the conversation that we had was about sometimes the only thing you need to do is just say, “All I can say is this is horrible, and this sucks, and this must be so tough.

Rob Volpe 46:16

Yeah.

Maria Ross 46:17

How you know I’m here, and sometimes that’s enough. We don’t have to go into problem-solving mode. We don’t even, you know, it’s like even if you just have a little bit of time, or you text someone, or you leave a voicemail message, or you drop them an email, to show up in whatever way you have the capacity to show up, but know that sometimes that’s enough. Because I think I think our tendency is if I can’t give all of it, I’m going to withhold all of

Rob Volpe 46:43

it. Yeah, yeah, and that gets some of this gets back into our initial question of is the is empathy a feeling? Is it an action? And I think it’s both. It’s both,

Maria Ross 46:54

and like we said, like you said at the beginning, it also doesn’t matter.

Rob Volpe 46:59

Yeah, and I guess you know it’s like thinking about those situations, and I want to listen to that interview with Ashley. But it’s like there’s, I guess you can give a fully empathetic response because you’ve got some personal connection. You understand your or you’re

Maria Ross 47:17

right

Rob Volpe 47:17

equipped with the words and the sentiment to support. Then there’s the empathy hijacking, which is just

Maria Ross 47:24

jumping in with your own story. Here’s what I did, and here’s how I felt, and here and you’re just decentering the narrative from them.

Rob Volpe 47:31

Exactly, exactly, and that’s the thing is, it always needs to go back to like what I was trying to do in my story was try to bring it back and ask questions because I knew the anger that I was feeling at a sudden loss and was that showing up for her? How was she processing that? And then that opened up things rather than going, “Wow, you must feel angry about such and such,

Maria Ross 47:54

right?

Rob Volpe 47:54

But yeah, don’t emotionally hijack or don’t empathetically hijack it. But sometimes you know, just say like that looks incredibly. This seems incredibly painful. I’m here for you. Let me know. I can support you.

Maria Ross 48:07

Right.

Rob Volpe 48:08

Versus doing nothing and saying nothing.

Maria Ross 48:10

Right. Right. I mean, you can even say, “I don’t know how to support you best right now.

Rob Volpe 48:15

I’ve not been through this. I’ve not been through

Maria Ross 48:17

this. Right. And it’s just an acknowledgement. So it’s just interesting. I find I know we’re kind of talking about. It seems like those random threads, but in my mind, it’s all connected because when we talk about empathy as an emotion, I don’t that doesn’t sit quite right with me. the The idea of empathy as a choice and an interaction and a decision feels better, but we also have to acknowledge that emotion is indeed very much a part of this, and it’s the it’s in whether we can share those emotions or not. That’s sort of a different question than if I can be empathetic or not. I guess is what I’m saying.

Rob Volpe 48:53

Yes, they’re they’re totally different. I mean, that being empathetic is having the ability to take the perspective or feeling the feelings, and then there’s the choice of what you do with it. Yes, it should elicit some feeling for you. Ultimately, to me, it what matters is that you are making the effort to and the choice to try to understand other people’s perspective or feel their feelings, and then do whatever is appropriate for you,

Maria Ross 49:24

right? In the

Rob Volpe 49:25

moment, in the context, in the setting to support them.

Maria Ross 49:30

Well, and in some of the research that you did, I’m looking at some of your notes. Another add-on to that is also to give people grace that they might be showing empathy in a different way. Their way of practicing empathy, I guess, might look different than your way of practicing empathy. If you are neurodivergent, if you are very stoic, if you are, you know, if you’re a hugger or a crier, right? We all have different ways of creating that connection. With empathy, and this goes back to our point earlier about not rating people’s empathy, because if they are able to create the connection, however they create the connection, then that works, right? We we all have heard stories of different ways, you know, the different love languages, for example, and the different ways that people build those bridges, and it reminds me of a story from when I was in high school, and I had just started driving to school. I think I was a junior or senior in high school, and pulling out of the the garage one day in my dad’s Camaro that I was given as the car, I was trying so hard to avoid the new car they had just bought that I didn’t look on my driver’s side, and I rammed the side of the car into the edge of the garage, and there’s like this big hole. And I have to leave for school. My mom’s asleep, so I just go upstairs and I like whisper, “Mom, mom, hey, just so you know, I hit the garage. I’ll see you later. Get back in the car. I and it still ran. I go to school, and I was making up all sorts of stories in my head about how my dad was going to react, I’m like, he’s going to disown me. Like I’m packing my bags. Like it was bad. Which friend do

Rob Volpe 51:07

I go live with? Which friend do

Maria Ross 51:08

I go live with? Right, and I had a babysitting job right after school, so I didn’t get home till about like six or 7o’clock. And I walk home, and I see just my dad hammering the track on the garage door, and one of the only times in his life he didn’t react with. He just and I just walked up behind him, and I was like, and he just goes, “Wow, you really did a job on this, and I’m like, “Yeah, sorry, but it was, and I bring this up because the reaction wasn’t one of like, “Oh, I forgive you. Tell me about what happened or whatever. But that was his way of connecting with me, and what he was capable of at that moment, because I’m sure he was seething, right? That’s what he was capable of in that moment to still create a connection with me was using humor, right? And so, all that to say, when you think about “quote unquote” judging people for how they are experiencing empathy, yes, you want you want the empathy that you practice to help the other person feel seen, heard, and valued. I’m not denying that. And if the way that you choose to do that isn’t landing, you might need to choose another way, and we also need to have grace for the different ways that people are able or have the capacity to communicate that empathy.

Rob Volpe 52:31

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, your dad actually-you know-I have no idea. Did he? Did he like figure? Well, she’s beaten herself. Did your mom report? Well, she came and whispered it to me, and whatever. I don’t

Maria Ross 52:45

know if she even remembered. Like, yeah, but

Rob Volpe 52:47

she was like, she was stone cold asleep. It was dead in dreams.

Maria Ross 52:51

But this is an example of one of those things where you know they talk about, and my parents were very tough in terms of discipline and flying off the handle and things like that, but this was an example of when people talk about positive parenting or conscious parenting. I didn’t get grounded for that because I think, to your point, they recognized they knew me well enough to know that I had already spent the day beating myself up. 10

Rob Volpe 53:14

hours beating yourself up over it. What good is this? It was an accident, you know. A little careless, but now what happened when it happened the second time?

Maria Ross 53:24

Well, those would be the speeding tickets that all occurred after that. But yeah, no, I but I I know we kind of diverged or what’s the word diverted off our topic a little bit. But my point being that that’s where I think the lines get blurry. Of is this a practice or an emotion? Because the way we process emotion actually impacts the way that we practice empathy.

Rob Volpe 53:49

I mean,

Maria Ross 53:51

that’s my TLDR, whatever they call it. And whether whether

Rob Volpe 53:54

it’s your pillars, my steps, like people need people. What I find is that people are hungry for like. I just need to know somewhere to start. Like, yeah, give people the tools.

Maria Ross 54:06

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 54:07

and then they apply it in their own setting and the way that they works for them and what they’re capable of. But most important, that you have the awareness to make the choice.

Maria Ross 54:18

Yes,

Rob Volpe 54:18

and that’s why I always talk about the importance of courage, and not run into a burning building. Courage, but small doses of courage every day to make the choice to try to understand somebody else.

Maria Ross 54:29

Boom, right there. And so we spent an hour getting to this cumulative argument of the definitions kind of don’t matter.

Rob Volpe 54:36

Yeah, basically,

Maria Ross 54:38

it’s about the actions that we’re taking and the care that we’re showing, and the like you said, the attempt to make the connection. Just do it. Do it. Just do it. We could have done that in 15 seconds, Rob. This is as always a delight to talk to you about all this, and we would love to know, folks, what you think about any of this that we talked about today. How empathy shows up for you, whether you think it’s an emotion. Or a practice, or a decision, or a choice, where it where you withhold it, and where you lean into it intentionally would be really interesting to hear. So you can find us on LinkedIn or Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn, Maria J Ross. Instagram, Red Slice Maria Rob.

Rob Volpe 55:16

Instagram is empathy underscore activist R M Volpe on LinkedIn, and we’ll link to my newsletter in the pod in the show notes, so you can find me down there.

Maria Ross 55:28

And all the things. Thank you so much. And remember, like we always close every episode. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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™

Dan Cosgrove: The ROI of Dignity – Disrupting Broken Employee Benefits for Good

Here is a stat that should make every leader uncomfortable: most companies are overpaying for employee healthcare while their employees are still underserved, afraid to use it, and one medical bill away from a crisis. My guest today is Dan Cosgrove, CEO of Better Benefits USA. Dan spent over a decade at some of the most iconic companies in the world before channeling that expertise into healthcare. His mission is simple and urgent: close the gap on care, cost, and coverage for hardworking Americans.

Dan makes the case that better employee healthcare is not just the right thing to do; it is one of the smartest business decisions a leader can make. We get into how employers can actually lower costs while improving the care their employees receive by leveraging tax codes and building plans that prioritize preventative care. We talk about why the status quo feels safe but is actually costing you, and why treating employees as individuals rather than offering cookie-cutter benefits is not just empathetic; it is what they now expect. And Dan shares the story of one nonprofit in New York that took the leap and is now saving approximately 1.2 million dollars per year, which they are reinvesting directly back into their mission.

If you have ever thought better benefits were out of reach for your organization, Dan is about to change your mind completely.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why your employee benefits package may be costing your employees and your business.
The ROI of changing the way your organization does healthcare.
Why we need to think about our healthcare system as three things: a sword, a shield, and a safety net.

“Employee health plans should not be a one size fits all. It should be customization and curation based on meeting the people where they are in life. So that’s where I talk about dignity. Understand the individual.” — Dan Cosgrove

Join Maria at The Rising Executive Women’s Retreat, Nov. 4-7. Use code “Edge500” to get $500.00 off! https://retreat.therisingmastermind.com/

Episode References:

Take the free audit at www.findbetterbenefits.org
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter
Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright
Forbes Article: Your Employees Aren’t Resisting Change. Their Brains Are

About Dan Cosgrove, CEO, Better Benefits, USA:

Dan spent over a decade at Procter and Gamble, Berkshire Hathaway, and Nike before he broke away to focus on his passion of healthcare. The first healthcare company he started broke $4m in under three years. Now his nonprofit Better Benefits USA was just recognized by P&G as one of the top ten companies run by P&G alumni. His group is all about disrupting our broken healthcare system, so hopefully a few insights he shares today can be really helpful for you as well!

Connect with Dan:

Better Benefits USA: betterbenefitsusa.org

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/myhealthandwealth

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/bestemployeebenefits

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

Courtesy of our sponsor, JLG Lawyers – Download “The Human Middle,” Your free guide to resolving workplace conflict: https://thehumanmiddle.ai/

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Dan Cosgrove 03:22

Hey, Maria, thank you so much for having me. I am very excited to have this conversation today.

Maria Ross 03:27

Yeah. So, let’s start where we always start. Tell us a little bit about your story and how you even got here, and what’s the passion for this work right now?

Dan Cosgrove 03:35

Yeah. Well, a little bit about myself. Well, one on the personal side, I’m from Boston, Massachusetts. I’m originally from Cincinnati, though. Married a beautiful woman, and we have two kids, so we live in a suburb of Boston. But I started my corporate experience at Procter and Gamble. I had a lot of great experiences there. Ended up getting sold to Berkshire Hathaway, so I went over and got some experiences working for Warren Buffett. A few years after that, I got poached by Nike. Went over was the chief of staff to the CMO. Now all of those experiences taught me a lot of great things about a lot of great companies. But I’m German in nature. My mom’s name is Ilsa, and when I graduated from Richmond University, Richmond, I set a goal that 10 years after my undergrad, I wanted to break away and do my own thing, and I wanted to do my own thing specifically in the healthcare space, so it’s amazing how things line up. Is that 10 years and one month that I took a package from Nike during COVID, and I first started in the healthcare space, first trying to solve mental health, and the reason being is when I was studying the minds of consumers at Nike, I was finding that anxiety and depression were at all time highs, and people were searching for a sense of being oneself. So that’s what I first wanted to tackle. And I also know in the mental health field that I do not have the skill set. We’ll just say to sit in a room and listen to somebody talk to me about their feelings for 60 minutes. Like my wife will be the first one to tell you that. But I can do business.

Maria Ross 04:59

Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 05:00

and so I launched a mental health company where I focused on taking care of all the back office and like the employee benefits and like pulling in potential patients, and I let my people focus on their superpower, which is actually taking care of people, because I wanted to minimize burnout because we knew that was ultimately hurting patient care. Well, as many business owners have seen when you try to really take care of your people, that involves employee benefits and healthcare and all those fun things, and

Maria Ross 05:29

the non sexy stuff, right?

Dan Cosgrove 05:30

The non sexy stuff that is just necessary in the United States, necessary to do. And I went down a rabbit hole, and I found that ultimately, for the past couple decades, we’ve been not lied to, but told a creative story as to what employee benefits should be from the insurance companies in their respective groups. So I challenged the status quo. I did something different for my own employees, and I created an employee benefits package that gives us 95% retention, and in an industry, by the way, that has only 70% retention. And I found a way that saved me as the business owner about $3,600 a year per employee, while simultaneously giving my employees better benefits. So that’s where it’s like, oh my lord, if I can figure this out, why can’t I bring this to more businesses out there because that’s what I’m trying to serve. So fortunately for me, I’ve got an awesome business partner and a great team over there, and they run things on the mental health side. So I was able to launch a new nonprofit called Better Benefits USA about four or five years ago now, where we try to challenge the current model in our healthcare industry. There’s a lot of things that are broken, but I say misaligned incentive structures are one of them. So we establish that as a nonprofit, we call it a sustainable funding model. We will only get paid if we pay if we save clients money, not how much we convince them to overpay on their various healthcare costs. So that’s a little bit about like what brings us here full circle.

Maria Ross 06:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there’s so many things in there because you started out as an employer, as a founder, trying to figure this out. How do I give my employees the best environment so they can focus on the work, right? And this is this is the thing that some leaders who don’t embrace empathetic leadership or even really understand the power of employee benefits is it’s not about coddling your employees. It’s about maximizing, you know, if we really want to be bottom line, maximizing your most important asset. Correct. How do you optimize people so that they are operating at full capacity?

Dan Cosgrove 07:33

Yeah,

Maria Ross 07:33

and not at a fraction of it.

Dan Cosgrove 07:35

Yeah.

Maria Ross 07:35

So I love that you came at this from a. This is the problem that I had. Here’s how I figured out how to solve it. Now I want to go help other companies realize there is a better way to do this because I think you’re right. I think the idea of changing how it’s always been done is scary because we’re doing it on autopilot.

Dan Cosgrove 07:54

I mean, change is scary, and that’s why we have people. So many people are stuck with the status quo because, and I saw this in in my corporate experience as well. Sticking with the status quo never got anybody fired, but it also didn’t create any meaningful change. And I think I was put on this world to or on this earth to actually disrupt an industry that’s very broken. So I want to encourage people to challenge the status quo. Don’t believe everything that you’ve been told, and actually look for yourself and do your own due diligence. And find that change can feel scary, but the scarier thing to me is becoming complacent and doing nothing. Because when you do nothing, you lose your your best resource, which is your talent at the company.

Maria Ross 08:37

Right, and then you’re constantly playing catch up, and then your talent’s going to your competitors and innovating for them if they’re being treated well, right?

Dan Cosgrove 08:44

Yep. And your profit margins inevitably shrink, and then you eventually have to shut down.

Maria Ross 08:48

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 08:49

And then now you’re really struggling. So

Maria Ross 08:51

right.

Dan Cosgrove 08:51

Yeah, we want to give people a different solution so that they don’t have to be so concerned about what the future because the future is always bleak until you get there. You just have to be willing to you know make some changes.

Maria Ross 09:00

Exactly. Exactly. So, I want to talk a little bit about this idea of the ROI of dignity because this is, you know, like when I talk about the ROI of empathetic leadership and show the skeptics the bottom line. Why does giving employees, and we’re going to get into the model specifically for listeners who are curious in a moment, but I want to talk about the macro lesson here for our listeners: Why is giving employees choice and financial protection in their healthcare? How does that yield returns? So I’m the CFO. You’re telling me I need to change the way we do healthcare, which again we’ll describe in a moment.

Dan Cosgrove 09:36

Sure,

Maria Ross 09:36

that’s scary.

Dan Cosgrove 09:38

Yeah,

Maria Ross 09:38

I don’t know if that’s going to work, but what’s the ROI of doing that?

Dan Cosgrove 09:42

I mean, better retention. Better retention is one of the biggest drivers from any company, and I mean, my group is a walking case study in of itself of a 25% increase. But look at other industries that we’ve helped; at least every single one of them seen about a 10% bump in their retention. So that, in and of itself, is a strong ROI. If you can attract and retain talent, so that you’re not having to constantly, if you’re an HR person, hire a new person, hire a new person, hire a new person. Like that is a hamster wheel that creates no success. So really, retention is the ROI there. But how do you actually, you know, talking about dignity, we’re not looking at an employee as employee number one. We’re looking at them as Maria, as Kaylee, as Lisa, as Patrick, like individual people, and oftentimes we get into these cookie cutter solutions because guess what? Benefits brokers are familiar with group cookie cutter solutions. They’re not here to actually serve the individual. And I learned this part over at Nike. Like every person in today’s world likes customization and curation. Employee health plans should not be a one size fits all. It should be customization and curation based on meeting the people where they are in life. So that’s where I talk about dignity. Understand the individual, not just the macro part of I want this group benefit plan. We’re just going to force it down somebody’s throat. That never seems to work, and that’s not a surprise that it doesn’t work.

Maria Ross 11:02

Well, and that’s empathy right there. It’s really understanding not not just here’s the solution we’re going to put on you, but what do you need from your point of view? What is the type of plan or benefit? You know, whatever it is, whether it’s healthcare or something else, what is it that you actually need to thrive? So I can make sure you’re fully engaged, correct? Engaging your brain, engaging your creative thinking when you’re on the clock, when you’re under my payroll, right? Correct. So I love that. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit because then we can get into more of this. I know people are like, “Well, I don’t. What’s this model? So talk a little bit about the model because I find it interesting that you are a nonprofit. Yeah, and that’s part of this. So, explain a little bit about when you talk about custom medical benefits solutions for employees. What does it look like, and how how are you even able to do this, and not only provide empathetic benefits to employees, but save the company money? That’s the part that I’m like, wow, this is the ultimate both and opportunity. That’s why I had to have you on the show. But so tell us about the model.

Dan Cosgrove 12:05

Yeah. So I’ll take a step back. If people have never read like Rich Dad Poor Dad, it’s a great book. Well, the CPA for Rich Dad Poor Dad, his name is Tom Wilwright, so he’s like a tax attorney. He wrote, and this is just me nerding out on the tax code. He wrote a book called Tax Free Will Strategy. Now, within like those 500 pages of wonderful tax stuff, there was a line that said the majority of people think taxes are written against them because they think about that day in April. Well, in fact, 95% of the tax code is written in your favor. Most people just don’t know where to look, and so like working off of that hypothesis of okay, if 95% of the tax code is actually written in our favor, what needs to be true in order to make these things basically subsidized by Uncle Sam and not subsidized by me as the employer? So it’s just again, you just have to change the lens that you’re looking at the problem from, and you can find some real meaningful solutions. So oftentimes we’re going to do a phase one and a phase two approach. Phase one is truthfully like tax codes out there that we can take advantage of to give employees better benefits while simultaneously saving the employer money and saving the employee money. Once we do that, we then open ourselves up into phase two, which could very well be helping people get access to health insurance and healthcare at a fraction of the cost. So let’s hit a few tax codes that I think people might find really interesting. For one, we have a lot. Careful, I know tax codes. Very interesting stuff.

Maria Ross 13:28

Tell me more, Dan.

Dan Cosgrove 13:30

But you could do like say you have a lot of remote employees. Immediately, you should be giving them basically you cover their internet and like cable expenses and energy expenses or electric expenses because you can give them $1 for dollar out of a non-taxable basis. So, like I can give every employee basically 100 bucks a month to cover their internet and energy, and that can be paid $100 to them instead of losing 30% of that in taxes. So that’s a great way to give people a meaningful bump in pay. All right, so let’s just look at various tax codes, and I’ll I’ll rattle off a few of them fast, and I’ll do a deeper dive into one that I think is really going to be interesting for people in terms of healthcare. One, if you have remote employees, just think about giving them utility or energy stipends because those can be done tax free. Or if you have employees that have young kids, give them the dependent care assistance programs because you can put about $7,500 a year tax free to if you have employees with student loans which we know there’s a lot of those out there you can give them about $5,200 a year tax free so those are just some tax codes but the biggest one that I think is in unlocking where our conversation is going to be centered on today is how do we make healthcare more affordable in America and that is hidden under Section 125, no different than HSAs and FSAs. There’s an optimized Section 125 people can be doing, and it’s focused on preventative healthcare, helping people stop a healthcare condition before it starts.

Maria Ross 14:53

Yeah, because

Dan Cosgrove 14:54

unfortunately, like the data out there is pretty overwhelming. We spend four and a half trillion dollars a year on chronic care conditions. Alone in America,

Maria Ross 15:00

right? We’re horrible at preventative.

Dan Cosgrove 15:02

We’re not good at

Maria Ross 15:03

like well, and I wouldn’t even say we’re good at dealing with it when crisis hits either. But yeah, a lot of our problems could be eased if we had plans that talked. You know, and some of it is nonsensical. You’re like, especially you know, as a woman in the healthcare system, I’m like, you’re not going to cover this, but if this goes wrong, do you know how much more money you’re going to have to spend on me if I don’t get this checked once a year or twice a year or whatever

Dan Cosgrove 15:30

it is?

Maria Ross 15:30

So I love that this poor solution is very empathetic in that it’s giving people that opportunity to prevent the catastrophic. And you know we haven’t even talked about how much stress and anxiety is caused to employees because of medical debt.

Dan Cosgrove 15:45

Correct.

Maria Ross 15:46

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 15:46

Correct.

Maria Ross 15:47

So yeah. So sorry. Go ahead. I just no yes preach go.

Dan Cosgrove 15:50

Well, talking talking about medical debt, you have a million Americans every year file for personal bankruptcy with out of control healthcare expenses.

Maria Ross 15:56

Absolutely.

Dan Cosgrove 15:57

And that’s probably a lower number because like I’m a family of four. If I file for bankruptcy, it’s not just Dan impacted. It’s my wife and kids too.

Maria Ross 16:04

Right, right.

Dan Cosgrove 16:06

So we need to give people proper safety nets because I personally believe we live in the greatest country in the world, but our healthcare systems let us down, and not every American deserves access to healthcare. We just need to find a way to make it more affordable for them. Yeah, and so that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Is we’re trying to use the tax codes in such a way to make it a financially smart investment for both employees and employers to actually consider their healthcare costs in a more serious fashion.

Maria Ross 16:30

Absolutely. Okay, so talk a little bit about the preventive care component because that’s one that is often missing in the cost cutting measure.

Dan Cosgrove 16:37

Yeah. For sure.

Maria Ross 16:38

Oh, this plan is cheaper, but it doesn’t include any preventive care for people.

Dan Cosgrove 16:42

Yeah, for sure. So let’s think about our healthcare system in three things. I’m going to give you a sword, a shield, and a safety net.

Maria Ross 16:48

Okay.

Dan Cosgrove 16:49

So a shield is going to be your traditional health insurance. We’re going to save that. We’re going to table that for later. So now let’s talk about a sword and a safety net. The sword is going to be focused on preventative healthcare. Why are we doing that? I would say consider the Netflix model. We unfortunately, right now in America, we make money off of people being sick or injured. It’s a fee-based system in our healthcare system, which is truthfully screwed up. So we’re trying to change that model. We want to do value-based care. So that means just like with Netflix, whether you watch one show on Netflix or 100 shows on Netflix each month, you’re still paying the same amount. Same thing with our healthcare. Whether you see one doctor or 100 doctors, you’re still going to pay the same amount each month. So by doing that, now when that you know like that little cough is just a cough, you can still contact a doctor. You know just by having your phone right there. So instead of you know trying to battle through that cough, because unfortunately sometimes when we battle through that, that turns into something more severe. It could be pneumonia. It could be something else that then keeps me out of work longer, or worse yet, turns into a major medical situation, which I’m no longer returning to the workforce.

Maria Ross 17:49

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 17:50

So that’s what we’re trying to do: is give every employee plus their spouse, kids up to the age of 26, basically free access to healthcare. That’s our goal there, and we’re all doing that just utilizing the tax codes in their favor.

Maria Ross 18:01

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So, and then talk a little bit about phase two.

Dan Cosgrove 18:06

Yeah, yeah. So once you do phase one, again, section 125 is just like an HSA. What does that mean? You’re it’s a pre tax deduction. So when you’re reducing your taxable income, it could actually unlock the ability for you to qualify for subsidized health insurance, and we know unfortunately the subsidy cliff kicked back into place in 2026. So you need to actually help people get below the subsidy cliff to actually qualify for subsidies. But like in Massachusetts, I’ll just use as an example because that’s where I live. If you are just $1 below the subsidy cliff, you qualify for basically a $350 a month subsidy for your health insurance. If you are $1 above it, you’re paying full price at like 700 bucks a month.

Maria Ross 18:45

Wow!

Dan Cosgrove 18:46

And that is the difference between giving somebody affordable access to healthcare and not. So with phase one, because we’re able to reduce people’s taxable income via all those things that I kind of rattled off earlier. Well, if you’re able to reduce somebody’s taxable income by like $20,000, which truthfully you can. Yeah, you can legally do that. You’ve just found a way to take them from paying 500 bucks a month on their health insurance to sometimes free,

Maria Ross 19:10

right?

Dan Cosgrove 19:10

And that’s all again going to be subsidized by the government and their various tax incentives,

Maria Ross 19:15

right? And for anyone listening, we can have a whole other conversation on if it’s fair to have taxpayers subsidizing for employers, but we’re talking about the majority of people in this country who the reality is they get their health care through their employer. So if we can make that, if we can at least fix one part of the system, we can tackle the rest, right? So I want to talk a little bit about this idea of doing right by your employees, right? Being an empathetic leader and saying, “Oh, this does matter. I’m not just going to burn, churn, and burn through people because I’ve got not only the costs of hiring and recruiting, but training and the loss of institutional knowledge and all the things that come with retention issues. Right? Yeah. So. What has been the biggest obstacle that you hear from companies to actually change to a way that seems to, on this, you know, we haven’t dug in, but it seems to, on the surface, benefit both the employer and the employee? Because I’ll tell you why I’m asking it this way. Because I’m always fascinated by the inability to embrace both and leadership. I talk about that all the time. That we’re stuck in these binary models of it’s either I save money or I do right by my employees.

Dan Cosgrove 20:29

Correct.

Maria Ross 20:30

And you’re presenting a model that is the epitome of both and. Correct. So where’s the objection? Because it

Dan Cosgrove 20:36

feels scary. Different feels scary. Like, and it’s just, and again, I I challenge people. I want to walk them through the compliance piece, and they’re just like, “How is this legal? You know, I’m just like, I’ll show you in the tax code where it is written. But for every person that says it’s legal to do it, you’re going to see plenty of opposition that says, “Nope, it should be taxable. Looking like that, I could go on agnosium of all the various things that the IRS puts out in memos and opinion pieces, but it feels scary. So most people aren’t going to do anything,

Maria Ross 21:05

right?

Dan Cosgrove 21:05

What I try to help them understand is, I believe right now we are in the third evolution of employee benefits. The first one was back in basically the late 70s, early 80s, where tax brackets were really high. So what was created? This thing called the 401k.

Maria Ross 21:21

Yep,

Dan Cosgrove 21:22

and it was a great vehicle for really rich people to put away $50,000 a year at that point in time, which is like $250,000 a year in today’s terms. Right, so they could put $50,000 a year tax free.

Maria Ross 21:33

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 21:33

Well, guess what? A few years later, people start figuring out. It’s like, oh man, I could put this in my employer plan because we know pensions were starting to go away.

Maria Ross 21:40

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 21:41

And so for several years, I think there’s like five or six years. There’s just a battle between these employers putting in place and the IRS saying, no, no, no, all these things need to be taxable income. They need to be taxable income. Guess what? It then became codified into law into the mid late ’80s, and now we know the 401k as it is today, one of the best retirement vehicles for employees out there.

Maria Ross 21:59

And we hardly have companies offering pensions now because of it? Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 22:02

correct. So, so like it takes time for people to adopt there. Fast forward another 20 years. There’s this thing called the HSA that came out in the early 2000s, and it was called the greatest thing ever outside of a 401k because it had triple tax advantages. Well, people fought back against this so hard, they fought back for a good five years. Then 2008 occurred. People are living paycheck to paycheck. The Affordable Care Act had some impact on, let’s just say, healthcare costs. So what did employers have to do? They had to move to high deductible plans. The HSA became the greatest thing since you know sliced bread.

Maria Ross 22:38

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 22:39

So it took 10 years from the HSA’s creation to basically being recognized as like you should be using this vehicle as the 401k on steroids.

Maria Ross 22:46

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 22:47

So fast forward another 20 years, here we are again. We’re talking about another employee benefit under another tax code, and people are pushing back against it because you also have to look at who’s entrenched, who’s getting money right now.

Maria Ross 22:57

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 22:58

It’s a complicated and purposely confusing by design healthcare system. Yes, the old guard doesn’t want people saving money on their healthcare costs.

Maria Ross 23:05

No,

Dan Cosgrove 23:05

they need costs to go up because it’s written into law. Like medical loss ratios, they can only take about a 15% profit margin on the cost of medical loss ratios. So that’s why people’s care isn’t going down.

Maria Ross 23:20

Right,

Dan Cosgrove 23:20

they need to grow the pie larger, so their 15% becomes a bigger number.

Maria Ross 23:24

Yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 23:24

So yeah, the old guard is going to fight this tooth and nail. But I just tell people like, look at what’s actually written, and that’s where you’re going to find the truth. Don’t listen to somebody that might have a misaligned incentive structure that’s going to get, you know, a 5% commission on how much your insurance costs. Right.

Maria Ross 23:40

Right. Well, and what I love about this is it dovetails so well into this idea of, as I said earlier, like operationalizing care for your employees, making it real through this kind of thing, and this idea of now that you know this is out there. I talk about this when I present data around empathetic leadership and all the ROI it brings, you can cite all the other horrible leaders or companies with horrible cultures who are successful that you want. Of course, they’re still going to exist, but now you know, so you can do better. Correct. If now you know that this is another way to operate and another way to help your employees, yeah. Now that’s on you. Yeah. You know, it’s not. Oh, it’s the system. I’m stuck in it. I have to do it this way. Now you have to make a conscious choice as a leader of a company, as a head of HR, to say no. We’re going to do this because we know it’s it’s good for us and it’s good for our employees at the same time. So it’s very similar in that there’s so many of these things that even though it’s change, because our brains react to change the same way, whether it’s good change or bad change. By the way, I did an article for Forbes on that. I’ll link to it in the show notes. But this idea of well, now you know, so there’s no excuse to say, oh, I’m a victim of the system. Sorry, we can’t do right by our employees because this is the way everybody does it

Dan Cosgrove 25:00

correct

Maria Ross 25:01

Now you’re making a choice that there’s another way to do this.

Dan Cosgrove 25:04

You nailed it. But when you think about every innovation and disruption, you have that adoption curve, right? We’re still in that early adopter phase. Yeah, you have to have people that you know have the courage, truthfully, to consider something new because they’re the ones that are going to be setting a new benchmark. And like again, I did it first in the mental health field, and yeah, I will. I’ll brag about it. 95% retention. We were 1% off of being one of Inc. best workplaces. Like that’s really hard to do when you’re competing with like the Googles and the tech companies of the world that give away like free cars and free lunch every damn day. Right.

Maria Ross 25:34

Right.

Dan Cosgrove 25:35

So I’m really proud about what we’ve done there, and my goal, truthy, is to force my competition to do the same thing,

Maria Ross 25:41

yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 25:42

Like let’s just raise the bar collectively together across all industries.

Maria Ross 25:46

Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 25:46

I truthfully want to make the companies that are not willing to take care of their people. I want to make them obsolete because they should be taking care of their people. And if you’re not, if you’re just focused on how much is in it for me, yeah, that’s not a great way to live this life. No. So it’s all about giving back and providing real, meaningful value to to humans.

Maria Ross 26:05

Is that why it’s a nonprofit model?

Dan Cosgrove 26:07

The nonprofit model is for a few reasons.

Maria Ross 26:09

Okay,

Dan Cosgrove 26:10

one, we want to get paid just based on how much we save clients money. You’re a little bit more restricted if you’re like a benefits broker for profit model. Like people can actually say like, oh, you have to do this. Evidence by Gallagher. Like, if you look at them since over the last 10 years, I think they’re up 917% in the stock market price. So again, their value is just significantly higher because people dictate it. The other reason of being a nonprofit, when you look, unfortunately, with a lot of healthcare innovations, the little guys get in there, they start disrupting the big guys, and what occurs, they get acquired,

Maria Ross 26:42

yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 26:42

and then that new disruptive technology or idea or service gets pretty much killed and put on the top front end, yeah, yeah. So as a nonprofit, it doesn’t say we can’t be acquired; just makes it a lot harder,

Maria Ross 26:55

yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 26:56

So we’re we’re purposely trying to make it difficult. Like we like that insurance companies don’t like it.

Maria Ross 27:02

Yeah, yeah.

Dan Cosgrove 27:02

It’s a that’s a badge of honor for us, but that’s kind of why we’re a nonprofit.

Maria Ross 27:06

Oh, I love that. I love that. So, what you know, as we kind of wrap up,

Dan Cosgrove 27:10

yeah,

Maria Ross 27:11

what is your thought for leaders that are listening? Well, actually, before we wrap up, I would love to hear an example of one of your clients and sort of the before and after.

Dan Cosgrove 27:20

Oh man,

Maria Ross 27:21

and how that impacted their employee retention, morale, productivity, all those things.

Dan Cosgrove 27:27

Yeah, gosh. All right, let me let me think of a good one. All right, this is I like this one. So we’re actually working with another nonprofit in New York. I’ll just leave it at that part.

Maria Ross 27:36

Uh huh.

Dan Cosgrove 27:37

And a lot of these people are not earning a great living, maybe 50, 60k a year, which we know in New York is expensive. Yeah, exactly. So

Maria Ross 27:47

yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 27:47

we put in place, of course, the preventative healthcare program. That was phase one, and they had about like 200 or so employees. So we put in place the preventative healthcare program first, where again, with how we structure it with the tax code, we can actually give most employees about a two to 4% net pay increase. Give them our entire family access to basically virtual healthcare, prescription coverage, access to like specialty drugs, like you know the weight loss drugs that are you know crazed right now. We don’t think people should ever be paying 1000 bucks a month for that. They should be paying closer to like 250 a month is really the real price. So we got this preventative healthcare program put in place for the employees. Well, again, since we were able to reduce their taxable income, a lot of these people that were earning 60,000 a year, well, on paper their gross or modified adjusted gross income, which is aka taxable income, it fell from 60 down to 45,000. Well, what did that then do? We then went and looked at their health insurance costs, and we said, “Okay, again, in in New York, health insurance is pretty expensive, so the individual plan was like 1200 or 1500 bucks a month for like not a very good plan.

Maria Ross 28:53

Uh huh.

Dan Cosgrove 28:54

And the employer was paying like 70% of it. The employee was paying 30%

Maria Ross 28:58

Right. Nobody wins. Nobody

Dan Cosgrove 28:59

wins. Nobody wins at all, so we looked at it, and this is again where we we really like to take a contrarian perspective.

Maria Ross 29:06

Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 29:06

we looked at it like, okay, you just reduce that person’s taxable income. Let’s see what they would qualify if we went to the individual marketplace. Now, again, we took them to the individual marketplace because most brokers don’t take them there because they don’t get paid by the insurance companies when you do that. So we’re just like again, we don’t want to get paid by them, so we looked at it. And in New York, if you’re earning about $45,000 a year of taxable income, you get free health insurance from the state. Free, $0 deductible, $0 premium. I think is like a $2,200 maximum out of pocket.

Maria Ross 29:34

Uh huh.

Dan Cosgrove 29:35

So we went from these employees paying what is that? If it’s 1200 bucks a month, they’re paying like 360 or 400 out of pocket, and the employer is paying 800 to paying $0. So we essentially save the the employer 1000 bucks a month. We save the employee their 300 bucks a month. Now, again, this takes it one step further because they did have 200 employees. They were larger than the applicable large organization. Which is over 50 for an employer. Legally speaking, you have to offer health insurance. If not, you get hit with a tax penalty A. Sometimes a tax penalty B. Well, we looked at and we’re just like, wait a second. Tax penalty B is basically $6,000 a year for every employee that gets a subsidy. You’re paying $12,000 a year for every employee to have crappy health insurance. All right, go ahead. Get the tax penalty. Take the tax penalty. Like pay the $6,000 tax penalty three years down the road. Whenever they do finally come back and ask for it, you just save $6,000 a year per employee. You saved your employees basically $3,600 a year on health insurance premiums, and you just gave them free access to health care instead of overpaying on a absolutely horrible employer plan. And guess what? The only person that pushed back against it was the benefits broker because they get paid on that. So, like, right, that’s just like one example of groups. Like, there are so many creative things you can do out there, but we try to take the emotion out of healthcare decisions because truly, it is an emotional based thing.

Maria Ross 30:56

100% Yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 30:58

we try to apply math and logic, right? And sometimes people like it. Sometimes people are just like, “Nope, no way in hell am I touching this. Because again, different feels scary, right? Nobody’s been fired forever changing the status quo,

Maria Ross 31:09

right? Well, and I think the other thing that you’re changing is, like I said, the amount of care and the quality of what they’re able to access, which again takes a huge burden off your employees from stress, from anxiety, from fear, and now they can focus on their work.

Dan Cosgrove 31:26

100% right? 100% And think about think about this also for that nonprofit. If you just save $6,000 a year after that tax penalty per employee, well, all right. So 200 employees. Help me with my math here. Six. You’re talking the wrong woman, 200,

Maria Ross 31:41

120,000, 100.

Dan Cosgrove 31:43

No, it’s more than that. That might be 1.2 million. 1.2

Maria Ross 31:46

million, maybe.

Dan Cosgrove 31:46

Yeah. So if we do that, I’m just checking my math here too, because yeah,

Dan Cosgrove 31:50

beauty of calculators. Yeah, 1.2 million. Yeah. So imagine you, if you’re that executive director, you just say $1.2 million. It’s going to be a lot easier to fundraise when you’re asking charitable donors not for extra money to cover overhead expenses that you can’t control, because you actually did control that overhead expense, and that 1.2 million can actually be reallocated to actually helping serve the community that your nonprofit was created for. So, like, I love trying to find these solutions for groups because, again, most people are not creating a business to say, “Hey, how much can I pay the insurance companies? That’s typically not why they created their their companies, and so now now we just want to help them avoid the middleman and yeah, actually give their employees more meaningful benefits.

Maria Ross 32:34

Well, and I think the takeaway lesson here is that there’s so many opportunities you have to take better care of your employees within the policies within the the systems that you’re engaging in, and this is where I always talk about operationalizing empathy. It’s not just a feel good thing. It’s how are we taking care of people through our systems, our policies, our decisions that we’re making, so that they know that we have their back.

Dan Cosgrove 33:03

Yep.

Maria Ross 33:03

And oh, by the way, if it benefits us too, great. Yeah. Yeah. So, what would be sort of a parting thought you have for listeners right now, whether they’re an HR leader or a CEO? Yeah. Who are like, this sounds intriguing, but like, what would be the biggest mindset shift you would want people to have around doing more to do right by their employees?

Dan Cosgrove 33:28

Yeah, I would say like if you’re a CEO or CFO listing right now, it starts at the top. It starts with you. All too often, these healthcare decisions get you know CEOs and CFOs and CEOs all just think like, well, this isn’t sexy, so I’m just going to send this over to HR and deal with it. And then HR, I love HR to death, but HR, our strong suit is not math. And so commonly in HR, we’re just like, oh, this sounds kind of crazy. Let me send it to my benefits broker for perspective. Well, that you’re sending information to the same. It’s a conflict of interest. Yeah, yeah. So, so really, the only way that you’re going to create change is if if it starts at the top and they are bought in. They’re the ones in those initial meetings having those conversations, saying like, “I truthfully want to solve for this. It’s not a, “Oh, I want to solve for this, but I really don’t want to spend the time on it. Because if you’re not actually going to spend the time, you’re not going to create more meaningful change. So I just say, starts at the top, buy in, be committed to it. Actually, mean what you say instead of just you know putting words out there.

Maria Ross 34:26

Thank you so much. This has been so fascinating to hear and learn about. And any way that we can amplify solutions like this to organizations and HR professionals and CEOs and founders, I want to use this platform to help them take better care of their employees. So, Dan, thank you so much for coming on today. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s exercising, hopefully, while they’re working out, while they’re listening to us, taking care of themselves, where’s the best place they can find out more about this?

Dan Cosgrove 34:56

Yeah, Emory, again, thank you for having us on the show. We really. And hopefully we can at least impact one company and all their employees just from this show. So the best place to find us is BetterBenefitsUSA.org. That’s our main page. They can play around in there, get in contact with our team. If they actually wanted to do an audit of their benefits without ever having to talk to our team, and they have like 10 minutes of the time, we have a sister site called FindBetterBenefits.org. Like just go there, put in. I think there’s like 12 questions. Just fill it out, and then somebody from our team will quickly get in contact with them to say like, yeah, you would probably save 1000 bucks here per employee, or oh no, you’d save about 5000 bucks a year per employee.

Maria Ross 35:34

Yeah, just do some of the math, and I think we have a special URL for our listeners.

Dan Cosgrove 35:40

It’d be findbetterbenefits.org is the best place to go for their. We’ve created that landing page for them to do that that little audit of their own employee benefits.

Maria Ross 35:48

Great, thank you so much for that, and thanks for reaching out and for sharing this with us. This is great, love it.

Dan Cosgrove 35:55

Thanks so much, Maria,

Maria Ross 35:56

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 and review and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes 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™

Rebecca Dhrimaj: How to Lead Teams Through Change with Empathy

Most leaders are promoted because they’re excellent at strategy, operations, or delivering results. But very few are ever taught how to lead people or give feedback. And that’s where things fall apart.

Rebecca Dhrimaj is on a mission to redefine what leadership looks like in the C-suite and beyond. As a Chief Empathy Officer of The Empathy Collective, Rebecca empowers leaders to coach teams and give honest feedback through change, one conversation at a time.

Rebecca shares how she “stumbled into” her business model through lived experience and hard-earned insight. She walks us through a powerful case study of her work with a large customer excellence team, where leadership training directly mapped to measurable improvements in employee engagement and change readiness scores. This isn’t theory—it’s tangible impact.

We also talk about why leaders often rise because of their technical and business acumen, but are rarely equipped with the skills to navigate human emotion. Rebecca explains why starting with a WHY of genuine care and understanding your team’s collective strengths can transform even the most disruptive change into momentum instead of burnout.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Rebecca’s Three Phases of Change Readiness Model
Creating more effective one-on-ones that include proactive career conversations
Why you have to do the inner work as a leader to best lift your team and organization
How to build honest two-way feedback with your team

“You don’t necessarily have to always be on the lookout for things, but if you’re asking the right questions in your one-on-ones with your people, floodgates will open, and they will talk, and they will share.” — Rebecca Dhrimaj

Episode References:

Rebecca’s Action Learning Coaching Guide: https://bit.ly/4rG0LPm
The Middle Matters: A Toolkit for Middle Managers by Jeff Sigal
Article in Change Conversations newsletter referencing Meet Your Inner Team cards

The Empathy Edge podcast:

About Rebecca Dhrimaj, Chief Empathy Officer, The Empathy Collective:

As Chief Empathy Officer, Rebecca’s mission is to redefine the role of the C-Suite by empowering leaders to coach people through change, one conversation at a time. After leading change management for an organizational restructuring, she noticed there was a lack of tools available to leaders dealing with the human side of change: the emotions, the fear, the resistance. She discovered that when leaders start with a WHY of caring and an intimate understanding of their team’s collective strengths, any change is possible. When she is not preparing teams for change, she laces up her running shoes and tunes into an audiobook. Fun fact: she has lived in the US, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France and always has a secret stash of Belgian chocolate.

Connect with Rebecca:

The Empathy Collective and Resilient Change Leader™ course: theempathycollective.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebeccadhrimaj

Podcast – Return on Empathy: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/return-on-empathy/id1750060452

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

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. Most leaders are promoted because they’re excellent at strategy, operations, or delivering results, but very few are ever taught how to lead people through the messy emotional reality of change, and that’s where things fall apart. Rebecca Dreamai is on a mission to redefine what leadership looks like in the C-suite and beyond. As a chief empathy officer of the Empathy Collective, Rebecca empowers leaders to coach teams through change, one conversation at a time. Rebecca also hosts a podcast called Return on Empathy. After leading change management during a major organizational restructuring, Rebecca noticed something alarming. There were countless tools for timelines, systems, and processes, but almost nothing for the human side of change-the fear, the resistance, the uncertainty, the quiet disengagement that tanks morale and performance. So she built what she wished she’d had. In this conversation, Rebecca shares how she stumbled into her business model through lived experience and hard-earned insight. We unpack her three phases of change readiness model and why it differs from traditional change management approaches that focus on logistics instead of psychology. And this experience is now available as an online program called Resilient Change Leader, designed to give mid-level and senior leaders a practical toolkit to measure impact, strengthen team resilience, and lead change with confidence and empathy. She walks us through a powerful case study of her work with a large customer excellence team, where leadership training directly mapped to measurable improvements in employee engagement and change readiness scores. This isn’t theory, folks. It’s tangible impact. We also talk about why leaders often rise because of their technical and business acumen, but are rarely equipped with the skills to navigate human emotion. Rebecca explains why starting with a why of genuine care and understanding your team’s collective strengths can transform even the most disruptive change into momentum instead of burnout. If change is constant, and it is, then learning how to lead through it is no longer optional. So many gems. Take a listen. Hello, Rebecca. Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast. I am so excited to have you here as a fellow empathy advocate and professional, helping organizations and leaders embrace empathy. You’ve got a really unique model around combining the work you do with change management, which is near and dear to my heart, as I mentioned earlier, my first job out of college was with a management consulting firm in the change management group. So, we’ve talked a lot on this show about the role of empathy to navigate tumultuous change, and I’m sure you’ve seen that in your work. So, welcome to the podcast.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 03:42

Thank you so much, Maria. I’m super excited to be here, especially since I’m I’m a fan of yours. I’ve read both of your books. You can probably see them sitting on my shelf right behind me.

Maria Ross 03:54

Thank you.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 03:55

So you know, it’s always good to. It feels like homecoming, right? When you you’re sitting across from someone at the table who just understands what it means to live and breathe empathy, and so very very happy to be here.

Maria Ross 04:08

I love that, and that’s the joy. I know you have a podcast too. That’s the joy of this podcast is talking to people who come at it from their own angle and the different facets of empathetic leadership and empathetic culture. So it’s always fun for me because, selfishly, I get to learn something new from every guest I have. So, Rebecca, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this work, and sort of how you stumbled upon your business model. It’s such a great story.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 04:35

Well, thank you, Maria. I actually, unlike you, you came out of college and went straight into management consulting, I ended up in change management kind of accidentally towards the end of my corporate career. But I’ve always, I say, the common thread throughout my career. I’ve, you know, I’ve spent time in marketing, communications, strategy roles. The common thread throughout is I’ve I’ve always been interested in this in the psychology. Behind my work, how other people function. So not just the technical aspect of my work, but the human side of work. In fact, I recall a time when I was in at university and I was studying abroad in in France, and it was right around the time when the European Constitution was being built and there was a ratification process, and France and the Netherlands basically declined. They were like, “We don’t want to be a part of this. And I just I wanted to understand why, why not create a United States of Europe, and so I started researching, you know, kind of the political backdrop and what what kind of fueled that rejection of of a European constitution, and in the end, it stemmed from a lot of what we’re seeing today in in American society with with black and brown people to say it was the same in Europe as Turkish and Moroccans, and they you know they they were afraid of you know these others the others other people who don’t look like us coming in, taking our jobs. You know, just sounds like a familiar story, right?

Maria Ross 06:07

Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 06:07

So it’s that fear-driven mentality that humans take when they feel uncomfortable or they’re they see people who are different from them. So that stemmed from you know that interest stemmed from a very young age, and that kind of propelled me into marketing only because marketing seemed like the only business discipline that had any kind of human psychology commitment.

Maria Ross 06:27

Same, same. I majored in marketing in college, and I think that’s a common thread among many marketers. That was actually what got me on the empathy train. Was this idea of realizing that empathy was the superpower of marketing, being able to connect and engage with people as human beings, not as numbers, not as subscribers, not as dollar signs. But what do people really want? What do they need? How do they feel? How do they see themselves? So, just like you, I remember toying with majoring in either psychology or marketing when I was in college because I was so fascinated. Exactly the same the same path. That’s so funny.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 07:06

It is interesting though, because you know I was I was looking at the different disciplines in business school. It’s like strategy, supply chain, finance. One of that you don’t you don’t think oh humans yeah

Maria Ross 07:17

exactly exactly,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 07:19

but that’s I mean, that kind of carried me along my journey because what I started to realize, especially when I got to that pivotal moment where I was asked to lead change management for an executive team that was undergoing a major restructuring of about 3000 employees, that’s when it hit me. That’s when I saw my eyes were open to all those leaders who had gotten their MBAs, gone through business school, and studied finance or strategy or whatever it was, they learned how to technically run a business, but no one taught them how to deal with people, right? Coach people through change, or just just lead people in general, let alone through a crisis or a difficult situation, and that’s when that’s when I realized, oh, we businesses, or at least from the very beginning when we go through business school, we’re not given these tools,

Maria Ross 08:17

absolutely not that

Rebecca Dhrimaj 08:18

you talk about on your podcast, and so I think this is why our podcasts exist. Yes, because we’re trying to reacquaint humans with the humanness that exists in business, because we’ve somehow created this divide.

Maria Ross 08:34

Exactly. Well, and with AI, it’s just making more of a stark contrast of the emotional intelligence and human skills that are missing in leadership, because I always like to say that leaders who are not good at the people side of it, who have been hiding behind the tasks and the technical acumen, they’re going to have no place to hide anymore because it’s it’s the people skills that are going to be the competitive differentiator. It’s being able to bring people along in massive change, I’ve written a few articles for my Forbes column about the role of empathy in change management. So that’s why I’m really eager to have this conversation with you today. Talk about this change readiness model that you have, because I think you come at the empathy work again from a very unique angle, from more of a business strategy change management angle, how did you discover slash stumble upon figure out this three phase model? And can you talk us through it and explain why each step is so important?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 09:37

Yeah, I’m happy to do that. And in fact, this whole model was built from my experience leading change management and trying to fill the gap, the toolkit that did not exist when I was leading change management that I wished I had had as the change management lead.

Maria Ross 09:52

Yes,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 09:53

and I will say, I mean, just just to backtrack a little bit to that story of being brought onto the leadership team to drive. Change the model that that we built in our consulting firm was actually built from what I saw as learning moments or or mistakes that I made when I was leading change management. I would say that the first learning moment for me was I within a month of leading change management, I saw this incredible empathy deficit between the senior leaders and the employees who are responsible for driving the change, and what I did was I tried to fill that gap myself. So I was literally, you know, I was talking to individuals. I had my calendar was full of meetings, one-on-one meetings with people, especially change agents who had been tasked with really inspiring their team to drive the change, and so I was, as my sister, who’s a mental health counselor, as my sister says, I was literally sitting in the suck with people on a daily basis,

Maria Ross 10:51

yes,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 10:51

listening to their complaints and their concerns, and and so that was to me. I mean, that that that was too much because I was over-indexing on empathy, and I was causing my own burnout, and that led to the second mistake I made, which was because I was sitting in the suck with all the employees on a very regular basis. When I would come back to the leadership table, I wouldn’t say I villainized them, but I almost sided with the employees because I could feel the pain that they were going through, and I didn’t see the empathy coming from the leaders, and so I would challenge their decisions at the leadership table. And what I should have done was I should have put myself in their shoes a little bit more, try to understand that they were under as much pressure and fear as everyone else. In fact, I remember one of the the senior leaders in a one-on-one conversation with me, he was telling me before I was even asked to lead change management. He said, “These were his words: the CEO’s way of leading is effing savage. And you know, I didn’t want to drop the f bomb on this podcast. It’s not really my style. I don’t. You have to censor it, but those were his words. And I think what I could have done is is really thought about okay, what is it like to sit in a room with this CEO who’s literally yelling at these leaders,

Maria Ross 12:08

yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 12:09

telling them to make the you got to make the numbers. Oh, by the way, here’s your quota. Here’s the number of people you need to cut from your your team by the end of this quarter, so we can make our numbers. So if that is the mandate that you’re getting from your leader, of course you’re going to respond in a in a certain way. You don’t have the capacity to show empathy for your your people. You’re just trying to survive.

Maria Ross 12:32

Yeah.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 12:33

So anyway, so that that’s kind of that’s the journey I went through, learning from my mistakes, and then also realizing what would have been helpful, what kind of toolkit would have been helpful to give to people leaders who are responsible for driving the change and coaching their people through the change. How can we help them so that the entire responsibility doesn’t sit on the shoulders of the executives who are reporting to sometimes an empathetic CEO and sometimes not so much.

Maria Ross 13:04

Exactly, exactly. Well, I talk a lot about empathy needs to flow both ways, and I think you’re hitting on that point of really getting these two groups of people who feel like they’re at odds and in opposition with each other to understand that they’re all having human emotions about this change. Yes, is it harder sometimes to be the one that’s laid off versus the one that has to make the decision to lay people off from a survival perspective? Yes, but that’s also very emotionally and psychologically hard for leaders to do that work too. And to your point, be boxed into that whether they agree with it or not, right? And they’re the ones being tasked with implementing some of these things that they might not agree with because they’re also closer to their people than perhaps those on high who don’t interact with the direct teams. Who it’s like, yes, it’s just a balance sheet number, but to many, especially mid-level leaders, if we’re talking about VPs or directors, they’re the ones who know these people and they know their lives. And so, it’s not necessarily that you have to feel sorry for someone that’s going to lay you off, but the understanding of like this is hard for everyone, and so the empathy comes in with the decisions being made. So, how can we do it in the most humane and compassionate way possible. How can we support people? How can we be there for them? What questions do they have? What resources do they need? You know, thinking about those things ahead of time is all part of the change management process. So I love that you’re speaking about this because I think that’s often what is what happens. Is sometimes there are leaders who put other people in charge of the change efforts, and I’m not saying this happens all the time, but they think those people are better at peopling than they are. They’re sort of outsourcing the hard stuff, right?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 14:58

Yeah, and

Maria Ross 14:59

not that that always. Happens, but they’re will they’re putting a really heavy load on certain individuals. Like especially, we saw this in the pandemic with a lot of HR leaders, for example, being the ones that had to be the bearers of bad news, the ones that had to implement and enforce the return to work policies, right? Return to office policies, and saying, “Well, you’re you’re a people person, you can deal with it, and I feel like what it’s doing is it’s giving certain leaders a pass to not strengthen that muscle and build their empathy and emotional intelligence skills. Which I don’t know in our current reality that that’s feasible. I think that we have to expect that of every leader that if you’re not good at this, you need to get better at

Rebecca Dhrimaj 15:45

it. Yeah, well, and I think that goes back to what you were saying earlier about leaders who are technically savvy get promoted into people leader roles,

Maria Ross 15:54

right?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 15:54

But they don’t have the peopling skills. Yeah, to your point, or they’re not given the right the right training or the right coaching, so they’re just thrown into it, and because they were really good at, you know, running this machine on the manufacturing floor, now they can be a supervisor. Well, you know, two very different roles, right? Right, right.

Maria Ross 16:12

One is about motivating and recognizing and encouraging and supporting and holding people accountable, and one is about doing the work. You might be an excellent individual contributor, but it doesn’t mean you know how to lead people.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 16:27

Yeah, yeah. Well, that and that actually makes me think a lot about Jeff Jeff Siegel, who I interviewed on my podcast not too long ago. He’s the author of The Middle Matters, so he provided this whole framework for middle management because he’s he spent his most of his career in middle management and all the way up to the VP level, and and the pitfall that he saw the most with middle managers who are promoted into those roles is he kind of showed this diagram of three bubbles where as a middle manager you are the doer, you’re the leader, and you’re the influencer. Yes, and we master being a doer when we’re an individual contributor,

Maria Ross 17:02

right?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 17:03

But then when we’re promoted, we kind of cling to that doer mentality rather than you know really honing our skills and leading and influencing. And I think his methodology really intersects well with what we we teach and taint change readiness is flexing that that muscle of influencing and leading.

Maria Ross 17:24

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let’s get back to your change readiness model and the three phases in the change readiness process. And where, as you talk us through those phases, where’s the role of empathy? Where’s the role of building those skills if they are lacking at the moment,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 17:41

yeah, yeah. So I mean, really, the what I wanted, what I needed when I was leading change management, what I was desperate to hand to people, meet managers during that time, was a toolkit for one-on-one communications between the leader and and the direct report. Because what was happening was we were we were creating boilerplate messaging. I was responsible for that as well, right? Yeah, they were like, “Oh, you’re you have a background in strategy, marketing, and communications. You’ll be a great change management lead. So yeah, I was I was working on the the messaging for you know for the initiative, and then working together with internal communications on that, and then it was just distributed, right? You know, all that that same messaging was used in town halls, and then in you know larger or smaller department level meetings. But there was no toolkit for those one on one coaching conversations between the the people leader and the direct report around what this change means for the team what it means for them as an individual.

Maria Ross 18:43

Yeah.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 18:43

So the three phase framework centers around that one on one contact. So it starts with the the resilient IQ diagnostic, which is a very basic eight question diagnostic. It takes five minutes to complete, but it is incredibly revealing about how well those leaders are equipped to have those one-on-one change conversations with employees, and what’s interesting because we’ve we’ve had enough we have enough data now at this point, and we’re also using this diagnostic as a foundation for the research for the book that I’m writing right now. We’ve had enough data come back where it’s very clear that the one piece that that leaders are missing over and over again with with those one on one change conversations is how is the change going to impact my career, my growth path in this company? Leaders aren’t having those proactive career conversations; they’re basically waiting until the mid-year or the end end of year review process. Like, oh, by the way, let’s talk about what you know what you’re thinking about for next steps or how you want to grow in your role. Versus literally every one-on-one or every other one-on-one, you’re having you know little you’re speckling the conversation with little nuggets. Like oh, I saw this project come across my desk, and I know you’re really talented in this area, and it’s and you’re excited about this area, and this project really would would hone your talents. You know, would you be interested in it? So basically, the the people leader always kind of having on their radar possibilities for their team members and knowing their growth trajectory and where they want to take take their career. I actually had um I interviewed someone on my podcast recently who works in manufacturing and he said the biggest challenge that he sees in his work is people get hired to work in the manufacturing facility and their biggest fear is they they’re afraid they’re going to be left to rot, so they get hired. They run the machine, and no one seems to care about what’s next. It’s like you know, eventually there’s got to be a next step. Like you’re going to get bored running that machine,

Maria Ross 20:53

right? You want to

Rebecca Dhrimaj 20:54

grow. You want to do something else. Maybe it’s becoming a supervisor. Maybe it’s working on another piece of equipment. Right. But that’s one thing that’s overlooked over and over. And think about it, Maria. Like when you’re when you’re leading change, what there is such an incredible opportunity to harness people’s talents during that change. Like, what is this change going to do for for you and your skill set? How can how can you be a change agent or you know get on one of these projects that are that’s involved with with the reorg because you’re really good at project management. I mean, there’s so many opportunities to turn the conversation into a growth conversation rather than, yeah, okay, here’s the change. This is what what it’s going to do to us.

Maria Ross 21:18

Yeah, what questions do you have?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 21:23

Yeah,

Maria Ross 21:23

and I think that that’s that is a mindset that not everybody has to be empathetic to those leaders, right? They’re not natural dot connectors. They’re not natural like you have said something that I’ve tucked away, and then I see this opportunity over here, even though you haven’t mentioned it. I’m going to connect that dot and say that could be a good opportunity for you. That is a skill that, to be fair, not a lot of people have. So, is that trainable?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 21:23

You know, absolutely. And I think some people are more innately aware of. You know, they’re

Maria Ross 21:23

yeah. I’m a dot connector. I think. I think in terms of random connections to the point that it’s kind of annoying. Of like, where are you going with that? It’s like, oh well, in my mind, the six steps lined up and made sense. But, but I know it, and I don’t say that to brag, but I know that not everybody sees the world that way.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 21:23

Yeah, no, and it’s you know, it’s it’s interesting because I I often you know at the end of my my podcast episodes I ask I ask my guests. I say, you know, is there one really small actionable thing that’s that a leader listening could take away today, so that you know this? The last 30 minutes we just talked about X, Y, Z. What can you make this easy and actionable? Like, how how can we move forward? And I think with career development and having those career conversations, it can easily become overwhelming for a leader. Like, oh, there’s one more thing I have to think about.

Maria Ross 21:23

Right,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 21:23

you know, keeping my feelers out and looking for opportunities for my people. If that doesn’t come to you naturally, all you have to do is use those one-on-one conversations to ask, “What do you want to do? How? Where do you want to grow? Like, all you have to do is ask a question, showing care, and that opens up the doors to you know conversations that are meaningful, where your employee actually thinks, oh, this this person cares about where I want to go next and how I want to develop on this team. So you don’t you don’t necessarily have to always be look on the lookout for things, but if you’re just asking the right questions in your one-on-ones with your people,

Maria Ross 23:45

yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 23:45

floodgates will open and they will talk and they will share. Yeah,

Maria Ross 23:48

and you know,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 23:50

not that hard. No,

Maria Ross 23:51

it’s not, and it’s also like it’s okay to keep information handy, right? I spoke to one leader for my last book, where she literally puts things on index cards like old school analog, or maybe digital. Like now she’s using her computer, but she keeps notes on her people, what their interests are. Maybe they mention something in a one to one, and she’ll jot it down. And it sounds scary. She’s keeping a dossier on people, but that’s not. It’s to help her number one really lock that in and remember it by writing it down for herself. But also, when opportunities cross her path, she’s able to go. Oh, I know somebody mentioned someone on my team mentioned that they were interested in this kind of opportunity. She has something to go back to. So it’s okay to cheat a little bit. It’s okay to keep notes on people and to document what they’re sharing with you, so that you can be on the lookout for those opportunities. And I think just even you know one of the things I talk about in my workshops around active listening, a trick that has worked for me is to write things down as someone’s talking, because it keeps me present, but it. Also helps me remember the information, and so you’re not expected to just be suave and bulletproof about all this and be able to keep it all in your own head. So I would just offer that to listeners as a tool that when they’re having those one-to-ones with people, you know, yes, you want to make eye contact, you want to be talking, but take some notes and keep the notes and keep a keep a running record of what people are communicating to you, even if you don’t know where it goes yet.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 25:30

Yeah, no, I love that advice. And now with AI taking notes on your behalf, 100% you can you can actually be present and pay attention and also have the note taking done for you, which is super helpful, but what I find is with the old school writing notes is whenever I’m in a meeting with someone and they’re taking notes, like actual written notes, I feel like they’re more engaged in the conversation. Maybe it’s just the optics. Yeah, it just feels like oh, this like what I’m saying must be important, or it feels right.

Maria Ross 25:57

They’re noting what you’re saying, right? Exactly, exactly. I just wanted to go back for a second to talk about, you know, the you mentioned an offhand comment earlier about, you know, the the impact on people of change, and it made me remember that, you know, I started at a management consulting firm when I was 21 years old. Like I don’t know what I knew about consulting managers, but they did a lot of training with us. And one of the earliest constructs they taught us was the seven stages of grief, because they were talking about it in terms of a change is a letting go for somebody, even if it’s positive. And so we have to understand how people respond and how they react, and why they might have all of these different emotions if you’re doing one-on-one interviews with them as a 21-year-old, as a 22-year-old, because that’s what they used to make the analysts do, right? Is to have those conversations, and I didn’t realize how forward-thinking that was at the time. This was like 1994, in terms of trying to understand that change impacts people on a psychological level. It’s not just flip a switch and everyone will follow. And I think that it’s easy to be seduced and hope that that’s how it’ll work, and that all we need to do is send one email communication and have one town hall meeting, and everyone’s on board, right? Everyone understands what’s happening.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 27:23

Check the box.

Maria Ross 27:24

Check the box. Exactly. So I love that. That’s actually the first phase of your three-phase change readiness process. Is that you need to understand where you are in terms of do you understand your people and the impact that the change may or may not have on them. Of course, it’s you know it’s things are true for whom they’re true. It’s not a blanket that everyone responds the same way to change. But I think where a lot of leaders get stuck is especially if it’s a positive change, they don’t understand why people are fearful or upset

Rebecca Dhrimaj 28:00

Maria Ross 28:01

like no, but this is going to make everything better. Don’t you see that?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 28:04

Right.

Maria Ross 28:05

So I love that the diagnostic is the first step. What is the second phase?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 28:11

Yeah. So once we get the results back from the diagnostic, which we’re so what we do is we ask individual contributors on the team or the in the department or the organization to respond normally to the questions, we ask people leaders to put themselves in the shoes of their direct reports. How do you think they would respond to these questions? So what we’re able to do is then extrapolate extrapolate the results so that we can see individual contributor perception of change readiness versus people leader, and there is often a gap. So, what we want to do with with the next phase is then close that gap, and then we can also see which areas need where they’re they’re excelling. So, for example, the the team we we worked with that I we were talking about this offline. The customer excellence team, they the the two areas that that were by far the areas that needed to be improved were around career conversations, surprisingly, and feedback. So the two way feedback, I think you know the feedback culture. We could do an entire podcast episode based on that,

Maria Ross 29:22

yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 29:22

because I think there’s a lot of negativity surrounding feedback. Like it’s only given in a negative context or a constructive context,

Maria Ross 29:30

right?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 29:31

But not many people experience what it’s like to have consistent, constant, constructive feedback two way, so that you are giving feedback to your manager and vice versa. So the manager is

Rebecca Dhrimaj 29:43

asking for feedback. Yes, yes. So those were the two areas where they needed support in the context of change, and then the areas where they were we were they were strong was around establishing the the purpose of the change and really driving towards that purpose. How does how does it connect to our team and our the

Maria Ross 30:02

clarity? Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 30:04

So, and we what we do is we we take those responses and we we match it with the pro size ad car model, which um you might be familiar with. Um, acknowledge or awareness, desire, knowledge, Ability reinforcement, so it’s as pro size model for carrying individuals through change, and so what we did was we we looked at okay based on their responses to the diagnostic, where on the in the Adcar framework are they suffering and where are they where are they excelling, and what we uncovered was this team was excellent at setting up the change for success. So driving driving home the creating awareness for the change, the how it connects to the purpose and the vision for the team.

Maria Ross 30:54

That’s amazing, right there. By the way,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 30:57

yes. And this team just just to give you some context as well, because what we do is we have the leaders complete the Clifton Strengths Assessment, Gallup’s Clifton Strengths Assessment. This team was incredibly high in the relationship building domain.

Maria Ross 31:10

Amazing

Rebecca Dhrimaj 31:11

relationship building and executing. So I guess for a customer excellence team, it’s really not surprising. Right, right. But several of them had empathy in their top five strengths. Yeah. So okay. So we’re we’re already a strong, you know, strongly empathetic leaders, but where they were where they were falling short was sustaining the change, holding the team accountable, and driving the results. And so that was a a huge eye opener to to them because when we presented the report out. We were all on a video call, and and you could just see everyone going, nodding their heads. Yeah, yeah, that’s we need help with that. That

Maria Ross 31:50

sounds right. Yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 31:51

and the the leader of the team actually told me. She said, you know, my biggest challenge is how do I get my team out of that the um out of an emotional rut, so they they you know they tend to get very emotional around changes that happen. Getting them out of that rut and moving to execution, like moving them forward and and getting beyond that.

Maria Ross 32:12

Okay, can you share some nuggets on what works for that? Because that is a common thing I hear a lot too. Is like we’re we’re stuck in the feels,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 32:21

yeah,

Maria Ross 32:22

and we got to move forward. So, how do we? What were some of the things that worked for that group? If you can share,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 32:29

yeah, yeah, no, I think once they had that realization and they saw the results in front of them, when we moved them into into the Change Conversations workshop, they realized that they were not having effective one-on-one conversations with their teams. So, as supervisors, they were they weren’t psychologically getting past their own trauma or their own belief about the change, and then therefore, because they were stuck there, they were not having effective conversations with their team about how is this going to move us as a team forward? So they were actually the the cause of the standstill, and they realized.

Maria Ross 33:07

Okay, interesting.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 33:09

And so what what we actually discovered, I mean, in addition to being able to you know give them the school the the skills for having these coaching conversations, the work that we’ve been doing with leaders has actually led us to partner with a mental health counselor to do inner work with leaders as well.

Maria Ross 33:26

Nice,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 33:27

because what we’re realizing is that you can be an incredibly effective change leader, but you’re eventually going to hit a roadblock at some point if you have inner workings inside you, there are parts that have not been addressed that are causing those roadblocks. Yeah,

Maria Ross 33:45

if your own house is not in order, I always like to say because self awareness and self care is really those first two pillars of being both empathetic and effective, and it’s got to start at home, which seems contradictory to people that are trying to learn how to be more empathetic leaders. You know, isn’t it more about other people and not about me? It’s like, well, what do you bring to the party, right? What are you bringing to the interaction that could be helping you or could be hindering you?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 34:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I and I think that that’s a big, you know, kind of false notion that you know it’s all about the other person. If you haven’t fixed what’s happening inside you, there is absolutely no way you can really put yourself in the context of someone else and understand their reality before you try to then change their reality. You need to understand your own reality first. Yeah,

Maria Ross 34:35

there’s no space. You’re in self-preservation mode at that point.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 34:39

Yes, and I think that’s that’s exactly where a lot of these leaders were, and they’re not alone because we literally come up against that barrier every time we work with leaders.

Maria Ross 34:47

Wow,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 34:48

you got to do the self, the inner work, scary work where you have to hold up the mirror.

Maria Ross 34:54

Yep,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 34:54

and that’s that’s hard. That’s not yeah. It doesn’t doesn’t always feel

Maria Ross 34:58

good. Yeah, exactly. What was their response to you bringing a mental health partner in? I’m just curious.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 35:06

Yeah, so we we haven’t actually done the work with this particular team that I mentioned with the mental health counselor. We’ve we literally just partnered with her and developed the content for the material because we’ve we literally run into this every time you work with leaders. Yeah, to the point where we were like, “Polly, Polly’s her name is Polly. We need your help. Like,

Maria Ross 35:27

yeah, we

Rebecca Dhrimaj 35:28

need to because what she did. I’m actually, I can show you. She’s actually developed these really cool cards called “Meet Your Inner Team, and she actually designed them for children. And when I bought them for my own children because I have a three-year-old and a six-year-old. I was like, “Oh my gosh, are the leaders we work with me this? Yeah, because what happens is you look at things that have been with you since you were a child that have been left unaddressed. So they’re these inner characters, these inner parts, and so you know. I’ll just read off of you: the caretaker, the striver, the perfectionist, the worrier, the peacekeeper. So you know, the adults have the the same you know the same inner parts that children do, right? And we’ve oftentimes we cling to them,

Maria Ross 36:17

yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 36:17

you know, without even realizing that they were there to try to you know protect us.

Maria Ross 36:21

Yeah, and from a psychology perspective, I had a guest on Rebecca Gashuri who talked about IFS, which is internal family systems, and it speaks to this aspect that we are all made up of different parts, and we can name those parts. We can name those characters within our own psyche that are either the positive or the negative voices inside our heads, and another person I interviewed on the podcast, Jamie Greenwood, who’s a women’s coach, talks. She refers to it as the “itty bitty shitty committee, which is you know what are who are those voices and name them and figure out what they need. Don’t don’t pretend they’re not there, but they are all parts of what makes you who you are, but you need to be able to function and navigate in harmony with those different parts of yourself. So I never knew it was called IFS until I interviewed Rebecca Gashuri. But I’m going to put links to both of their episodes where we talked about this because this is coming up more and more in the conversations that I’m having and in the work that I’m doing, and I love that there’s this card deck, which I also will put a link to in the show notes for listeners. Okay, so when you talk about the first phase being the diagnostic, the second phase, it sounds like it’s closing the gap.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 37:35

Yeah, so we’re we’re we’re we’re taking the the diagnostic outcomes and we’re coaching the leaders through how do you have effective change conversations with your people, one-on-one conversations, right? Understanding that you need help with two-way feedback, these areas, right? Your conversations, okay. And so we actually develop case studies together with the leader of the team before we go into the workshop, so that those case studies become the foundation of those change conversations. So they’re not just generic scenarios, yeah, like picture actually real world scenarios that they’re they’re going through right now, right? That they can use as a foundation for practicing those change conversations during the role play.

Maria Ross 38:17

Okay,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 38:18

so that’s that’s basically the the crux of the of the workshop. Now, what we’re going to do with the inner team work moving forward once the content is built is we’re going to likely infuse that in the first half of the workshop, where we get we get feedback from leaders that they want to dig into the self leadership and the self reflection piece a little bit more before moving into okay, here’s how I have one-on-one conversations with my team.

Maria Ross 38:43

Right, so which makes sense.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 38:45

Likely where we’re going to insert insert that piece.

Maria Ross 38:49

Got it. And then what about the third phase?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 38:52

The third phase is the most important phase, honestly, because what I’ve seen, especially in my time in the corporate space, is you go into a training and you come out super pumped, excited about implementing everything. Yep. And then guess what? The you know you’re fighting fires. You go back to your desk, and you know basically everything. Well, what what’s the Ebbinghaus

Maria Ross 39:13

effect? Is that two weeks later we forget 90% of what we’ve learned in a workshop? Yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 39:19

yeah. So then it’s like what you know. My boss just paid $2,000 to send me, you know, put me in this training, and now I’ve already you know forgotten about it. And you know, you might give a presentation on it to the team to you know once again check the box, right? But it’s very, very, very often not retained. That knowledge is not retained, and there’s no way for you to continue to practice and hold yourself accountable. So what we did was we inserted a final phase where post workshop we bring the leaders together virtually for 90 minute sessions once a month with an executive coach who’s also specialized in what we call action learning. So it’s it’s a it’s a specific type of peer coaching method. That I was familiar with when I was in my in my corporate career, and they take turns bringing a change challenge to the table. So as they start having these change conversations with their employees, what’s surfacing? What challenges are they are they experiencing? So they bring the challenge to to the group each month, and they rotate. You know, they take take turns presenting their challenges, and then they coach each other through those challenges. And what that does is two things. So one, they’re seeing the challenges that their peers are experiencing, right? So they’re learning from that. Two, they’re getting coached by their peers, which is helpful, so they’re you know getting coached through that challenge, and then three they are learning how to be a better coach. So you know we give them a guide and a toolkit for the type how to frame a question because you know most most leaders haven’t gone through they don’t they don’t have coaching certifications or they haven’t gone through any kind of training on how to be a coach, so they don’t know how to do peer coaching.

Maria Ross 41:08

Right.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 41:08

So we give them those tools, and it’s always a little rocky at the beginning because as they fumble through, because everyone immediately wants to give advice.

Maria Ross 41:16

Right.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 41:16

That’s not coaching. Right. So we help them be better coaches by you know they they get to practice having those those coaching conversations with their peers. Yeah, so they do that for a good four to six months after the workshop.

Maria Ross 41:30

Is there a resource you can share with listeners on on a guide like that that’s available to the public? Because I think that would be something really valuable to a lot of leaders listening is are there some tips and strategies for how to become a better coach?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 41:49

Yeah, I mean it’s it really does start with framing framing the question, and we we have a one pager I can absolutely share with you that we share with our yeah

Maria Ross 41:57

that would be great. We can put that in the show notes for folks. I think that would be wonderful. So that’s the the third phase is really sort of the action, the action learning, right? Yeah. And what are some of the? Can you share with us with some of the clients that you’ve successfully done this with? What have been the outcomes from this, both anecdotally and if there are metrics you can share.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 42:22

Yeah, no, it’s interesting, and I’ll go I’ll go back to the customer excellence team because they’re you know they’ve they’ve gone through the full cycle of the program. We were able to see how we moved the needle, and what we actually saw. So the in an i in an ideal scenario, we would then have a year after they take the diagnostic, have the team take the diagnostic again and see, you know, how their resilient IQ score was shifted. Yeah, we have not done that, so it will it’ll it will be a year in April, I think, April May.

Maria Ross 42:54

Okay,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 42:54

with the customer excellence team, but what we did see is that their employee engagement survey results. So the corporate engagement survey results increased specifically in the section around executing change management.

Maria Ross 43:11

Wow!

Rebecca Dhrimaj 43:11

Because what what we did when we ran the initial diagnostic with them was we asked for the results for that specific change management question.

Maria Ross 43:20

Uh huh.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 43:22

And then we matched it to the resilient IQ score,

Maria Ross 43:25

right?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 43:25

And we interestingly, what we we were able to show was that the resilient IQ score was the windshield view of change readiness, right? We’re looking forward. How prepared are we for this change,

Maria Ross 43:40

right?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 43:40

The employee engagement survey question was how well did the leaders execute change, or how you know? So it’s the rearview mirror view, right?

Maria Ross 43:47

Right.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 43:47

So and so what we found was the diagnostic actually predicted the execution effectiveness, and so after we went through that whole process together as as a team, they got their employee engagement survey results back in. That’s amazing.

Maria Ross 44:06

Yeah,

Rebecca Dhrimaj 44:06

they moved they moved the needle on that question.

Maria Ross 44:09

Well, and I just want to connect this dot for people because I don’t think you mentioned it when you were talking about the diagnostic phase. The diagnostic is called resilient IQ.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 44:18

That’s right.

Maria Ross 44:18

Yes. Okay. Great. Yeah, that’s amazing. That I-I mean, there’s definitely a. I love the fact that you’re so focused on the measurement and the data around this. And even though we’re talking about human beings and they’re complex, and we can’t be just limited by the data, the fact that we can show that sentiment change over time is really important that these kinds of programs and these kinds of investments matter to helping our people get through change. I just, you know, as of this recording, I saw recently a article about a very large financial services company who revealed that next year they’re. Spending $16 billion for tech in their budget, and I wrote a post on LinkedIn that said, “Great! Is there anything in this budget for people readiness? Is there anything in this budget for change management? Is there anything in this budget for upskilling their leaders on emotional intelligence and empathy to get their people through this change successfully, because otherwise that’s going to be a waste of money for them. So I love, love, love the work you’re doing. So as we wrap up today, Rebecca, I know that you have a podcast, and I’d love to share the name of the podcast with listeners. I’ll also put a link in the show notes. But what is the name of your podcast? It

Rebecca Dhrimaj 45:41

is Return on Empathy.

Maria Ross 45:44

Love it, R O E.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 45:46

Yeah, going back to the measuring empathy and empathy as a strategy, and not just this you know fluffy thing.

Maria Ross 45:54

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I wrote. I did an article again for for my Forbes column around empathy as a business metric, although I will share that one thing I do share with my clients is you don’t want to measure empathy for empathy’s sake. You want to add empathy as the seasoning to then look at your other KPIs that move the business forward, and see if that is having that investment and that you know to your point, looking at the employee engagement scores, looking at change readiness as a result of adding that seasoning, adding that flavor to your your organization. Because I get asked, I’m sure you do too. How do we measure empathy? And it’s like, well, you you can measure it through sentiment. You can measure it through what are the reward structures, what are the policies? What are the what are the employee engagement surveys? But measuring it just to measure it doesn’t matter to actually driving growth in the business. So what are the other KPIs you have in your organization, and have you noticed an uptick in those because of what you’ve been doing with your leadership capability and your people capability? So I love that that we’re talking about this from a very practical angle, and the fact that this is not just fluff and it’s not just nice to have. It’s actually a business strategy and something that moves things forward. So, Rebecca, this has been so fun. We again are going to have all the links in the show notes, as well as to some of the things we referenced here today, but for anyone that’s on on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work?

Rebecca Dhrimaj 47:28

Best place to go is our website, theempathycollective.com.

Maria Ross 47:32

Amazing, amazing! Thank you so much for this conversation. I’m so glad we connected.

Rebecca Dhrimaj 47:36

Thank you so much for having me, Maria,

Maria Ross 47:38

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, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please 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 theempathyedge.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™

Alex Tieu: How Empathy as Policy is Disrupting a Cutthroat Industry

Today we get to see what it actually looks like when a leader builds an entire organization around empathy and people – operationalizes it, measures it, and watches it drive real, bottom-line results.

When Alex stepped into leadership of JLG Lawyers, she brought an operational mindset and a transformative question that became their cultural north star: what would the legal profession look like if it were built around people rather than billable hours? That question became the foundation of everything. They call it Justice with Humanity.

Alex gets refreshingly practical about what it actually means to walk the talk. We dig into how JLG Lawyers has operationalized their people-first philosophy for both employees and clients. We talk about the fascinating tension of being both an employee law firm AND an employer, and how they hold themselves to the same standard they fight for in court. We get into their counter-cultural approach to AI, using it responsibly to grow the business without displacing people, and why understanding your workflows is the key to knowing where you actually need human judgment in the loop.

If you have ever wondered what it looks like when empathy stops being a value on a wall and starts being a genuine competitive advantage, JLG Lawyers is your proof of concept.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Leading with a moral center and ethical consciousness in an industry that rewards greed and conflict.
Using AI ethically to augment, not replace, humans in your workflow and processes.
Building systems for clarity between clients and your organization.
Using mentorship to build up less experienced employees.
Why empathy and critical thinking are the same ability and a key ingredient in leadership, no matter where you are in your organization.

“My leaders absolutely challenge me. They push me. They tell me things like that, and it’s because they care. They, and you, have the same values, and the same goals.” — Alex Tieu

Episode References:

The Human Middle: a free guide with questions and guidance before conflict goes too far. Download The Human Middle for free at thehumanmiddle.ai

About Alex Tieu, Founder & CEO, JLG Lawyers:

Alex is CEO of JLG Lawyers, where she leads business strategy, operations, technology, and organizational development. She brings over two decades of leadership experience from real estate, technology, entrepreneurship, and venture capital, including senior roles at Keller Williams, Movoto, Propy, and Twenty Five Ventures.

At JLG, Alex is known for building an organization that’s both high-performing and deeply human, using technology and AI to support attorneys’ judgment rather than replace it, and creating multiple paths to success for both attorneys and staff. JLG believes there is rarely only one path to success, and that strong organizations can maintain high standards while giving talented people room to excel in different ways. She calls this broader approach “The Human Middle”: proof that accountability and opportunity, high standards and empathy, don’t have to be trade-offs.

Connect with Alex Tieu

JLG Lawyers: jlglawyers.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alexandra-tieu-62845b6

Instagram: instagram.com/jlglawyers

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Alex Tieu 03:24

Thank you so much, Maria. I’m really happy to be here and that you have a podcast about empathy, which is absolutely a subject that should be talked about in every single workplace that’s out there. It’s a key ingredient.

Maria Ross 03:36

Seriously. So before we get into the good stuff, let’s quickly just hear about your story and the story of the law firm you work for, because you are not a lawyer, but you are actually the brains behind the operations. So tell us a little bit about how you got here.

Alex Tieu 03:51

Yeah, just real quickly. I actually started my career just as in real estate really. I was one of the first operators at Keller Williams, had what, a thousand agents, led a bunch of proptech companies, a couple of exits before I came into the law firm. Just recently, about six years ago, you know, this law firm’s been in our family for 18 years, and about six years ago, I just, you know, as an executive in proptech, I had just finished selling for $65 million one of, you know, one of the companies and and then COVID happened. My husband got really sick, and you know, I found myself in a position where we had our family business struggling. He was you know, we only had at the time like 6 to 10 employees. My husband was doing employment law and probably doing maybe about 15, 20 cases a month. COVID happens, nobody’s working, you know, we had to lay off people, my husband sick, and then I found myself having to jump in and help run this firm and you know, pick it up. And today we’re we are what, 80 employees strong. We’re doing about 300 to 350 cases a month, you know, just revenue, streamlining, doing all sorts of things, just taking stuff I learned in, you know, real estate and, you know, startups and bringing it to law firms.

Maria Ross 05:14

I love that. Well, and just proof positive that the approach we’re going to talk about today actually does lead to success and profitability and all the things we want, right? Like all the whole both/and philosophy that I talk about all the time. So, let’s talk a little bit about the philosophy of the firm, because I love you sent me some information ahead of our call, and you boiled your whole firm’s philosophy down to justice with humanity, and that your mission is not to prolong disputes for the sake of fees, but resolving problems and restoring dignity to individuals. Now, those are all beautiful words. And so talk to us first on how you got to that, and then we’re going to talk through the actual operational examples of how you bring that to life.

Alex Tieu 06:00

Yes. I mean, these are all really good qu- questions. I, you know, a lot of the times when we talk about justice for humanity like at the end of the day, I’m I have a very unique perspective. I am running a employment plaintiff’s law firm. We represent clients who have been discriminated against, you know, retaliation, discrimination, sexual harassment, you know, all huge issues in the workplace. But also, I am also an employer myself, you know, I have 80, you know, I’ve been on the management side both, you know, in my past businesses and currently right now. And at the end of the day, I see both sides. And I say this to everyone that at for us, we restore the dignity of, and so often we have so many clients where that is the most important thing to them when something like this happens. But also, I have a bigger goal in mind, which is, you know, I really want to improve workplaces in general, everywhere, you know. I don’t want clients to end up in my office because there was a some sort of retali- now, granted, there are bad actors that are out there. But my experience tells me that most employers are good, right? And most employees are good, and they want to do good work. And you know, if I can prevent that from happening by, you know, having conversations about what should happen, having a conversation before dispute gets out of hand, right, at the workplace, is so much more valuable to the people that I serve. Keepout of my office, right? Nobody, you know, I don’t I’ve never met a client who said, Hey, I wanted to sue my employer, like this is not, you know, when I got this job, you know. And I think that there is a lot of disputes that can be resolved. Now, there are some really egregious ones that, you know, should absolutely be in our office. But then there are others that, you know, just them it just got gets out of hand, and and that’s the stuff that I want to talk about. And especially right now, in this day and age, with AI taking over, so much of it being done either remotely and people are just not connecting at all, like I see a lot of problems that could simply be resolved if, you know, these conversations are actually happening at the workplace.

Maria Ross 08:19

Yeah, it’s like I always say, like AI is not getting rid of all those human-to-human issues that we have. We still need to learn the art of talking to each other, the art of discernment, the art of curiosity, of active listening. Those are still skills we have to refine for ourselves as human beings. We don’t get a free pass because AI is coming and doing all these things. So I just want to point out I love your mission and your philosophy, because back when I was doing purely brand strategy work with clients and helping them really understand what was their purpose, what were they there for, like your customer doesn’t care that you’re there for to make money, why are you choosing to make money this way? What is the change you want to see in the world, right? And I used to challenge them to say, Pick a vision that actually puts you out of business, because that’s the world you’re working towards. That’s why you’re doing this work. You know, hopefully you won’t be, but especially when you’re doing work, because you see a lot of nonprofits do this, right? Their vision is so specific about what they’re trying to do that if that vision is realized in the world, you don’t need that organization anymore, right? If your vision as a nonprofit is to no child goes hungry, if all children in the world are fed, you don’t need your nonprofit anymore. So I just want to say this is a total segue, but I just want to say kudos to you for picking a vision and a mission and a philosophy that’s like here’s here’s where we’re going towards. And we’re going to be brave enough to put a stake in the ground and say this, someday in the future, could put us out of business, and that’s okay, because that’s the world we’re trying to create.

Alex Tieu 09:58

Absolutely. And, you know, there are so many attorneys out there, and I’m sure your audience has seen the billboards, has seen the commercials, Oh my god, so many billboards. Yeah. and it’s always about doom and gloom. And it’s like I feel like attorneys are just waiting for something to happen that’s bad. They want something It’s almost like you know, you you I don’t want to be that type of law firm where you want something bad to happen to someone, you know, in order for you to make money, you know. And because and if that if that’s the, you know, place that you want to be, there’s plenty of them out there. That’s just not JLG. JLG is not about that. You know, we represent really good, solid employees who have been wronged. And if you know you get a lawsuit from JLG, you know you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble, you know, because we take cases that you know are that deserve it. That you know we don’t take cases where people are not being truthful, things like that, you know. So, yeah.

Maria Ross 10:58

Well, and what’s that like to have that sort of moral center and that ethical consciousness in an industry that rewards greed, that rewards conflict, that rewards people trying to take advantage of other people? Like, talk to us about how does that feel on a day-to-day basis for you, for the lawyers. Like, what are the challenges in that, and how do you stay centered?

Alex Tieu 11:24

Yeah, that’s a really good question, Maria. I think that it is very challenging, right? Because in the law firm world, you have polar opposites, right? You got the the guys that you know. It’s all about greed. They take any case that walks in the door. They will, you know, put crazy liens on cases, make up medical reports, not make up, but go ahead and put this

Maria Ross 11:46

neck brace on while we’re in court. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Tieu 11:48

exactly. Things like that, and it’s just, it’s like you know what it does is that it diminishes the people who have the real problems, right? Exactly.

Alex Tieu 11:58

It diminishes the people who have the real problems, and so as a result, it’s really hard to do. And so, you know, for our firm, we believe that it starts first with us, you know. We have to, as an employment firm, we have to be good employers first, right? If we’re going to talk about, you know, work-life balance, for example, you know, having flexibility in certain things while still being a profitable business, because then you got the other extreme in our business, right? Where you know you have these solo practitioner who are going bankrupt, literally,

Speaker 2 12:29

because

Alex Tieu 12:30

they’re too much on the other side. Where it’s like everything has to be perfect, and so they’re not making any money. And so that so there’s two polar opposites. So how do you again? This is my life’s work. Go down the middle where you have the solution, which is the solution is being able to run a business where you have so much business, where you could take the good business, you know, the ones, the best cases, and turn down a ton of cases. We turn down. We do probably about 1,000 intakes a month. We turn down down about 90% of that. Oh, wow. So, about 900 cases we turn down, or, you know, after doing intake, we tell, you know, these clients that we cannot take their case for various reasons, and you have to have a commitment to what that looks like, right? And so, I mean, that’s the way that it’s done for us. So, the first thing is, you know, having a culture that instills that amongst the employees, starting from within. we promote things. Like one of the things, Maria, that we do is in this world of AI everybody is wondering like where is their job. Paralegals are wondering where they’re going to be, you know, are they going to be replaced? I mean we, for example, started what we call the apprentice program in California. And so what that does is that we listen to our paralegals. Most paralegals are, you know, working parents who have to support their family. They cannot go to law school, although they are so smart. They should be. Right. And so we there’s a program in California where that we got approved from the State Bar where we can educate and they can do in-office training and sit for the bar. And what we’ve done is gotten that curriculum approved, and so our paralegals can actually go to school in our office, Mhm. take the baby bar, and then take the bar and become actual attorneys in 4 years with no debt. And we invest in their classes. We’ve invested in instructors to teach them. And so it’s a It really a commitment for the firm to make sure that our people that have given us the privilege of their careers to grow it with our firm, that they will continue to be marketable and have like opportunities years after us.

Maria Ross 14:40

Yeah, well, I mean that’s such a great example of operationalizing empathy to say let’s look at this from our employees point of view, Mhm. what do they need, what can we do, let’s provide it, let’s change the business model from what’s standard in this industry, and let’s invest in them as human beings because what’s going to come back to us, and I’m assuming, is retention, engagement, Yes. high performance. And what I also love about this, and we’re going to talk about your use of AI as a firm in a second, but for like roles where people are scared of losing their jobs to AI, roles where maybe you could leverage AI to do some of the tasks that you used to give to paralegals, you’re creating a talent pipeline Mhm. because what’s happening with a lot of companies is they’re outsourcing all the entry-level jobs and then they don’t have a talent pipeline

Alex Tieu 15:31

Yes.

Maria Ross 15:31

when their existing executives and leaders leave because they haven’t mentored anyone, they haven’t trained anyone, they haven’t gotten the wisdom of the building that experience for those younger workers or those entry-level workers, and then they’re basically going to shoot themselves in the foot for the future.

Alex Tieu 15:48

Yes. Right? You see that happening a lot. And then, you know, what what do you do then? And so, that’s one of our answers for it. We we definitely use AI. We built our own AI agents within the firm. But, you know, especially in the legal world, you have to be very careful of how how you use AI because the stakes are so high if you get it wrong. Oh, yeah.

Maria Ross 16:12

Yeah, if it starts hallucinating laws, you’re in trouble. Yes. You know, the courts

Alex Tieu 16:17

are are sanctioning people. You know, there’s all sorts of things that are happening. I’ve seen like various facts in cases get just switched around. They hallucinate witnesses that don’t actually exist, you know. And I’ve seen our counterparts fall into these traps where they are heavily and irresponsibly using AI. And so, for our purposes, we do use it. We have checks and balances within the firm where nothing that that is used from AI Like we use AI in the very first level of when something goes out and it goes through two levels before it finishes because we do see the benefit. You know, the benefits are undeniable, right? Undeniable, yeah, benefits of having AI, but we also see what happens. And I mean I’ll give an example. Like for example, there’s a lot of companies that are using AI, for example, in intakes, right? Intake is just, you know, you’re not drafting any documents for the courts or anything like that. But, you know, for us, I’ve seen you know our competitors replace it completely with AI, where there’s no humans at all involved, and I think that’s a very dangerous thing. So, so we do we after examining everything, we do something again in the middle, in between, right, where our intake specialists use AI, and we’ve actually developed our own program where the AI coaches the intake specialists on questions they may have forgotten to ask while the caller is still on the call, and then afterwards there’s a summary that then gets checked that, you know, helps. But then it is still the same thing because, you know, there’s checks and balances that are happening with the help of AI, but it is not the end-all-and-be-all. We still have attorneys that look at these intakes and make the final decision.

Maria Ross 18:07

Uh-huh.

Alex Tieu 18:08

So, things like that, and I have seen it go completely wrong when you don’t have someone looking over what’s happening.

Maria Ross 18:16

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the biggest advantage you can get from AI is when you still have a human in the loop. Yes. And they’ve talked about the fact that First of all, there’s a hidden cost to AI that companies are now just discovering and just talking about that they’re realizing they’re actually not saving as much money as they thought they were if they’re trying to just rip and replace humans out of the process, right? But the ones that are getting the ROI out of their AI investments and actually streamlining, creating efficiencies, creating a better client or customer experience are the ones that have humans in the loop.

Speaker 2 18:50

Mhm. Yeah. So

Maria Ross 18:51

it’s how do I use AI to augment the incredible talent that I have within my organization. And your example is a perfect example of where you can use AI to actually not as a search engine, not as like a do this for me, but as a what am I missing? Right, as an as an interrogation. And what I also love about this is, you know, you talk about some firms that have completely outsourced the the intake to AI. Think about the state of mind of people coming to you and just the psychological state they’re in, the trauma they may have experienced, the emotional dysregulation.

Alex Tieu 19:33

Yes.

Maria Ross 19:33

You need the human connection in that environment.

Alex Tieu 19:37

Absolutely.

Maria Ross 19:38

You need someone to They need to be listened to at that point, right?

Alex Tieu 19:42

Yes. Right. Right. I mean, that it’s also the reason why we don’t outsource our intake. So there’s also a lot of companies that outsource intake to, you know, other countries and gigantic call centers, things like that. So our firm doesn’t do that. We do not do that because you do need to have somebody on the other line that number one, you could lives in the United States, Right. Right. for legal purposes, yeah. you could tell on the strike. Yeah. But But also, you know, to really understand because, you know, we’re talking about cases where people, you know, sometimes have been working at, you know, companies for 15, 20 years. Yeah. And there’s some like traumas there and there’s a lot of history there that just can’t get just from AI or even a call center that doesn’t act hasn’t been trained. So I absolutely agree to that. I will say, however, that I I’ve said this before. 2026 is really about workflows. I know everybody’s all over the map, right? And I think that operators, business operators in this year Yes, there are AI agents and stuff like that. Don’t get like lost in actually that technical part of AI. It is understanding your workflow, every little piece of your workflow. Once you understand every single little piece of your workflow and break it down, then you can take small segments of those workflows

Speaker 3 21:04

Yes.

Alex Tieu 21:04

use AI for that those small segments. And, you know, and the more you can get your workflow down to like step-by-step by step, that’s where the time is being spent. And don’t put it in a AI thing, then let the AI tell you what your workflow is. You know what your workflow is, right? Yeah. Yeah. What’s the best

Maria Ross 21:25

experience for our clients, right? Yes. And the other piece of that is when you sit down and identify that, then you can identify the opportunities where humans can really add add the secret sauce, right? Where in that workflow does a person need to sit down with somebody? Where in that workflow and where can our employees spend their time instead? Yes. In all the think tanks I’m in and and research that I do where we talk about AI and and making workflows more efficient,

Speaker 2 21:54

Mhm. they

Maria Ross 21:55

talk about saving employees time. What they’re not communicating to their employees for each individual culture and industry and company is where do I want you spending your time instead?

Alex Tieu 22:06

Yes.

Maria Ross 22:07

They’re sort of assuming that those people will figure it out, but maybe they need to spend more time client-facing. Maybe they need to spend that time shoring up their EQ skills. Maybe they need to spend that time doing some additional interviews or legwork, right? But really being prescriptive about, okay, now that you have all this time savings, maybe some of it goes of course to work-life integration, right? But it can also go towards what are the skills you need to be building now that you’re not worried about this task anymore and where are you going to add the most value in the customer experience?

Alex Tieu 22:41

For me, it’s even more powerful than that. So when you get your workflow down, right, there’s a couple of things that you can do. You can see which one goes to a paralegal, which one, for me, goes to a you know a legal assistant, which one goes to a calendar clerk, which one could be done by AI from a you know from a legal assistant standpoint. Now, once you do that, what we have found is that we’ve categorized how long each task takes, right? And so over time, you already know how long a small task in your workflow takes, and so guess what you’re able to do? We’re able to give tasks to our paralegals, to our attorneys on a daily weekly basis where we know these tasks are going to take you eight to 40 hours. Guess what? That’s how you guarantee work-life balance. Cuz how often it is Cuz I think a lot of times when employers talk about things like work-life balance, they think about hours in a day, right? They’ll say, Hey, Jack, here’s your work-life balance. You can take Friday off, right? Well, Jack here is thinking, Oh my gosh, how do I take Okay, I could take Fridays off, but I have so much work to do that if I don’t actually work Friday, Monday is going to be a disaster. That is not work-life balance, right? Work-life balance is about the operators thinking about their business and what these and what these workflows look like, knowing what you are assigning that person without a shadow of a doubt should take them no more than 40 to 45 hours for that week. And then and guess what that is so powerful. Now you know when when you need to hire, when you don’t need to hire, who actually doesn’t have enough work because not all tasks take the same. And when you have that history of what those tasks and those workflows look like, you just become a more efficient operator. So you’re not depending on your staff to tell you they’re busy or what they’re doing with their time, right? But you know.

Maria Ross 24:36

Well, and they can plan ahead. That’s the other thing, right? Like I can plan ahead and know, Okay, maybe I need to grind for two days and then I’m going to take a three-day weekend, right? Like

Speaker 4 24:44

being able to do

Maria Ross 24:45

that. Okay, so we’re talking about the employee side and the way that you’ve you’ve operationalized empathy on that side. Let’s talk about your client experience platform. And you know, with this philosophy of justice with humanity, what have you done as an operator with the platform and the the the client experience with the with the tech interface? Yes.

Alex Tieu 25:08

So what we’ve done is, one of the biggest complaints that we get, all attorneys get from client is communication. They don’t communicate with me. I don’t get an update, right? So what we’ve done is develop our own client portal. And one of the things that GLG has done because of my tech background is that we’ve hired our own engineers in our firm to develop proprietary, you know, systems and software within the firm. And so now, you know, we send out preemptively with, again, going back to workflows, when you have a workflow and you know what stage your case is in, you don’t need the attorney or the paralegal to call the client and tell them what’s going to happen next. You already know what’s going to happen next. So, for example, if we have a demand letter go out or we’re waiting for personnel records, guess what? Our client’s already getting a video of their attorney, and they have a portal that they can text their attorney on, where they’re already saying, Hey, this is going to take 45 days. So you know, we just sent it out. It got sent on this day, and we’re going to follow up on this day, and it’s going to take blah blah blah. And guess what? The client doesn’t have to call because they already know. And guess what? Our attorney didn’t have to call, our paralegal didn’t have to call, and the client feels like they know what’s going on. They know what’s

Maria Ross 26:25

going on. It’s it’s the clarity pillar of my five pillars. It’s not leaving people in limbo, and that’s both for employees and for customers.

Speaker 5 26:32

Yes. Because

Maria Ross 26:33

that whole like, Well, I don’t have anything to report, so I’m not going to report anything philosophy that some people have, that doesn’t fly. And it’s not empathetic, right? It’s not it’s not really saying, What can I do to alleviate your stress and your worry about where this is in the process? I mean, you may still be stressed and worried about the case, but the point is understanding their frame of mind just for the little details, right? Where is this in the process?

Alex Tieu 26:59

And clients appreciate that so much because they’re like, Oh, I wasn’t even expecting an update, and now I got one. I got

Maria Ross 27:04

one proactively, right? It’s like I I always liken that to when you go to the airport and your flight’s delayed. There’s the really great gate agents that give you constant updates. Like we You know, well, we we still don’t know more, or they’ve just called the maintenance team, or they’re waiting on this. And then the ones that are like, Well, I I’m not reporting that we’re boarding the flight yet, so I’m just not going to say anything for 2 hours. And then people are like, What is going on? Right. Right. So, right. No, I love that. I want to talk a little bit. I want to kind of go back to this idea of mentoring younger, less experienced talent, right? You mentioned to me before that, you know, as a law firm, you and as experienced lawyers there, that you deliberately develop the ability to judge. And that’s something that comes with experience, right? And and that empathy and critical thinking are in fact the same ability.

Speaker 6 27:58

Right. So

Maria Ross 27:58

talk to me a little bit about that and where that fits in into why you started that apprenticeship program and why you keep that going.

Alex Tieu 28:06

Well, we started the apprenticeship program mainly because, you know, one of the pillars I have is really about, you know, listening, you know. So often as employers, you have to listen. The best ideas truly come from your employees, right? And this whole mentorship program or this apprentices program star- I mean, started because I was talking to my paralegals, right? The, you know, so many of them want to go to law school, you know, and but they can’t cuz they can’t afford to stop working, you know, and because they have to support their families. And then I’ve had others where and then they’re the debt, right? And so truly solving that with this program. And then I also listen to why they’re afraid of the program. A lot The success rate for this program is actually very low in California because most people don’t study, right? Because most law firms have it, if they do have it, they don’t follow through on it. And there’s no classes, you’re not going to law school. So you have to actually pass the bar, you know? And so we invest in classes, we invest in instructors for our people. So and then we also add more people. So guess what? The paralegals that are in it have each other. They’re going, Yeah. you know, they’re going to study groups. Yeah. They’re we’ve we the firm has taken on the cost of hiring instructors, hiring, buying the prep books for the and creating a community Right. of apprentices that Right. one day is going to run the firm. They’re going to run the firm.

Maria Ross 29:38

Right. And you don’t want them just reaching for like AI tools or something like that. You want them to develop that critical thinking and develop that discernment, Yes. and I’d love to understand why you feel empathy and critical thinking are actually the same ability. Like, tell us your perspective on that.

Alex Tieu 29:53

So, empathy and critical thinking are definitely the same ability. I I think that it’s a key ingredient in leadership.

Speaker 2 30:03

Mhm.

Alex Tieu 30:03

It’s just you know, you can lead from anywhere in the firm. Mhm. I truly believe that. We develop leaders in the firm, and and that means that you have to have empathy in order to do that, and being able to listen, being able to find like solutions that others may not see,

Speaker 2 30:23

Mhm. and

Alex Tieu 30:24

being able to see the bigger picture when, you know, when you’re able to step back and see the bigger bigger picture. And so all those things are really important.

Speaker 2 30:34

Mhm.

Alex Tieu 30:35

So so so when you and even for myself when I think about judgment, you know, it’s funny because you can’t, you know, when you hire people, it’s hard because you don’t really know what the judgment is.

Speaker 7 30:46

Right.

Alex Tieu 30:47

You don’t really know what the judgment is. But when you do find someone with good judgment, you promote them, you build their career, and you just Well,

Maria Ross 30:56

and I love this because we don’t want people Empathy requires that we’re not judgmental, Mhm. yet critical thinking requires that we have good judgment. Judgments, yeah. And that’s the difference of being able to discern fact from fiction, being able to discern if someone’s being sincere or whether they’re lying, right? Right. Being able to discern is this a a decent case? Is this a case we want to take on or not? Right. And you know, if you if you were to create a law firm where everyone’s reaching everyone at the entry level’s reaching for a tool to tell them what to do,

Alex Tieu 31:28

Right.

Maria Ross 31:28

again, like we said earlier, you’re not building that pipeline of experienced eventually lawyers or even more experienced paralegals who need to make those critical human decisions.

Alex Tieu 31:39

And believe it or not, part of good judgment is they need to be able to challenge you.

Maria Ross 31:44

Yes.

Alex Tieu 31:45

And so often I think that, you know, operators they tell people what to do. And so and if I like people around me, my leaders absolutely challenge me. They push me, they tell me, you know, things like that, and it’s because they care, you know. Yes. It’s because It’s because they care, they and you have they have the you have the same values, you have the same goals, and I think that, you know, I think about this. I I have three little girls at home. I’m a mom of three little girls, and, you know, I think one of the toughest jobs I have, and I think it spills into my work here as a the CEO of the firm, is that what do you do for these little girls to make sure that when they go out into the world that they can challenge, you know, men and, you know, in big, you know, conference rooms or

Speaker 2 32:36

Mhm.

Alex Tieu 32:36

in power? And I think that and I I I do think that that is a key ingredient, being able to speak up when it’s hard or when you feel like, and as an operator, you got to create that environment. I’ll give you an example. Well, and

Maria Ross 32:51

and just real quick, you have to create an environment where people feel safe enough to do so. And the fact that you’re doing all this listening, and you’re putting in programs like the apprenticeship program, you’re encouraging people to come up with new ideas, you are creating that psychological safety so that you don’t get lied to, so that no one’s present You know, I was on a call earlier today where they said, If the executive team is not getting any bad news, somebody’s hiding something. Oh, absolutely. Right? And so, absolutely. but all of these little operational deci- not little, big operational decisions that you’re making all go towards creating an environment where it’s like it’s okay for you to feel safe enough to speak up, and you don’t have to have like a pretty poster on your wall that says, you know, I have an open door policy, or I have, you know, you’re living it through the actions that you’re taking as leaders, and through the policies you’re putting in place where people say, That’s something that was developed for me because you understand my point of view. And that’s why actions speak so much louder than words to create that culture. I’ll

Alex Tieu 33:55

give you a perfect example. I was just talking to somebody yesterday. They’re like, Well, how do you get people to tell you things, Alex? And I you know, How do you get your employees to tell you things? I was and I I really thought about it. I was like, You know, you can’t just come up to an employee and be like, Hey, You can tell me anything. you can tell me anything. You know, this is a safe environment. It doesn’t work with my 12-year-old.

Maria Ross 34:13

And then I was like, Dude,

Alex Tieu 34:15

that is the like That question in and of itself is so uncomfortable, right? And it’s like It’s like that’s a really uncomfortable question, you know. So, I said, You know, this is what I do. When an employee comes in, I can tell you right now, the first or second time you ask them this question, they’re not going to actually tell you. You know, it’s it’s just hard. And so, what I what I realize I do is I when somebody comes in, I actually tell them. I say, Hey, how are things going? And, Maria, so you know, you know, I I just want to share with you something that we’re doing at the firm. We just implemented like this review process, and it was Joanne’s idea, right? And from that idea that Joanne had, we’ve been able to do X, Y, and Z, and it’s been spectacular. Had she not pointed this out to me, we wouldn’t have had this like amazing, whatever. And it’s like And And I never ask them for their input. I just gave them an example of someone else in the firm doing it and how I’ve listened, and I’ve implemented it, and so that the And so it’s I’m asking them, but not really asking them. And then I I will say, Well, you know, you know if there’s anything that you would like, you know, I would love

Maria Ross 35:25

Yeah.

Alex Tieu 35:25

And you just leave the door open. It’s as easy as that.

Maria Ross 35:29

Right.

Alex Tieu 35:29

And so that’s a tip that Well, I

Maria Ross 35:32

again, it’s the actions speak louder than words, and like that’s, you know, as a parent myself of a 12-year-old, it’s like I remember when he was younger, and that was always the way you did it. You didn’t do it by necessarily saying, This is a teachable moment. But it’s almost like you’re talking to your spouse about something that the child did so that you’re, you know, Oh, it was so great today when so-and-so did this. You, you know, You weren’t there, but this is what happened. And it feels more sincere when they hear it about like it’s almost like someone else is talking about it versus it’s being directed at them and putting them under the spotlight. So I love that. Well, this is such good stuff. One of the other things as we kind of wrap up is I want to talk about going back to judgment and this ability to say no. And you’ve you’ve talked about the fact that you only take on certain cases. You’re very discerning about the cases you take on as a law firm. What How do you encourage your employees to learn to say no and to hold their own boundaries vis-a-vis you needing them to do work? This is always This always seems to be the struggle with a lot of leaders that I talk to, where it’s like, well, I want them to protect their boundaries, but when their boundaries start to bump up against them doing the work I need them to do, that’s where I don’t know where to go. Can you offer any advice or a little golden nugget to the leaders listening of how you encourage your your employees to have boundaries, encourage them to be discerning and to be able to say no, and be there when you need them?

Alex Tieu 37:03

Yeah, I think that it all starts with how you start the relationship and the expectations that you create from the beginning, right? Because if you, for example, my attorneys, we sit down very, you know, before we hire them, and we tell them, Hey, these are the metrics that you got to hit. For paralegals, these are the hours or Clarity. Yeah. clarity. It is everything. Why it’s a pillar.

Maria Ross 37:28

Yeah. Yes, it’s clarity.

Alex Tieu 37:30

You Because it’s actually on you, as the employer, to be very clear. It is not on the employee. It is on you, the employer, to be very very clear on what that looks like.

Speaker 7 37:41

Right.

Alex Tieu 37:41

And then you can say, Now, as long as can you do this and still hit meet your boundaries? If you cannot- Because everybody’s boundaries you can’t Then let’s talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, let’s talk about it. And, you know, you may have somebody that has unreasonable boundaries. Don’t even start the relationship at that point, right? Because somebody might say, Hey, I can only work part-time. I can’t. There’s not a match. You end it at the beginning, right?

Maria Ross 38:04

Mhm. And

Alex Tieu 38:05

if Now, if they say, Hey, I can do this in this hour, whatever it is, and again, it goes back to your systems. If you are asking them to do something that is unattainable, unattainable in the hours that you are expecting them to work, that is again on you, right? Yes. Take that responsibility. You need to, number one, be very clear on what the goals are. Number two, make sure that the goals are attainable in the time constraint that this employee has. And then, Mhm. actually And then, once that happens, then we can talk about, you know, whatever those boundaries are. I have Right. Right. I’ll give you an example. I have an attorney came to me and said, Hey, one thing for my mental health, this is before we started, I will do the work, but for my mental health, I need to leave work every single day at 4:00 p.m. so I can go work out for my mental health. I said, I respect that, right? Yeah. I absolutely respect that. This attorney comes in at 7:00, leaves at 4:00 every single day, and gets and is one of my top performers.

Maria Ross 39:02

Right.

Alex Tieu 39:03

Because I knew, cuz we take mental health very seriously at this firm, we want to make sure

Alex Tieu 39:10

I know that if my employees are healthy, they’re happy, and they have they get their fuel tanks refueled. Yep. Self-care pillar, yep. Self-care things, they’re gonna come back and be better.

Maria Ross 39:24

Yeah, yeah. You know,

Alex Tieu 39:25

they can give me their best, but I need to make sure that I have built a firm that supports those things. Right. And so, so that that’s an example. So it’s about being very, very clear. Because if you’re not clear, guess what’s gonna happen? Now you’re gonna have performance issues. Well, that’s

Maria Ross 39:42

like I say, there don’t make assumptions, and especially like I mentioned with the clarity pillar of the Five Pillars, it’s spelling things out for people. So when there’s a disconnect or when there’s a performance slip, it’s like help me understand what you didn’t understand about this, cuz we we talked about it, we both agreed to it. I’m not making any assumption,

Speaker 8 40:02

right,

Maria Ross 40:02

on the part of, you know, like, Well, I assumed that if we had a client emergency, you would work on the weekend. Well, the person didn’t say that because you said, I would never have to work on the weekend, right? So just things like that of being crystal clear because you can’t hold people to an expectation that you haven’t clearly set.

Speaker 2 40:17

Yes. Like you

Maria Ross 40:17

said, that’s on you, right? That

Alex Tieu 40:19

is. And I can tell you the people who end up in my office are the employers who are not clear. Clear, 100%, yeah.

Maria Ross 40:28

who are not clear. Alex, as we wrap up, I know you have a wonderful free guide for people to help them avoid conflict and keep it from getting to the point that they might need to take legal action. So, tell us a little bit about The Human Middle, which is your free guide, and we will have a link to it in the show notes.

Alex Tieu 40:47

Yes, so it is the thehumanmiddle.ai, and it’s a free guide. And it’s really about precisely what we talked about on this podcast. It’s about being able to communicate with your employees, avoiding, you know, getting sued, the end of the day, creating a good work environment. Because, like I said at the very beginning, the reality is that we have a lot more in common. And I have seen amazing businesses and amazing careers blossom from when an employer and employee works really well together. And I’ve seen amazing things happen for people, including the people that are in this firm. Right? Now, I’ve seen it break apart. So this guide helps answer those questions on how to avoid it, both on the employee and the employer side so that, you know Now, it also tells you when it’s like over the line, and you should probably be getting seek legal advice. But that’s what that’s about.

Maria Ross 41:43

Yeah, I love that it offers questions people might not have thought to discuss. And so definitely, it’s thehumanmiddle.ai, and like I said, we’ll have a link in the show notes. Alex, thank you so much for your time today and your insights. It’s so great, like I said, to speak to actual operational leaders in the trenches doing the work that I talk about all the time and giving people the real-life examples of what this looks like in practice. So, I will have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s on the go, really quickly tell us the URL of the law firm as well.

Alex Tieu 42:16

Yes, it’s jlg-lawyers.com. jlg-lawyers.com. And Maria, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the work that you do.

Maria Ross 42:25

Thank you.

Alex Tieu 42:26

You’re helping a lot of people. Thank you.

Maria Ross 42:28

You as well. 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, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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 @redslicemaria. 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™

Carlo Odicino: How People-Centered Leaders Get Big Sh*t Done!

Warning: We’re getting a little spicy today! What if caring deeply about your people was actually the fastest way to get big sh*t done?

I’m talking with Carlo Odicino, CEO and Founder of One TEAM Partners, where he helps early-stage companies bring innovations to market without burning out their teams. With more than 24 years of experience in scaling businesses, Carlo knows that psychological safety and empathy aren’t “soft” skills — they’re the drivers of high performance.

Carlo shares how a high school drama teacher first recognized his leadership talent and modeled people-first leadership, shaping how he leads with empathy today. We dive into trust and psychological safety and the natural human tendency to want to learn, and how that builds relationships and trust between leaders and their teams when that trust is there, and individuals feel respected and heard. When it comes to getting sh*t done, we discuss and debunk the excuses that leaders use and give practical steps that can be taken now to show you care and get things done.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The surprising question every leader should be asking their team.
Spotting toxic behaviors that sabotage morale.
Why some leaders resist people-centered leadership.
Clarifying your number one priority to keep your team focused, supported, and protected from overwhelm.

“True empathy and caring actually require you to challenge people and raise their standard.” — Carlo Odicino

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge podcast: Bronwyn Saglimbeni: The Art of “No Enemy” Conversations

About Carlo Odicino, CEO and Founder, One TEAM Partners:

Carlo Odicino is the CEO and Founder of One TEAM Partners. He specializes in helping early-stage companies bring their innovations to market without succumbing to the burnout often faced by start-ups. With 24+ years of experience scaling businesses of all sizes, he guides CEOs and leadership teams through complex challenges to achieve extraordinary results. Carlo holds an MBA from the University of Notre Dame and directs high school theater in his spare time. He lives in Costa Mesa, CA, with his wife and two sons.

Connect with Carlo:

One TEAM Partners: https://oneteampartners.com/

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

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Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Carlo Odicino 02:25

Thank you very much for having me. I’m very honored to be here.

Maria Ross 02:28

So I usually start out asking folks their story and you know how they got to this work, what they’re so passionate about, and I know you have a particular story about your drama teacher and how they were the one that showed you how to tap into your empathy as a strength. Do you mind sharing that with us?

Carlo Odicino 02:45

Yeah. So it was my drama teacher. Her name was Barbara Van Holt, and she was my high school drama teacher and English teacher. And she was just one of those natural leaders that the way she interacted with her students, she met the student for where they were. She didn’t have a one size fits all type of of interacting, and I think it came from just her natural ability. And then also training as an actor and as a director, she really emphasized the importance of being able to kind of connect with a character when you were trying to, and that requires a certain level of empathy, where she had this view of even if you’re playing a villain, you cannot feel like you’re the villain. You have to be sort of empathetic to their point of view and can’t judge it because they don’t. The true character wouldn’t judge themselves, and that really, at very early age, helped me sort of understand watching her not only direct us but interact with all the students in a way that I that just stuck with me. And being in theater, I and I still work in the theater and help direct high school students in theater. I think it taught me so many leadership skills that at the time I wasn’t necessarily consciously aware of. But as I reflected on it and watched her, and what made her such a dear mentor and friend to me was how much she cared about everyone. And I’ve had an another friend kind of say it is like show people you give a damn, and you can get a lot out of them. And she was incredible in that way. In terms of she could, she said definitely wasn’t a softie by any means, but she could get a group of high school students year in and year out to always be complimented. As the shows that we put on felt like a professional show, didn’t feel like a high school show, and that was due to her leadership because she did it for over 25 years, I think. And you don’t do that by accident when. And so I just carried that a lot with me, and I’m grateful that she was willing to continue the relationship and the friendship basically until her passing a few years ago. just a very. Dear friend and mentor, in her ability to kind of listen and guide,

Maria Ross 05:04

absolutely. And did you know at that time, or did that lead you into the career of doing leadership coaching and leadership development to the work that you do now, which is helping leaders and teams create that people first environment, or did you have more of a circuitous route.

Carlo Odicino 05:21

Yeah, I didn’t know it at the time. It was more her mentorship that, as I gained more experience in in the business world, I started more and more to use the skills that I learned under her. And then it wasn’t until about I guess it’s almost 10 years ago, now I had an executive coach, and I was talking to her about how much theater meant to me and that creative outlet. And she was the one. Her name is Tova John Press, and she was the one. Well, why don’t you bring more of that theater exercises to work?

Maria Ross 05:55

Yeah,

Carlo Odicino 05:56

and some specific things that she sort of shared was you know in order to put on good live theater, and the type of live theater that we were doing was like the students would script it. It was like a sketch comedy show, but that creative space requires you to show your work, as it were, like not be afraid to experiment and try something. And no, no, that that’s not that funny or that’s not landing. Let’s try something else. If you apply that in a business context, it starts to it creates a much more fertile ground for discussion and evolution in business. I think too often, particularly leaders, are taught to be kind of have the right answer and not show the thought process and not invite people into their thinking, and I’m still I don’t have the answer. I’m still noodling on this, but what are your thoughts on this?

Maria Ross 06:46

Exactly. Yeah, I talk a lot about that in my work. My listeners will be very familiar with the fact that my most recent book, The Empathy Dilemma, is really about providing those five pillars to leaders to help them be both empathetic and high performing at the same time.

Carlo Odicino 07:00

Yeah,

Maria Ross 07:00

and a lot of that, you know, one of the pillars is clarity. Another pillar is decisiveness. These things that we don’t often equate with empathy, but so much of trying to see things from another person’s perspective and bring them along with you is about trying to tap into what their unique perspective or life experience is. And like you started out saying, meet you where you are, and you know we can get so much. I don’t want this to sound extractive or exploitative, but we can get so much more out of our people when we approach it that way. And don’t we all want our human assets to be operating at optimum capacity? Right. It does you no good to say, “Well, I’m only going to do it my way, and you’re either going to fit into that or not. If that only gets you like 33% performance or 33% engagement, why not go for you know 90% or above? Because you simply are able to adapt and to listen. Like you said, it’s not about necessarily having all the answers, it’s about also asking the right questions.

Carlo Odicino 08:03

Yeah.

Maria Ross 08:04

So speaking of that, and by the way, you know, you’re speaking my language around theater and acting because I have told that story a million times about you have to go into a role not judging your character, and so you don’t play a bad character as a bad character because they don’t think they’re bad, right? So I love that you shared that story. But speaking of questions, I want to ask you: What is the one question that empathetic leaders should be asking their team on a regular basis? And if they don’t consider themselves an empathetic leader, is this a question they can put into their toolbox?

Carlo Odicino 08:40

Yeah, and there are many versions of this question, but I think the one question is, and this goes into meeting people where they are, is ask people consistently how are you doing, and probe a little bit more if the answer is always just fine.

Maria Ross 08:54

Yeah,

Carlo Odicino 08:55

just and be ready to sit and listen to that response for two to five minutes. So be genuine in how are you doing, right? Or I heard it just recently on another podcast, phrased differently, but tell me something.

Maria Ross 09:11

Yeah, and just

Carlo Odicino 09:13

invite that conversation to open. And and one I like to use when I’m first working with leaders that are kind of feeling that burnout, a version of it is just that opens up that dialog: is how are you sleeping, and that just opens up.

Maria Ross 09:31

Yeah.

Carlo Odicino 09:31

Well, you know, usually get some version of well, you know, there’s no time to sleep or something, and it’s like, okay, well, why is that? Why do you feel that way? And I think the more you can show people with open-ended questions like that, where you’re not expecting a specific answer, and you’re willing to, you demonstrate that you’re willing to kind of listen to the response and take the time that creates an environment where people feel seen. And trusted.

Maria Ross 10:01

Yeah, and to your point, asking it in a genuine way, not in a offhand nicety kind of way. But if I’m going to ask you how you are, Carlo, it’s how are you, like how are you really? And I’m going to lean in. I’m going to make eye contact, and I’m going to make time to hear the answer. And I don’t like always referring to like this, but you know, one of the silver linings of the pandemic was people started asking that question with sincerity, and people also started answering it with honesty. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. And when you talk to leaders who think that that sort of talk is a waste of time, that’s the stuff. That’s what builds teamwork. That’s what builds resilience. That’s what builds trust to create the foundation to do phenomenal work and meet all the objectives and hit all the KPIs and all of that. But it’s anything but a waste of time. It’s actually the stuff that makes the team gel. So I love that. Why is psychological safety such a non-negotiable? Again, you know, you’re talking to leaders who are like, “I just need to get shit done, and they often are like, “I don’t have time for that. Which my question is always, “Well, then, where are you spending your time? Because this is actually what you’re supposed to be doing. But what do you say to clients, to leaders who really question if psychological safety is really that important.

Carlo Odicino 11:25

Yeah, and I think it just really comes down to it’s fundamental because any relationship is built upon trust, and you can’t have trust without psychological safety.

Maria Ross 11:37

And what do you specifically mean by that? I know some people have different definitions of psychological safety. What does that mean to you?

Carlo Odicino 11:44

In terms of as an individual, I feel like I can express an opinion that may be counter to what everybody else is saying, and there are not going to be negative consequences for that having that opinion, so long as I do it in a respectful and constructive way,

Maria Ross 12:04

right, right,

Carlo Odicino 12:05

and because that invites dialog, I think organizations so much shy away from what I would call dialog or conversation, and you cannot have a relationship without conversation, and so, and I will say, if you want to change the relationship, change the conversation.

Maria Ross 12:29

I love that.

Carlo Odicino 12:29

And so, if you’re not, but then that also requires people to feel safe enough to be able to try to change the conversation and not be judged for it

Maria Ross 12:40

right, right, and not experience any blowback to that

Carlo Odicino 12:45

exactly. And one of the things that, going back to Barbara in my high school theory, it was she would never tell us or show us how to deliver a line. She wouldn’t do a line reading for us. If she would just say, “Make another choice. It’s that’s not working right now. Make another choice.” But it gave you the safety to experiment. Then, like it’s not that I’m going to be fired from my role for making a wrong choice or choice that doesn’t quite land.

Maria Ross 13:12

Right.

Carlo Odicino 13:12

I can just make another choice. Make another choice.

Maria Ross 13:14

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we talk so much about you know this age of transformation we’re in and the need to be competitive, the need to be innovative, the need to be first, the need to you know all of the things, and yet there’s leaders who are still stifling their teams from ever expressing a different point of view, from ever throwing out a crazy idea, from ever trying to go down a path that they don’t know if it will succeed or fail. Right? You can’t have innovation, you can’t have market leadership without the ability to try and fail sometimes. Because you’ve got to try some things, and if we’re all so scared, if we’re all living under fear and anxiety to do anything that might get us in trouble, your company’s dead.

Carlo Odicino 13:58

Yeah, you don’t want an organization that just wants to play it safe. There’s no such thing as an organization that wants to play it safe and that is innovative, unless you’re willing to be wrong. There’s no no innovation, true innovation, comes about without a willingness to be wrong, because it comes in on the back end of a lot of experimentation and a lot of different things that didn’t quite work, but it was part of the learning process,

Maria Ross 14:20

right?

Carlo Odicino 14:20

And that’s what I think organizations really need to do. That truly thrive is lean into learning and our humans’ natural tendency to want to learn. When I work with a high school student that says I hate school, I think that’s a tragedy because humans are naturally required are naturally wired to learn and want to learn and explore, and we are taught and sometimes carefully taught to not like to learn.

Maria Ross 14:50

Right, right. Oh my gosh, so important. So let’s talk a little bit about the things that get in the way. What are the hidden signs of? Toxic behavior that kind of quietly sabotaged team morale.

Carlo Odicino 15:05

Yeah, I think some of the things are a lack of responsiveness to simple questions, or like meeting invites as an example of just not responding and not showing up sends a message, and I think that creates a go to this back to relationships are built on conversation, and you cannot not communicate. So if you choose not to say anything, that’s sending a message, and often that message will be imagined because you didn’t say anything by, and it’ll probably almost all the time, if not all the time, be much worse than the reality,

Maria Ross 15:46

for sure.

Carlo Odicino 15:48

And so, some of those signs of keeping on the lookout of just doing the respect of explaining context or saying, “I saw this meeting, I can’t attend. What do you need From me, and then the other side of it that I think is subtly toxic is the people who sort of overexpress. I’m always left out of these things, or I don’t feel included, because that’s putting the ownership of inclusion solely on somebody else. When okay, if you don’t feel included, what can you do about it? Control the controllables. You can ask to be invited in, and then you have data of like, no, well, we don’t need you, or so, or I had this question and I don’t know the answer. Can you please offer that instead of always going back and well, nobody tells us anything, or always the last to know. Take ownership of what you can control of, and that’s really the thing that I tell leaders to be on a lookout for, both for themselves and others, is people’s reactions to things, even frustrating events. What’s their first instinct to blame outwardly, or say, okay, what can I control as part of this? How can I move forward?

Maria Ross 17:00

Yeah,

Carlo Odicino 17:02

and when you get people whose natural reaction is that was a bummer, or you know, wish that outcome was different,

Maria Ross 17:07

yeah.

Carlo Odicino 17:09

But what can I do differently? That’s where you have a really strong culture, yeah. Positive, and not having that gets toxic very quickly because then the finger pointing starts to show up, not immediately, but over time. Yeah, starts to show up.

Maria Ross 17:25

Well, and I’m just I’m gonna play devil’s advocate on that a little bit, just as a woman in the workplace and as a woman in tech, and kind of representing populations that don’t feel safe.

Carlo Odicino 17:35

Yeah,

Maria Ross 17:36

saying where do I insert myself, right? And I think it gets back to your point about why it’s so important to create that culture of psychological safety and trust and camaraderie, because you want people to feel comfortable about saying, “Hey, I’m not feeling included right now, so how can we change that together? What is it that you need? What is it that I can contribute? Here’s what I can contribute, and being open enough about that, because for a lot of people, you know, it’s not just in their heads. It is something that’s happening at a cultural level within their organization, from an exclusion standpoint. But I hear you because I think part of it is also what culture has been established by the norms, by the practices, by the way that we treat each other and how the leaders are modeling behavior that someone might feel they can’t do that, and so that’s almost like again, it’s another, it’s almost a jujitsu feedback loop of oh now these people aren’t coming to me and they’re feeling excluded. What am I doing that’s making them feel excluded? How can I be more inclusive? And so, what I hear you saying is, we all need to be taking ownership of that.

Carlo Odicino 18:47

Yes. So,

Maria Ross 18:48

you know, the leader can’t blame the other person about not being proactive about getting involved, and the person can’t really complain about, oh, nobody invites me to these meetings if they’re not saying anything. So, to I think it’s to the your overall macro point of have the conversations

Carlo Odicino 19:04

exactly, and I’m glad you brought up the gender bias that happens, particularly well, and also

Maria Ross 19:09

any underrepresented group, right? Any underground that doesn’t feel safe, yeah.

Carlo Odicino 19:13

I’m glad you brought that up because my experience is often most people that, or just from a gender standpoint, the ones that I often hear saying most, I don’t feel included. Are it’s not women, right? It’s men that I sometimes think are over included to the expense of of women, and but and that’s why I was trying to make it’s just a symptom of something that might be going on. Exactly, I completely agree. Then explore that conversation. Well, why do you feel excluded?

Maria Ross 19:42

Yeah,

Carlo Odicino 19:42

and what have you done? And then that can invite that can open up a conversation of, well, I have done, I have asked, and I still don’t get included in these meetings. And then that’s something that you can start to dig and and say, okay, well, we have something potentially passive aggressive that might be going on.

Maria Ross 19:58

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, I love that. You know, again, kind of getting back to this idea of being a people first leader while getting shit done. Where does that come from? Do you sort of take a tough love approach with your clients? What are you hearing from them about their inability to get things done because they’re being too caring or because they’re putting people first? What are some of the excuses that they make?

Carlo Odicino 20:20

Yeah, that’s usually an excuse for people who haven’t people who have never tried it, right? So they it feels uncomfortable to try that because they’re afraid of if you haven’t tried it, how can you say I’ve been too soft? If you haven’t tried it, how and who you’re too caring is that really something you want to avoid, like

Maria Ross 20:41

yeah,

Carlo Odicino 20:42

I use it that this construct that we’ve used, and I think it’s very powerful. It’s offered. It’s called the Strengths Develop Deployment or Development Inventory SDI. It’s through Crucial Learning. But one of the key things there is people don’t have strengths and weaknesses; they have strengths and overdone strengths, and because no one similar to what we talked about-a villain and doesn’t think they’re a villain-no one shows up in a scenario and says, “I’m going to have a weakness show up.

Maria Ross 21:12

Yeah,

Carlo Odicino 21:13

they show in what they feel they’re good at, and then their strength. But like a piece of music that you may like, if it’s played too loudly, then it’s overdone, and you have to turn down the volume. That’s the the analogy I like people to hear about or think about. So, care, give a damn,

Maria Ross 21:30

yeah.

Carlo Odicino 21:30

And if you start to see things that are, for lack of better terms, slacking off or things like that, then maybe you’re not being firm enough, so from radical candor, it’s challenge directly and care personally. It’s both. It’s not either or.

Maria Ross 21:50

Right.

Carlo Odicino 21:50

And I think when you have an organization that is truly willing to have those conversations and those tough conversations, you would find that people are more motivated to do a good job raising a standard. As long as it’s a reasonable standard, actually drives engagement, doesn’t diminish it, and you’re really trying to get to the point where feedback isn’t viewed as something that is negative.

Maria Ross 22:21

Right. Feedback is a gift. If you actually are an empathetic leader and you are grounded enough, you’re not operating from fear and defensiveness. You meet feedback with curiosity. You know, huh? Why do you have that impression? What have I done? You know, how could I make that better? What could I improve on that? Versus, I don’t want to hear it. You’re wrong. You know that’s coming from a place where you are so inwardly focused that you’re not thinking about the other person’s point of view and how you showed up in that interaction. And that’s why self awareness is the first pillar of being an empathetic and effective leader. Is because you’ve got to be grounded enough in who you are, your own values, your own self confidence to be able to take on other points of view without defensiveness or fear. So I love what you’re saying here about this because you know we’ve got the data, we’ve got the research. You know, my first empathy book, The Empathy Edge, was all about the business case for why being an empathetic leader actually impacts your bottom line, and so that’s why it’s interesting to me when I keep hearing about the rebuttals to this, and I I love your very simple answer, which is like, well, have you tried it?

Carlo Odicino 23:28

iYeah.

Maria Ross 23:29

Like, or if you did, maybe you’re doing something that’s not empathy and not caring, and I call that dipping into people pleasing. Right? If you’re people pleasing, if you’re caving into unreasonable demands, that’s not empathy. That’s submission. So what you’re doing, if you say it’s not working, quote unquote, because they’re taking advantage of me, you almost need to look at well, where am I falling down, and how I’m trying to convey my caring. If I think it’s caring to avoid a difficult conversation because I don’t want to hurt your feelings. That’s not really caring. That’s about you leading with fear.

Carlo Odicino 24:05

Yeah

Maria Ross 24:05

If you care, you’ll want to have the difficult conversation to clear the air, to help the rest of the team function, to you know help someone be their best. And I love what you said about the raising of the standard. Right when a lot of times the rebuttal I hear about embracing empathetic leadership is we don’t want standards to fall, and I’m like, where in the definition of empathy do we talk about that? It’s about you caring enough about the other person to raise them up to the level that you need them to perform. You don’t lower the bar; you give them a boost to get to the bar, right? And that’s very, like you said earlier, that’s very individual. That’s very like, what do you need? What skills do you need? What role do you need to be in? What can we do to adapt? Maybe you’re neurodiverse. Maybe you have some issues you’re dealing with at home, and you can’t work standard hours. Whatever it is, what can I do to help you work at your best? So you meet the standard of excellence that we’ve set. We you meet the objective that we’ve we’re aiming for.

Carlo Odicino 25:06

Yeah, and I think true empathy and caring actually, I would say, requires you to challenge people and raise their standard. The standard is excellence, or I and we were very careful about saying big shit done because so many organizations will say get shit done and it’s a bunch of little shit that doesn’t matter.

Maria Ross 25:27

Yeah,

Carlo Odicino 25:28

but if you want to get big shit done, you cannot get big shit done without a well operating team. There’s no such thing as a singular person that can get big shit done because you haven’t reached the big shit done. If one person can do it,

Maria Ross 25:42

right, right.

Carlo Odicino 25:45

So, have you ever seen a championship team that didn’t know how to operate cohesively as a team?

Maria Ross 25:52

100% right.

Carlo Odicino 25:54

That’s the standard,

Maria Ross 25:55

right, right.

Carlo Odicino 25:57

And in order to get there, the path is through caring and empathy, not in spite of it.

Maria Ross 26:03

Right, right. I love that. So, what do you, as we kind of like wrap up? I have one last question for you because this is such good stuff. How do you, as a leader, clarify your number one priority? And let me give you some context to this. As I mentioned, clarity is one of the pillars of the five effective and empathetic leadership pillars, and it’s because clarity is not just kind; it’s empathetic. People know where they stand. They know what’s expected of them. Everyone knows where they’re going. And so, how do you help your clients and your leaders of the teams that you’re working with clarify their number one priority when they’re getting pressure from all sides, they’re like, “I’d love to distill this down to one priority, but I’m getting 60. So, what are some ways and approaches that you work with your clients on to make that crystal clear for them and help them really land on that north star for them and their team?

Carlo Odicino 26:59

Yeah, I think it starts with acknowledging that their priority should be singular, and acknowledge. Don’t try to escape and have a one A and 1b because that’s just two stated differently, and really come to peace with your number one priority has to come from yourself, cannot come from somebody else, because your number one priority is your north star or compass on how you interact with requests that come in. You won’t care if you adopt a priority that somebody else has that you don’t truly care about. So understand what you really value, what really matters to you. So one team, the name of our the company that I started is intentional. So one, it has to start with the individual before they can operate as a team, and team is also an aspiration, which is stands for thrive every available moment. If you find yourself trying to do what others think you should do, you will stop thriving. So, if you want to thrive every every available moment, you as an individual, need to get really introspective and say what really matters to me, and start observing your behaviors of like when I’m not, and sometimes you it takes time, but when I’m not forced to do anything or trying to meet an expectation, what do I naturally find myself Leaning towards, and what about whatever I’m doing? What does that say about what I value?

Maria Ross 28:28

Okay, I’m going to challenge you a little bit, mostly because I want to see if you can help us with this.

Carlo Odicino 28:32

Sure,

Maria Ross 28:32

that sounds great in a perfect world, right? But you’ve got C-suite executives, you’ve got boards, you’ve got shareholders. You’ve got competitive threats. What if you can’t just do the thing that lights you up? What if you can’t just do the thing that feels naturally? But your priority is being set, as it is in most organizations, by something beyond you. Of you know, this is what the team is being asked to deliver right now. How do you help your clients through that?

Carlo Odicino 29:03

Yeah, and I, I guess I run counter to any of that. That in terms of yeah, you’re going to always have outside pressure, board, shareholders. At some point in time, you have to say the best way for me to deliver on whatever you’re hoping to get is for me to be true to myself, and it is not unrealistic. It takes courage and a willingness to say, “I want to do this differently, and here’s why. I am not trying to make an excuse for not delivering on something, but we’re going to do this in a very different way. So, as an example, when you hear boards that may change from one quarter to the next of what the company priority should be. You need somebody who’s willing to say, “Okay, understood. We changed the priority. Are you willing then to say what we had as our? You’re allowed to change your mind because we have new information. But what we had as our priority is now going to take second to this new.” And if they’re unwilling to do that, then you can have the conversation. Well, then we need more resources to be able to tack this at what. And I think we lose sight of your own agency to be able to be it. And it’s not being Pollyanna, and it’s not being unrealistic, but it does take courage to say, “Okay, I am not going to be my best self if I’m consistently making myself second, put differently, you cannot be selfless unless you’re willing to be selfish. Selfish, you have to be selfish. You have to take care of yourself in order to be selfless.

Maria Ross 30:35

I love that you’re speaking to the pillar two, which is self care. So I love that. No, but I think you I think you bring up good points, and thanks for being willing to play with me on some of this because I think that you know that’s the skepticism that you know when I’m out there talking about what my work when you’re out there talking about your work that’s what we’re met with and it’s sort of like yeah you’re right no one said this was going to be easy and what I tell my leaders all the time when I’m doing workshops is this is the job of leading. Like an example, you know, if you say like I’m too busy for all this people stuff, then that’s on you. Where are you spending your time? Because your whole role as a leader is to empower other people to

Carlo Odicino 31:15

yeah

Maria Ross 31:15

deliver for you. So if that’s what they need and you don’t have time for it, what are you actually spending your time on? And secondarily, I’ve written a few articles for Forbes about this. With the AI transformation, those leaders that are hiding behind the doing and the tasks will have nowhere to hide.

Carlo Odicino 31:33

Yeah

Maria Ross 31:34

If their people skills are not so great, that’s what we actually need them for right now. We need their complementary people skills to get to marry with the AI potential, so that we can transform the workplace and we can transform the work. But if that’s what you’ve been hiding behind is your full calendar and you micromanaging and you doing all the tasks and you just like I’m too busy to talk to my team. I’m going to hide behind my computer. It’s going to be a really difficult road ahead for you as a leader. So it’s that idea, you know. I kind of joke sometimes. It’s like that’s why you’re getting paid the big bucks is because it is hard and it does require some time. And like you’re saying, I think the biggest takeaway is it requires courage, and that’s why I always go back to being an empathetic leader is not weak because being an empathetic leader actually requires strength and courage.

Carlo Odicino 32:26

Yeah. So, and you will get the same behavior out of your of the people that you’re leading if they start to see, oh, they’re willing to step out and take a risk and share an opinion that maybe the board didn’t want to hear.

Maria Ross 32:40

Yeah, I’ve worked for leaders like that who you know you saw took a risk, had our backs, defended an approach we were taking, and not only did that kind of increase loyalty, but it increased our engagement because we wanted to double down because this leader had taken a risk for

Carlo Odicino 33:00

us. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh, I love it. Yeah, that’s just. I think it just comes down to just a willingness to live what you believe in.

Maria Ross 33:08

Well, I thank you for clarifying also the nuance of the big shit versus just the getting shit done, because I think that’s an important point. So, Carlo, this has been so great. I know we can talk much longer, but we gotta go. So we will have all your links in the show notes. In for anyone on the go, for anyone exercising while they’re listening to us right now, where’s the best place they can find out more about you and your work?

Carlo Odicino 33:33

Yeah, it really is our website oneteampartners.com and and one spelled out O N E, and that’s where you can see more about us, and there’s a link on that website to schedule a meeting and just to chat and introduce yourself to me, because I, as I said, every relationship starts with a conversation. So,

Maria Ross 33:53

absolutely. Well, thank you for this conversation. We really appreciate you.

Carlo Odicino 33:57

Yeah, thank you,

Maria Ross 33:58

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 and review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit theempathyedge.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™

Hot Take: What the Fire Horse Has Taught Leaders About Reinvention

We are living in the Year of the Fire Horse. And if you know anything about Chinese astrology, you know that the Fire Horse is not a gentle, meandering kind of energy. It is fast, fierce, unpredictable, and transformative. It burns down what isn’t working to make room for what’s next.

And that feels about right for where we are as a culture, as leaders, and as human beings right now. Today, I share the neurological impact significant change triggers in humans and give actionable steps to build resilience to withstand the change that is going to continue and lead and live with more purpose and intentionality through whatever is thrown your way.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

How systems are breaking, and the world is changing, and people are struggling to keep up.
Why reinvention is not a crisis; it’s a choice.
Three things you can do right now to build resilience for what is next.

“If you’re clinging to a way of working, a title, a strategy, a version of yourself, or a version of your company that’s no longer serving you, the Fire Horse year is asking you to release it. Not recklessly, but thoughtfully, with intention.” — Maria Ross

References:

Jonni and Maria Go There: Fire Horse Season: Reinventing at Full Gallop: https://bit.ly/4zUnrzP
Your Employees Aren’t Resisting Change. Their Brains Are: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariaross/2026/07/31/your-employees-arent-resisting-change-their-brains-are/
Rita Wilson on Reinventing Yourself at Any Age | IMO Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kqMI38b15M&t

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

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. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Empathy Edge. I’m Maria Ross, and if you’ve been feeling like this year has put you through the ringer, you are not imagining it. And today, I want to talk about why and, more importantly, what we can all do about it. So as some of you may know, we are living in the year of the Fire Horse, and if you know anything about Chinese astrology, you know that the Fire Horse is not a gentle, meandering kind of energy. It is fast, fierce, unpredictable, and transformative. It burns down what isn’t working to make room for what’s next. And honestly, that feels about right for where we are as a culture, as leaders, and as human beings right now. I recently recorded an episode of my other podcast, Johnny and Maria Go There, with my co-host and dear friend, CEO of 11:11 Solutions, Jani Wrestler. We dug deep into this idea of reinvention, especially in what we’re calling life’s third act, and why so many people, including us as women, are fundamentally rethinking who they are, what they want, and what they’re willing to put up with anymore. And I’ll link to that episode in the show notes when it airs, but today, I want to bring that conversation into a leadership context because I think it’s deeply relevant for all of you. So first off, the systems are breaking and that’s not an accident. The horse is at full gallop, running through barns and fences as it goes. So let’s just name it. The world is changing faster than our brains were wired to absorb. I actually wrote about this recently for Forbes, and I’ll link to that article in the show notes because it goes deep on the neuroscience of what we’re experiencing. But here are the highlights that are relevant to what we’re talking about today. The NeuroLeadership Institute found that organizational change accelerated by 183% between 2020 and 2024. Four years, 183%. And Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace Report shows employee engagement has dropped to 20%, its lowest level since 2020. Now the sobering truth is that most organizations are treating the human fallout as a side effect to be managed, rather than a reality to be understood. So the bottom line is your team is not resisting change because they’re difficult. Their brains are doing exactly what brains do when the ground shifts underneath them, and as leaders, we have to stop pathologizing—pathologizing? What’s the word? Pathologizing—a completely normal physiological response. So go read the Forbes piece for that full picture, but today I want to zoom out even further. Here’s the thing your neuroscience textbook will back up: any change, big or small, good or bad, triggers a threat response in the human brain. Cortisol spikes, the prefrontal cortex goes offline—that’s our capacity to think and reason and prioritize and all the things, right?—and our capacity for clear thinking and sound decision-making drops. It’s biology, not weakness. And when people don’t have language for what they’re experiencing, they interpret it as personal failure, which compounds everything. So, you as a leader, if your team seems disengaged, resistant, or stuck right now, they’re probably not being difficult. Their brains are doing exactly what brains do, as I said, when the ground shifts. And here’s the parallel I keep coming back to: it’s not just our organizations that are in reinvention mode, it’s us as people, as leaders, as humans navigating a world that looks almost nothing like it did 5 years ago. So the second thing I want to talk about is reinvention is not a crisis, it’s a choice. And in our Johnny and Maria Go There episode, we talked about life’s third act and how so many people post-pandemic, post-whatever personal reckoning they’ve been going through lately are asking themselves hard questions: Who am I?

Maria Ross 05:04

What do I actually want? What am I willing to keep tolerating? And I think leaders need to be asking those same questions about themselves, their teams, and their organizations—not from a place of panic, but from a place of agency. The Fire Horse energy is not asking us to blow everything up for the sake of it; it’s asking us to be honest about what’s no longer serving us and courageous enough to let it go. I recently made a change in my own life that felt scary and overdue at the same time, and I’ll share it with you. I’ve been putting up with something, in this case, perimenopause. Yes, workplaces are talking about this now, so stop squirming, that I and many other women my age sadly keep being told is quote, unquote just part of getting older, just something to manage. It’s just normal, get more sleep, exercise more. And even if you are getting more sleep, and you are exercising more, now, I personally, I don’t know a lot of other people cycling and CrossFitting four times a week, and who actually get 8 hours of sleep a night. That’s me, and I’m still going through it. So, I, like many others I know, finally said, No, I’m not settling for this. Hold my beer, right? I asked my friends, I researched, I found a naturopath who specializes in what I was dealing with, and it changed my life, genuinely, that’s not hyperbole, within weeks. And the lesson I keep coming back to in all of this is do not settle for gaslighting, whether it comes from your doctor, your boss, your colleague, or the voice in your own head that says this is just how it is. Get a second opinion. Find the expert. Use your resources. Trust your gut. You are allowed to expect better, and you’re allowed to advocate for it. Get that Fire Horse energy going. That goes for how you run your teams, how you structure your work, and how you lead your life. So third, let’s talk about shifting identity without losing yourself. Now, one of the hardest parts of reinvention, whether it’s personal or organizational, is the identity piece. Who are you if you’re not the job title you’ve held for 15 years? Who are you if the company you built looks completely different than it did before? Who are we as a company or a team on the other side of the AI revolution and all this seismic change? It starts with surrounding yourself with the right people. Always, it comes back to people, right? Sorry not sorry, AI. Actress, producer, musician Rita Wilson talked about this beautifully on the IMO podcast with Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson. She talked about reinvention and the friendships that anchor you through it, the people who knew you before, who also know where you came from. Those relationships are not just nice to have; they’re stabilizing forces when everything else is in flux. Now, a caveat to that is if you have people in your life from back when that are draining your energy or holding you back, that’s an entirely different ball of wax. That is a relationship that you may have to let go of in order to evolve and change. But for the most part, it helps for us to be surrounded when we go through transition by a supportive community, and maybe that means you have to find a new community. And at work, that community translates to culture, to psychological safety, to having a team where people feel seen and known and trusted enough to say, I’m struggling with this change. I need help. As a leader, especially as a leader, your job during times of reinvention is not to pretend everything is fine because you know deep down you don’t feel fine. Your job is to be the steady presence that names what is actually happening and creates space for people to process it together. Okay, so given all this, okay, after all that reflection and pontificating, I want to get practical. Here are three things you can do right now as a leader and as a human being to build resilience for what’s next. One, name it out loud. You don’t need a psychology degree.

Maria Ross 09:24

You just need to say in a team meeting, in a one-on-one, in a company all-hands, What many of us are feeling right now is a completely normal human response to rapid, overwhelming change. That’s it. That simple act of naming does the neurological work. Research shows that when we name an emotion, we begin to regulate it. Naming is needed; it’s leadership. Two, let go of the identity that no longer fits. Now, this one is harder, but if you’re clinging to a way of working, a title, a strategy, a version of yourself, or a version of your company that’s no longer serving you, the Fire Horse year is asking you to release it. Not recklessly, but thoughtfully, with intention. Ask yourself, What am I holding onto out of habit or fear, rather than genuine conviction? That’s where the reinvention begins. And three, build your reinvention team. I spoke about community. You cannot do this alone. Find your people, whether that’s a coach, a trusted colleague, a naturopath, a best friend, a mastermind group, or a podcast co-host who will go there with you, surround yourself with people who support your evolution and also know where you came from. Reinvention doesn’t mean starting from scratch. It means building forward from everything you already are. So, here’s my final thought for you. The Fire Horse doesn’t wait for permission. It does not wait for the perfect moment, or the calmer news cycle, or the steadier economy. It moves. It transforms. It makes things new. And I think that is the invitation that this year has been for all of us. Not to necessarily blow up what is good, but to stop tolerating what’s not, to stop waiting for some external force to give us permission to change, to lead in our organizations and our lives with the kind of bold, purposeful, human-centered intention that actually makes things better. So, what are you ready to reinvent in your life, in your work, in your world? What are you finally ready to let go of? I would love to hear from you on this. Thanks for listening. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care, be kind, and share this episode today with someone who needs it. See you next time. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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 @redslicemaria. 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™

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Why Expertise Isn’t Enough to Lead High-Performing Teams

We’re entering a leadership era where charisma without self-awareness falls flat, expertise without empathy stalls out, and confidence isn’t a personality trait; it’s a leadership skill that can be trained.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen has built her life’s work around that reality. Nada is the Founder and CEO of Rise Up For You, a globally recognized leadership development and coaching organization dedicated to advancing confidence, emotional intelligence, transformational leadership, and influential communication.

Today, Maria and Nada discuss Nada’s personal experiences that shaped her focus on confidence and emotional intelligence, and led to her creation of Rise Up For You, including her Power Up Method. They also dive into the difference between high performers and high-potential talent, and what shifting from transactional to transformational leadership really demands. This is a grounded, practical conversation about how leaders grow influence, presence, and impact, not by adding more tactics, but by strengthening the inner skills that drive everything else.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why “soft skills are the new success skills”
Nada’s Power Up Method and four core pillars that address challenges facing high-performing leaders
Why self-confidence is the foundation of emotionally intelligent leadership
The shift from transactional to transformational leadership
The difference between high performers and high-potential talent, and how confusing the two can derail leadership pipelines.

“If you want to be in the top 1% or even in the top 10%, these are the skills that are going to help you stand out. I always say, be seen, be heard, and be relevant.” — Nada Lena Nasserdeen

Episode References:

MIT Study: These Human Capabilities Complement AI Shortcomings
The Power Up Method: powerup.riseupforyou.com
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

About Nada Nasserdeen: Founder and CEO of Rise Up For You

Nada Lena Nasserdeen is the Founder and CEO of Rise Up For You, a globally recognized leadership development and coaching organization dedicated to advancing confidence, emotional intelligence, transformational leadership, and influential communication. With over a decade of experience, Nada has partnered with executives, organizations, and institutions across North America, supporting leaders at every level through research-backed coaching and training programs designed for real-world impact.

Nada is a certified coach, keynote speaker, and bestselling author whose work has been featured on platforms including TEDx, Bloomberg, CBS, and Entrepreneur. She is known for her ability to translate leadership psychology, emotional intelligence, and neuroscience into practical, human-centered development experiences that drive measurable growth. Under her leadership, Rise Up For You has delivered more than 15,000 coaching sessions in the last three years and maintains a 95 percent client renewal rate, and consistently receives high performance ratings from leaders and teams.

Nada’s work emphasizes ethical coaching practice, sustainable leadership development, and the belief that soft skills are the new success skills. Through her speaking, writing, and certification programs, she continues to empower individuals and organizations to lead with clarity, presence, and purpose while creating cultures that thrive in an evolving business landscape.

Connect with Nada:

Rise Up For You: riseupforyou.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nadalena

Instagram: instagram.com/nadalenanasserdeen

YouTube: youtube.com/@RiseUpForYou/videos

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 03:16

Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

Maria Ross 03:19

So, you know, we heard in the bio you’ve been doing this work for a long time. You’ve done it for some pretty impressive clients. Thank you. But I’m going to start where I always start, which is just finding out your story. How did you get to this work, and what’s your biggest passion for it?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 03:33

Yeah. So it’s that’s actually quite interesting, I think, anyway. So my first career I ever had was a performer. So I’m a former musical theater performer. I used to tour internationally. Yay! I know. So the first career I ever had was in musical theater. I used to tour internationally around the world and sing and dance. And from there, I moved into being an executive. I was an executive at 27. I had 200 team members under me.

Maria Ross 03:58

Oh, my gosh.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 03:59

And I took that path because when I was performing, I realized that what I really loved about performing was the human connection. It’s like, you know, you’re on stage, you’re building a relationship with people. Most of the time, I was in countries that didn’t speak English, so Russia, Japan. And so there was something about building connection, emotional conversation from the stage that got me into education. It was like a very natural progression for me.

Maria Ross 04:25

Mhm.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 04:25

So I came back, became an executive, and in the evening, I was a professor for a community college. And in every industry that I’ve ever been in, I started to see the exact same challenge, which was highly talented individuals, PhDs, master’s degrees—you name it—super successful technically struggle to build relationships and grow in their career. In fact, most of the time, they sabotage themselves. And I was seeing this across the board. I was seeing it on the professional level when I was an executive. Most of my team members really struggled to communicate, to lead, to manage their emotions. Many were unfulfilled and unhappy. And when I was a professor, I was seeing every year more and more the freshmen would come into college, and they would rather take an F than ask a question because they didn’t want to look dumb, right? They were afraid. They had fear in them. They were afraid that people would make fun of them. And so this became like a very glaring challenge for me. So I started to contribute in my own way. I started studying myself, got my master’s in executive leadership, started studying soft skills and what it truly means to build success as an individual and as a company because I knew it wasn’t just the technical aspect. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t working for most people. And then I went through my own my own personal journey. I was again teaching, training, executive, and I decided to resign from being a professor and an executive, and I moved out of the country for an opportunity called love. And on the first day of my honeymoon, my husband said he wanted a divorce. So within two weeks, I know I know that’s the face I get all the time.

Maria Ross 06:10

People can’t see I’m making a face with an open mouth, but yeah.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 06:13

So within two weeks, I went from a six-figure executive college professor to $100 and two luggage. That was it.

Maria Ross 06:21

Wow!

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 06:22

And I got back on a plane, and I was crying, and I was mortified, and very embarrassed and confused. And my father came to me, and he said, Nada, everything you need is already inside of you. And when I say came to me, it’s because he passed away. He passed away prior. Oh, wow! So he came to me in my dream, and he said, Everything you need is already inside of you. You just have to rise up for you. So that’s the company that you mentioned that I that I built. So I got back to California, and I just kept hearing that phrase in my head, Rise up for you, rise up for you. So I said, You know what? I’m just going to start building it. I don’t know anything about entrepreneurship. I knew nothing about business. It was not I didn’t even know what a podcast was. I’m like, What is a pod What’s a podcast? I never listened to one.

Maria Ross 07:03

Yeah.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 07:04

So I just started building this thing called Rise Up for You, and I reflected back on, you know, what am I good at? What do I love? And what is the big challenge? And I always knew that I was good at speaking because I was a performer. Like it was natural

Maria Ross 07:21

for me.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 07:22

And I knew that I had a deep passion, which made me good in teaching. Like I love to pass on knowledge, and I also love to be a student. But the biggest challenge were these soft skills. And so I started building this company around that. Three months later, my second parent was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I built the company out of a hospital. By the time I was 31, I buried both of my parents, going through divorce, lost all my money, and I was buying my groceries at the 99 Cents store, $25 budget a month.

Maria Ross 07:53

Wow!

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 07:54

But I had the company Rise Up for You in my mind to build. Like it was my motivation to keep going. Now the reason why I share that story is because the skills that my team and I teach today are the very same skills that I have used in myself to take a company from in the negatives to a seven-figure business today that’s global, that’s in over 50 countries, not because I had the technical skill in business, but because I had the soft skills to help build the relationships, have the self-confidence, the emotional intelligence to manage myself, to take action and move forward.

Maria Ross 08:32

Mm. So much in there. Wow, what a story! And what a success story to show that like these skills are the crux of what makes people successful. It’s not that you, you know, you’re going to go through and have no business acumen and no technical experience, but that’s often the missing piece for so many businesses, for so many leaders who on paper should it should work.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 08:56

Yeah.

Maria Ross 08:56

And it just falls apart when it comes to the human element. Absolutely. And I keep saying this message over and over, especially this, you know, in the times that we’re in, is that AI is going to transform AI is transforming our workplace and our cultures, but that just means that leaders without these skills will have nowhere to hide.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 09:16

Absolutely. Because

Maria Ross 09:17

the tasks that they are hiding behind are being taken away from them. And so what are they left with? They’re left with motivation, they’re left with engagement, they’re left with collaboration, they’re left with empathy, they’re left with all these things. Yeah. And so, you know, that you kind of can’t avoid it anymore. And what’s wonderful is that these skills at work benefit us in our real personal lives, Yeah. with our relationships, with our communities, with our families. So, of course, yes, I’m like eating up everything you’re saying. So, I want to talk a little bit about that, and talk to me about your perspective of why these skills are more important now than ever before, and what you’re seeing with your clients in terms of the transformation of, A, acknowledging that, and B, working on it.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 10:03

Yeah, well, I would say that COVID was really, I think, an eye-opener for a lot of people. Mm-hmm. Like a lot has happened in the last 10 years that I believe have catapulted the idea of soft skills onto the next level. Now, don’t get me wrong. We got a long way to go. There are still leaders that I talk to that ask me, What is emotional intelligence? In fact, I just did a keynote two weeks ago for 400 school administrators, and when I asked how many knew the four pillars of emotional intelligence, not one hand went up.

Maria Ross 10:37

Wow!

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 10:38

So, which for me is great. I’m like, all right, like we got a lot to do. Like

Maria Ross 10:42

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 10:43

That’s awesome!

Maria Ross 10:44

But also as a parent, that’s terrifying.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 10:48

For sure. Absolutely! As a business owner, I’m excited. As a parent, I’m like, holy yes, 100%. But I think that COVID really helped people recognize that it didn’t really matter what your role was, what your technical aspect was, that when things become stressful, because that’s the key with emotional intelligence, when you are in a heated moment or a stressful moment or a challenging moment as a leader, how do we respond? That That’s the greatest test of our success. And I think many companies and leaders identified that most people were not equipped with the skills. And so when COVID happened and shutdowns were happening and people were losing their jobs, there were a lot of companies and individuals that were struggling, deeply struggling. They were losing business, companies were about to shut down, people wanted to take their life, unfortunately. They Nobody ever learned these emotional and social intelligence skills. Now, that is obviously a very extreme case and situation. But now you forward it to today where artificial intelligence is coming into play, and we got to remember that there’s very We always say that like, success is yours, so we can all be successful, but very few people actually reach that level of success on a holistic level.

Maria Ross 12:07

Mm-hmm.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 12:07

And And that’s because these emotional intelligence or these soft skills are never really taken into consideration. And so, I always say that if you want to be in the top 1% or even in the top 10%, these are the skills that are going to help you stand out. I always say, be seen, be heard, and be relevant. So that brings me back to AI. You know, AI is going to come, it’s already here, it’s taking over many jobs. Even with myself, there’s things that I’ve said, well, now we can have ChatGPT do this. I can build a whole automation funnel and marketing materials and everything through resourcing ChatGPT, which then means I don’t need to hire somebody that does that, right? So why would I hire somebody that is in marketing? Why would I hire? And that’s where the soft skills comes in. Is the individual that is able to be a critical thinker, that’s able to be creative, that’s able to bring ideas to the table that are going to scale the business, that can build relationships, is all the things that AI aren’t necessarily going to do that we still need in this human world.

Maria Ross 13:10

For sure, and I’ve mentioned this before on the show, I’m pulling it up right now, there’s that MIT study that was done last year about the human capabilities that complement AI, that AI currently lacks, and in that list is empathy, emotional intelligence, you know, things like ethics, and it’s called the EPOCH model, E P O C H, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to the article for folks. I know they’re probably sick of hearing me talk about it, but it’s basically that the humans can still do things AI cannot. And actually, that’s where our largest competitive advantage and strategic advantage to stay relevant is going to lie. So I love what you’re saying, and yeah, it’s really interesting to me because the pandemic came along, and I’ve told this story before. You know, when I was I was shopping around my first book on empathy, there were a lot of agents and publishers who loved it, but didn’t get it, and they didn’t understand if it was a business book or a self-help book. And then the pandemic hit, and my book took off, because people started to understand that we we bring our whole selves to work in that we don’t park our humanity at the office door when we come to work. So what’s going on economically, what’s going on culturally for somebody is yeah, it’s going to affect their ability to do a spreadsheet accurately.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 14:30

100% We’re not we’re not robots, and I always say that the person is the professional, and the professional is the person, and they always work in tandem. I mean, how many of us have had a coworker or somebody that is going through a divorce, they’re struggling financially, their child is sick, you can’t tell me that they came to school and they had optimal performance, or they came to work and they had optimal performance.

Maria Ross 14:51

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 14:52

If they struggled with self-managing and stress and those, they brought that into the workplace.

Maria Ross 14:57

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 14:57

And so I think that that’s a very, you know, hundred-year-old mindset of like I’m going to work, I’m going to make my paycheck and do my thing, but today we just don’t function that way. We have we have more humanity, we want more purpose, more fulfillment, and all of those are very humanistic qualities.

Maria Ross 15:13

Yeah, absolutely. And the pandemic just accelerated that because that trend was already happening, and as we see with Gen Z and with younger millennials, they were driving that change already, and, you know, good on them. They’re being brave enough to say, Yeah, if I’m going to spend 8, 10, 12 hours a day working and producing for you, I want to be respected. I want to be seen, heard, and valued. I want it to be a place where I can collaborate, and feel good, and find joy, even when the work is hard.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 15:42

Yeah, 100%.

Maria Ross 15:43

So I love what you’re saying. So you guys follow a power up method. It’s four pillars to optimize the workplace, and I know that’s been the topic of your books, which we’ll put links to all your books in the show notes as well, but tell us about those pillars, and why they’re so important. And then, if you can, you know, as we talk, give us some examples of them in action.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 16:03

Yeah, so I created the Rise Power Up Method because of all the experiences and the clientele that we work with, there was really like four common challenges that kept coming up. Okay. And so I recognize that these are there’s a lot of soft skills, as you know, there’s tons, recognize that there’s four major ones that actually move the needle forward, okay, when you learn them the right way, and that are the most critical to optimizing your workforce, whether you’re in sales, whether you’re in leadership, it doesn’t matter. And so the first pillar is self-confidence. Most of the clients that we work with, and in fact, every year we do an assessment and we ask anywhere between 4 to 6,000 individuals what their number one challenge is, 83% say self-confidence. So,

Maria Ross 16:51

That’s startling.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 16:52

It’s startling, and we recognize in our coaching and in our training that when we break down the coaching and when we train, that a lot of the behaviors are based off of beliefs, right? And a lot of those beliefs are based off of a lack of self-confidence, not feeling enough, perfectionist mindset, imposter syndrome. And so I always say, like, you can’t give what you don’t have. And so how do we become a transformative leader? How do we really create impact and influence in the world when our mind is telling us that we’re not worthy and that we’re not good enough? Right. So, I mean, how many of us, you know, if you’re listening because I’ve experienced this, you have a team member that you give feedback to, okay? And all of a sudden the team member starts crying. They think they’re going to get fired. They get defensive. They can’t take the feedback. It’s because in their mind, they are struggling with feeling enough and self-confidence, and their identity is attached to that job. And so, when you give feedback about the job or the task or the email, their brain automatically says like, I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. And so, and then the opposite, you have a team member that is self-confident, that you give them feedback and they’re like, Got it. What do How do I need to fix it? Can you give me more clarity? I’m on it. I’m going to start actively working on it. Something and their growth mindset shines and comes through.

Maria Ross 18:14

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 18:14

So, self-confidence is the number one pillar. It’s the most important. I could talk about it for hours. It’s the first the first book I wrote, and I think any great leader has to start there.

Maria Ross 18:26

Right. And we’re, you know, a few things there. We also are talking about a difference between self-confidence and arrogance, because arrogance is actually just hiding a lack of self-confidence in many cases. And so, you know, when we talk about self-awareness, self-care, the first two pillars in the empathy framework, that’s really about knowing that you have that gap, and being able to take care of yourself so that you can take on other perspectives, you can take on feedback without defensiveness or fear. Because to your point, if you are coming from an insecure place, then everything you hear is going to feel like a personal attack.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 19:02

That’s right.

Maria Ross 19:03

And then, where are you? You just don’t have the capacity to actually look at it in a productive way, or be collaborative in the exchange, because you feel like you’re being attacked. So, sort of, I always say we have to get our own house in order before we can be a leader, and we can be there for our teams, and be able to withstand all the change, all the emotional issues that we have, all the conflict, all the hard conversations. So, I love that that’s your first pillar of that framework. What’s your second one?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 19:32

Yeah, and let me just back up for a second. I appreciate you talking about the arrogance or the overconfidence, because I always say that doesn’t exist, because true self-confidence is not overcompensation. In fact,

Maria Ross 19:46

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 19:47

true self-confidence is a growth mindset. It’s progress over perfection. It’s being able to fail and say, You know what, I’m just going to keep going. Right. And it’s very self-aware, so it’s not somebody that’s like I got this even and their self-awareness is so far gone.

Maria Ross 20:04

Yeah.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 20:05

That’s not what self-confidence is. In fact, the true definition states all of that. So that leads me to my second pillar, which is emotional intelligence. Self-confidence is actually under emotional intelligence, under the self-awareness category. It’s the third competency.

Maria Ross 20:20

Mhm.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 20:20

And the thing that I love about emotional intelligence that I geek out on is that most people have no idea what it is. Truly. Yeah. They think it’s just like touchy-feely, you’re in your feelings, and they think it’s just it’s just being self-aware. But there’s actually 18 competencies that fall under emotional intelligence, and those 18 competencies pretty much solve almost every challenge in the workforce today. Everything from accountability, strategic thinking, diversity, equity, and inclusion, cultural tolerance, empathy, active listening, coaching, modeling, team conflict, they all fall under emotional intelligence. And so when companies come to me and they say, Well, we don’t need emotional intelligence. We just we need to teach our leader we need to teach our leaders how to coach. I’m like, Well, let me pull up the emotional intelligence chart for you. Yeah. Yeah. Because that’s where you have to start. And again, you can’t give what you don’t have. So the brilliant thing about emotional intelligence is that it breaks it down into four quadrants. The first two have to do with you, Yes. and the second two then have to do with how you’re showing up with others and how you’re able to modify and adapt yourself in a way that’s win-win according to the person and the room that you’re in front of. Mhm. And that’s the brilliance of emotional intelligence is knowing, hey, I’m in a room right now full of passive players, we’re not able to make a decision, I’m going to assert a little bit more because that’s what’s needed in the moment. Or, this is a true story for me, I’m in a room full of all male executives that are brilliant and they’re all super aggressive and going at it and nothing’s getting done, so I take a step back and when it’s ready, I say something very gently and the whole room goes quiet and we finally make a decision. So it’s knowing how to shift your energy, right, and your behavior in a way that’s win-win for both parties.

Maria Ross 22:15

Well, and I think that, you know, I’ve written a lot about this in terms of empathy and emotional intelligence writ large being so important to navigating the tumultuous times of change we’re in right now. And you’ve just articulated why. That ability to adapt, that ability to be resilient, that ability to read the room. I’m always telling my 11-year-old, Dude, read the room, right? That joke’s funny, but not to your teacher.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 22:37

Yes.

Maria Ross 22:38

But that ability to get out of your own head, and again, to your point, if you’re insecure, you’re too stuck in your own head. But if you’re grounded and you’re able to kind of see what’s going on from an objective point of view and respond to it, and you might have to respond in a non-scripted way, and that’s where the flexibility and the adaptability come in. That’s what’s required for us to survive and thrive in these times of change. So the link between change management and emotional intelligence is so strong, and I think a lot of people misjudge how strong it is. They think they, Oh, we need to we need to figure out how to navigate this change, but we’re going to keep our old patterns and our old leadership paradigm in order to do it. Like, mh, that’s not really going to work for you.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 23:24

Well, I just had a conversation this morning with a prospect, and they were saying, Well, we don’t really like we don’t want to learn about emotional intelligence. We want to just be able to be in a room and have crucial, conscious conversations.

Maria Ross 23:37

Without emotional intelligence, yeah.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 23:40

And I said I said, I hear you. I total I absolutely get what you want the outcome to be. And we can’t just jump to crucial conversations. They need to have the conceptual, the understanding what emotional intelligence is. They need to learn self-awareness so that when they do communicate in a crucial conversation, it doesn’t blow up and go sideways.

Maria Ross 23:59

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 23:59

So, you know, people always want to like jump through the actual work that’s needed and get to the outcome, but EQ is the it’s the foundation. It’s the most popular program we have.

Maria Ross 24:10

Yeah, they want a shortcut, right? And they want, like to your point that you made earlier, you know, we’re not talking about being overly touchy-feely. We’re talking about, you know, being able to access emotional intelligence and empathy from wherever you are, whether you are analytical and data-driven, whether you are emotional and emotive and touchy-feely, whether you’re neurodiverse, right, or neurodivergent, and how can you access it whether whether you use your head or your heart, you still can get to a point where you’re trying to understand someone else’s experience, someone else’s point of view, and like I said, be able to read the room. And so that’s the thing. I’m sure you get this, too. I get kind of like sighs of relief from leaders that I work with when they’re like, Oh, I don’t You know, I’m like, You don’t have to be crying on the floor with your employees. That’s not empathy. That’s not even emotional intelligence It might be, if that’s how it manifests for the two people in the interaction, but it doesn’t have to be. And so they they sort of are like, Oh, I always thought that’s what it was, and that’s what was holding me back from being emotive, from being, you know, willing to listen, from being like making the time if my employee’s having a rough time. I just didn’t want to go there because I thought it was going to lead to something that I was uncomfortable with.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 25:24

Yeah. Yeah. So,

Maria Ross 25:25

I love that so much. Okay, so pillar three.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 25:30

Pillar number three and four are the most difficult. The third one is transformative leadership versus transactional. And the reason why we labeled it transformative is because we see so many leaders, especially, you know, our clients, people that we’re coaching and we’re working with when I was an executive, that function we always use Maslow’s hierarchy as a bench. They function at the bottom of the pyramid, meaning that so many leaders are helping their team on a very basic level. Do you feel supported? Do you have what you need? Is there psychological safety where you can show up and do your work? I have an open door policy. Let me know if you need anything. Right? It’s It’s a very passive, hands-off approach until you need something and then it’s like management, we got to get this done. Yeah. And so what we really want to do is be a transformative leader where we look at our team as infinite potential, and we help them get to the top of the pyramid, which is self-actualization. So, how do I take my team member beyond just their job role, but coach them, mentor, guide them to a place where they start to see shifts in themselves and they start to push their potential. Now, the hardest part about this pillar is that leaders always want to be selective. Right? They’re like, Well, I could do that with these team members, but I don’t know if I want to like invest my time in these other ones. And then I always say, actually I just had this conversation the other day with a client, and then I said, Well, then why do you have them there? You like if you’re not interested in investing in them because you think that they’re stagnant or that they’re just not worth it, why do you have them on payroll to pay why are you paying them? Why are they on payroll? Right. And how do you

Maria Ross 27:11

think they’re going to innovate for your organization?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 27:14

Exactly. Cause I always, and I say this now I’m thinking from a very business-minded perspective, people are either a liability or they’re an asset.

Maria Ross 27:23

Okay?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 27:24

And when you tell me that you are not interested in growing anybody, but you keep them on payroll, that’s a liability to me because they’re no longer growing and nurturing themselves, their leadership, the company, the environment. And that’s always how I think of it, but in a positive way. Yeah. And so transformational leadership is that third pillar. That one’s more strategic. So how do you coach? How do you mentor? How do you build that next level of succession planning and bench? And the thing that’s really important for me to teach is how do you identify high performance versus high potential, cause they’re very, very different.

Maria Ross 28:00

Ooh, dig into that. What is the difference?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 28:02

So high performance is typically what we see in a company where I’m going to promote the sales team member because they perform well. They bring in the top sales. They are they’re bringing in the revenue. They are a high performer. But then you put them in a leadership role, and they’re not interested in growing. They’re not interested in They’re not interested in teaching their team. They have no desire to coach and mentor. And then people end up turning over because you put somebody in a leadership role that has no idea how to lead, nor do they care. Right. And so a high potential is somebody that can perform, but is also hungry to grow as a person. They’re hungry to pass on their knowledge to other people. They’re collaborative. They want to grow themselves, the team, the organization, and that’s what we need to find.

Maria Ross 28:49

I love that because so many people have gotten promoted because they’re good at the doing, and they’re not good at managing people. Right, they’re performers. And so I love that idea because I’ve actually, you know, in my throughout my career, I’ve seen people who might not be great at the actual work, but when they’re put in a leadership position, they’re able to create a team of catalysts. And it’s because of these quote-unquote soft skills, which I always hate calling them soft skills because they actually impact the bottom line.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 29:16

Yeah.

Maria Ross 29:17

But it’s that idea of that’s not a checkbox for someone being a good leader is them being able to do all the tasks. Again, AI is coming, right? Yeah. Just because they can do all the tasks, you know what? AI’s going to be able to do that for us. Exactly. So how do we get those people that maybe they’re not, you know, maybe they’re B players. Maybe they’re B-plus, right? But they are amazing at motivating and managing and mentoring people, and they’re going to exponentially benefit your organization. Because if you’ve got them at that level, they’re going to be able to take any team and create a high-performing team. And this is the thing I was just discussing on another episode with someone about the importance of coaching. And coaching, we were talking about college sports, actually, and how the Indiana University Hoosiers, which by the time this airs, as of this date, it’s just happened, but by the time this airs, we’ll know if they became national champions or not. But they had a huge turnaround in their organization in just two years with mostly the same players. Yeah. They were like the second most losingest college football team in the NCAA or something like that. It’s cause the coach came in with a completely different approach and mindset, and he took mostly the same group of players and turned them around. And that’s what we need in our organizations because I’m sure you hear it too, like, it’s not me, it’s my team.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 30:41

Oh, yeah.

Maria Ross 30:42

Right?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 30:43

It’s not me, my team. I don’t have time to teach my team. I don’t I don’t have time. I have my own job. And again, that’s not a high potential, that’s a high performer. It’s like, I want to do my thing. I want to perform. I want to make my sales. I want to, you know, make sure that I get my bonus or whatever it is, and it’s not a collaborative or potential-driven approach, and that’s the difference.

Maria Ross 31:02

Mm-hmm.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 31:03

And then the final pillar, which is by far the most difficult, is influential communication.

Maria Ross 31:08

Ooh.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 31:09

So how do I influence and communicate in a way where the person, the persons, the stakeholder, the client, the team member is going to be moved to take action? So my communication is so inspiring, it’s empowering, it’s exciting that whether it’s a team member or a high-paying client that you’re trying to sign, they want to say yes to you.

Maria Ross 31:33

Mm-hmm.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 31:33

And the biggest challenge that we see with this, to tell you the truth, is amongst the executive team. The biggest gap we see in companies throughout the North America is that the executive C-suite team does not know how to influence the owner or the CEO of the company. And so influential communication is a big gap there. So they don’t know how to drive vision, they don’t know how to shift the CEO in a way where they’re going to get buy-in, they don’t know how to create influence, and oftentimes they communicate in circles, which creates more frustration with the CEO.

Maria Ross 32:07

Right.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 32:08

Right, there’s a lot of fluff and it’s not clear and a lot of filler words like like, you know, and they talk in circles. Well, back

Maria Ross 32:16

to your self-confidence point, right? And so I I’m curious to hear what you get back from people who are like, I’m just not someone who can spin, or I’m not an extrovert, or how do you help those kinds of people become influential communicators? What kind of strategies or mindsets do you use with them to get them to shift their thinking?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 32:37

Yeah, there’s a lot of different strategies. There’s mindset strategies and then there’s actual like tangible strategies around cut this word, use this phrase, right? So there’s different nuances. But the reality is is that the first thing that we have to do is shift the mindset of putting yourself in a box. So when somebody, for example, tells me, I’m an extrovert, I say, Well, you’re also an introvert. We’re all the things. We’re all all the things. And this is what I love about emotional intelligence, going back to that second pillar, is that that’s what emotional intelligence does. It tells you, I’m naturally an extrovert, but right now I should play as an introvert because the room needs it. Yes. Or I’m naturally an introvert, but I’m going into this high-stake job interview and I want to get the job, so now is not the time for me to be an introvert. I need to step into my power and be a little bit more extroverted. And so one of the first things that we do is we just have to break that mindset of that you have all of it. You’re colorful in every aspect, and you have dominant traits, of course, but you can also learn how to pull out the other side of things that’s going to serve you, right? And then where where do I use what color? So So yes. I’m

Maria Ross 33:47

Just real quick, I’m glad you said that, because I think, you know, people get a mixed message in their own minds that, But I’m being told I need to be authentic. Now you’re telling me I need to build this other skill. But what you’re saying is we’ve got it all there. Just sometimes we need to pull at different things and understand what the moment requires.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 34:05

Yes. Yeah, we we all have all of it, but we’ve just trained ourselves, or maybe we use it in different moments. Like I know people that are very introverted in public, but in their house they’re not. They have the extroverted skill. I can see it, but something along the way has made them play more introverted in a public environment. And so it is authentic to you. It is your natural characteristic, but you’ve just trained yourself to use it in certain situations, and now we’re doing a little bit of the untraining so that it can serve you versus sabotaging you.

Maria Ross 34:38

Well, and also this idea that, you know, every kind of personality trait or style, whatever, has its benefits as well. It’s got They’ve got shadow sides, but they got their benefits. Like research that has shown that actually some of the most successful salespeople are introverts because they can listen well. Yeah. Right? So, you know, this We make a lot of assumptions. Yes. And I think this is based, kind of going macro view, both our work, it’s based on these outdated leadership paradigms that says a leader needs to look like this. They need to be command and control, they need to be strong, they need to be outspoken, they need to be extroverted, they need to be tough. Like, who said that? Like those are all constructs we created as human beings, and we can unlearn them. We can uncouple them because now we know better. Now we know the data and research shows us to your point, you know, all the results and the success you get when you marry emotional intelligence with business acumen.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 35:35

100%.

Maria Ross 35:36

Yeah,

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 35:37

and that is again, that’s the beautiful of learn beautifying of learning these skills. I highly recommend, so we have an assessment, it’s totally complementary, it’s called the Power Up Assessment, and you can take this assessment either as an individual or as an organization, and it assesses you on the four pillars we just talked about: so self-confidence, emotional intelligence, transformational leadership, and influential communication. And at the end, it’ll whip out a report within 30 seconds, complementary, and it’ll tell you like, you’re really strong in self-confidence, influential communication we need to work on, and then it provides, I want to say, anywhere between like 30 to 35 resources, totally free, on every single category. Wow. So I recommend if these four pillars get you excited and you’re curious, take that assessment, again, it’s complementary, and it’ll let you know where you stand today.

Maria Ross 36:25

I love it. I’m going to add that to my bag of tricks, because when I do my talks in the self-awareness pillar, I offer people some assessment tools.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 36:33

Yeah.

Maria Ross 36:33

And so I am going to add this to the bag of tricks for people. I love it. So, yeah, we’ll put the link to that in the show notes. It’s called the Power Up Assessment if you’re interested. For anyone just listening right now, I’m just going to give you the URL for that. It’s powerup.riseupforyou.com. So, that’s the URL. But again, it’ll be in the show notes. And I’ll also put some links to the MIT article I mentioned earlier and also Maslow’s hierarchy for people that need a refresher on on that whole hierarchy of needs. But kind of as we wrap up, what is one gem or nugget you can share with leaders who are a little a little hesitant to dive into building more emotional intelligence, who have some of these preconceived notions about what that means in the workplace? What’s What are your words of wisdom for those leaders or professionals?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 37:24

way that I say it to leaders and executives that are a little bit more hesitant, and I sum it up in a way where I think it would land with them, is I say that emotional intelligence teaches you how to be expressive and empathetic without being overly emotional. And the reason why I say it that way is because, again, sometimes when we think about emotional intelligence, we think that it’s like emotional and like you said, crying on the floor. But what it really what it really teaches you to do is to be expressive in a way that is professional, that’s personable, that drives the needle forward, that moves things forward, but in a very like grounded way that can land for really anybody that’s sitting across from you.

Maria Ross 38:06

Right. I mean, if you break it up, it’s being intelligent about your emotions.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 38:11

That’s right.

Maria Ross 38:11

So it’s not it’s not something where it’s like you will be overly emotional, which is I think the the vision that people have in their heads.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 38:19

Yes.

Maria Ross 38:19

Netta, this was so good. Thank you so much for all this. Like I said, we’ll have all your links in the show notes and links to all your amazing books and to that assessment that you mentioned. But for anyone that’s on the go, that’s exercising right now as they’re listening to us and taking care of themselves and their capacity, where’s one of the best places they can find out more about your work?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 38:38

Thank you. So the company is Rise Up for You. Every social media platform, our website, it’s simply that, it’s riseupforyou.com, @riseupforyou. Our YouTube is Rise Up for You. So feel free to check us out on LinkedIn is where we play the most, YouTube, our website. And then feel free to connect with me, Netalina Nasserdeen. I do my own social media, so even if you send me a message on LinkedIn, I’ll be there. I’ll respond. It’s it’s not a bot. Not yet. There’s no AI there yet. Not

Maria Ross 39:05

yet. And I’m going to do my PSA I do for all my guests that invite people to connect on LinkedIn. Send a note that says you heard her on this podcast so that she knows you’re not trying to sell her something.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 39:16

Thank you. Yeah.

Maria Ross 39:17

But this has been delightful. I feel like we could talk for so much longer

Nada Lena Nasserdeen 39:21

I agree

Maria Ross 39:21

I think we’ll continue to collaborate and continue to talk. But thank you so much for your time today and your insights. Thank you. 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, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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 @redslicemaria. 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™

Scott Stirrett: Why Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty Is a Core Leadership Skill—and How to Build It

What if uncertainty isn’t something to fear or even survive, but a skill you can train and a competitive advantage you can build?

Scott Stirrett has spent more than a decade helping people do exactly that. Scott is a Canadian entrepreneur, author, and the founder of Venture for Canada, a national charity that has supported over 10,000 young professionals since 2013. He’s also the author of The Uncertainty Advantage, a powerful guide for navigating the future of work that argues uncertainty isn’t a bug in the system. It is the system.

Scott walks us through how empathy and emotional skills play starring roles in his six pillars that help build real resilience, alongside some surprising mindset shifts and practical exercises you can start using right away. We also talk about why traditional career playbooks no longer apply and how leaders and professionals can turn volatility into opportunity instead of paralysis.

If you’re navigating change, rethinking your career, or leading others through uncertainty, this episode offers both reassurance and a roadmap.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The six pillars that help build real resilience and momentum in uncertain times.
Seeing the opportunity in uncertainty and volatility.
How to act when you don’t have perfect information.
Why it is so important to build your uncertainty muscles.

“We don’t choose what era we live in. We live in an era of rapid change. Learning to develop a positive relationship with uncertainty is one of the most important things that you can do, perhaps at any moment in human history.” — Scott Stirrett

Episode References:

Scott’s Book: The Uncertainty Advantage
Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
MIT study on human skills that complement AI: mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/these-human-capabilities-complement-ais-shortcomings

About Scott Stirrett: Founder, Venture for Canada and Author, The Uncertainty Advantage

Scott Stirrett is a Canadian entrepreneur, author, and the Founder of Venture for Canada (VFC), a national charity that has supported over 10,000 young professionals since 2013. Under his leadership, VFC raised $80 million and partnered with leading organizations to equip early-career Canadians with entrepreneurial skills to thrive in an uncertain world.

Scott is the author of The Uncertainty Advantage, a guide for young professionals navigating the future of work, endorsed by leaders including Andrew Yang and Amanda Lang. The book draws on lessons from building VFC, emphasizing adaptability, entrepreneurial thinking, and lifelong learning.

A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Scott began his career at Goldman Sachs in New York. He’s been recognized as a Telus LGBTQ Innovator, Ashoka Fellow, and Globe and Mail Changemaker. His commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, and more. He currently co-chairs the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights.

Connect with Scott:

The Uncertainty Advantage: scottstirrett.com

X: x.com/scottstirrett

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scottstirrett

Facebook: facebook.com/stirrett

Instagram: instagram.com/scottstirrett

Substack: substack.com/@scottstirrett

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Scott Stirrett 03:22

Thanks for having me on.

Maria Ross 03:23

So as we start every show, we would love to hear a little bit about your story. How did you get here and why are you doing this work? Why this book?

Scott Stirrett 03:33

I’ve had a up-and-down relationship with uncertainty throughout my life, and I was motivated to write The Uncertainty Advantage because I experienced firsthand in my 20s significant challenges with navigating uncertainty. I graduated from Georgetown University in 2013 when I was 22, and shortly after graduating from Georgetown, I went to go work at Goldman Sachs in New York City. I worked there for around a year, and then I quit my job to go found a non-profit in Canada where I’m originally from called Venture for Canada. And over the last around 11 years, I scaled Venture for Canada alongside the team from just a little idea to a national organization that supports over 10,000 young people across Canada to launch their careers, and we raised over $80 million of funding to support our work. And in my work at Venture for Canada, I saw firsthand the challenges that a lot of young people face in navigating uncertainty, and how fear of uncertainty is arguably the most prevalent thing that holds people back at the beginning of their careers. It prevents them from taking risks, from realizing opportunities. And likewise, I saw in my own 20s my struggles with uncertainty. I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which at the core is a fear of uncertainty. And while most people don’t have OCD, many people, like most people, have an uncomfortable relationship with the unknown. And the throughline through my work is how do you help individuals learn to see the opportunity in uncertainty rather than to fear it?

Maria Ross 05:13

Oh my gosh, so much in there, so thank you for sharing that with us. And, you know, it’s interesting because we’ve always talked about We in the past, we’ve always talked about uncertainty in terms of young people and they sort of have this blank canvas in front of them and they don’t know what’s going on. But especially in the times we’re in right now, uncertainty is everywhere because of the pace of change. And you know, I I started out my career as a change management consultant, and so that that was very much about helping people through that fear, helping them get excited, helping them figure out what do they need to upskill or to bolster themselves so that they could take advantage of the change, rather than have to run from it or fear it. So I’m really excited. You know, I know your your book and your research and your experiences offered a framework in The Uncertainty Advantage about how to turn volatility into opportunity. So maybe we can start there. Why do you believe that thriving in uncertainty is kind of the most important skill that people can master for career success today? The

Scott Stirrett 06:17

first reason is because our era is defined by rapid change. There’s always been a degree of volatility in human history, but what’s different now is how quickly things are evolving. That’s because of AI, climate change, a variety of different factors. But there are unique things that are driving rapid evolutions in terms of how we live, how we work, and I think one of the most important things that we all need to do at this point in our careers is to think about how we see the opportunity in uncertainty, because we don’t choose what era we live in, but we can choose to develop a better relationship with uncertainty. And that’s first and foremost why I think it is really critical for young people to embrace building their uncertainty muscles. The second core aspect is is that learning to develop a positive relationship with uncertainty is correlated with a whole host of socio-emotional benefits. The more comfortable you are with the unknown, generally the more positive mental health that you have, the more that you’re willing to like take risks, and that can be everything in forming new relationships and launching new businesses. We live in a world where more rewards go to those who are willing to take smart, you know, calculated risks. And I’m really passionate about this because I think that the more that you help young people, in particular those who maybe are more socioeconomically marginalized, see the opportunity in uncertainty, the more that we can unlock a ton of potential throughout the world and help people take risks within the context of what’s appropriate for them. And the third reason why I I think it’s really important to teach comfort with uncertainty is that not only is uncertainty or comfort with uncertainty an important skill, it’s also something that’s really teachable. All of us maybe have different innate abilities in terms of how to cope with the unknown, but everyone within the context of where they’re at can learn to develop a better relationship with uncertainty. And I share this firsthand. 5 years ago, I was at the worst of my OCD experience. I struggled to get out of the house. I struggled to do basic things. In some ways, today I have more comfort with uncertainty than I ever have. And that’s been a testament to slowly building up or rebuilding my uncertainty muscles over time. All I’ll say is if I can do it, so can others. And I think anyone can learn through practical tips and habits to build a mindset and the skills that help them to thrive in the unknown.

Maria Ross 09:00

Amazing, amazing! It’s funny because there’s so many parallels there to helping people understand that they can build empathy as well. That it is a muscle, and you can strengthen it, but you just have to be more intentional about it. It’s not something where people are just necessarily born being good at adapting to change, because we as humans learn to adapt. That’s how we evolve. But the human brain does not thrive on change, it thrives on predictability and knowing what’s next. And, you know, that’s those are the shortcuts that our brains love. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about the approach you take to learning that. There’s 6 pillars in the uncertainty advantage and, you know, obviously, many of those overlap with my work. So can you kind of give us a brief primer on those pillars, and how they play into strengthening that ability to adapt? And really what we’re talking about here is resilience, and we talk about resilience and adaptability. I mean, we all experienced it to some degree or another during the pandemic, but that is the skill that teams and leaders are craving right now, because they know it’s like you said, it’s change. They always used to say, Change is the only constant, but not at this pace, right? So you you hit the nail on the head there. But tell us a little bit about those pillars, and how each of them work to strengthen that resilience muscle or that adaptability to change muscle.

Scott Stirrett 10:31

Yeah, the first pillar of the uncertainty advantage is self-compassion, and essentially, the more that you are kind to yourself, the more that you can learn to develop a positive relationship with uncertainty. Those who are relentlessly self-critical are less comfortable with failure. And uncertainty inherently means that sometimes you’re going to have adverse or negative outcomes. And I think about a lot of what’s involved in learning to develop a better relationship with uncertainty is learning to accept that bad things can happen, and being kind to yourself that sometimes you’re going to make mistakes. And that’s part of a life. You want to learn from them, but mistakes are par for the course. And some of the ways that you can learn to foster more self-compassion to yourself is to learn to talk to yourself in a more kind or gentle way, to label self-critical thoughts, and and to really focus more on the journey rather than the destination. The second core pillar of the uncertainty advantage is the importance of adaptability. Essentially, that in a world that is really unpredictable, setting rigid plans for yourself can be a waste of time and can set yourself up for a lot of frustration. So, my advice is, rather than set rigid plans for yourself, is be iterative in your your goal making. Think clearly in terms of what is your like life mission statement, what is your vision statement, what do you want to accomplish in the long term, at a really high level. Be really adaptive in terms of your short-term goals. So don’t say, In two years I want to make X, Y, Z amount of money or have X job. Be more iterative and think, Okay, in the next couple months, what am I looking to accomplish?

Maria Ross 12:15

Right.

Scott Stirrett 12:16

And adapt based on what’s happening. The third pillar of the uncertainty advantage is the importance of antifragility. And antifragility is the ability to not just withstand challenges; it’s the ability to grow stronger in the face of setbacks. And one of the ways that you can learn to be a more antifragile person is to learn to develop your risk-taking muscles, because the more risks that you take, the more that you can benefit from all of the uncertainty that’s out there in the world, rather than just tolerate

Maria Ross 12:50

it. I I just I would love to interject here, because I’ve heard around this topic, more framed as resilience, but I love the term antifragility because it sounds like you’re fortifying yourself, right? This idea of just try to even do small challenges, like learn a new skill, or learn an instrument, or learn some phrases in another language, or whatever it is. It’s sort of giving yourself those own your own little personal challenges of something that you think maybe you could never do, and giving it a try. And I’ve heard that. Is that part of what you mean by that?

Scott Stirrett 13:25

Yeah, 100%. And credit goes to the public intellectual Nassim Taleb, who created the concept of anti-fragility and wrote a book called Antifragile on the topic. So I’m borrowing that concept and applying it in the personal development space.

Maria Ross 13:40

Mhm.

Scott Stirrett 13:41

But I think it’s really important for folks because I think sometimes people will think that what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, but in fact, it’s what’s really important is to take that mindset of always pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

Maria Ross 13:54

Yeah.

Scott Stirrett 13:55

And I This is my first week back, actually, in Canada after traveling for two and a half months. I took a little sabbatical after leaving Venture for Canada to go on a trip, and after two and a half months, I can tell certain skills that I have feel like they’ve atrophied after two and a half months. Like, I’m glad I took two and a half months off and not a year off, because I can see how when people take really extended periods of time off, it’s easy for skills to to atrophy over time.

Maria Ross 14:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Stirrett 14:24

To link back to anti-fragility, that’s why it’s really important to always be pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Even when I was traveling, it was in like rural Japan for a lot of it, and I don’t speak any Japanese, and there were a lot of things that were out of my comfort zone. So I felt I was learning some new skills. But all to say is that if you just go lay on the beach for three months, your ability to withstand setbacks are going to decrease. So it’s important within the context of where you are to always be pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Of course, there’s a Goldilocks. Like it’s like in the gym, if you push yourself too hard, you’re going to injure yourself.

Maria Ross 15:00

Right.

Scott Stirrett 15:00

So you always want to push yourself, but also be mindful of not overexerting yourself because that’s where burnout and other challenges end up happening.

Maria Ross 15:09

Yeah. Well, and it also instills, you know, part of my frameworks, when you’re you’re developing the when you’re trying to develop empathy for yourself, one of the habits is, obviously, it starts with self-compassion and self-awareness, but also this idea of building your self-confidence, so that you’re not you can take on other points of view without defensiveness or fear. And giving yourself these little challenges, these little stretch goals, that actually helps build your self-confidence to say, The sky didn’t fall. If I tried it and it didn’t work, it’s okay. This is like the worst case scenario that could happen. You get more comfortable with risk and uncertainty. Not that anyone’s I mean, there might be people that are completely comfortable with it. I’d love to meet those unicorns, but for us mere mortals, it’s a great way to build self-confidence, which actually helps you, not just in the the this component of getting used to uncertainty, but it also helps build your ability to be more compassionate with other people. Like you said, because if you’re if you learn to be compassionate with yourself and like, Oh, I try things. I fail things. At things, it’s all okay. You have more space and grace for other people.

Scott Stirrett 16:21

Yeah, learning to be more kind to yourself is definitely correlated with also learning to be more kind with with others.

Maria Ross 16:29

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott Stirrett 16:30

And I think it’s really important to double-click on that concept of building your kind of risk-taking kind of muscles, and Annie Duke, the champion poker player, has a great book called Thinking in Bets, and in it, she really emphasizes the importance of people thinking about life as a series of like, not just like a couple dozen bets, but like tens of thousands of bets over a lifetime. And if you think about every day that you’re making a bet on something, and yeah, maybe it’ll work out, maybe it doesn’t. But that’s part of life. Like, we’re all betting all the time.

Maria Ross 17:04

Yep.

Scott Stirrett 17:04

And not all bets are going to pay off. But what’s important is that you bet, because no bets means no rewards. And and again, it’s important to emphasize that it’s important to do that judiciously within the context of your socioeconomic kind of environment. So, people can take more risks because they have access to more resources.

Maria Ross 17:22

Exactly.

Scott Stirrett 17:23

But everyone needs to think about constantly making bets in life.

Maria Ross 17:28

Yeah. Okay. What’s pillar four?

Scott Stirrett 17:30

Pillar four of The Uncertainty Advantage is the importance of generalist skills, which are the ability are the kinds of skills that are needed across a wide range of domains. So, that can include communications, teamwork, the conflict management, all of these skills are important whether you work in the government or you work in the private sector or you work in a startup or a big corporation. And it’s really important for everyone to develop these skills, especially where a lot of technical skills are at greater risk of automation because of artificial intelligence. And in a world that is really uncertain, my core thesis is that technical skills in aggregate are going to become less important. And it is going to be more important for people to develop skills that are harder to automate and that you can apply across a wide range of domains.

Maria Ross 18:22

Yeah, we talk about that a lot on the show in terms of my viewpoint is AI is fantastic, but it also gives leaders who don’t have those kinds of skills no place to hide, because they can’t hide behind the work anymore. They can’t hide behind the tasks. They actually are going to have to motivate people and uplevel people and support people. And there’s a I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I’ll put it again in the show notes here. There’s a study by MIT that came out last year that talks about the five skill human skills required to augment AI that AI currently can’t replicate. And many of those skills are the skills that you’re talking about now. So I’ll put a link to that study for folks in the show notes again.

Scott Stirrett 19:00

Yeah, it’s really important for people to think about it. How do you build the skills, the portfolio of skills and talents that can help you withstand a lot of uncertainty that’s going to come if you invest all of your skills or you focus on fostering skills that are really highly technical and you go all in on those, and then all of a sudden AI makes those skills redundant, then you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Maria Ross 19:26

For sure.

Scott Stirrett 19:26

So the more you invest in generalist skills, I think the more that you’re going to be able to thrive in a world where AI is likely going to have more and more influence.

Maria Ross 19:35

Would you kind of put that under the banner of emotional intelligence skills?

Scott Stirrett 19:39

Yeah, totally. I think

Maria Ross 19:39

When you call them general skills, yeah.

Scott Stirrett 19:41

I think general skills are at the core like socio-emotional skills, empathy being one of them.

Maria Ross 19:46

Got it. Okay, so that’s four. What is five?

Scott Stirrett 19:51

The fifth pillar of the uncertainty advantage is the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset. And to be entrepreneurial is to identify and act upon opportunities to create value for others. And the core point is that in a world that is moving really quickly, there are more opportunities emerging than ever before, which means that it’s more important than ever to be really great at identifying opportunities and even more importantly on acting on them. And that being entrepreneurial isn’t just for like startup founders, it’s for everyone, that we all need to work on fostering our entrepreneurial mindset. And the way you do that is through running a series of of experiments, of launching side hustles, of testing out different ideas. It’s easier today in many ways to run experiments than ever before because of AI. And if you’re entrepreneurial, I encourage you to think about an idea and go run with it in the next like couple weeks, test it out. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But the core point is that even if it doesn’t work out, that you’re building your entrepreneurial mindset.

Maria Ross 20:54

Mm-hmm. What say to someone who might push against that? Of like, I’m the person that likes to just do steady work and be good to my colleagues, and I don’t necessarily want to experiment.

Scott Stirrett 21:06

I’d say to that person that there’s a risk in not taking risks, that I think AI is potentially going to push the world more into a place where there’s fewer employees and there’s more people that are freelancers or contract employees or self-employed, and that even for people who are employed in in big organizations, there’ll be more of a mindset that by employers that everyone has to be entrepreneurial all the time. This business as usual, just doing the same thing over and over again, isn’t going to cut it. So I would say to that person that it’s important to not get left behind and invest in entrepreneurial skills.

Maria Ross 21:43

It’s funny because I was at—I can’t even remember what it was, an online panel or an online gathering of leaders, and one of the leaders was saying, With AI, I no longer will— and they said it nicer than this, but sort of, It will no longer be acceptable for someone to come into my office complaining about something unless they have a prototype, unless they have some way that they think they possibly could solve it, because they have the capabilities and they have the tools now to be able to do that. So if you think the way something is done is not efficient or effective, great. Let’s talk about it, but try to run some sort of experiment. Try to run some sort of prototype for me of what would work before we have that conversation. And I thought that was really interesting.

Scott Stirrett 22:32

Totally. Yeah, I think it’s one of the most important things of someone with an entrepreneurial mindset is the ability to not just like identify a problem, but like act on it. There’s a section in the book where I talk about the different levels of helpfulness in an employee, and the most helpful employee, is they identify a problem, they think about a solution, they solve it, and then they like go to their boss and say, I found this problem and I fixed it. Right. And the least effective employees, or some of the least effective, are those who just identify problems and dump them on their boss. And then their boss is just more stressed out because they have a bunch more problems to solve.

Maria Ross 23:08

for sure Well, and I think that also includes, you know, I don’t want to scare people of like, But I work better in a group, right? That also includes being the person to pull a group together to help solve the problem collaboratively. It doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own in your office, on your computer, trying to prototype something. It also means having the initiative to say, Hey, there’s a problem identified. Who else here is interested in trying to find a solution on this? Let’s put our heads together. Let’s get together on this, and then let’s go to our boss with a proposed solution. So it doesn’t mean you have to be a lone wolf, but you know you could be the one that’s initiating the collective and saying, Let me find the people who care about this as much as I do. And we I might not have all the answers—that’s where empathy comes in. Other people might have different perspectives and viewpoints—but I’m I want to take the initiative to bring those people together.

Scott Stirrett 24:00

Totally. Yeah, a big part of being entrepreneurial is not just taking action by yourself, but working with other people.

Maria Ross 24:06

Exactly.

Scott Stirrett 24:07

And most entrepreneurial ventures that create a lot of impact end up involving hundreds or thousands of other people, so your ability to work with other people, to be an empathetic leader, to be somebody who can motivate other people, is a core part of being entrepreneurial.

Maria Ross 24:20

For sure. Okay, and what’s the sixth magic pillar?

Scott Stirrett 24:24

The sixth pillar of The Uncertainty Advantage is the importance of network building. And that in a world that is moving really quickly and where there’s a lot of new opportunities, it’s more important than ever for people to foster a network that is really resilient. And some of the advice I talk about in the book is the importance of building a network that is both wide and deep. What I mean by that is build a network that’s deep in the sense that people who you know really well, people you can go to for advice, mentors, people who provide socio-emotional support. And in the book, I talk about a report from MIT about the importance of a personal advisory board that you create for yourself, which isn’t a formal board, but it’s a kind of group of people who give you advice. But also, it’s really important to think about weak ties and how do you foster some kind of relationship with like thousands of different people on a regular basis. And a lot of jobs come through weak ties rather than deep ties. So it’s important to emphasize that your weak ties in some in some ways can be more important. But in terms of your resilience, your anti-fragility, your ability to bounce back from setbacks, deep ties are really, really critical. So sometimes in the career development advice people emphasize deep ties over weak ties, or vice versa. What I really emphasize in the book is that both are really important for different reasons.

Maria Ross 25:43

Obviously, yeah, that’s great. And, you know, in my five pillars of being an effective and empathetic leader, the first two are self-awareness and self-care, and part of the tactics I offer to leaders for self-awareness is is build that community, build that peer support group, that personal board of directors. Everybody needs a sanity check. Everybody needs sort of these people that will not only be there to support them, but also call them out and hold them accountable on goals they’re setting or behaviors they’re trying to change or whatever it is. So I love that this is also a resilience-building strategy. And this is also my entire as to why empathy has been identified as the number one skill for leaders in the 21st century. It’s because our, to your point, our problems are too complex. They’re coming at us too rapidly. There’s not going to be one lone savior hero. Like we need to be able to create networks and connections and collaboratives and connect with people quickly in order to creatively solve problems. And I go back to the thing, the leaders that have been skating by without wanting to build those skills are going to be exposed in this current environment. And so for anyone kind of early in their career listening to this, it’s important to work on that skill. But I would also submit anyone who’s not good at this right now, it’s not too late. We can intentionally, like you said earlier, learn those skills and build that muscle. Why do you think that uncertainty is actually a competitive edge when leaders and people can approach it with the right frameworks?

Scott Stirrett 27:21

I think it can be a competitive edge for a few reasons. I think the first is because a lot of people don’t like uncertainty, and learning to embrace it is something that differentiates yourself from most people. I’ve done a lot of talks over the last six or seven months about uncertainty within-person groups, and I’ve had maybe 700 people fill out this short survey that I have where it’s like, you know, 12 questions and it gives you a score of how comfortable you are with uncertainty. And I’d say that there tends to be like maybe in average like four people who dislike uncertainty for every one person who loves uncertainty. And it’s because our brains are like hardwired to fear the unknown. And it’s partially because of it’s how we survived. Often the unknown would result in death when we were like cave people. And as a result, when we think of unknown situations, our brains almost always for most people go to the worst possible outcome as a way to keep ourselves safe. Now, in the real world, that’s not necessarily always a or often a helpful way to go to.

Maria Ross 28:36

Right.

Scott Stirrett 28:36

And learning to really develop a positive relationship with the unknown, is I think a huge differentiator between you and and and other people. And then I think second is that learning to develop a better relationship with uncertainty helps you with so many different things like risk taking, your just mental health, your relationships with other people. Sometimes psychologists or trainers talk about meta skills that are that are really important, and I think that, you know, empathy is a good example, I think, of a kind of meta skill that is really important, but so is I think comfort with uncertainty. It helps you be more empathetic. In some ways, I think that learning to embrace the unknown is one of the most like important meta skills you can have because it helps you with so many things. There’s one study I read where one of the authors said that like your comfort level with uncertainty is one of the greatest like predictive factors on whether you develop like a mental health challenge later in life or or not. And I think most people, if you were to ask them what is like the greatest impact on your mental health, a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily appreciate that your relationship with the unknown is is really really critical for your overall well-being.

Maria Ross 29:47

Right, right. Well, and I think, you know, there’s I mean, among the many lessons that the pandemic and the lockdown taught us, is that we can’t always know. We don’t always know, and everything from we don’t know when we’re going going to go back to work or back to school, to we don’t know if we’re going to find a vaccine for this horrible disease, we don’t know, you know, and science even, you know, with what what they learn and what they know, it was being able to say we don’t know what’s going to be next, but we’re going to keep experimenting, we’re going to keep seeing what’s out there. And that’s why, you know, through the course of the pandemic, some of the guidance changed, because they were like, okay, we need to be open to the fact that what we thought was going to work here doesn’t, we need to change the guidelines, we need to change some preventative measures. And that’s all okay. It doesn’t mean somebody was right or wrong. It’s just the evolution of being comfortable with the unknown and saying, we’re still going to forge ahead and try to find the right answers, we’re still going to forge ahead and try to find a way to manage this for people. So so many folks that, you know, were working or going to school during that time really had to learn to be, you know, that was always the phrase of like get get comfortable with the uncomfortable, how many times do people say unprecedented times, right? And I I don’t know that that I think for a long time we’ve been living under a lovely little facade that things are stable, even though again we had these great sayings like the only constant is change, I don’t know that it really was driven home as clearly as it was during the pandemic, and then now the times we’re in in terms of the market and technology and the workplace, like this is where the humility comes in, the humility of empathy of let me learn from other people’s points of view and let me learn from other perspectives, because that’s how we find the way forward through change.

Scott Stirrett 31:44

Totally, and I think especially in the the North American context, I was born 1991, grew up in the 1990s, a time of in some ways record like peace, stability, and even, you know, there’s the famous Francis Fukuyama essay about the end of history, and, you know, are we entering this this period of kind of almost utopia?

Maria Ross 32:04

Yeah.

Scott Stirrett 32:04

And, you know, I think what for people who grew up in the 80s and 90s, I think one of the reasons why like this moment right now is I think so challenging for a lot of people is that the world as people thought it exists is different, and the reality of human history is always wars and instability and pandemics, and the world is a fragile place that is at the core extremely uncertain. Mhm. And I think in some ways, speaking for my contemporaries and a lot of other people born in the 80s and 90s, I think that for many, people need to do the work to kind of recognize that perhaps for many, the world is different than what they thought it was.

Maria Ross 32:46

Exactly. It hasn’t necessarily gotten that it there’s more change and more chaos. I think there’s just more transparency now. You know, like where where we’ve got social media, we’ve got a 24/7 news cycle, we’ve got, you know, market tickers across the channels that we watch that are giving us second-by-second, minute-by-minute updates on stock prices changing, right? We didn’t have that kind of ongoing monitoring of the change that was going on in the world, and also for many of us, we didn’t have the the proximity or the visibility. So we only were living in our own little bubble, in our own little neighborhood, and not knowing what was going on in all these other areas of the world, and now we see it, and and our brains are interpreting it as, Wow, there’s so much more going on now than there used to be. It’s like, Well, really? I don’t know. Maybe it always was that way, we just didn’t know.

Scott Stirrett 33:38

Yeah, and I think there’s both more awareness of the uncertainty, but I also think that in many measures, the world is more uncertain today than it was 20 years ago. There is a world index called the Uncertainty Index that tracks the level of uncertainty in the world, and in according to that index, the world today is around five times more uncertain than it was at the beginning of 2008. So, there’s so many things that are driving like higher levels of of uncertainty across the world, and in some ways, I think that the level of uncertainty is just going to accelerate.

Maria Ross 34:10

Yeah.

Scott Stirrett 34:10

And all to say is that coping with really high levels of uncertainty is hard for hard and challenging for most people because the way our brains are are hardwired, which is why learning to develop a better relationship with the unknown is critical, because, again, we don’t choose what era we live in. We live in an era of rapid change. Learning to develop a positive relationship with uncertainty is one of the most important things that you can do, perhaps at any moment in human history, but right now, it is especially important. I think those who fear the unknown are really going to have a lot of issues in a world that is going to be even more uncertain.

Maria Ross 34:52

Yes. Well, that’s a great place to leave it, so, Scott, thank you so much. This has been such a interesting conversation. Definitely want folks to check out the book, The Uncertainty Advantage. We’ll put links to it in the show notes, as well as all the links to stay in contact with you and your work. But for anyone who’s working out right now while they’re listening to us, can you share where’s the best place for them to find out more about you and your book and your work?

Scott Stirrett 35:17

Yeah, to find out more about me, I recommend you check me out on first Substack, where I send out a newsletter once a month on how to develop a better relationship with uncertainty. And secondly, I recommend you check out my book on Amazon.com, where you can order it as a hard copy or Kindle.

Maria Ross 35:35

Wonderful. And your website is scottsturrett S T I R R E T T .com. But again, we’ll have all your links in the show notes so folks can get in touch with you. Scott, thank you so much for your time.

Scott Stirrett 35:47

Thanks for having me on.

Maria Ross 35:48

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, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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 @redslicemaria. 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. Ute Liersch: How Resilient Leaders Bend Without Breaking

What if resilience isn’t about powering through, pushing harder, or staying unbreakable but about knowing how to bend, recalibrate, and return to center without losing yourself in the process?

That question sits at the heart of my conversation with Dr. Ute Liersch, a German psychologist, leadership coach, and resilience expert who works with high-performing leaders, especially those navigating burnout, anxiety, trauma, ADHD, or major career transitions out of corporate life. She has more than a decade of experience at the intersection of mental health, leadership, and neurodiversity. She brings a rare blend of clinical depth and real-world pragmatism, drawing from evidence-based approaches to help leaders build psychological flexibility, resilience, and purpose without sacrificing wellbeing.

Today, she shares some of that wisdom, explaining the truth behind resilience, why emotions are neutral data, and she describes how “nice-looking” rules can actually prevent the necessary actions that leaders need to take. It’s a wonderful conversation with so many nuggets for wherever you are on your leadership journey.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why resilience isn’t a “demolition derby,” but the ability to return to equilibrium after stress
How emotions can be treated as neutral data points, not problems to suppress or judge
What emotional regulation looks like in real leadership moments and why leaders who regulate their emotions create calmer, more trustworthy environments
How overly inclusive decision-making can backfire, and how to balance empathy with decisiveness and boundaries
How leaders can disentangle past trauma from present-day decision-making to lead in more values-aligned ways

“If you want to become more resilient, one of the things you really need to learn is to be courageous and brave and curious enough to start noticing how am I right now? What’s my body doing? What are my thoughts? How am I positioned in the situation? An honest reflection of HOW you are, not who.” — Dr. Ute Liersch

About Dr. Ute Liersch, Chartered Counselling and Coaching Psychologist:

Dr. Ute Liersch is a Chartered Counselling and Coaching Psychologist based in the UK, with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of mental health, leadership, and neurodiversity. Her unique blend of clinical expertise and coaching insight supports high-performing individuals—particularly leaders, professionals, and creatives—who navigate anxiety, trauma, burnout, or ADHD.

Drawing from evidence-based modalities like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), EMDR, and emotional intelligence frameworks, Dr. Liersch empowers clients to build psychological flexibility, resilience, and purpose. She is known for her pragmatic yet deeply compassionate approach, often challenging mainstream psychology with philosophical depth and a touch of humour. Her latest book is A Minimalist’s Guide to Becoming Resilient, full of no-fluff micropractices, reframings, and toolkits

In addition to her private practice and workshops, Dr. Liersch speaks internationally on topics like mental health in leadership, high-functioning anxiety, and creating neurodiversity-affirming spaces at work. She is passionate about helping people redefine success on their own terms—without sacrificing wellbeing.

Connect with Dr. Ute:

Website: drute.org

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drute

Instagram: instagram.com/dr_ute_

YouTube: youtube.com/@DrUteLiersch

Book: A Minimalist’s Guide to Becoming Resilient: amazon.com/Minimalists-Guide-Becoming-Resilient-Psychologist-ebook/dp/B0F95Z82XF

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Dr. Ute Liersch 03:12

Thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you.

Maria Ross 03:17

And before we get started, I’m just going to ask the question I start with all of my guests. Is you know we heard about your successful work in this field and as a psychologist and a coach. How did you even come to this work, and how did you come to the topic of resiliency? To come to psychology, I think I came to it at a later age, and it was predominantly driven by becoming really curious why people develop in the way they do

Dr. Ute Liersch 03:44

because the predictions I had how people would develop they were all wrong. I’m not saying I got better in predicting, but I think I got better in probably explaining why we do things differently than we thought we would. It was predominantly curiosity, curiosity about seeing why do we do things we do, and why are we sometimes so obsessed to do the same things, even though we know they don’t work again and again. When you

Maria Ross 04:13

figure that out, you will make millions of dollars because I think all of us have asked ourselves that question at least very close. Yeah, very close. So, and then, what specifically got you so interested in resiliency?

Dr. Ute Liersch 04:30

So that’s interesting. In a sense, I chokingly say it’s because I’m German and I live close to where they build these beautiful cars. The reason is I do love language. I work. I analyze language very quickly when I speak with people, and when people use the word resilience, what they were actually talking about was demolition derby. You know what demolition derby is, right? You know I do. They so they throw these cars in, and then they bump into each other until a car does. And when I work with my leaders or when I work with my clients, they do most of the time that following movement. You can’t see it, guys, but what I’m doing is I’m I’m kind of cleaning my my shoulder when people speak of resilience. So what this actually means is I shouldn’t be bothered about getting a hit, and this is how resilience was sold for many many years, which is utter nonsense. And this is where the car industry comes in now. Yeah, there is a really there’s a clear link to it. What resilience actually is is when it is when you test material. So what people do is they clamp, let’s say, a sheath of metal between two hands, and then they stress the metal. Then the metal is yielding its bending down, and resilience is tested by the material’s ability to come back to a state of equilibrium. So, if we look at what resilience truly is, we need to, of course logically come to the following conclusion. Number one, in order to develop resilience, life has to give us quite a lot of weight in stress, so that we cannot hold it any longer, and we have to yield. Number one. Number two, yielding under stress is a normal, a helpful, and a healthy reaction. Number three, only in the coming back to a different state we learn a new set of resilience skills. So, if you want to do the bumper car resilience thing. I can give you a prediction. The prediction is you’re going to break. There’s no question about it. You know, if you have a better chassis, fair enough. You might drive a little bit longer, but somebody is going to drag you off the floor. That’s not resilience. If you want to be resilient, you need to have an understanding of how the process of resilience is, and because I was really detail driven in understanding how that process works, not in a theoretical point of view only, but also seeing how my own life has developed with resilience. This is what brought me to the point to write something which is very pragmatic, doesn’t do a lot of fluff, take you to the point. It is actually measured in being able to read one slot of data between two tube stations in London, so you can get the dose of resilience on the way to work, or when you bring the kids to school and then you go home. Because at the end of the day, I need to bring it to people so they can do something with it in the time of need.

Maria Ross 07:55

Okay, so that is really profound because I know there was probably an episode. I want to say maybe it was a couple years ago, or maybe an article that I tried to research around how do you build resiliency outside of feeling the pressure. What if you know you need to build the skill as a leader so that you can be a more effective leader, but you’re not feeling pressure right now? How do you actually build that skill? And what I’m hearing you say is that you can’t necessarily, but there must be a way to build that muscle before you actually need it. Is that correct?

Dr. Ute Liersch 08:31

Can I say yes and no?

Maria Ross 08:33

Yes, you can. I know. I’ve chosen right.

Dr. Ute Liersch 08:39

Let me give you a different metaphor. Of course, you got to pack a parachute before you jump out of an airplane, right? Sure, we need to learn to pack the parachute, but you only understand jumping when you jump. So yes, we can learn and we can train a couple of behaviors, which are incredibly important to build resilience, and they will really serve you very, very, very well the moment that weight falls into your life. But how you are managing that pressure in the moment you are under pressure, you can only do in that moment. Let me give you a practical example,

Maria Ross 09:24

please. Yes,

Dr. Ute Liersch 09:26

I in the world of psychology, one of the big names is Carl Rogers, humanist, client-centered therapy. I think most people know it. And Carl Rogers said one thing that he said: the beginning of change is accepting where we are, really, truly, honestly honor Carl Rogers. I think he’s got it fundamentally wrong. Change starts with becoming aware of what’s going on, and we run through the world not being aware. Even more, we are running through life. Trying desperately, not being aware of the stuff that is difficult, he’s so good in avoidance. Look, I avoid. There’s nothing wrong with avoidance. It becomes a problem when this is our go-to behavior. So, if you want to become more resilient, one of the things you really need to learn is to be courageous and brave and curious enough to start noticing how am I right now? What’s my body doing? What are my thoughts? How am I positioned in the situation I am? An honest reflection of how you are, not who. Forget about the who. Who cares about the who? How you are in this moment? No judgment, because the judgment is already pulling you in a direction which is quite often created by culture, by outside forces, by conditional regard, and so on. When you work with me, what you need to understand is what’s going on right now, and then we can link it to values, to purpose, to where you want to go, to goals and so on, and direction. But without this awareness, you are trying to find something really precious in the dark. So, when you talk about the things that you can do to prepare to pack your parachute, in other words, I

Maria Ross 11:29

assume a lot of that is in the book. Can you share one or two practices that people can say, “Okay, I want to know that when I hit that moment,

Dr. Ute Liersch 11:38

yeah,

Maria Ross 11:39

my bag is packed. What would some of your go-to ones be?

Dr. Ute Liersch 11:43

So one of the go-to ones is allowing yourself to notice difficult emotions and stop believing they are positive and negative emotions. I think one of one of the big categorical crimes psychologists have done is to label positive emotions and negative emotions as if anxiety, as if disgust, as if sadness, as if anger is negative. I mean, that’s nonsense. They’re difficult, sure, but they are equally important to understand life as we live it Today, look. Every emotion has a function, right? Emotion is nothing else than a data point of how we are situated in life in this present moment. What’s the function of anger?

Maria Ross 12:34

It’s usually something underneath anger. I find

Dr. Ute Liersch 12:37

can be if it’s secondary anger, but primary anger is very often linked to noticing something is going wrong, and is not fair nor just. Right? I pose the following: Gandhi wouldn’t have existed without anger. It’s not aggression. It’s not hate, but anger is an emotional attunement to an unjust situation. Yeah, what is the function of sadness? It’s that we’ve lost something or someone that is really important to us. Yeah. So these emotions, because we have coined them as negative, we are now doing what, of course, is normal to do. We try to get rid of them through multiple things, but what we are what we are actually now denying is the trueness and the honesty of how we are living life at the moment. You are running to work angry every day, and you are not facing up that this is truly what’s happening. You are wiping out data, and that’s one of the hardest things for people to do is to actually face the true data pool of their lives.

Maria Ross 13:57

Wow, you’re making me, and this is so at a different level than what you’re talking about, but you’re making me think about the Disney movie Inside Out and the fact that the emotions had to coexist, even when Joy thought there was no place for sadness. Yeah, there was a place for sadness, and I mean, I love that they’re trying to educate children on this concept because so many many of us adults have a problem,

Dr. Ute Liersch 14:22

yeah,

Maria Ross 14:23

accepting it. I want to go back some more to your point about emotions as

Dr. Ute Liersch 14:28

data, yeah.

Maria Ross 14:29

And what are some of the therapies that you do with your clients to help them get past the judgment part of emotion, to help them see emotions as data and as neutral information.

Dr. Ute Liersch 14:43

Yeah. So from a ontological perspective, the way I’m trained, when I did the training, I’ve I’ve alluded before that I’ve started psychology when I was older. I had two very fulfilled careers before. My first career was in hotel management, so I traveled the world, right? As a very very young woman, and then my second career was in education, where I had private learning institute,

Maria Ross 15:07

and

Dr. Ute Liersch 15:07

then I started to train in psychology and to study in a much later age,

Maria Ross 15:13

which

Dr. Ute Liersch 15:14

is kind of

Maria Ross 15:15

helpful.

Dr. Ute Liersch 15:16

So when we when we look at the different therapeutic modalities, they actually give explanations in a different way around these data points. But when we go into something which is probably not a therapeutic or a Western therapeutic modality, let me go to Buddhism. There is an interesting training on the path to enlightenment, because what the Buddhists say is, look at yourself in the mirror, and see what truly is without judgment. So, I’ve taken this very literally often. Well, and it’s hard. It’s not. It’s like just because you say it doesn’t mean we can do it. So that’s why I’m curious of what have you done with leaders and professionals that you’ve worked with to help them see it as neutral. So I do, for example, a mirror exercise. That’s why I said I take it quite literally. I go with them in front of the mirror, and I ask them what they see, and very quickly all the judgment comes up because we, in our world, we are of course trained to judge ourselves and to critique ourselves as something of a higher ability or cognitive cognitive level, but what we are not then doing is having the bravery to see what is without the judgment. So when I then have a mirror exercise, and I call people out and say, “Is this now a description or is this judgment? What comes very quickly is sadness, right? And then we pause. What we normally do is we run away, we laugh, or we pretend, or we we do a joke, or we are hiding our face. What I then do with people is I say, and now we pause, and now tell me exactly as much as you can what’s going on in your body. Take me into your world, and then very often for the first time, people can start observing what this sadness actually is. So what I’m now bringing in is curiosity. The beauty around curiosity is that we are starting to investigate, not judge. And then, what we want to do with this data depends on where the person wants to go. Yeah,

Maria Ross 17:40

Dr. Ute Liersch 17:40

you have a leader, and many leader are trauma, also have trauma in their life. When we work with trauma, I do a lot of trauma work because it it influences decision making quite negatively. We look at how these emotions inform the trauma in the present moment, and what this actually does to decision making. So rather than going into look, I do act, or I do compassion focus theory, or I do humanistic, or I do existential, and I am trained in two different ontological modalities. One is behavioralism, and one is existential philosophy, where everyone says, “But how can you keep this in one head? I said, “I don’t know, but I do. It’s about

Maria Ross 18:30

pausing and seeing what does this give us in the moment. What you have to be able to do, as somebody who gives counsel to a leader, is you have to be able to hold that bag of emotion safely, I love that. I love that. So, for someone listening right now and realizing, being self-aware enough to realize that they have challenges with resiliency, whether it’s I have a hard time bouncing back from criticism, or I have a hard time dealing with navigating change at the rapid pace. I have a hard time getting out of my comfortable patterns when change is called for. Yeah, where does the link come in what you’re saying in terms of the self awareness and then the ability to make the ability to see your emotions as neutral. What’s the link there that leads to increasing your capacity for resilience?

Dr. Ute Liersch 19:29

Yeah. So emotions are not making us neutral, right? They are creating a whole lot of physiological reaction in us, which of course then translate into behavior, but what I’m saying is we have to stop seeing emotions as positive or negative. We they are of course some of them are easier and some of them are harder. Look, we all love joy, right? But we don’t like grief. But if we can’t grieve, we cannot. Love either, right? So the the link is that we have to stop being afraid of these difficult emotions, because when you are afraid of anger, I promise you your conflict skills are not very good, because what you are basically avoiding when you come into a conflict situation is a so-called negative emotion. If you have the sadness of having been rejected out of whatever reason, and you are carrying that trauma with you, you are firstly and again, I’m not having a crystal ball. I’m just telling you about human behavior and why I’m so fascinated by psychology. You will have a problem with trust. This will probably translate into how you manage people. So micromanagement is big on your agenda. Your control behaviors are probably through the moon, which means your stress levels are on a higher threshold. Because not looking at everything in detail gives you anxiety. But of course, we are not allowed to be anxious, right? Because leaders got to be cool and not anxious. So now you are avoiding the next so-called negative emotion. The moment you switching, and that’s not a switch like a light switch. That’s a process. That’s a training. That’s about a 20. It’s a 20 week. It’s a 20 week training because it takes time to have this momentum. The moment you are switching from fighting that what is uncomfortable to seeing it as this data set, which has information about how I manage it, and then by definition manage others, then you are probably going away from being a good manager, which is called a leader, to a proper leader with calm authority.

Maria Ross 22:02

Yeah, I mean, we can think back to all the leaders that we may have had in our lives that we, you know, were those special leaders, those ones that we would follow to the ends of the earth. We felt seen, heard, and valued by them. And I know for me, many of them, the the common trait now that I do this work and I look back, was their ability to emotionally regulate, not deny their feelings, but emotionally regulate their feelings, and that there was space to have your feelings and for them to have their feelings and be human, without it impacting things in a negative in a negative way, meaning there wasn’t an environment of fear created. There wasn’t an environment of drama or conflict, but the feelings were just a natural part of the ebb and flow. And so, when I think of resilience, and maybe this isn’t the true definition, but I think of someone who is able to navigate and regulate through the highs and lows, and sort of stay steady. And that doesn’t mean they’re, you know, not extroverted or they’re not passionate or they’re not. Because I think sometimes we equate that with emotional regulation. I know I do because I’m a hot-headed Italian redhead, and I have always equated emotional regulation with being more, more calm and serene. And I’m like, wow, I could never be that. But we can still keep our passion and our drive and our excitement while still regulating our emotions in a productive way. So when you work with clients who are who have recognized that they are judging their own emotions, they recognize that resiliency comes hard for them. That they’re they it’s hard for them to adapt to change in a again for lack of a better term in a graceful way.

Dr. Ute Liersch 23:58

Yeah, what

Maria Ross 24:00

could you share with us maybe what is like a epiphany they have, or what is something that becomes a game changer for them in that process? So they’re already at self awareness of I know this is an issue and a block for me, and we can talk in a minute about what do you do for someone that doesn’t realize that. But once they realize that, they’re coming to you. Can you give us an example of like a game changing moment or a game changing event that gets them to the other side of like oh and not perfectly not every time yeah but where they have that breakthrough of here’s how I can maintain passion and maintain momentum and still be emotionally regulated

Dr. Ute Liersch 24:39

yeah

Maria Ross 24:40

that’s kind of a long question, but hopefully you understand my point.

Dr. Ute Liersch 24:43

Yeah, I give you a an example. So this is somebody who is taking over a company, and it’s a company that has been in the family for a long time. So everyone who is listening and is in the same position, I can hear how the stuff drops into your belly and. You think, oh dear! We know the complex situation, and it’s also a company that is co-owned with the sibling. One of them is more business orientated; the other one is less business orientated. But they are also co-owning it half-half. Wow! That’s so that’s the thing. So the person who is driving the business also has a value of including everyone and educating everyone who is in the meetings for at the same level, so that everyone is on the same page. Which whoever listens, you would say now. Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s really beautiful. My question was, is it? So my question was, what’s the function of that rule? And what it turned out, the function of the rule was to be so constrained and so performative patient that the other sibling who came late was not informed. Does not do that stuff because it’s simply not what they want to do. Then, of course, ask questions, and the meetings got longer and longer and longer, which cut into the working time of the person I’ve worked with. So, something that sounds really great from the outside. I’m patient. Everyone needs to be on the same page, and so on. Messed that person up big time. And once this link was given, shown, made so clear, the next step we could work on was how to set boundaries, because one thing is one thing people must know. Just because I know that I have to make a different choice, and I know that the other choice is probably more helpful for me, doesn’t make the difficult emotion go away. The only difference is that you will have a different outcome, and the outcome you will have is more steered by you because you now take agency. So epiphanies very often come, if you allow me to use that word. Sure, epiphanies very often come when we are taking a rule and we are asking for the function of the rule, and especially nice-looking and good-sounding rules work so well in our environments.

Maria Ross 27:30

Their function is not always helpful, right? And this is when people sit and say, “Wow, had not seen this coming. Yeah, there’s a story I share in the recent book about a client I had years ago who, yeah, and I hear this a lot from different people in organizations where sometimes the leader is overly democratic, yeah, because they want to be empathetic, they want to be inclusive, and all of those are wonderful things. Not when they leave everyone else in limbo because they cannot make a decision because they don’t want to upset anyone. Yeah, and not every decision has to be a decision by committee. And that’s the thing: is being a leader is knowing which decisions require input and being able to synthesize that input in a fair way, but then make a decision swiftly. But also to understand that this no, this is a decision I get to make.

Dr. Ute Liersch 28:27

Yeah,

Maria Ross 28:28

and I don’t have to have six months of conversation that drives everyone in my organization bananas because they’re just like I don’t know how I’m supposed to move forward because you have not made a decision yet to the client that I worked with to the point that their team, their executive team, confided in me that they didn’t care anymore. Yeah, they were just so desperate for a decision so they could put this to bed and move forward and have plans and set targets and take action. And I know that it came from a good place, and so to your point, you know, sometimes we have those behaviors as leaders, that script that we’ve told ourselves. Yeah, you know, well, I I want to be thoughtful, and I want to take my time, and I want to get input from everybody. And yes, and there’s a time and a place to you know to realize that things need to keep moving. When I’m working with people who are, you know, offseed startup, for example, one of the questions I ask since when is hierarchy a dirty word? And process, by the way,

Dr. Ute Liersch 29:36

a good hierarchy. Yeah, a good hierarchy gives you safety,

Maria Ross 29:41

yeah.

Dr. Ute Liersch 29:42

So I’m coming back to what is that? What you’re doing in service of not the story we tell ourselves and the leader you described. Yeah, of course we we want to be democratic and we want people to be. With us, but I promise you, if we dig a little deeper, the avoidance that you’ve just described, yes, and fear of not being liked,

Maria Ross 30:12

and not being right, and the fear of not being right-I think that was-that’s the issue. Because, not to interrupt you, but just that that point is so important because I always tell my audiences there’s no such thing as a decision that’s going to make everyone happy. There’s also no such thing as decision as a decision that’s a sure bet is going to be 100% successful. And so when when we’re trying to optimize for those two things, it’s really hard. And that’s why the funny part about that client example is the team said we’ve given all our input over and over and over again. We just keep talking about it. Yeah, and that was classic avoidance. That was classic. I don’t. Yeah, I don’t know if I’m going to make the right move here.

Dr. Ute Liersch 30:56

Can I come back to your decision point?

Maria Ross 30:58

Yes,

Dr. Ute Liersch 30:58

because the decision point also links really beautifully to resilience. How many people are stuck in? I can’t make a decision. And look, I’m not talking about bread roll or breadstle. I mean that’s decision to make the really difficult stuff because people say, but I don’t have enough data to know what the right decision is, and then I often say, you will never have enough data for important decision. You do not know the outcome before you make the decision, and I’m putting it even, I’m pushing it even further. I think you can evaluate the rightness or wrongness of a difficult, important decision three seconds before you die. Let me tell you why I say that. Imagine you’re getting married, beautiful wedding, right decision. 16 years later, you realize it doesn’t work any longer, and you go through a brutal divorce. So the decision 16 years before you could say was the wrong decision. You’re going through this divorce; it nearly kills you. You lose everything. The divorce was the wrong decision. You’re coming out five years later. You’re rebuilding your life, and you live a life which is fundamentally different, but more aligned maybe with how you are now. Oh, so it was the right decision. Oh, and by the way, and getting married was the right decision also, because without that, you wouldn’t have had this process. So, in an existential perspective, because death only gives us meaning, the evaluation of the rightness or the wrongness of a decision can only come shortly before we have no more life to live to get more experiences. So it is really important to own that and to say, I have to make a decision. Kirkegaard says it’s a leap of faith in many ways. Yes, there are, I would say, certain parachutes we can peck for these decisions. But at the end of the day, allow me to be a little bit witty. I hope you don’t bite in a banana. If you just look at it and let your executive team tell you how it tastes, you have no freaking clue how a banana tastes. You got to bite into

Maria Ross 33:33

it. Right, right. Well, and I think this is so closely linked to resilience because when we talk about the skills that that people are looking for in leaders now to deal with this onslaught of change and uncertainty in the world that we live in, they’re looking for resilience because they’re looking for the people that can make decisions. And if they’ve made a less than ideal decision, I’m going to say, yeah, can they pivot? Yeah, can they rebound from it? And first of all, can’t to your point about awareness. Can they admit they were wrong?

Dr. Ute Liersch 34:05

Correct. Can

Maria Ross 34:06

they actually say it without judgment? Of I made the you know that was the wrong call that I made with the decision I the information I had in front of me at the time. Here’s what I’m going to do about

Dr. Ute Liersch 34:16

it. Exactly

Maria Ross 34:17

right. That’s the skill. I was part of a conference where, or at a think tank when I was listening to investors and PE firms and folks talking, they said, you know, lots of people have really great business plans. Like you can go to ChatGPT and come up with a really great business plan. What’s separating people is the leader. Can this leader take a plan and implement it and make decisions and pivot when they were wrong. Can they admit that they were wrong and say, “Who do I need to bring onto my team to write this? Who knows more than me? So all of these things we talk about empathy, you know, putting aside your ego, but that’s resilience. That’s the ability of like I’m not going to just drive myself off the cliff. Because I made a wrong decision, it’s okay. What? How do I look at this to figure out a new way around it, or a way to correct it, or not even that? What am I going to do next? Would you say that that’s an accurate view of it as well?

Dr. Ute Liersch 35:14

Because what you’re speaking of is the yielding. Yes, you know, you speaking of the yielding, and then once we have yielded, we have to bounce back. Right, but you can only bounce back, and with the bouncing, I really mean it. Such it’s like an it’s such a beautiful word because it gives you the momentum, it gives you movement. Yeah, you know, it’s

Maria Ross 35:37

effective.

Dr. Ute Liersch 35:37

Exactly. So when you do the bouncing, you have to take agency. You’re not driven by something; it’s your agency. But very often, especially, let me come to the fail. We are denying agency of our own failures. I’ve lectured for I don’t know how many years at university, and every year I got more and more acutely aware that people have a problem with failing. I think the worst thing we can do, the worst thing we can do, is to not allow people to fail, right? Because you’re not learning anything. If you look at how children learn to walk. They not good at it. Actually, use my language. They suck. Right, right, and they fall down. They fall down. They bleed. They cry.

Maria Ross 36:32

Right.

Dr. Ute Liersch 36:33

If children at this age, if the if kids around one and a half, two years would have an understanding of failure as we have at the age of six, we all would crawl, and that I find I find quite dangerous. If we are not learning to fail, we do not learn to stand up. But if we don’t learn to stand up, then we are not yielding, but we are breaking. Yes, we can come back from being broken, but that is that’s a very different catalog fish, Maria. Very different fish, right?

Maria Ross 37:12

So, as we wrap up, what sort of a final thought you have for leaders listening to this that are like, “Yeah, I know I have a challenge, even adjusting to change,

Dr. Ute Liersch 37:23

yeah, to

Maria Ross 37:23

admitting I’m wrong, to course correcting, to you know, everyone joked during the pandemic the word pivot was uttered a million times,

Dr. Ute Liersch 37:32

yeah.

Maria Ross 37:32

And what if someone’s listening, going, Yeah, I know that’s a struggle for me. Where do I start?

Dr. Ute Liersch 37:37

Yeah, being courageous to admit to yourself I do struggle. I think that’s important, and I believe you need somebody who gives you counsel. This is not about therapy. Therapy is a tool, right? When something becomes more clinical, but I think it is good to have counsel. Somebody who, in Bavaria, would say gives you a nice thing up your backside, a kick in your backside. Let’s put it that way. Yes, who keeps you moving? Right. Who holds you safe, but does not let go. So you got to walk, maybe from time to time through hell in order to understand. Actually, it’s not as helly as I thought it is. 100% right? Yeah. Doing that alone, the reason why I say this is not going to work is because you only have your own brain, and that’s not really to be trusted. Yeah,

Maria Ross 38:37

especially if we’re telling ourselves these scripts, we need someone to break to interrupt the pattern and to interrupt the cycle. We’re not. Yeah, we’re not aware.

Dr. Ute Liersch 38:44

We’re not aware of them. Unaware. We’re simply not aware of them when they have been around for a very long time. Interestingly, they can be non-verbal, and this is why. Again, I come back to emotions because you feel something. You know there is a guy,

Maria Ross 39:03

yeah,

Dr. Ute Liersch 39:04

and and then you’d run away. Why? Because you’ve been doing it for 2030, 4050, 7080, 120 years. I don’t know for how long. Of course, you’re gonna run away. But you know the people I’m with, I say stop. Not running. Invite me into your world now. Tell me what’s going on, and then change happens because it creates space. And when we have space, when we have more data, we can make we can make a decision. We have choice. Yes, I know we have always choice, but you know, 95 to 5% is not a proper choice. At least at 6040. Okay, exactly, exactly. And if you run around with these automatic scripts, many leaders do that. This is the 95-5% choice. It’s not a choice. Not a proper one, anyway,

Maria Ross 40:03

Dr. Uta. Thank you so much for your insights and your wisdom today. A lot to think about. I really want to encourage everyone listening to check out her book, A Minimalist Guide to Becoming Resilient. And we are going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone that’s on the go, where’s the best place they can find out more about your work.

Dr. Ute Liersch 40:21

Probably the website it’s www.dr for Doctor UTE for the weird German name.org.

Maria Ross 40:31

I love it. I love it. And you mentioned that you also post a lot of micro lessons on LinkedIn, so folks can follow you there.

Dr. Ute Liersch 40:39

Absolutely.

Maria Ross 40:40

We it’s been such a joy to talk to you today. I could talk to you so much longer. I love this heady stuff. It makes me stop and it makes me think. Thank you for your time.

Dr. Ute Liersch 40:49

Thank you for having me. And I really, truly hope everyone can pause from time to time a little bit more.

Maria Ross 40:57

Love it, love it. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit theempathyedge.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™

Hot Take: You Are Your Decisions, Not Your Intentions

While many leaders want to lead with empathy, they often fail to translate that desire into actionable decisions. Today, Maria discusses the distinction between intention and decision and highlights the importance of making–and committing–to those decisions that lead to tangible changes. She also emphasizes the urgency of making the most of the opportunities we have today, not waiting for what might change in the future. Finally, Maria challenges listeners to use their agency to be empathetic leaders and to act now, regardless of external circumstances.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why it’s not the thought that counts, but rather the decisions that you make.
Deciding to make the changes now with what you have, not waiting for better circumstances.
Maria’s challenge to you as a human-centered leader.

“We get to make better decisions about how we structure work. About how we run companies. About the metrics that matter. About how we lead with ethics, humanity, and mutual concern.” — Maria Ross

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

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. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Empathy Edge. I’m Maria Ross, and this is one of our hot take solo episodes where I get a little real, a little direct, and hopefully a little inspiring with you. Today I want to talk about something that has been on my mind a lot lately: the difference between intention and decision, between wanting to be a certain kind of leader and actually choosing to be one. Here’s a little confession: I have a habit, and my husband will absolutely back me up on this, of telling him that I thought about buying him something. I will see something, think, “Oh, he would love that, and then life gets busy. I get distracted, and the thought never turns into action. And I always say the same thing when he calls me out on it. It’s the thought that counts, except it doesn’t. Not really. Not when it comes to the things that matter. Because here’s the truth: thinking about doing something kind, thinking about being a better leader, thinking about creating a more human workplace-none of that counts if it never becomes a decision, a real, firm, committed decision that you then take action on. And I see this all the time with leaders. They want to lead with empathy. They want to build psychologically safe teams. They want to leave a legacy they can be proud of. But wanting is not deciding, and deciding without acting is just a slightly more sophisticated form of not doing anything at all. Now, I know some of you are already sitting there with your arms folded, maybe, maybe not. I don’t know who listens to the podcast, right? But I see you. You are the skeptic. You are the person in the back of the room at my talks, and I say this with love, who raises their hand and says, “But what about Elon Musk? Or what about China and how they treat their workers? Those organizations are innovating and finding enormous success. So, what do you say to that? And here’s what I say: Yes, there will always be outliers. There will always be examples of organizations that seem to be winning while treating people as disposable. I can’t show you any more data than what already exists, and there is a lot of data. Study after study we’ve talked about on this show, from Google to Gallup to Deloitte to the World Economic Forum, showing that human-centered leadership leads to exponential results, competitive advantage, higher engagement, more innovation, and sustainable long-term success. So you now know you have the information. The question is no longer whether this approach works. The question is what are you going to do with that knowledge? What kind of leader do you want to be? What kind of human? What kind of legacy do you want to leave? Because that is a decision, and it is yours to make. I want to share something a senior leader told me recently that has stayed with me. She stepped away from a large global firm after decades at the top, and she told me that her clarity moment-the moment she knew something had to change-came when she literally had 30 seconds between meetings and had to decide whether to get a glass of water or go pee, she couldn’t do both. There was no time, and in that moment, she saw the insanity of it all-the machine that we have built that chews people up and spits them out, not because it has to, but because we decided to build it that way, and we can decide to build differently. We get to make better decisions about how we structure work, about how we run companies, about the metrics that matter, about how we lead with ethics, humanity, and mutual concern, but we can’t wait for some external catalyst to decide for us.

Maria Ross 04:47

We can’t wait for the economy to improve, or the political climate to settle, or the headlines to get less horrifying. We as leaders need to decide every single day what kind of organization. We’re building, and what kind of leader we are being. This whole musing brought to mind a quote I heard years ago. It’s from an artist who is no longer with us, a woman named Jane, who goes by the stage name of Nightbird. She performed on America’s Got Talent several years ago with an original song, while she was in the throes of fighting very aggressive cancer, she actually didn’t even make it to the live shows because of her health, and she ended up passing away in her 30s. But one of the things she said on that stage that stuck with me was, “You can’t wait for life to be easy. You can’t wait for life to not be hard anymore before you decide to be happy, and that’s the point I’m trying to make here. We can’t wait for things to get better around us before we make the decision to do something about where we are with what we have. I want to get a little personal with you for a moment, if I can. I recently celebrated the 18th anniversary of the day I almost died from a ruptured brain aneurysm. 18 years, I got 18 years more of life, of work, of love, of laughter, and all of it, I almost didn’t get. I got a son. I got to visit Spain and Puerto Rico and Costa Rica and Tuscany. I got to meet incredible people in work and in life who came into my life after that tragic day. I got to write books, do a TEDx talk, build my business back up, launch a podcast. I got 16 more years of marriage, and when I reflect on that, I’m not just grateful; I’m galvanized, and I want to galvanize you, because here’s what I know: there is no dress rehearsal. We get one life, one shot at this thing, and what matters most is not what happens to us, but what we decide to do with what we’re given. In work and in life. Now, I want to be crystal clear. I know that not everyone listening has the same power or privilege to change their situation. Some people are genuinely stuck where they are, navigating systems and structures that make meaningful change incredibly hard. I see you, and I honor your reality. But plenty of you listening do have power within your sphere of influence. You are the leaders. You are the change makers. You are the shapers. You have more agency than you might be giving yourself credit for, and in a world where the media is full of leaders behaving badly, where cynicism and mistrust is at an all-time high, where it can feel almost naive to choose humanity over hustle, that’s exactly when your decision matters most. So here’s my challenge to you: You are more than your intentions. You are your decisions. Deciding to be an empathetic leader, a legacy leader, a human-centered leader does not happen because you simply wish it so. It happens because you choose it over and over again every day, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. So I want to ask you directly: What will you decide? How will you show up? Who will you choose to be? Not someday. Not when things calm down. Not when the economy turns around or the headlines get better. Now, today, in your next meeting, in your next difficult conversation, in the next decision you make about how to treat the people you lead and the people around you, you have agency. Use it. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. Until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.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.

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