What if the secret to a more fulfilling life (and a more effective leadership style) isn’t productivity or strategy, but connection? My guest today is Dr. Adam Dorsay, a licensed psychologist and executive coach in Silicon Valley, where he works with high-achieving professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and even professional athletes. He’s the host of the award-winning SuperPsyched podcast and has delivered three highly regarded TEDx Talks.
Adam shares why so many of us are more disconnected than ever and what’s really driving that gap. He unpacked the four types of human connection that are vital for a thriving life. We also explore what connection looks like in the workplace, how leaders can foster a genuine culture of empathy and belonging, and why diversity in your personal and professional connections along many vectors matters more than you think. Finally, he wrapped up with some incredibly grounding advice for anyone who feels like they’re running on empty when it comes to meaningful relationships.
If you’re a leader wanting to build a more engaged, connected team, or simply someone craving more depth and fulfillment in your life, this conversation delivers both the science and the heart to help you get there.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- Why connection is such a key element in our lives and the four ways which we connect.
- Creating your own Connection Formula.
- What connection means in the workplace and how leaders can foster a culture of connection.
- The importance of diversity in connections.
- Advice to build the necessary connections in your life, especially for those who feel they are lacking.
“We need to override our narcissistic tendencies and get to know our colleagues and go to bat for them, and they will go to bat for us.” — Dr. Adam Dorsay
Episode References:
- The Empathy Edge Podcast: Dr. Adam Dorsay: How Ambition and Compassion Co-Exist for High-Performers
- Atlas Obscura: atlasobscura.com
About Adam Dorsay, Psychologist, Author of Superpsyched:
Dr. Adam Dorsay is a licensed psychologist and executive coach in Silicon Valley, where he works with high-achieving adults (including professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and professional athletes). Adam is the host of SuperPsyched, an award-winning podcast with more than 200 episodes. He has given three highly regarded TEDx Talks: one about men and their emotions, another about friendship in adulthood, and the most recent about the four ways humans connect. His new best-selling book is the International Impact Award-winning Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the 4 Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love.
Beyond his private practice, Adam is a resiliency expert who co-created an international program for Facebook’s Online Safety employees for several years. He now serves as the resiliency consultant to DigitalOcean and has frequent requests from the media for interviews. He has provided keynotes and trainings to multiple corporations and organizations, including Microsoft, LinkedIn, and the California Psychological Association.
Connect with Adam Dorsay:
Website: dradamdorsay.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adam-dorsay-psyd-cpcc-a582a2
Facebook: facebook.com/dradamdorsay
Book: Unleash the Power of the 4 Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love
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. What if the secret to a more fulfilling life and a more effective leadership style isn’t productivity or strategy, but connection? My guest today is Dr. Adam Dorsey, a licensed psychologist and executive coach in Silicon Valley, where he works with high-achieving professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and even professional athletes, he’s the host of the award-winning Super Psyched podcast, which I highly recommend, and has delivered three very well-regarded TEDx talks on topics ranging from men and their emotions to friendship in adulthood to the four ways humans connect. Beyond his private practice, Adam has co-created resiliency programs for Facebook’s online safety employees, and now consults with companies like Digital Ocean, Microsoft, and LinkedIn. His new book is the International Impact Award-winning Supersite: Unleash the Power of the Four Types of connection and live the life you love, which was so so good. Today, Adam shared why so many of us are more disconnected than ever, despite being constantly plugged in, and what’s really driving that gap are biases, comparison culture, and fear. He unpacks the four types of human connection that are vital for a thriving life. We also explore what connection looks like in the workplace, how leaders can foster a genuine culture of empathy and belonging, and why diversity in your personal and professional connections, along many vectors, including age, matters more than you think. Adam offers three ways you can develop your own connection formula, and he wrapped up with some incredibly grounding advice for anyone who feels like they’re running on empty when it comes to meaningful relationships. This conversation spanned everything from overcoming our narcissistic tendencies to us both fanning about writer and creator Bill Lawrence. If you’re a leader wanting to build a more engaged, connected team, or simply someone craving more depth and fulfillment in your life. This conversation delivers both the science and the heart to help you get there. Take a listen, Dr. Adam Dorsey, one of my favorite people in the world. Welcome back to the Empathy Edge podcast to talk about connection and our need for it and how to get it and why we need it and all the things. So welcome to the show.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 03:09
show, Maria. I’m so happy to be back with you. I’m just remembering and smiling because when I first read your book, I did something I do rarely, which was I immediately it was actually a listen, but I immediately listened to it again, and that’s how much I loved your very first book, The Empathy Edge. I can’t wait to listen to the Empathy Dilemma as well. But just fan of you professionally and personally.
Maria Ross 03:35
Same, same. I love it. And we have met in person, and we’ve been basically a group of whirling dervishes sitting at a table, bothering people in a restaurant. So, yeah, our energy levels are pretty damn close. So I love it. So we are here to talk about your new book, Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the Four Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love. That’s a lot. So we know a little bit about your story. Being a former corporate guy turned psychologist, going to the love of really figuring out what makes people tick. So, for those of the listeners that didn’t get to enjoy your first interview, I will put a link in the show notes. But just tell us briefly how you got from being a corporate guy to now being a psychologist to now being an author.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 04:20
I love that question. Well, here’s how it happened. I had undiagnosed ADHD, and I didn’t know why it was that I couldn’t really stay on a task for very long. And I’d always wanted to become a psychologist, but if you know anything about becoming a psychologist, it means staying on a task for a very long time, including being a hermit for a long time, doing this thing called the dissertation and lots of loneliness and lots of just tenacity that I lacked at the time and thought I would never get. So I was also dyslexic, which added just a lot of fun to the mix. And I thought I was going to become a psychologist, but I dropped out of graduate school, and I found that. Working in the corporate world was relatively easier than slogging it out to become a psychologist. Well, as luck would have it, I ended up marrying a psychologist, and every day during dinner, she’d describe her day, and I’d hear about her day, and I’d say that was supposed to be my day. And by this time, I’d pretty much gotten a handle-more than pretty much, I’d gotten a handle on my ADHD. I’d found other ways around reading, i.e. listening, but I could read for a sustained period of time. I’d learned, I’d trained myself. Anyhow, at the most inopportune moment, I already owned a house, had a child, and I decided to go back to graduate school, and this was at the behest of my wife and my buddy Aaron, who basically sold me on the idea that I there was still time,
Maria Ross 05:53
yeah,
Maria Ross 05:53
and that I should go for it. That life was too precious. I talk about it quite a bit in the book, but I decided to go to night school, and during my nights and weekends, I would after work, I would find a way to eke out a doctorate. And when I finally did that, I took out a home equity line of credit on our home and earned $10 an hour with no benefits for a couple of years to earn my license, and that’s how it worked. I had a very, I have and had a very supportive wife. Always went at my back. Not once did she even complain about the sacrifice she needed to endure to get me where I wanted to go. So none of us does this alone. If it weren’t for my friends encouraging me. I just recently heard John Piero Petiliari out of actually where your roots come from from Sicily. He said, “Our friends.
Maria Ross 06:48
I’m not Sicilian.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 06:49
You’re not.
Maria Ross 06:50
I’m Italian. I’m not Sicilian.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 06:51
Oh, my apologies. I take it back somehow. Well, it’s all good. Regardless, I am a huge fan of Italy. Says to me, a good friend is one who is able to imagine who you could become. They help us imagine who we could become, and that is what my wife did. That’s what my buddy Erin did, and this has been a dream for me to actually do this every day. I am so, I’m actually super psyched. My nickname in high school was enthusiasm, so it kind of lent itself to super psyched to become a podcast. One thing I want to make abundantly clear, though, is that I’m not peddling toxic positivity. I’m not saying that we should be super psyched all the time. Yeah, we should feel all the feels. I’m actually suggesting we should be super connected to our psyches. So really connected to whatever it is that we’re feeling-if it’s grief, if it’s joy-really being there and really being attentive to those feelings and and what they’re asking of us.
Maria Ross 07:52
I love that, and I’m so glad you you mentioned that because we do have a problem with toxic positivity in our culture right now, and and when folks like you, folks like me, are out talking to leaders about how to connect and how to build better relationships. We’re not saying it’s all sunshine and roses all the time, nor do we need to pretend that that’s what we’re bringing to the table at whatever point of capacity we’re at on that day. So, thank you for saying that. I think you may have answered my next question because obviously relationships and connection have been such an important part of your life, but I’m wondering in your professional work why this book, why connection, why is it so important in our lives?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 08:31
I’m stoked that you asked that question as well.
Maria Ross 08:33
Because are you super psyched?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 08:35
I’m literally super psyched that you asked that question, and not yes, 100 authentically so, because I trusted that when the right book would take hold of me, that would be the book I would invest my heartbeats in. After sitting in this chair for nearly 20,000 hours, I’d heard the term connection. I want more connection in my life. Themes and variations on this idea, this nebulous term, and I realized, oh my gosh, I need to talk about connection because it’s not something that’s well defined. What do people mean when they say they want more connection? And what could it look like if we had more connected lives? And I came to realize there is a way to define that, and there are four places connection can exist that I can. I’ve heard nobody come up with a fifth, so it’s almost like, and that there, it’s almost like a an archery target that’s got a nucleus. We first connect to ourselves. Most of us think connection is connection between two people, but that’s actually the second level connection to others. The third is connection to the world. The world includes our work; it includes our history, such as our ancestry. You mentioned you are Italian, and as Maya Angelou once said, we can’t know where we’re going unless we know where we’re from. I think that we really do need to be rooted in our history and. Finding ways to embody some of those traditions, whether it’s you know around Christmas and having you know Italian dishes around that time, or whatever it might be. I’ve got mine connection to the fourth level is connection to something greater. Greater for some of us, means traditionally going to church, but for the most hardcore atheist, going to stargaze at night and feeling being in nature, being in nature, feeling awe. And one of the things that I’m so grateful to the field of psychology for really studying and putting under the microscope is awe itself. When we experience awe, we are less self-absorbed. We’re more socially focused. Strangers at the solar eclipse that happened in 2017, and particularly in Oregon, where that was most easily seen, strangers were hugging strangers. And what we see that when we’re in a state of awe is something very similar in brain imaging to when we take psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical in magic mushrooms, and you don’t need to take any form of any substance in order to feel awe. It’s available to all of us, and yet it takes a little courage because somebody might clown on you for being in a state of awe because you’re so not self-absorbed. Back in the day, I don’t know if you remember in YouTube the guy who was seeing the double rainbow, and it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s a. Oh, totally remember that. No, and
Maria Ross 11:35
I’m laughing because my husband always loves to tell the story of we had only been dating eight months when we got engaged, but we were in our early 30s when he was almost 30, and he told me about a mountain biking trip he took in the in the Marin Headlands when I was away, and the high he got, and that was actually the day he decided he was going to ask me to marry him was when he got to the top and he had this just feeling of awe and this feeling of euphoria, and he was like, “Yes, I’m going to do this. Like, so yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:05
Maria, I’ve got to share something with you.
Maria Ross 12:08
Yes,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:09
the day I got clear that I was going to marry my wife,
Maria Ross 12:11
yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:12
I was on a bicycle going down Haleakala in Maui, and we were riding together. She was like writer number three, and I was writer number nine. I was looking at writer number three, and I was like, “Dude, if you do not marry this woman, you are the biggest idiot who ever lived. You absolutely positively.
Maria Ross 12:30
Wait, did you know her?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:31
Oh yeah.
Maria Ross 12:31
Okay, I was gonna. The way you made it sound was like she was some stranger. She was on the trip with me.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:35
No, no, she and I had been dating, but I’d received more than critical mass. Enough information about her to realize that I needed to be with her in this lifetime. Yeah, because and if I didn’t get on a knee, I would be the world’s biggest jackass. And there was no question in my mind that this was the least courageous thing I’d ever done because this was it was so ridiculously obvious,
Maria Ross 12:58
so funny. But that’s what awe does: is it actually creates clarity for us. I want to ask a question though around this because, and it might seem pedantic or silly, but why do we need connection? What is it about the way humans are wired, and ourselves as a species, and the way our brains work that it’s actually in our not best interest to be a misanthrope and to be a hermit, right? What what is it about connection? Why do we need it?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 13:27
So what’s interesting is our brains-the things that exist between our ears at this time-are the same ones that have existed between our ears for 30-five to 70,000 years, and yet are, in spite of the fact that you know, even though you might have an iPhone 17 and have upgraded multiple times, our brain has not upgraded at all. Our brains are the same as the brains of our ancestors from 35,000 to 70,000
Maria Ross 13:52
years ago,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 13:52
and we have become a successful species partially because we are social. We require others. No one does this alone, as I said earlier. Barbra Streisand kind of got it wrong. People who need people, luckiest people in the world. No, it’s actually people who know they need people are the lucky and act on it are the luckiest people in the world. Right. We need to act on our need for other people. We have social brains. We do better together exponentially.
Maria Ross 14:17
What happens if we don’t? What happens to us? What are the downsides of not connecting?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 14:23
Wired deep within our nervous systems is loneliness, and loneliness is a signal that we could be evicted from the tribe. Back in the old days, that meant our certain death. Our survival is really dependent on the kindness and the connection with others, we have different needs for connection. Some of us need more connection than others, but we all need some connection. My friend Britt Frank describes us as having different feeding schedules. Some of us are more like hummingbirds need to feed all the time, and I don’t know if you remember in the. TV show Friends, but like Joey was in every scene. He was a hummingbird. He needed to be always be Ross. He did, you know, he was sometimes in there. Did you look at your last name? Ross would show up periodically. He needed friends too, but he was more of an introvert, and he was more he had the feeding schedule more like perhaps let’s say according to her a scorpion. Scorpions don’t need to eat all that regularly, and apparently GLP ones are based on Gila monsters that eat like once a year. So, like, which is really interesting to me. But regardless, we all have different feeding schedules, but we all have feeding schedules. We all need to hang out with friends or loved ones from time to time. We all need other people in our lives, and yet one of the things that we now know, former Surgeon General made a huge warning. Doctor Devivek Murthy noticed that if and he picked up on the research out of University of Utah that if we are lonely, it can be as disastrous to our health as smoking. It can be more predictive of our mortality than other measures than like our blood sugar and our cholesterol, so it really we have a biological incentive for connection.
Maria Ross 16:09
Absolutely. Okay, so let’s get to the book because I’m gonna for our YouTube audience. I want to put this up here. It’s so pretty.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 16:15
Oh, right on.
Maria Ross 16:16
But I want to talk a little bit about you know you already took us through the four ways we connect, right? And let’s just review those quickly: connection to self, connection to others, connection to the world, and connection to something greater. Did I get that right? Okay, good. I pass. I get an A. I get a gold. You’re more than
Dr. Adam Dorsay 16:33
getting an A. And by the way, I just wanted to highlight connection to self because it’s not a narcissistic thing to get to know who you are. If we don’t know who we are, and if we aren’t behaving in a way that is somehow authentic, it’s like walking through life with a rock in our shoe. It will inform all of the other connections that we have.
Maria Ross 16:49
Yeah.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 16:49
So it’s and
Maria Ross 16:50
you know from my work with the empathy dilemma, the five pillar framework. The first two are self awareness and self care. Because if you don’t have your own house in order, I like to say, there’s no space in your brain and in your heart to make connections with other people. The
Dr. Adam Dorsay 17:06
Venn diagram of our work. There’s so much overlap.
Maria Ross 17:09
Yes, I know totally. All right, I want to talk really quickly about why we’re so disconnected. You know, you mentioned the loneliness epidemic, and we know, and I’ve spoken to other guests about this. Like we’re living in a world that’s more connected than ever, yet we’re so lonely, right? And it’s not about how many Facebook friends we have or Instagram friends. My Gen X is showing, right? Facebook, Instagram, but it’s also just-it’s amazing how much we should be more connected, and yet we’re not. And there’s a few reasons you outline in the book for this, and I just wanted to highlight one of them specifically was this idea of the biases that mislead us, and you had this great passage in here where you talk about the brains again evolving, and here’s here goes: our brains have evolved to keep us alive and make sure that we keep breathing, eating, and knowing what to do when we feel threatened, they act as prediction machines, doing everything they can to help us avoid that thing called death. Keeping us alive is a lot of work, so the brain has also worked to become as energy conserving as possible. As it evolved, it developed a series of cognitive shortcuts that help us to reach fast and usually accurate enough conclusions about problems that have allowed us to survive and to procreate, but the shortcuts have the unfortunate side effect of causing mistakes when we are dealing with harder questions and problems of modern day thinking. So you’re talking here about our brain’s ability. How I perceive this is the ability to make snap judgments about people that we just meet, about our ability to think, oh, this person and I will never connect, about our ability to even think I don’t belong in this room, when maybe that’s just our brains telling us that, right? So, can you talk a little bit about biases getting in the way of connection, but also some of the other reasons that we fail to connect.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:02
I am so glad you read that passage because it’s such a central theme to the book. What caused us to become a successful species was our ability to eat. It’s the same reason that we we were attracted to sugar and empty calories. It’s we go for what’s easy.
Maria Ross 19:20
We
Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:21
go for what is efficient. We go for what’s fast, and oftentimes other things get in the way, like fear, the the negativity bias we hear a rustling in the leaves, and we determine it must be a tiger, even though it’s just a squirrel, because if we’re wrong and it is a tiger, our bloodline dies, and if we’re wrong and it turns out to be a squirrel, okay. So we’ve experienced some fear,
Maria Ross 19:47
right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:47
Big deal,
Maria Ross 19:48
right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:48
But it is a big deal because we now experience fear in all of the other ways. Just as you described, one of the things that prohibited me from becoming a psychologist was I was scared, rightfully so. I mean, this is like.
Maria Ross 19:59
But and yet your life wasn’t in danger, but your body felt it the same way.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 20:04
It felt like I could die,
Maria Ross 20:06
right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 20:06
And I don’t know about you, but there are many times that I’m scared about things that aren’t going to kill me,
Maria Ross 20:14
right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 20:14
And I am not scared about things that are actually like driving from here to there. We know statistically is far more dangerous than getting on an airplane, but I’m-I mean, no one has ever clapped when a taxi arrived at its destination, and people clap all the time when the plane lands. Right, exactly. And there’s a reason for that. But when that applies to our lives, we live half-baked lives. I know so many people who are rife with regret. They’re in their 50, 6070s, and say, “I have not done half the things I’ve wanted to do because I’ve been scared, or I got married to the wrong person because I was scared that there’d be no one else, or I got married to the wrong person because I felt pressured and they were available and they wanted to, and so I said yes. And now we’re in a custody evaluation. You know, I see that all the time in my office. Like this, not listening to the knowing because it was inconvenient to say no at the time. We have yes brains. We’re much more likely to say yes than no to lots of things because no is hard because we have to deal with the fact that we’ve rejected someone, and we know that rejection hits the same pain centers as physical pain, so we don’t want to inflict that pain on another person unless we are somehow, you know, really misanthropic, as you were saying earlier, which is, you know, for a very select group of people,
Maria Ross 21:38
right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 21:38
So the no brain is harder, and for us to actually double down on our lives requires massive activation energy, which is not really easy. So many of us don’t do the inconvenient thing. Last but not least, we apply this technology of going for what’s easy, and we get these empty calories in social media, thinking that we’re connected. We’re more connected now technologically than we’ve ever been before, and yet we’re less connected interpersonally.
Maria Ross 22:09
Right? They’re not. They’re shallow. They’re not deep. It’s like skipping a stone. Right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 22:13
You nailed it.
Maria Ross 22:14
Exactly. Exactly. Well, and I think you know, and we’re gonna we’re gonna get into this because again, like you said, this is where our work overlaps the role of empathy in being able to create connections and override those automatic systems in our brains, and embrace people who are different from us, who we can have a connection with if we can look past the fears and past the biases and past the comparisons, and all of that. So, kind of to segue into that when you think about connection in the workplace. So I know you talk you talk in the book about lots of different types of connection, right? Spousal connection, romantic connection, connection with faith-based groups, like all different kinds of connection. But when we’re talking about professional connection, what does that mean in the workplace, and why? I mean, I could probably answer this, but I’d love to hear this from your psychological point of view. Why is that important to create a thriving and productive workplace? And then I’ll have a follow up question once you share that with us.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 23:14
I remember early in my career where my boss Martin Darner, who’s sadly no longer with us, actually lived in Pacifica for a number of years, Martin, and he said to me, “You need to show your colleagues at work. This is in the corporate place that they matter more to you even than the customer, because they are your brothers in arms, and that you will go to bat for them and you will help them out when they are struggling. Make them your number one priority because if we don’t band together, to borrow from Benjamin Franklin, we will certainly you know die apart. So that was part of the founding of our country that is applicable to being in the workplace. We need to override our narcissistic tendencies and get to know our colleagues and go to bat for them, and they will go to bat for us. Exactly through this type of cooperation, we have a corporation.
Maria Ross 24:10
Oh, that was gold! I love that. Well, and you know, in the work that I do around empathy, it’s about creating that workplace where people feel seen, heard, and valued. And by virtue, to me, that implies connection, and when you do that, you create a group of people to your point where they want to have each other’s backs, and that fosters engagement, that fosters innovation, that fosters creativity, and it all translates to customer experience as well. Right? You can’t have a great customer service experience. If everyone within a company is competitive, stabbing each other in the back, constantly looking over their shoulder, whatever they’re experiencing is going to translate to what you show outwardly in the marketplace. And so that’s you know this is kind of how I got on the empathy train was through my brand. Marketing work of you’ve got to see your customers as people, but in order to see your customers as people internally, you’ve got to walk that talk, and you have to see each other as a team and as people, and you have to have those connections. You don’t have to be best friends with everybody, but are there moments of levity you can share? Is there that joy pillar present? Do you feel like yeah, this is somewhere I want to go and spend 810, 12 hours engaged with these people? Hopefully, the answer is yes,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 25:28
1,000,000% And why did the Miracle on Ice happen in 1980 when the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in hockey? They were not better athletes. They were not better players individually, but they banded together. And I thank Bill Lawrence so much for creating Scrubs and Ted Lasso and all of the other shows. Huge fan. Love them and all he talks about is exactly what you and I are talking about. Everything is about bonding, empathy, connection. That’s what makes a team, and I love it in Scrubs more than anything else to see, I mean, it’s my comfort food is scrubs. Yeah, watch. I watch and rewatch that show to watch these guys connect with each other. Have you watched the reboot? I just started it. Scared to
Maria Ross 26:10
watch the reboot. I was so worried it was going to get messed up for me, and I was actually I’ve been quite pleased with the first two episodes I’ve seen so far as of this recording.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 26:18
As have I, and so yeah, so it’s obviously timestamp, but all I can tell you is, I’m hopeful. I mean, Bill Lawrence and Zach Braff. I mean, my goodness, what more? What more do we want?
Maria Ross 26:30
But actually, you know, I know we’re joking about this, but that’s actually a central theme of Ted Lasso.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 26:35
Oh, and I’m not even taking a team.
Maria Ross 26:37
Yeah, taking a team of people who might not have been all star performers, but when you create those connections and you create that camaraderie and you create that environment, they’re capable of believing in themselves. They’re capable of performing at optimum capacity for each other, and then that’s that’s where the alchemy happens.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 26:58
Million percent, and one of the things that we found in the literature is that diversity wins, but it only wins if perspective taking occurs. And what is required for perspective taking? This thing called empathy. And so, if we really want connection, and if we really want the sum to be-I mean, the the the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts-yeah, we need to empathize. We need to take perspective. We want diversity. Temple Grandin said on my podcast, she’s you know a very famous woman with autism. She said if somebody had my version of autism and was on the Space Shuttle Columbia team, it would not have exploded in outer space because I would have seen the problem ahead of time. Neurodiversity, ethnic diversity, all types of whether it’s gender diversity, we need diverse perspectives, and we need to take each other’s perspectives. Override again our inherent narcissism. We have, we all have narcissism. It’s self protective. We need it to live, but we also don’t want to get out of hand, and we want to be able to empathize. Okay, full alt elite, and we empathize.
Maria Ross 28:01
What a great segue because that was the other thing I wanted to talk about about the need to have diversity in your connections, both your personal and professional relationships. And I want to read this passage out loud to everyone, which is where you talk about diversity plus respect wins. Right, the commitment, this commitment to depersonalized conflict, looking at the project as a puzzle may have led to the magic that caused flight. Poetically, they came to discover that the only way to get the machine off the ground was for each propeller to spin in the opposite direction-one clockwise and one counterclockwise. This was a perfect metaphor for Orville and Wilbur Wright and their connection and appreciation of what each brought to make the project successful, and then you had another quote in here which I love, which is, “Of course, we want similarities between ourselves and our partners. And you were talking here in context of romantic relationships, but I, as I read this, I kept thinking of workplace relationships and diversity. We want similarities between ourselves and our partners, but even among the most similar people, differences will exist. Used properly, they can strengthen the relationship. And we’ve talked a lot on this show. I can’t even, you know, there’s not even enough episodes I can link to in our show notes for this episode on the power of diversity and the ROI of diversity. But all that to say that when you have people that bring some different perspectives to the table, each person can see different risks and see different opportunities because they’re looking at a different facet of the challenge or the problem. And so, when we think about creating diverse connection communities, I guess, for lack of a better word. What advice would you have about being intentional about that? Because sometimes that can feel fake. Of like, oh, I need more friends who are gay, or I need more friends who are trans. I’m going to go find them, right? What are some of the things that you’ve seen, whether with your patients or you know in the research that you’ve done? About how you can cultivate a more diverse community to connect with.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:04
There are so many ways to do this, and it actually-I hate the term “kills two birds with one stones, but I’m going to use two.
Maria Ross 30:11
Feed two birds with one scone.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:14
Oh, oh, oh, oh!
Maria Ross 30:16
Thank you.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:17
This can feed two birds with one scone.
Maria Ross 30:19
I don’t. I can’t take credit for that. I heard somewhere, and I love it.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:23
That is so great. It’s kind of like Lady and the Tramp eating one little string of pasta. It is, but um, I love that. Feed two birds with one scone. So here’s how you feed two birds with one scone.
Maria Ross 30:33
Okay,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:34
you go do something that you love doing, and anyway, it could be a meetup for hiking, and hopefully, it’ll be a diverse age group. One of the things that Chip Connelly, who runs the Modern Elder Academy, says, and you’re nodding because I know you know him, is that we need friends who are at least 10 years older than we are and at least 10 years younger because most of us don’t have friends who are 10 years older or 10 years younger . And without my children in my life telling me what six seven actually means because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s you know it’s really important to have diverse voices.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 31:06
So do something you love doing, and talk to people about that. So if you have a common denominator, that’s great. Another tip though, is this one. This is like the funniest idea I’ve ever heard of. This comes from Will Schwalbe. Will Schwalbe is this editor of I forget Macmillan or one of the other big publishing houses. He’s been on the podcast, but he does something that absolutely doesn’t interest him at least once a month. He goes to an event, he goes to a thing on the history of blah blah that he has no interest in, and he meets people, and he he very often finds that it’s actually quite interesting, but he also meets people who are into that thing, people he wouldn’t have met otherwise, and sometimes there’s a connection there. So Alex Trebek apparently said, “I’m so curious. I’m even interested in things I’m not interested in,” and I think that’s a really good way to go through life. And the idea of seeing life as a puzzle comes from AJ Jacobs. He said that if two people could look at the same problem and see it as a puzzle that needs to be solved, and I love that idea of Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright, they would have project-based arguments. You need somebody to argue with you, and so that you can get to the truth. As long as you’re both committed to the truth and not ego, then we can really come up with better ideas. Steve Jobs would famously say to Johnny Ives, “Hey, Johnny, I got a really stupid idea. I want to want to hear about a stupid idea. And I I may be paraphrasing it poorly, but I believe that’s how it went. And Johnny would always said yes because I would love to hear a stupid idea from you because your so called stupid idea is probably one week away from becoming the greatest idea, right? So,
Maria Ross 32:42
and kind of bringing this back to you know the question we were talking about before about why you even need connections in general, but also in the workplace, that’s just one way leaders can foster connection is to ensure there is psychological safety where people can have those kinds of conversations, and like I have this crazy idea, and I know I’m not going to be shunned. I know I’m not going to be fired. I know I’m not going to be laughed at. You might get laughed at, maybe, but maybe it’s all done in in jest, right? In joy, and that’s one of the things when leaders go, “Well, how do I create more connections with my team? That’s one way to do it: is ensure everyone feels safe and seen and heard and valued. Do you have any other tips that you could apply for a workplace leader on how to create those connections within their teams?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 33:26
So, Dr. Amy Edmondson teaches at Harvard School of Business, and she is the person who came up with the term psychological. She’s the queen of
Maria Ross 33:34
psychological safety. Yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 33:35
she has found that the most innovative companies have the highest amounts of psychological safety because without it we cannot fail forward. We need to fail forward. Everything that you and I have learned in our life has been the byproduct of us being willing to look like idiots for a minute. Because for me to learn how to speak a foreign language, I had to make all the mistakes, and that’s the difference. So for a company to do what it needs to do, psychological safety is super important, and that’s why when somebody comes up with an idea, we really, and during a brainstorm, we really give it respect and consideration. They might be seeing something that could become the next post-it note,
Maria Ross 34:21
right?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 34:22
The next penicillin, the next great mistake that becomes something amazing, and really, really look at it almost talmudically. Talmudically means to look at it from every angle possible, and really give it respect and consideration.
Maria Ross 34:37
Yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 34:37
and if we’re able to do that, we are going to be more innovative, and we’ll also probably have higher retention and attract the best
Maria Ross 34:47
talent. Well, all the things, right? And that that willingness to put ego aside and see someone else’s point of view, hear someone else’s idea-that is empathy. That’s the ability to say, “I don’t have all the answers.” Let me hear your point of view. Let me learn from your lived experience to see if that might be a good opportunity or a good way to solve the problem. So, you know, when people ask, like a lot of people have that misperception that empathy is all about crying on the floor with your employees. No, it’s also about being open-minded and to say, “Oh, I’m going to be curious about someone else’s perspective and point of view, and that’s how you create an environment that creates connections for each other.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 35:29
I didn’t know why I wanted to go to Japan so badly until years later. There were several reasons, but one of the biggest one was I wanted to live in a place that felt 180 degrees for my own reality. I wanted to walk around in a world where my reference points made no sense, and their reference points I had to really get to know in order to understand just a little bit about Japan. I had to walk around in their shoes, and that was really helpful to me. I only came to realize this: it wasn’t just the sushi and the ramen that attracted me, although those were very attractive.
Maria Ross 36:03
Uh huh.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 36:04
And similarly, and you point this out in the Empathy Edge, and I actually talk about it on my episode today. I interviewed a great novelist who wrote the Gargoyle, Andrew Edmonds, Andrew Davidson, out of Canada. One of the things that we found in the literature is that we become better people when we read more fiction because we’re able to enter the worlds of more characters, and there’s no question in my mind that actually, quite frankly, empathy and connection are probably the two bigs in this life.
Maria Ross 36:33
Yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 36:34
like if we can have, if we can get more of those two things, so I think you and I have stumbled upon the two biggest things that matter the most in terms of our heartbeats,
Maria Ross 36:45
absolutely empathy
Dr. Adam Dorsay 36:46
and connection, are the bigs. Like, what do we regret? Yeah, we’re on our deathbeds. We regret love not given. We regret chances not taken. Empathy and connection.
Maria Ross 36:58
Yeah, it all comes down to that. Are you have a connection formula. What is a connection formula?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 37:04
Well, we all have a different winning formula, and some of us have. It’s almost like a walk-on song that baseball players use when they’re going up to bat.
Maria Ross 37:13
Uh huh.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 37:13
You and I probably have a different walk-on song, and similarly, we probably have different formulas for our success, and we have different formulas to make us feel connected to ourselves, others, the world, and something greater. Like I might have been awestruck when I saw this singer on stage, and you might have been in the same audience and said, “Been like me, yeah, not for me.
Maria Ross 37:34
Yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 37:36
and I was like, “What are you talking about? That was a life changing audience. What did you see? Yeah, and you might have a go to bed routine that works for you and allows you to connect with yourself and shut in and and attend yourself and put out all the fires so that you can really really feel rest coming on. And my ritual might be quite different. We might have different rituals for how we connect with our friends and how we connect with our romantic partners, pets. My father could go through five lifetimes and not touch a pet. I can’t go through a day.
Maria Ross 38:09
No,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 38:10
and I talk about pets as a very important, significant other for those of us who are inclined. So each of us has different elements that we need to pay attention to and ask ourselves what do we need and at what frequency to feel connected to ourselves, others, the world, and something greater. So yeah, go ahead. So
Maria Ross 38:29
you’re saying that the connection formula is different for everyone, and and we need to discover what that is for ourselves. Exactly. What are some ways that we make that discovery? Is it just about paying attention, or what can you? How can you guide us on that?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 38:42
I’m gonna name. There are infinite ways, but I’m gonna name three.
Maria Ross 38:45
Okay.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 38:45
One of them is to ask yourself, what is something that I used to love doing, but I stopped doing because life got in the way. Bring exhum that from its dusty crypt and try it and see if there’s still something there. The second way is to try something new, like somebody mentions, hey, you know what I’m really into is I’m really into Photoshop. It’s like, gosh, you know, that would be really cool. I’d like to get into Photoshop or scrapbooking or something
Maria Ross 39:11
salsa dancing, whatever. Yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 39:13
salsa dancing, right? Try something new. And the third way that I can think of, and again, there are infinite ways is to look at lists. I actually have a list in my book of things that you want to try, but maybe haven’t tried. Maybe you have what some people refer to as a bucket list. Some people don’t like the bucket list. I do personally. I think it’s a really good thing to have. The bucket list is the list of things that you want to do before you kick the bucket, and we need to pay attention to those things.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 39:46
I’m not sure about skydiving for me. I have very mixed feelings about that. It might be it might be a pass for me too, but I’m not sure if on my deathbed I’ll regret not having done it. But who knows? But one thing I’ve always wanted to do, I. As dumb as it sounds. I’ve never been to Nola. I’ve never been to New Orleans. We’re going this weekend. Okay, good. Finally, gonna check this this magnificent place out. We’re doing a massive, you know, a four day weekend off some deniers. Yeah, exactly. And we’re gonna eat all the things. And even though, but we’re doing something that I know for sure I want to do at some point, and you know, don’t put it off. Go do those things.
Maria Ross 40:25
How does that help you with a connection formula? Like connect the dot for us on that one.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 40:30
If connection defined is what makes you feel like you come alive, and we didn’t really go into that, but it’s vitality, it’s life force, and I actually had about 20 mental health professionals weigh in, so we could kind of construct a working definition of what connection means. I will probably come very alive when I’m walking through these vibrant streets of New Orleans, seeing the musicians, smelling the smells, eating the foods, going to on ghost tours, and things like that. This will cause me to come alive and evoke a part of me that has never been alive in my chemical connections in this lifetime. And if it is vitality, and I believe that a place like New Orleans brings that on, but we don’t have to go to New Orleans. We can actually do something ostensibly stupid, like like for one Father’s Day, I actually had my family get on a Grayline bus tour of San Francisco. We live right at the just at the cusp of San Francisco. We hung out with the tourists from Oklahoma and Germany, and when people ask where you’re from, we said San Jose, 50 miles south. The bus driver said, “I have never had anybody from San Jose, but even though we are very familiar, and my wife lived there for many years, and I lived adjacent for many years, about 80% of the things that we learned on that tour were things we didn’t know.
Maria Ross 41:50
Exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 41:51
So go do something that might be campy, that might be local. Go onto Atlas Obscura. It’s a great website that has all kinds of weird stuff. Not far from where you used to live was you know there was this tavern where there was a ghost of the Blue Lady over in the Moss Beach Tavern.
Maria Ross 42:08
Oh yeah, Moss Beach Distillery.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:10
Moss Beach Distillery. There you go.
Maria Ross 42:12
Yeah,
Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:12
and there are just all kinds of fun, campy things that we can do that will cause us to feel more aligned.
Maria Ross 42:19
Well, and that really relates to my self care pillar, pillar two, which is is not about manis and petties. It’s about re-energizing your heart and your mind and your soul in a different way to get you to refill your tank, refill your capacity and your cup, so you can meet people with empathy and be open to connection. And it’s almost like we need those occasional shocks to the system to keep us more open to what’s happening and get us out of our our rut. I guess
Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:50
there’s a reason why cold plunges are popular. It’s not because they feel good,
Maria Ross 42:55
but it’s not
Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:56
because they feel good.
Maria Ross 42:57
No, no.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:58
And but it’s because they cause us to feel more awake and alive. They they they’re vitalizing.
Maria Ross 43:04
Yeah. All right. So as we wrap up, I I have a final quick question for you. This sort of like a little speed question.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 43:10
So all ears. I
Maria Ross 43:11
want to read this Chinese proverb you have at the end of the book, where you say there’s an ancient Chinese proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now. You may have missed out on many connection opportunities throughout your life, but there is no time like the present to start leaning into the four types of connection that you talk about in the book. So, if you can give us your quick hit, someone’s listening. They’re like, “Yeah, I need more connection in my life. What’s your gem? What’s your go-to strategy that you can leave them with to take an actionable step towards cultivating or perhaps reigniting connections in their lives and in their work?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 43:53
I would go back to what I just said, and since repetition is the
Maria Ross 43:58
the cold plunge
Dr. Adam Dorsay 44:00
since repetition is the mother of mastery, I would ask yourself, what’s something that you used to do that you love doing that you stop doing, or what is something in your family’s tradition? Perhaps your grandma used to be a gardener, and you want to honor her memory and feel more connected to the earth. Go try that out and see if there’s a there there. It’s this spring, this summer, whenever you want to plant in the winter, right? Because there’s a lot of things to be planted. Go do something that honors you and allows you to feel more alive while you’re living, more alive while you’re living, not another day, another dollar, a someday. You know, life work kind of sucks, or whatever it is. No, don’t live this limp pasta lifestyle. Like live al dente, lively, vibrant.
Maria Ross 44:51
I’m getting you a bumper sticker that says live al dente. I love that so much, Adam. This has been such a joy. I hope. Everyone picks up this book. It’s called “Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the Four Types of Connection. I also want to encourage my listeners to take a gander into your podcast. You have amazing guests on Super Psyched. I love listening to your podcast when I’m doing road trips back to San Francisco. But you’re always you’re always so much fun, and you are so positive without it being toxic positivity, and I just love that about you. So thank you for this book. Thank you for your work. Thank you for healing people’s hearts and minds in your profession that you almost didn’t pursue, but finally got convinced to. We’re gonna have all your links in the show notes, and I’ll put some reference links to some of the things that we talked about. But for anyone that’s listening to us while they’re road tripping or working out, where’s the best place they can find out more about your work?
Dr. Adam Dorsay 45:45
Sure, just Google my name, Adam Dorsey. I’ve got three TEDx talks. I’ve got a website, and the website is dradam dorsay d o r s a y.com It’s d r a d a m d o r s a y.com
Maria Ross 45:57
Love it! Thank you so much, Adam.
Dr. Adam Dorsay 45:59
Oh, it’s been a blast,
Maria Ross 46:01
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 at Red Slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
