Managing up is one of the most powerful career accelerators you can master—and it all starts with empathy. Not just empathy flowing downward from leaders to teams, but empathy for your leaders: understanding their pressures, challenges, and decision-making context so you can build trust, influence outcomes, and create mutual success.
Given multiple generations in the workforce, we need empathy flowing up for leaders dealing with added pressures and mental health issues right now. Today’s guest, Catherine Ducharme—Founder of Fluency Leadership, award-winning communicator, certified coach, and TEDx speaker—has spent over 30 years helping leaders and teams lead with heart, curiosity, and inspiration. She shares her own story of learning to manage up, the mindset shifts that change everything, and practical ways to anticipate needs, respond more effectively, and position yourself as a strategic leader.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- How to shift your own perspective, rather than trying to change others.
- Ways to hold your boundaries, while still meeting people where they are.
- The team building skills you cultivate when you engage in everyday activities with coworkers.
- Why is there nothing small about small talk or soft about soft skills?
“A little vulnerability goes a long way. And it doesn’t mean you’re pouring your heart out, your woes and everything to your team, but giving them insight to what you’re juggling or what’s on your mind will tip the balance toward compassion.” — Catherine Ducharme
Episode References:
- Catherine’s article on managing up: www.fluencyleadership.com/2024/07/17/the-crucial-art-of-managing-up
- Fluency’s Trust Breakout exercise: http://bit.ly/4lqTBun
- Book: Seen: The Untapped Power of Appreciation – coming in 2026 – Find out more here
- TEDx Talk: The Untapped Power of Appreciation
About Catherine Ducharme, Founder, Fluency Leadership
Founder and Principal of Fluency Leadership, a leadership + team development and coaching practice, Catherine is a certified coach and facilitator with 30+ years of professional communications and leadership experience. She works with leaders and teams to build relational skills, empowering them to lead and influence with heart, empathy, curiosity, and inspiration. She’s been recognized as Regional Leader of the Year by the International Association of Business Communicators. She’s passionate about the need for more appreciation in the workplace and did a TEDx talk on that topic.
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Connect with Catherine:
Fluency Leadership: fluencyleadership.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/catherineducharme
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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
Maria, 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. Managing Up is one of the most powerful career accelerators you can master, no matter what level you’re at, and it all starts with empathy, not just empathy flowing downward from leaders to teams, but empathy for your leaders, understanding their pressures, challenges and decision making context so you can build trust, influence outcomes and create mutual success. Given we have multiple generations in the workforce, we need empathy flowing up for leaders dealing with added pressures and mental health crises right now, according to Gallup’s 2025 state of the global workplace report. Quote, last year, global employee engagement fell, costing the world economy 438 billion US dollars in lost productivity. The primary cause was a drop in manager engagement. Since the pandemic, managers have been asked to square the circle of new executive demands and employee expectations. We are starting to see the toll end quote, your leaders are dealing with a lot y’all today’s guest, Catherine Ducharme, founder of fluency, leadership, award winning communicator, certified coach and TEDx speaker, has spent over 30 years helping leaders and teams lead with heart, curiosity and inspiration. She’ll share her own story of learning to manage up the mindset shifts that change everything and practical ways to anticipate needs, respond more effectively and position yourself as a strategic leader, whether you’re in your first job or you are CEO reporting to the board. This was a great conversation. Take a listen. Welcome Catherine to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m excited to talk to you. We have been co conspirators for a while now on all things leadership and empathy. So welcome to the show.
Catherine Ducharme 02:44
Thank you, Maria. I’m thrilled to be here. A great opportunity to connect with you again. You’re right, co conspirators in a few things. So delighted to be on your podcast today, exactly,
Maria Ross 02:55
and you run fluency leadership, as we just heard in the intro. So tell us a little bit. I know today we’re going to really be talking about the importance of empathy and managing up. We talk a lot about empathy flowing downhill from leaders, and I know I’ve been part of the problem with that narrative for a while, until I realized, no, we’ve got to start talking about everybody embracing empathy for each other at every level. And part of what sparked this is you wrote an amazing article about the importance of managing up and understanding up, if you will. But before we get into all of that, tell us a little bit about your story. We know you’re a coach and a facilitator. You’ve worked with a lot of different clients over the years. How did you even get into this work, and what’s your passion in it?
Catherine Ducharme 03:39
Yeah, my passion is that early in my career, I had this fabulous mentor, great role model, leader. So out of the gate, I was blessed with this leader, and so learned a lot from him. Got my interest in leadership. There spent many years in corporate communications, marketing communications, but was always interested in the leadership development and how leaders really have that place where they can create a good environment from people. And my managing up story was also early in my career, because I had this VP that was sort of my internal client, and I just found him so difficult to work with, you know, an engineer, very process driven, very systematic, particular and I remember saying to my boss, like, Can I change the file on this? I just can’t work with this person. They’re impossible. I found him, you know, annoying. I would use words like that, and my boss kind of looked at me and said, Kath, you have to figure him out. Like that’s your mission. I can make it easy for you, but all through your career, you’re going to come across people who you’ll find it difficult to work with. So I made it my mission to figure him out. And. And I think one of the things that was a flip for me was realizing that I was looking at it from a very one way point of view. How is this person impacting me, instead of what this person needs? So that outward, so as you’re talking about, empathy is a two way street. So I made that my mission to figure out, well, what was important to him, what did he need to see? How could I build the trust? And so we finally got there like it was almost like, I, you know, I’m going to win him over. And I did. And years later, he became a CEO of a company, a biotech company, and he hired me, and so we were great. He became my mentor. I mean, this person was really important in my career. So going from I don’t want to work with him, to be my mentor was important. And even in that new organization, people would come into my office and say, you seem to have figured him out, like, what’s the secret? What do I need to know? And it was always about, this is what this person needs to operate at their best. And so that was a lesson.
Maria Ross 06:13
I love that. Well, I mean, that’s the whole thing we’re talking about when we talk about empathy. There’s, you know, it’s so often confused with, I’ve got to be crying with people, but it’s really just about trying to understand where other people are coming from and what makes them tick. And the Nirvana is when you both interact with each other in that way, where they care about what makes you tick. You care about what makes them tick. But we’re not always in that environment. So, you know, I get that question a lot from people I know you and I have talked about this of Well, what I do if the other person isn’t empathetic to me, and my response is always you are the only person you can control in the interaction. So tell us a little bit about that, because how did you can you share some advice about how you were able to set the tone for the interaction with him while you were gathering the information about him to maybe help him realize, hey, there’s another way to operate when you’re communicating with another person.
Catherine Ducharme 07:07
Yeah, and I think communication is really the key there. And so trust and communication are the elements. And I remember my boss, who had said, figure him out has said you need to build trust, and I think that’s a foundation for all leadership, and that starting point and the way you build trust is to get to know people and get to know them as the human beings that they are. So instead of looking at this person as the micro manager or the demanding manager, or whatever labels I was putting on it, I got to know him as a human being, you know, he was a father. He had, you know, all kinds of interests. And so you get to know the whole person and their style and their way around it is maybe a part of who they are that was so quick to label, you know, micro manager or my way or the highway boss or whatever we do, but that’s just a part of who a person is, and frankly, it’s a little judgmental. So it’s about meeting people where they are, and the more we got to know each other. And I leaned him with curiosity, what did you need? The more he, you know, sort of released a bit of that control, because that’s it. In the end, as you said, I have so many people in coaching that start off with, how can I get this person to change? Yeah, and it’s you can’t. All you’re responsible for is how you show up. So that’s what I made my mission and still do with people it. How can you see it differently? How can you shift your perspective to give them what they need?
Maria Ross 08:55
And how do you do that without becoming subservient? How do you do that while still getting your needs and your tasks and your boundaries met?
Catherine Ducharme 09:04
Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s not about tolerating things. And I think when you look at people with you know what’s underneath, what’s maybe driving the behavior, we’re very quick to judge other people’s behaviors, but what we don’t always look at, it’s what’s driving the behavior, and sometimes it comes from a fear of failure. They don’t want to get things wrong, or they may be getting pressure from other people. I mean, this guy was a VP, but he reported up to the CEO, and he didn’t want to get that that wrong, and so it is that that meeting people where they are, but also holding your boundaries. So it isn’t about taking it it all on. As you build trust, you can have the conversations with people around well, you know. Why don’t we look at it another way? Or have we thought about other things? So, you know, one of the tools I would offer is that tool of curiosity to help people shift, maybe shift, or at least maybe look at things in a different way, and then they come to know you, and then we’ll listen closely the next time?
Maria Ross 10:21
Yeah, I mean, you see so many parallels of how this goes both ways this goes whether exactly what you’re saying can apply to dealing with someone who’s reporting to you and someone you report to and having it flow in both directions. I’m curious to know, how do you control how you show up and respond in those situations, because we’re not all showing up in those situations fully formed, right, especially earlier in our career, but also later in our career, when we’re under pressure, when we’re under the gun. So what tools or strategies do you give to your clients on how to regulate themselves in the interaction where they’re trying to get to know the other person, they’re trying to also maintain their boundaries, and it’s just, you know, maybe it’s not going well. How do you help them figure out what they need to do to regulate themselves so they’re showing up in the way that they want to show up in the interaction?
Catherine Ducharme 11:18
Yeah, such an important point you bring up, is that self regulation, because we can be so easily triggered, right? We have baggage. We have things in our past that comes up. And so it really is. I think in those situations, the more present we are, the more mindful we are of what is coming up, because we always have that choice on how to respond. And I have been in situations where I feel you’re managing up, and people have crossed the line, and you know whether they come back at you verbally, where I have sort of taken that step back to say, why don’t we pick this up a little later, when you know we can both see things a little more clearly and so, and that’s hard to do, particularly when the person is, you know, senior to you, right, right? But you just can’t make progress, and you may even damage the relationship if you react to it. So it’s that awareness, it’s that pause, it’s that stopping, and often it’s a really good question that might diffuse things
Maria Ross 12:32
right, right? The power of asking a question versus making a statement is really huge when you’re trying to buy time. I always say, You know what I mean,
Catherine Ducharme 12:42
absolutely, yeah, lean into that curiosity. And thing about curiosity, and as a coach, I mean, it’s one of the key tools, and it for leaders too, because curiosity and judgment can’t hold the same space, and so we really are intentional about, I’m really curious about what’s driving their behavior, and why are they maybe getting upset, or why do they want it that way? Then there’s no room for judgment when we start coming up with our stories of why that’s happening. Yeah, that sort of impacts the relationship.
Maria Ross 13:19
Yeah, well, and I see what you’re talking about in terms of the relationship between that and building trust. And I’m thinking back to a really, really difficult boss that I had decades ago, and how much harm that person did on the team that was already a very high functioning team. And I think about my reactions and my responses, in my frustration, in my fear, in my anger, and even if I had gotten even if I had had enough presence to actually sit down with this person and say, what’s really going on for you? Why are you behaving in such a horrible way to all of us when we’re just trying to do our best? I don’t think that even would have been effective, because I hadn’t built the trust up yet for that person to respond in a way that’d be productive, right? They would have gotten defensive. They would have said, You have no right to ask me that you are subordinate to me. Whatever they could have said. But there’s something about this idea of building trust, and we talk about it a lot, about how it’s important to build trust. You alluded to it earlier, but what are some ways we build trust with someone who is more senior than we are? Aside from just part of building trust is do what you say you’re going to do and get your work done and perform well. What other ways can someone like think about the situation where they’re it’s a new boss and it’s a new relationship. What are some ways that that trust can even be built so that you can have those difficult conversations?
Catherine Ducharme 14:47
Yeah, absolutely. And I hear you right, like stepping in and asking that question, like, you know what’s behind this for you is, what are you coaching you have to be really, really careful about. Say that, and I find it requires that patience to build the trust, right? That just takes time. I remember I had a CEO who had hired me. I was part of his senior team, but he didn’t quite know exactly, you know, what it is corporate communications did. And so there was that resistance to it, like telling me what need to be done. And so I think if you recognize that, you deliver you meet them where they are, you deliver that, but then you also offer your counsel. So they, you know, often when we think people aren’t going to like or want to hear what we have to hear, we don’t say anything, but it’s really leaning into offer your counsel, and even if they don’t take your counsel right when it goes sideways, as it might do the next time they’ll listen to you a little more. So it’s kind of just, you know, step by step, building that trust, that accountability. How about we think about it this way? Yeah, what would happen if we change it that way? And then whatever the answer is, letting go of that you’ve done your job in offering your best advice, your best counsel. It’s not up to you to get people to do what you want to say. And I think if you you let go a bit, you’re more accepting of it, then they listen to you the next time, like, what was that you said? Right? And then with this CEO, we got to a point of, you know, anything happened in the organization? It’s like, have we bought in communications? Do they have a lens on this? Are we going to see that? But that took, you know, a good year, year and a half, to right, that point of trust. So, patience,
Maria Ross 16:56
patience, yeah, well, and I think the other important tip here is, like you mentioned earlier, is we’ve got to take an interest in people for who they are, not just our roles at work. And this is why, you know, some people say, well, there’s no time for that, or that’s nonsense, or that detracts from the work. No, it’s those five minutes at the beginning of a meeting or 10 minutes at the end where we’re talking about our weekends or our families or our vacation plans or what we’ve had for lunch, like that’s not nonsense. That’s not a waste of time. That’s what’s actually going to build trust and resilience within the team. And it’s those moments where, if I know that you see me as a human with outside interests and passions and worries and values, I’m going to be more inclined, and I don’t know what the scientific data is around this, but I’m going to be more inclined to want to hear what you have to say, and to be there for you and to you know, hey, you make a good point, but if I don’t even feel recognized or respected as a human being, There is zero trust there. So I feel like a lot of the times that we engage in these activities, and sometimes, you know, some companies do it as forced fun to get to know each other, right? But we need to make those individual investments even when it’s uncomfortable for us, even if we’re introverted or not, as you know, I’m just not wired that way. We kind of need to wire ourselves that way, because that is it. That’s such a principle of trust, even if you’re doing you’re ticking all the boxes, and you’re doing your job on time and you’re delivering. That builds trust too. Yet it’s not just about that. Do you can you explain that dynamic to us? Because I will bet you there’s someone listening going, but I get all my reports in on time. I do all my things. I blah, blah, why do we still not have a good relationship, right?
Catherine Ducharme 18:46
I check all the box I check all the boxes. Exactly.
Catherine Ducharme 18:50
Yeah, you raise such a good point, and the work has become so transactional about checking boxes, jumping on the Zoom call, jumping off getting to your next one. It’s relentless and on and on and yet to truly communicate, we need to connect and to connect. We need to be relational, and we’re losing that. The people that we work well with are people we know and trust and laugh with. In fact, I read that somewhere that a team who laughs together is a team who trusts one another. Yeah, and it is making that effort, and yet we dismiss that so easily. As I hate small talk. It’s not small talk. Small Talk leads to big conversations. Oh, I love that. That’s the way into people. When you understand what matters to people, what their values are, what drives them, then you’re able to see things from their perspective, right? And. And they know that you see them, and everybody needs to be seen, heard and understood, because whatever level you are at, you have responsibilities above you, and you have doubts and you have insecurities, that it’s the human condition. Yeah, so I think seeing the human being, that relational person, and having that balance of transactional and relationship is just so important,
Maria Ross 20:29
even if it’s the boss. This is everything I’m hearing you’re saying, and this is, I think, what the crux of, what we want to get to and offer some real action items for people, is it’s your job to create that relationship with your boss, as well as your leaders doing that for you so absolutely. Well, let me back up. Do you think there’s a generational twist to this? Because I know growing up as Gen X, when I entered the workforce, it was all about how you get ahead. Is you manage up, you make things easier for your manager or your leader? I don’t know if that’s true anymore. What’s your perspective on the generational expectations of managing up as we’re talking about it?
Catherine Ducharme 21:11
Yeah, and I don’t know. I mean, you know, I can speak from my kids, who are millennials and so forth. It is a little different. And I think exposure and to people, when you think of it, there’s people now who’ve been in the workplace a few years and have never experienced that in office, in environment, and so much of the literature out there is about, you know, speaking your truth and who you are, and what about my needs, and I want to be able to show up, yeah? And somehow we’ve lost, I don’t know if it’s generational, but somehow we’ve lost that, that two way street, you know, or we don’t have those mentors like I did back in the early days. Said, figure it out. That’s your mission. Yeah, yeah. If I had sat back and thought, you know, I want this to be easy for me, you know, I want an empathetic boss who understands me and wasn’t giving that back, it just have worked, right?
Maria Ross 22:17
Well, and I think that’s the important point here, is that it’s incumbent on all of us to be empathetic in both those directions, and just because your leader might have to be making decisions or doing things you may not like, it doesn’t mean you roll over. You know, if you’re being mistreated by your leader, that’s not what we’re saying. But have some compassion for the difficult decisions that they have to make. Have some empathy for trying to understand they’re managing multiple people, and you might only be an individual contributor, and you know, they’re dealing with the squeeze coming from above and the squeeze coming from below, right? So I think we tend to just write off the leaders that we don’t agree with as toxic. We’re so quick to label that as such when, you know, we’ve probably experienced real toxic leadership. But I feel like that term is bandied about so much by a lot of the younger generations in the workforce, and I’m their biggest champion. So don’t get me wrong, like I love the way they’re changing workplace culture, but so quick to you know, oh, because they made me work overtime one day this week because of a client crisis. I have a toxic boss, and we again, we’re forgetting that lens. So what’s the solution to that? What do you think is necessary, and what’s within the power of leaders to do, to bring those, their people along with them, to try to have empathy going upwards as well as downwards?
Catherine Ducharme 23:41
Yeah, it’s such a good question, and it’s such a hard question, and again, a lot of it starts with us, and throwing around those labels of toxic boss or micromanager or whatever labels we are is a rush to judgment. It’s just not seeing the humanity of people. And I don’t know if it’s the answer, but awareness is always a really big thing, and how am I showing up if we’re mindful that it’s a two way street, it’s how can I change how I see this particular situation, and what can I do? So it’s not easy. And I’m, you know, curious what you see on this, because it’s a it’s a tough question. Yeah.
Maria Ross 24:33
I mean, I think, you know, I think this is why I get the work that I get, is because I’m being brought in not just for leadership development trainings, but also for cross level conversations, so that it’s not just the onus is not just on the leaders to show empathy, but hey, I’m talking to everyone in the workforce today about how we can be empathetic with each other, whether it’s a colleague, whether it’s a client, whether it’s our manager or leader. And. I think that that’s something, you know, that’s where I get the requests sometimes from leaders of saying I give and give and give, and my team is constantly they don’t give back to me, and they shouldn’t have to. I am the one in charge. It is my responsibility. But, man, it would be nice if they could just take a little perspective and have a little empathy for what I have to deal with, the larger issues that I’m dealing with, the board that I’m reporting to, the CEO, that I’m reporting to, the shareholders that I’m responsible for. It’s like they almost say, like they don’t see that. They’re just seeing their little world. And so whether it’s leadership trainings whether it’s, you know, having someone facilitate a conversation about that at one of their strategic meetings. Sometimes we do need to get some outside help to come in if we’re not comfortable having that conversation. And there’s a lot of leaders who don’t want to admit they’re having that problem because they’re like, that sounds like whining, right? I shouldn’t need that from my people, but we all do.
Catherine Ducharme 25:57
Yeah, we all do because it’s a human condition, and as you’re saying, leaders often feel they have to have all the answers. They have to be the strong ones. They have to keep it together. And a little vulnerability goes a long way. And it doesn’t mean you’re pouring your heart out and your woes and everything to your team, right, but giving them insight to what you’re juggling or what’s on your mind, right, will open that sort of, you know, tip the balance in compassion, yeah? Because when we really understand people and that they’re human and they’re doing the best that they can. Yeah, and we have that compassion. I think we see people in a different light. Like to know that micromanagement might really come from a place of pain or insecurity. We can see that we can be a little bit compassionate. And then we get curious, right about, well, how can I help in this? So I think leaders, yes, can show a little bit more vulnerability within those boundaries. I also, and when you were talking about sort of practical things, there’s really good trust building exercise that I do in workshops. And I love it in workshops where there’s leaders and teams and everybody’s together, and it’s really simple, we break people into groups of three, and we give them a list of questions, and I’m happy to share this list with you. And some of the questions are more vulnerable than others. It might be about what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done, or what’s what are you most proud of? Anyway, they’re those kind of questions. And we invite people to pick one of those questions that they’re comfortable sharing within their triad, and we let them go off and they have the conversation, and then we do a bit of a debrief. And invariably, we have people saying, you know, I’ve worked with this boss for 10 years. So there’s a great exercise that we do when we gather teams together, and it’s a trust building exercise. And usually we’re going into a day of conversations where we want people to fully contribute. So we want to break that ice, so we put them into triads of three people, and everybody is given a list of questions, and some of the questions are more vulnerable than others, so people can choose what they want to share, but some of the questions are like, What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, or what was your proudest moment, or what’s a huge goal that you have for the coming year? So they’re quite personal, and we send them on their way, and they choose a question that they’re comfortable answering with the triad, and when they get back, we invariably hear, you know, I’ve worked with this leader for 10 years, and I found out something about them that I didn’t know that was just very human, and you can feel the shift, yeah, room, that they’ve had a conversation that they just don’t have in the day to day. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I love that, because it’s so simple and it’s so it’s something where we just don’t take the time to ask those questions of each other and to get to know each other on that level. And that’s why a lot of those I love that technique, because that is where we talk about taking time to ask and answer questions that we’re usually too busy to ask each other that some people might think are a quote, unquote waste of time, but those are the things that help humanize us to each other. So when you have a difficult ask, when you need to, you know, take someone to task for poor performance when you need to, you know, ask your boss or say something difficult you’re. Able to have that understanding of who they are as a person, and you’re able to say, I know this person is real, I can kind of let my guard down a little bit. I’m not just dealing with a persona. I’m dealing with an actual human being. And what’s so simple, yet we know it’s so hard about what you’re saying is, I think what stops us from getting to that relationship is the busyness and the pressure and, you know, it’s the KPIs and the goals and the objectives and this and the that and the quarterly sales, and we’ve got to make sure we’re making that time for those connections. And that’s why facilitated workshops or a training talk, or even just a strategic off site is so important to step away from the business so that you actually can have time to facilitate conversations like that? Yeah, absolutely. And then how do we bring that into the workplace? So it’s part of the rhythm we always talk about in one to one, like check in on the person before you check in on the work. Yes, and it doesn’t have to be the boss who does that. Yeah, you can initiate the conversation. Yeah, ask what the boss did on the weekend, or what’s lighting them up these days, or what book she’s reading, right? Whatever it is, but it says those moments, and it’s seen those moments as investment in the relationship. It’s a drop in the trust bucket, which, as we know, trust is built in drops and, oh yes, lost in buckets, and just knowing that, and to answer your question earlier, about, you know, is it a generational thing? What I would say is, if you want to accelerate your career, no matter what level you’re at, right? Because there’s always higher levels to get to, yeah, then be the person who makes the connections. Be the relational person, yeah, the communicative person, the curious person, because people are going to notice that they noticed when you’re being helpful, when you’re finding solutions, yeah, when you’re checking in on them. So your boss, who say, Take micromanagement, it’s usually about, are they doing the thing and are they doing it in the way? So anticipate that that’s a stress for them and take that off the table. Yeah. So it’s being that this could be a superpower for a person. It really could be
Maria Ross 32:48
well, and this is what’s going to lead to success in the age of AI, because it’s those relational skills, it’s those connection skills that leaders are going to be required to have, because we can get all the doing from the AI. What we can’t get is the trust building. We can’t get the listening. We can’t get the connection and collaboration and innovation and ideation. We can’t necessarily get that just from Ai. We’ve got to interact with each other, and those people skills are making us so marketable in the era of AI, and this is, you know, this is a song I’m going to keep singing as we go through this transformation, because we are not going to be able to just be the leader who hides behind our email to have difficult conversations, or be the leader who, you know, doesn’t get up out of their office, or be the worker who avoids interacting with their boss because it’s too hard, or they don’t understand me, or it’s too difficult. It’s about, what can we bring to the interaction and the conversation that no one else can, or nothing else can, I guess I should say, right?
Catherine Ducharme 33:56
So absolutely, it’s the humanizing that’s going to be the differentiator. Yes. I mean, AI like, it just doesn’t do empathy. It can, you know, maybe fake it, yeah, but it’s not real. And if we really take that to heart, that it is a relational element to build those relationships, to build trust, to have the conversations. They’re the skills, and I hate that they’re called the soft skills. Oh, I do. I do too, yeah, the soft skills are the hard skills, right?
Maria Ross 34:29
Because what you and I supposed to do, that’s our work, is we realize how it impacts the bottom line. And so they’re anything but soft, and they’re often difficult. So when we think about the word hard in terms of that, but yeah, I think that there’s so much what you know, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the show with various guests who are leaders in AI. There’s so much that is wonderful about AI, but ultimately the transformational aspect of AI, the impact of it, is a change management impact. It’s going to change. How organizations look, what jobs exist, what skills are needed, and all of those things are people issues, and we’re not going to be able to outsource that.
Catherine Ducharme 35:10
Totally agree? Yeah, what I’m hearing lately is don’t be afraid that AI is going to replace you. Be afraid that you’ll be replaced because you don’t know how to use the tools and the human skills that go,
Maria Ross 35:25
oh yeah, our how to use the tools and how to upskill your human relational skills as well.
Catherine Ducharme 35:30
Absolutely, yeah, because they’ll become more and more important as AI comes raging. Well, it’s here, but it’s here. And more so here even
Maria Ross 35:39
more so well. And I just want to take a little bit of a turn. Little bit of a turn, because I know your book is coming. Seen the untapped power of appreciation, again, another undervalued skill of gratitude and appreciation for yourself and others. I know we’ll have some links to where that’s available as soon as that’s available. But can you give us one final word of advice on the double flow of empathy and what we need to know as someone who’s reporting to a leader, and what a leader needs to know in terms of effectively leading their people, about how to get that two way flow going.
Catherine Ducharme 36:17
Yeah, I love that. I would say, from the person managing up, it’s to be others focus. It’s not about you. It’s that. How can I help? How can I understand? How can we move things forward, productively and for leaders, I would offer that it is being a little bit more vulnerable and showing your human side developing the relationship, because that’s also a two way street. So people see you as humans, understand what you need in the relationship, so others focus one way and vulnerability the other way.
Maria Ross 37:02
I love it well, and you can see how that’s a self fulfilling cycle there, because the more that leaders can be human and be transparent and be vulnerable, the less iconic they make themselves. And then that, in turn, builds trust for the people that report to you of understanding that you are a human being, and now I want to get to know you and understand where you’re coming from. And it kind of it supports the cycle. So yeah, I love that. Approachability. Yeah, approachability, exactly. Well, Catherine, this has been amazing. We are going to have all your links in the show notes, and I just want to thank you for sharing your insights. So much good stuff. I hope folks will continue to follow you and follow the work of fluency leadership. And for anyone that’s on the go that’s not looking at the show notes right now, where’s the best place they can learn more about you and your work,
Catherine Ducharme 37:51
fluency leadership.com. Perfect. I love it.
Maria Ross 37:55
Yeah, I love it. Well, thanks again. I’m glad we finally connected on this interview.
Catherine Ducharme 38:00
And thank you for having me, Maria, thank you everyone
Maria Ross 38:02 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 the empathy edge calm. 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.
