Turns out your organization’s inability to adapt and align in this era of great change may have little to do with structure, sales, or cutting costs and more to do with how you are investing in building your team’s people skills: you know, old-fashioned communication, empathy, collaboration, and conflict resolution. Sorry to break it to you, but research is showing those skills are going to be MORE, not LESS important in the age of AI. Today’s guest, Dan Tocchini, has been helping leaders bring more magic to their teams for over 35 years.
We talk about what leadership really means, the biggest enemy of a high-performing culture, and how to spot when your team is misaligned. Dan also shares why it can feel lonely at the top, how empathy helps leaders have difficult conversations that make a real difference, and the best time to address issues before they derail performance. If you want practical, hard-earned wisdom on how to lead with both courage and compassion—while still driving results—this is the conversation for you.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- The biggest enemy is fear, and what you don’t face will defeat you. Courage is being in touch with prices and rewards.
- You have to live your values. If you’re not living them, you won’t understand the nuances and where things could fall apart.
- Leadership doesn’t have to be lonely; it only is because you’re not willing to solve that problem. Often, the unwillingness to hear feedback is the biggest breakdown.
- Business, now more than ever, influences culture. With AI becoming increasingly relevant, it is up to leaders to become more relational and more empathetic.
“Most executives work around the hard conversations. They end up reacting to them. The hard conversations become your culture, and the conversation you’re not willing to have becomes your culture. What you don’t face now will eventually defeat you.” – Dan Tocchini
Episode References:
About Dan Tocchini, Change Agent, Catalyst, Consultant, Coach
Dan Tocchini has been helping leaders bring some more magic onto their teams for over 35 years. He has worked with executive teams from Interstate Batteries and ESPN, to Smarty Pants Vitamins and Impulse Space, as well as on-profits like Homeboy Industries and Defy Ventures. Dan gives a no-fluff approach by helping transform leadership teams without any pixie dust – just courageous leadership, creative conflict resolution, and relevant restructuring. No conversation is too difficult, no situation too conflicted, because a leader with a vision cannot be held hostage by circumstance or history.
Connect with Dan:
Take New Ground: takenewground.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dantocchini
Instagram: instagram.com/dan_tocchini
The Change Imperative (FREE e-book) change.takenewground.com
Revenant: takenewground.com/revenant
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/books
Learn more about Maria’s work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Turns out, your organization’s inability to adapt and align in this era of great change may have little to do with structure, sales or cutting costs, and more to do with how you are investing in building your team’s people skills. You know, old fashioned communication, empathy, collaboration and conflict resolution. Sorry to break it to you, but research is showing that these skills are going to be more, not less, important in the age of AI Today’s guest has been helping leaders bring more magic to their teams for over 35 years. Dan Tocchini is the co founder and senior partner of take new ground, a boutique consultancy focused on maximizing organizational performance and efficiency by creating aligned, resilient teams. He’s worked with executive teams from Interstate Batteries and ESPN to smarty pants vitamins and impulse space, as well as nonprofits like Homeboy Industries and defy ventures. His no fluff approach transforms leadership teams without pixie dust, just courageous leadership, creative conflict resolution, empathy in action and smart restructuring. Today, we talk about what leadership really means, the biggest enemy of a high performing culture, and how to spot when your team is misaligned. Dan also shares why it can feel lonely at the top, how Empathy helps leaders have difficult conversations that make a real difference and the best time to address issues before they derail performance. If you want practical, hard earned wisdom on how to lead with both courage and compassion while still driving results, this is the conversation for you. Take a listen. Welcome to you. Dan Tocchini, to the empathy edge podcast. I am so excited to have you here today to talk about leadership and all of the ways that you catalyze teams and help them become high performing, high achieving through leadership, through both our shared understanding and commitment to emotionally intelligent and empathetic leadership. So welcome to the show.
Dan Tocchini 02:59
Well, thanks for having me, Maria. This is a real honor. And I’ve listened to a couple of your podcasts, and I love the name itself. Hooked me right in very powerful so thanks. Thanks. I
Maria Ross 03:10
love it. Well, we’re going to get into that edge right today. So before we dive into the topic at hand, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you came to this work I was telling you earlier. You know, I love to know people’s stories about there’s lots of different ways they could have made money. What brought you to this work of sort of building leadership capability and helping build high performing teams?
Dan Tocchini 03:31
Well, I came out of a broken home. My mother was a manic depressive, schizophrenic, and my parents got divorced when I was 18. But it all started when I was about 12, and I became the go between, between her and the psychiatrist. My father was never home, afraid of a lot of as were most of the kids. I just really interested in what it would take to connect with her. So it started there. And I, you know, I, we were in Northern California, so I had the benefit of they would send I would go to Ross general, which is where she was hospitalized, and work with her. And then they would send me. They would have people debrief me, and one of them was a guy named Fritz Perls who wrote Gestalt therapy verbatim. Was the first book I ever read, and I did a lot of work with him, one on one and debriefing what I went through. And went through quite a drug addiction after that in my later teens life years, but I read. I got became a voracious reader at a young age. So always reading about human I mean, I remember reading vandal and Grinders work on NLP, when I was 16, 1514, I think I started there, and the integrity of language, that kind of thing. It’s always been very deeply involved in that. And then I was an entrepreneur. I come out of an entrepreneurial family. My grandfather opened the first talking motion picture theater in north of San Francisco. And, you know, he was in the real estate business and had grocery stores and did all kinds of crazy things. But the interesting thing. Thing was, he taught us how to do business. My dad did too. I was reading leases at, you know, 1415, that’s how we connected. Wow. So I’ve had a background in business since I was a kid. In fact, my grandfather was upset with me because I wanted to go to college. You know, we taught you a business. Why are you going to college? I just have different interests, pop, you know. So I went to school and studied business psychology and particularly philosophy, a particular type of philosophy that has, it’s called phenomenology, which is, it’s just the study of what it means to become, how to become human, and what that means, and it’s influenced all my work with teams.
Maria Ross 05:38
Wow, wow. What an amazing story and so rooted in your own personal experience. I love that. What drives you is this trying to figure out, even as a young kid, how do I connect and engage with people that are different from me, that I don’t quite understand what’s happening with them, right? And that’s a huge mark of empathy, is that, that ability to want to to create those bridges with people for the end result of connecting and engaging with them and trying to understand what’s going on in their world and in their lives and what motivates them. So it’s very apparent how you bring that to your teams and to your clients. And I do have to tell you that one of your clients in the past, smarty pants vitamins was a mainstay in our home as my son was growing up. My son is 11 now, but that was always our vitamin brand for years and years and years. Love them, and so it’s really great. I mean,
Dan Tocchini 06:36
they’re quite a story. You know, they started in their kitchen and making, you know, really planning it out. And they just got really big. And he the, it’s a husband and wife team, and they just got really good at working with Amazon. They ended up selling to, we were involved in the sale. It’s a big company out of Holland, but they sold for a half a billion dollars. Oh, wow, there’s a tremendous story.
Maria Ross 07:03
Amazing, amazing. I love those kitchen table stories. I actually, a few years ago, a friend of mine, Kara golden, who’s the founder of hint water, it’s, I’ll put a link to her episode. Yeah, I’ll put a link to her episode. But she talked about, you know, the idea of starting at your in your apartment, in your kitchen table with her husband, and she experimented with different things. So love that story. Let’s dive a little bit into leadership and to frame the conversation. I would just love to know, given your work as a as a consultant and a coach and a change agent, what’s your definition of leadership.
Dan Tocchini 07:40
That’s a sticky question. It’s a good question. I don’t think you can define it as much as describe it. And I would say leadership is a way of being that takes responsibility for the future they’re committed to having, and they stand in such a way that it brings order to the chaos and releases the beauty they’re committed to, or the you know, what the results are that they’re committed to. And that involves first managing yourself, because if you can’t manage yourself, you can’t lead yourself. You’re not going to lead others. Well, you can still lead them. You can have very natural persuasion. You know, leadership, to me, is a big negotiation. Any communication designed to influence or persuade is a negotiation. So leadership’s all about influencing and persuading. So if you’re leading a group of people, you’re good at persuading and influencing, but if you’re not good at leading yourself, you’re eventually you’re just going to sabotage yourself and you’re going to lose your team over a very short period of time, probably, and you’re going to find yourself in patterns. And so when you get into relationships, professional relationships and personal you’ll probably find you’ll probably be waiting for the other shoe to drop, like, when’s going to happen with this person, because you’re not in touch with the seeds of sabotage that you’re sowing in the opening of the relationship to me. Leadership to me is really begins with managing yourself. And managing yourself starts with awareness, you know, awareness of what’s going on, like, I like to say, listening to your own listening, you know, hearing what you’re making up about what’s around you, or who you’re talking to, and managing the impact of what you’re making up?
Maria Ross 09:27
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is the first pillar of my five pillars of empathetic and effective empathy in the recent book, and the empathy dilemma, and it’s because of you. You know, you don’t have that house in order. You’re in survival mode, and you can’t make space to see and hear and understand and listen to the people around you, because you’re too focused on preserving yourself.
Dan Tocchini 09:50
So yeah, you see, if you’re in survival, you’re reacting to what’s around you exactly, instead of responding, yeah, because you’re anticipating suffering or unnecessary. Suffering, and probably out of touch with the suffering you’re called to. If you’re gonna have a certain every vision requires a certain level of investment, which means there’ll be some suffering, because you’re gonna have disappointment, et cetera. And there are so many psychological strategies we use to mitigate disappointment, which naturally takes our presence out of the participation, out of the process, which so sabotage, because if you’re not in the process fully, you’re going, there’s gonna be room for
Maria Ross 10:29
mischief. Right? Room for mischief. I love that. What do you think is like, I wanna go back to leadership for a second, but I wanna look at the team in general and the culture. What do you think is the greatest enemy to a high performing culture? What mistakes have you seen? Or what are the big red flags, especially when you start working with people? What is that enemy? Good
Dan Tocchini 10:52
question. I would say the enemy is, I’ve seen the enemy, and the enemy is me, right? The enemy is, I would say, number one enemy for executives, at least the ones I I’ve had the privilege of, I do, we do a lot of strategic implementations and turnarounds and that kind of stuff. And the number one destroyer of teams is the unwillingness, or the, I would say that. I call it the despair of necessity. People can’t see anything but what’s in front of them, and they’re afraid to imagine what could be, and they have a tendency not to have the conversations that are needed to be had, because they don’t want to lose what they do have. So they’re playing not to lose what they have, rather than thinking about what could be from wherever they’re at and then having the conversation from that future, which means you’re probably going to have to have difficult conversations that you normally wouldn’t see if you were just trying to survive. If you’re trying to survive, you avoid difficult conversations that put the relationship at risk or put the project at risk. But if you’re there, trying to produce something unprecedented. If you’re solving a problem, then every conversation is game, and the most important ones are the most difficult ones to have. You know, I read Gus, the guy he ran Proctor and Gamble anyway, I read his book, and he said, I know I’ve had a successful day by the number of difficult conversations I navigated in that day, because the most they’re difficult because something’s at stake, right? Something’s fake, because something matters. And if I don’t have the conversation, whatever matters now begins not to matter. And that, you know, things fail slowly, then all at once, right? So, you know, I call it the the shit hors d’oeuvre principle. If you can catch it as an hors d’oeuvre, it’s much easier to eat. But if you push the hors d’oeuvre away, it comes back as a sandwich, and that’s a little more difficult to eat. You push that away, comes as a two course meal. You push that away, you have a shit buffet. And that’s I try to catch it when it’s about, you know, an hors d’oeuvre. I don’t always get it right. Take a sandwich if I have to, but I’ll take the hors d’oeuvre first, right, right? Most executives don’t they work around the hard conversations. They they end up reacting to them. So they the hard conversations become their culture, and the conversation you’re not willing to have becomes your culture. It starts driving the culture. And the saying we use, the principle is, what you don’t face now will eventually defeat you. So if you can, you know courage is just being in touch with prices and rewards. If I know this is going to bring me more pain later, and I can vividly see that pain. I’m going to have more courage in the moment to have that conversation. But if I’m in the despair of necessity, all I can see is what’s in front of me. And I’m not thinking about what could be both on a negative side or a positive side. I just all I’m doing is dealing with with what’s in front of me. Back to your comment about survival,
Maria Ross 14:01
for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, what I’m hearing from this is that the biggest enemy is fear. The biggest enemy is is letting fear get in the way of you being able to imagine something better and being able to drive towards something better. You said it better and in less words, not always. I don’t always. Um, so given that, and I hear what you’re saying about the difficult conversations, I talk a lot about being an empathetic leader actually means you have clarity and you have decisiveness to nip issues in the bud, because they can fester and they actually cause more pain. And so when you’re trying to be an empathetic leader, and in the name of empathy, you avoid the difficult conversations, right? You don’t call the toxic Rockstar to task. You don’t right the ship when you see it going in the wrong direction because you don’t want hurt feelings or you don’t want to upset people, you’re actually making things worse for them when you’re them.
Dan Tocchini 14:59
Short term gain, long term pain, exactly, and we don’t think that’s what I mean. I’m so in necessity that I’m afraid to look up and see when I let this star get away with this, when I’m sent, what message am I sending to the culture, exactly, you know, and when, where else, where will it that start to sprout up, what special caseness Will I then be taken? Will I have to deal with from others that I’m also dependent on, that I’m afraid to risk losing, et cetera or challenge
Maria Ross 15:33
well? And I have kind of two questions related to that, the whole concept of these difficult conversations. And one is, when is the best time to bring up an issue or an upset or disappointment? Because I think that’s a lot of the struggle too, is sometimes the timing doesn’t feel right. So what’s your perspective on that for people
Dan Tocchini 15:54
as early as possible? So that means setting, you know, it’s like anything if I if you thought I have a million dollars to give to you, you would arrange a time to get the million dollars. You would say, When can we pick this? And you’d find a time. Well, I look at a difficult, difficult conversation like that, like this, if I don’t have this conversation, it’s going to come back and haunt me. And so I need to make a request, what would be an appropriate environment, who would be the right people in the conversation, and when’s the earliest we can have it? And I would express that to whom everyone, if I was having a conversation with you, Maria, I would express the urgency of it for me, and I feel like there’s a lot at stake. What’s the earliest time you can do that? Let’s look set up a few times. Let’s get it set I and I tell them, there’s two things I do. I tell people what I want to talk about and where I want to be with them on the other end of the conversation, and then I prepare for the conversation, which most you know. I don’t think people I do it because I’m pretty reactive. So if I’m prepared, I’m not as reactive. I’m much more open hear what they say, and if I can hear what you say, then you’re going to be much more open to hear what I have to say. So I prepared. I write down what do I want to have on the other end of this conversation, where am I committed for you and me to be? And then I write it down. I do all this before I even talk with you. Take a half hour. What is the issue? I want to talk to you about specifically, and I want to name it. What’s an example? The next thing is, I want to give an example of that issue so you can see what I’m looking at, even though I may see it from a different perspective. I’m doing this because I want to learn about how you see it and what I might be missing, right? So give you an example, then tell you then I want to let you know how what I experience, when that occurs, and then, and then, once I give you that experience, I also want you to know how I’ve contributed to it, what I’ve sewn into this. Maybe I haven’t said anything about it. Maybe I’ve acted like everything’s okay. Maybe I’ve avoided there’s a million things I could be doing that’s contributing to my own upset. What are they? And for my own benefit, I want to know what’s the benefit? What’s been the benefit of avoiding this for me, and what future? And I want to know that, because the next thing I’m going to write down is, if this continues, what’s at stake, right? Like, what future is coming? That’s where courage comes. Courage is just, oh, this is going to hurt more than that, so I’m going to take care of that now, right? Yeah, so I don’t think courage is anything more noble then I’d rather have this pain in the short term than that pain in the long term, right? And so that takes some discipline, because a lot of when I sit down with execs, a lot of times they’ll say why they can’t do it, and they’ll give me a very logical reason, and it’s usually survival, and survival, it’s got some necessity and and then when we start talking about what the future that’s going to bring if they continue to do that, all of a sudden they’re much more interested in how they have the conversation they’ve been trying to avoid. Yeah, so those are that’s kind of I do that for myself, so I’ve got more courage in the conversation. And the last thing I prepare is a proposal about how I’d like to go forward, not that I’m going to get that. It may change just in learning information from
Maria Ross 19:23
you Exactly, yeah, but if I have
Dan Tocchini 19:25
all that laid out, then we can go anywhere in the conversation. I know where to go back to. I can and what I learned from you will help me contextualize what I want to come back and talk about. I may learn things that I didn’t know here, and that’ll alter what I have to say, but at least I’m grounded enough that I can be there for you and listen to where you’re coming from and have empathy. Doesn’t mean I have is distinct from sympathy. Yes, I’m a Chris Voss freak, and he does a great distinction on empathy and sympathy. But I want to understand what you see. I want to understand what you value, so I can into. Create that with what I value and something that that’s mutually beneficial,
Maria Ross 20:04
right? The common ground? Yeah, I talk about empathy in terms of being a method of information gathering to understand someone’s context and to understand why they think and feel the way they feel, and then, yes, to connect with them, if that’s appropriate, or be able to give them what they need in the moment, but that can ultimately lead to figuring out what the next right step is with us.
Dan Tocchini 20:28
You’re so I love it. You’re really aware. So you speak of it as like, of course, right? But you believe it or not, so many executives don’t give a shit where anybody else is or where they’re coming from. I know that’s the first interruption I end up doing. It’s like, if you don’t care where they’re at, then not only do you see them as tools, you must see yourself as a tool. And you’re living in some sort of despair, yeah? Like, like you’re putting you found a level of despair that’s tolerable. And you call that happiness, you know,
Maria Ross 21:00
absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I mean, a lot of the work that I do, speaking and doing leadership development, is helping people understand empathy in a way that’s accessible for them, and help them understand what they’re what they’re risking, but also what the ROI is of empathy. Your point of you know, how you create that high performing culture you’ve gotta make, you’ve got to make those difficult conversations, or those difficult, uncomfortable things worth to somebody what’s in it for them.
Dan Tocchini 21:28
Empathy is, is probably one. I think empathy, along with authenticity, are the two two conversations that are necessary. They’re necessary for a thriving, high performing team. Otherwise, the team’s going to flatten out or burn out, because, you know, you’ve got you’re going to go through cycles and have empathy and in, you know, authenticity, you’re going to authentically want to know where somebody comes from, and you’re going to communicate where you’re at, because that’s the starting point. If you don’t locate each other. You can’t get to where you want to go, right? And that’s a that’s a a lot of times that’s that’s to do it kind of to your whole, your whole methodology is you got to locate people. That’s what is. Where are you how, where are you coming from? What do you value? How does that fit into what I value?
Maria Ross 22:19
It’s a lot of discovery in there. Yeah, absolutely. So in your work, you know, we talked about, sort of the enemies of a high performing culture. And what other indicators are there that a team is misaligned? Do you ever get Do you ever get clients who are like, No, our team’s all on the same page? And then you get in there. Yeah,
Dan Tocchini 22:42
I just last week, 210, days ago. In fact, I got a debrief with this guy tomorrow. Went into a biannual meeting with a fairly good size they’re basically a a high end therapy company. They do kind of executive therapy, work with couples, etc, in conflict, etc, and they’ve got multiple offices. And you know, the the founders talk to me about just what a great culture it is, etc. And he’s invited me to this biannual meeting, and he’s asked me to put my ears to it and speak to the group, and then meet with him and his leadership team and tell me what I see, and you know, they’re high performing. They do very well, but they’re all in despair. They’re burnt. And he rolled out new set of values, and one of them was excellence. And one of the things I noticed was we’re in a gymnasium with no air conditioning with his top people, 45 or 50 people, and he’s rolling out excellence, and there’s no there’s no cover on the table. I’m thinking to myself, and he’s thinking, this is a great culture. And then we went to a restaurant for lunch with his leaders, and they didn’t have the reservation. The restaurant was overwhelmed and it was low budgeted. And then he went to another one, and they couldn’t get us in. Finally, I called we got us into another one that was a little more higher end. And so I’m going to talk with them about what that’s called, the despair of possibility, like I see the future, but I don’t recognize where I’m at. I don’t recognize my impact. I don’t recognize what’s going on for others in the leadership meeting, the head of basically the medical director, without him, he doesn’t have a business, is in tears about how burnt out the staff is because they’re overworking, and how what kind of support she needs. And when I listened to him, he didn’t hear a thing. She said he couldn’t even repeat back to her. So we’re gonna have a, probably a mediation. He wants me to come in on I’m gonna debrief with him, and then we’re gonna talk about, because if he loses his medical director, the whole thing’s over, right, right? So there’s, if you think about it, being optimistic, so optimistic that you can’t recognize where you are is a real enemy. Yeah. Any kind of transformation or high performance you want to have, because eventually people burn out. Then you have to start over, and then you wonder, and you get frustrated, because here you are again on that treadmill doing what you said you’d never do again, wondering how you got there, right? And you got there gradually, and then all of a sudden. So that’s kind of my debrief with this guy. Yeah, yeah.
Maria Ross 25:23
You know, it’s so interesting, because there’s so many things to unpack in there. And you know, a lot of my work stems from when I’ve been doing brand strategy projects with clients and helping them understand the voice of the customer. And so much of this is about walking your talk. It’s so easy to put the poster on the wall, to roll out the values, to do all the things, but what’s the meat behind it? What are the proof points behind it? So when we talk about operationalizing empathy or operationalizing excellence, there’s got to be behaviors and actions that are associated with that value. So we can objectively say, are we achieving this
Dan Tocchini 26:02
objectively identifying Yes, and you. And the other thing is, if you’re not living it, you won’t know the nuances. You won’t see the nuances when they arise. So you’ll be constantly reacting to what you missed. Yes, the results come back to then you’re reacting to the symptom, and you’re not really on the problem and right? And then you wonder, it’s like whacking moles, and you get frustrated. And pretty soon you think, like, well, it must be people when you start, you know, doing that whole thing. Yeah, that’s crazy,
Maria Ross 26:31
yeah. And I want to get back to this point, you know, this is the problem with a lot of leaders that just through, through, sometimes through no fault of their own. They get into their own ivory tower, and they perceive the organization as operating in a certain way or having a certain culture. There’s a 2025, state of workplace empathy report that came out from business solver that they’ve done it for 10 years and over and over again. There’s this gap between what the CEOs say about the culture and what the HR folks and the employees say, and so, you know, this is kind of related to the A question I was planning to ask you anyway, which is, you know, we talk about leadership being lonely at the top, but what makes it so lonely? What can a leader do to make sure they’re not insulated in that echo chamber.
Dan Tocchini 27:22
Well, this is a peeve of mine. When people say it’s only it’s only it’s lonely at the top, because you want it to be you look whatever complaint you have, you ought to stop and ask yourself, I wonder why I want it this way. Because one thing I know about people for sure, if they don’t want something, they know how to get rid of it. And if it’s still there, there’s something I’m getting from it. If you can identify that, that’ll be that’ll help you understand what kind of trade offs you’re making for the mediocre, mediocrity that you’re settling for. And I would say that feedback, the unwillingness to hear feedback is the biggest breakdown, right? I don’t want to hear it, so I don’t ask for it. I don’t want to hear it, so I I’m always saying what it is, right? And I’m not paying attention to the eye rolling shutdown, right?
Maria Ross 28:15
Or, or they punish people for giving negative feedback. And then that’s the model you’ve just set is that, oh, we don’t tell the truth around here.
Dan Tocchini 28:24
That’s right, right? Because if we do, we’re going to pay with penalties and interest Exactly, exactly, everybody becomes inauthentic and in miserable. And, you know, that’s one of the reason why, you know, I started my own business because, you know, I thought, well, at least I’ll run my own business now, I have multiple people working for me. And as a young man, I was like, Oh no, this is exactly what I thought I was avoiding. And my wife said, Well, I guess you’re gonna have to get up to listening. I’ve been married for 50 years, so yeah, it’s like, she’s my partner, right? We’ve worked together for 40 years,
Maria Ross 28:56
so Right. Wow. That’s great. That’s great. So as we kind of wrap up here, I just, I would love to get a sense from you as to how you’re seeing leadership evolve. So you’ve been doing this a long time. I am always talking about the new paradigm of leadership that it’s, you know, got to be more collaborative. It’s gotta be more empathetic in order for us to solve the tough problems that we currently have in the 21st century. But from your vantage point, what is the evolution that you’ve seen and what is your hope for the future of leadership?
Dan Tocchini 29:35
Well, I look at leadership as you know, without it, things don’t happen. It’s, you know, one person taking a stand creates a wake, and people can come up and stand behind them, and that creates a greater wake. So to me, in the 21st Century, my son’s an AI, one of the best AI engineers in the world. He’s about ready to launch revolutionary AI. It’s going to be the first digital employee out there, and it does. Operational work, like moving data from one app to another so people can go do other things. But for initially, it’s going to reduce the number of jobs, so our work is going to become more relational. It’s going to become more empathetic. It’s going to be more about influencing, persuading groups of people to to it to me, it’s kind of businesses taking the place of, if you will, in a lesser degree, the church. You know, in the ancient days, that’s where people gathered and talked about things that mattered. Well, when you’re living and you’re working with somebody, you know, you’re spending 60 hours a week with them, well, that’s like a home. That’s like a church, though it’s not a family, it is like a family in the sense that you’ve done something that’s that’s respected, and people want you to be part of the team and and you’re either going to contribute or you’re not. If you don’t contribute, you’re going to give an account for it. And if you do contribute, you give an account for that. And the what you contribute is going to impact the community. So business more than ever. I think we can see it influences the culture. That’s why there’s concern about, you know, big companies owning all of the the different companies that are available in the world, because it reduces accountability to the to that, because the accountability is what causes the shift. So it’s almost like, if I own everything, I don’t have to hear any feedback. I just dictate the terms. And culture is trying to go there. But there’s a large part of the culture that’s saying, no, no, that’s I’m not a tool, and I don’t want to be one. And I think it’s our job to keep our humanity, you know, forefront of all this technology. Otherwise, you know, we’re going to get exactly what we’re afraid of right and that, and that’s going to require a level of responsibility that up until now, we’ve been unwilling to take, because it requires having conversations that are potentially they’re going to break rapport with many people until it doesn’t right. You can’t stand in the break of that rapport and still have a conversation, control yourself in a way that you can still invite differing points of view to the table and find a common cause. That’s that’s going to be the ultimate of it. I do. I do a lot of work on the side with kids coming out of gangs. I’ve done it for years. The curriculum we develop is the most studied curriculum in America, and I’ve trained a number of organizations in this curriculum. And when you see gangs, like we were the first to do bring rival gangs together in prison, and guards would take would bet that the training that we did four day training within in the first day, and we’d make it through, and we’d have Bloods and Crips and, you know, Mexican Mafia, and you know, you name it. Ms 13, we’d bring their leaders together, after we worked with them in separately for maybe eight or nine months, into a training room, and then collaborate with them. And we saw huge results. We’ve been seeing huge results for the last 25 years doing that. I don’t do as much as I used to, but I did it for in the early from 2000 to 2010 but if it can be done at that level, that’s really what’s going to happen at the business level, because there’s a lot of competition, a lot of dirty shit that goes on, and frankly, if we don’t learn to get along with each other, then we’re going to end up dominated by the biggest horse in the room. So,
Maria Ross 33:25
for sure, for sure. Well, just to kind of piggyback on that, I think that’s the ultimate lesson. That’s what I’m always out there talking about, is with in the age of AI, the only competitive advantage we’re going to have in terms of leadership is their human skills. It’s their ability to collaborate and connect quickly to solve our complex problems. And leaders who have been hiding behind the doing and hiding behind the tasks, they don’t have anywhere to hide anymore, because it’s going to be very apparent that their value is not going to be seen as important as it has been, and what’s going to be important is, can you rally the troops? Can you bring people together? Can you understand what motivates your team and be clear with them and help them understand the expectations and the goals and the mission and the leaders that are going to be able to do that and tap into those skills, or Up skill themselves to build on their emotional intelligence, to build on their empathy. They’re the ones that are going to survive all this.
Dan Tocchini 34:26
Yeah, and the first thing that they’ve got to realize is, if you want to collaborate, you have to take a stand, which means you’re you’re going to produce conflict. Yes, the minute you stand, there’s so collaboration comes after you stand. It doesn’t come before you stand, because when you get and the bottom line is, it’s interesting. I watched leaders work, try to collaborate together, and they stay very high level because they know they’re afraid to get down to the detail, because when you get down to the detail, you find out what the differences are. And that’s where the real collaboration comes in. And. So if you’ve got to have your way, you’re going to try to stay at this level and then be surprised that people didn’t do what you thought they were going to do. You know, the willingness to get to the details, the willingness to understand why people may resist what you want in the details, where you start to collaborate and find the greater pie, the bigger, the more. How big is the common ground? Usually much bigger than we think, right? You know, and but that requires breaking rapport, and I can you stand alone long enough to find each other again, right? It’s like, yeah, my wife and I will get in a fight, and then it’ll be like she said, my night. Well, we’re searching for each other. I just hope we’re coming towards each other, not away from each other. Good question. It’s like, yeah, because you break rapport and you just got to find yourself back. Okay, here you are. I got it right, right? And are you willing to take the bid? Are you willing to give a bid? Right? Because when you make a bid, you’re vulnerable, right? And then the other party might use it against you. That happens in in the in the corporate environment all the time. Yeah, are you going to use me as a stepping stone for your career? The only way I’m going to find out is really first I’ve got to know how to have that conversation, right, right? Like that. So anyway, I
Maria Ross 36:17
love it. Well. Thank you so much, Dan, for for your insights today, and for sharing with us your view of leadership and how you help companies and teams create that high performing culture, all your links will be in the show notes. But for anyone that’s on the go, do you have one place in particular that would be a good place for them to check you out?
Dan Tocchini 36:37
Yes, takenewground.com and you can reach out from there. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Dankey,
Maria Ross 36:44
great, great. Well, thank you so much again for this conversation, and we
Dan Tocchini 36:49
appreciate you. Oh, I appreciate this. Thank you, Maria. What a great time. Thank you,
Maria Ross 36:53
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 the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slicemaria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place you.
