Where do empathy and compassion actually impact corporate profits, employee experience, and customer satisfaction? In healthcare, and yes, in your industry, no matter what it is, it starts at the local level, as my guest today shares.
Today, Geoffrey Smith and I talk about his journey as an employee experience professional in healthcare, but how he didn’t really understand his work or purpose until he saw it through the patient’s eyes during his wife’s cancer battle, and how the power of human connection relates to patient and customer outcomes. Geoffrey shares why annual employee pulse surveys are not the most actionable, and instead create more continual feedback loops to identify high-performing leaders and teams at the local level so you can replicate their actions and achieve company-wide engagement. He offers practical examples of how busy leaders can check in with employees and achieve measurable results.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Innovation happens in big and small ways. You can change someone’s life with low-tech solutions that only require being present in the moment.
- Employee engagement is a local phenomenon. It’s not an organizational metric, it’s a team metric – where the work actually happens.
- Checking in with your employees weekly doubles the engagement of checking in monthly. Measuring team by team in real time will allow you to know where your teams are shining and where they are struggling.
“Keep your eyes open and stay authentically present, because you never know when those small moments are going to change everything.” — Geoffrey Smith
From Our Partner:
SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.
Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.
About Geoffrey Smith, Chief Mo-ment Officer
Geoffrey leverages a diverse 25+ year career in Human Capital Management, specializing in employee engagement, leadership development, and culture change initiatives in the workplace. His journey has ranged from working for the corporate industry leader to building his own entrepreneurial start-up from the ground up. Currently, he supports innovative employee/patient/caregiver/human experience leaders, nurse and clinician entrepreneurs, and hospital administration, consulting them on and modernized people and talent activation strategies to make a true impact on those that both provide and receive care.
Geoffrey also hosts the Mo-ments of Experience podcast on the People Forward Network. Inspired by his faithful 14-year-old beagle Mo, whose unwavering spirit and love lifted his family during challenging times, the Mo-ments of Experience podcast highlights the meaningful Mo-ments that shape us, move, and inspire us to pursue our purpose.
Connect with Geoffrey:
Mo-ments of Experience, LLC: mo-mentsofexperience.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/geoffreypsmith
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, where do empathy and compassion actually impact corporate profits, employee experience and customer satisfaction in healthcare and yes, in your industry too. No matter what it is, it starts at the local level, as my guest today shares and to get results, we encourage leaders to take more small action at a team by team level and replicate that success across the organization, rather than always start at the top down to find success. Geoffrey Smith leverages his diverse career in human capital management, specializing in employee engagement, leadership development and culture change. Currently, he supports innovative employee, patient, caregiver, human experience leaders, nurse and clinician, entrepreneurs and hospital administration through modern people and talent activation strategies to make an impact on both providers and patients. Geoffrey also hosts the moments of Experience podcast, which highlights the meaningful moments that shape us, move us and inspire us to pursue our passion. Today, we talk about his journey as an employee, experience professional in healthcare, but how he didn’t really understand his work or purpose until he saw it through the patient’s eyes during his wife’s cancer battle. We discuss how the power of human connection relates to patient and customer outcomes, and Geoffrey shares why annual employee pulse surveys are not the most actionable and instead invites you to create more continual feedback loops to identify high performing leaders and teams at the local level so you can replicate their actions and achieve company wide engagement. He offers practical examples of how busy leaders can check in with employees and achieve measurable results. So many gems today. Take a listen. Welcome Geoffrey to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m excited to have this conversation with you about your work helping build teams full of innovation and compassion and empathy, specifically in healthcare, but I know a lot of your work is applicable to any industry and will be of interest to all of our listeners, whatever industry they call home. So welcome to the podcast.
Geoffrey Smith 03:02
Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here. And yes, this is I have over 25 years in employee engagement, leadership, development and culture change in the workforce. My last decade has been in healthcare, specific, but absolutely applicable to all streets.
Maria Ross 03:17
I love it, and we’ve had a conversation or two before we started recording. So I would just love if you can tell us briefly, before we kind of get into the meat of things, how you came to this work and what makes you most passionate about it. Yeah,
Geoffrey Smith 03:31
so there’s a lot of it was actually a few years back when my personal and professional lives collided that really started me down this path of a very purposeful I have over 25 years, as I mentioned in employee engagement with the last decade in health care, but it wasn’t until my wife’s battle with cancer that I saw things through the patient’s eyes, that I truly understood the importance of my own work. I got to see her hang on the every word and instruction of the nurse that made her laugh And, coincidentally, tune out the physician that wouldn’t even make eye contact and had his buried in his computer. So I saw how employee engagement in healthcare specifically impacts patient outcomes. It impacts how they feel, how they their willingness to fight. I was doing an all day workshop at a 27,000 plus employee health system in my backyard here in Connecticut, around leadership development and employee engagement. And when we broke for lunch, my wife was 800 yards away, being treated and being prepped for a bone marrow transplant in this same cancer center that I’m talking to the CEO and the CHRO and I walked across the street on our lunch break. I walked into my wife’s room. My wife was crying, and I walked over, and her nurse had her arm around her, and I said, Why are you crying? And she said, because Gloria didn’t bring me my lunch today. GLORIA sings to me when she brings me my lunch. And. Okay, so here I was with bullet points and PowerPoints and white boards talking to the sea level of this 25,000 plus employee health system about employee engagement and a food service employee is impacting my wife’s mood as she fights for her life. And that was really the moment that I said to me, I need more of this. I need more of because when we went back to the next session, there were actually a couple detractors from the health system, saying, I see how we can do some of this stuff with our nurses, but I’m not sure how we scale it across the organization. And I raised my hand and I said, Hey, can I tell you a story? It’s about 45 minutes old. And I told the story of the food service employee and my wife and the tenor of the meeting changed. It changed from whiteboards and PowerPoints to true human connection and how empathy and compassion impact our patients lives, not just with nurses and doctors, but at every touch point as they go through the health system.
Maria Ross 06:01
Yeah, and you and I, wow. I mean, what a story, and what a gift you gave to those people that were attending that training workshop of making them understand that innovation in air quotes, you know, happens in big and small ways, and you can transform a patient or a customer’s or a client’s experience with the most low tech solutions that just require you to be present and understand what that person needs in that moment, like, that’s the innovation, right? We’re all gaga over AI and it’s possibilities. And you know, I love technology. I try to embrace it when I can, although I’m always a late adopter. But really it comes down to those small moments, which is, you know the name of your podcast moments, but I you know you and I have spoken before, and you know about my experience recovering from a near fatal brain aneurysm, and that is where I started to see not only, the ability to make empathy work at scale, but also how it’s something that is about how you train your people, how they are able to communicate. It has nothing to do with the technology they’re using, but it’s do they use the patient’s first name when they walk into the room and treat them like a human being? Do they allow them to order their own food from a menu, to give them some sense of autonomy and a very vulnerable time. And those are the difference makers. Those small moments add up to the larger experience. And I think sometimes we as business consultants, as business business leaders, we’re looking to the big thing to make the difference. And what I love about your work is it’s all about helping them realize the small things, the human connections, the human touch points. And so I’m curious to know, with that shift that day, did that change the way you started delivering your work and delivering your message, obviously, you getting a taste of the patient point of view changed how you were helping healthcare workers better serve patients. But can you tangibly talk about or can you talk about what tangibly changed for you after that kind of moment of enlightenment? Yeah, one thing,
Geoffrey Smith 08:19
I will say that, just to follow up on what you just said, is one thing, I say on my podcast is it’s not just the big moments that can truly impact our life. So one of the things I always say is keep your eyes open and stay authentically present, because you never know when those small moments are going to change everything. So how my work changed, I think, a lot more purposeful, because one of the things I did after that moment is I went home that night and said, I need more of this. I need more moments like that, versus other stuff I was doing in my job that I didn’t feel were impacting patient outcomes. So a few months later, after really evaluating that, I just left my cushy corporate job and just jumped without a net and just said one day, just woke up and resigned. You know, I truly believe uncertainty can be empowering, and since that moment of leaving the corporate world, I’ve been blessed to collaborate with and work with some of the world’s leaders in nursing, clinician burnout, patient and employee experience in healthcare and beyond leaders in mental health, where we’ve we’ve been focused on our youth, versus just healthcare and things along those lines. So everything changed for me, and it allowed me to create more aha moments for executives that are really focused on one thing I like about your work, and that’s very similar with mine, is what we talk about is steep in evidence based research and science, but executed on true human connection and. When we have to my my close friend panta fahidi, who’s the world’s leading educator in compassion, she always says, Jeff, I hate that I have to make a business case for compassion. 100%
Maria Ross 10:11
that’s what I had to do with the empathy edge was I made the business case for empathy because the moral imperative wasn’t working right.
Geoffrey Smith 10:18
But so what changed with my work is I was able to take that true human connection piece and then learn how to tie it to the metrics and the proof points that they believe in the metrics that they whether they’re correct or not, whether they’re accurate or not. I don’t believe in annual surveys for engagement. I believe there’s a much better way. You know, patient satisfaction score is very flawed, but one thing I did know is, if I could find the empathetic leaders in a healthcare organization, because employee engagement is a local phenomenon, it’s not an organizational metric, it’s a team metric. So if I could find the pockets of brilliance if I could find and measure engagement, team by team, and find out where my empathetic leaders are, then I can help tell the story to these executives in healthcare and beyond, about when I find out where my pockets of brilliance and engagement are, I find out where my best leaders are, And then we actually have something actionable, which we don’t in an annual survey. You know, people still view, there are certain organizations that still view employee engagement as a once a year event or a survey, versus a living, breathing organism that changes shift to shift in my work, patient to patient or and most certainly, team leader to team leader. So what I really learned through my personal experience of watching my wife’s journey was, how do I take those personal stories and find a way to tie them to the metrics that they believe in? I call it making sure I give them their Binky and tie it to a metric they believe in, will I slowly show them a better way to both measure and to both be actionable? Because that’s the problem in my work. You talk about it, and my friend that I just referenced talks about it as well as empathy plus action equals compassion, and in my work of employee engagement, there’s so little action. Yeah, there’s a lot of measuring, but there’s not a lot of doing something about it, right? So what I really learned is, how do I teach people to take action? So talk
Maria Ross 12:35
to us a little bit. I’ve spoken on the show in the past about from my own research, when I was writing my memoir, rebooting my brain, my research I did on specifically the outcomes and the benefits of patient and family centered care, which is essentially operationalized empathy in the healthcare systems. What are the outcomes you’ve seen of the power of human connection? What are some of those benefits that you see those healthcare systems, those companies that you work with achieving through the power of compassion and connection. Yeah.
Geoffrey Smith 13:07
So I think it comes back to that action word, you know, where I’ve seen it, and people have asked me, can you scale this across the 25,000 employee health system? Because what we’re doing now doesn’t work. And I say yes, but it’s going to take some time. And it goes back to that thing I just mentioned about engagement being a local phenomenon, and this was one of the things I learned from my wife’s journey. So we were at that 25,000 plus Academic Health System, which is one of the greatest in the world. And on some floors, we were at the experience wasn’t so great, okay? Other floors, it just felt different. And so I was sitting there doing my own non scientific study about my own work, watching this, watching food service, work with environmental services, work with the social worker, the nurse, the doctor, all working together to provide an amazing care experience. And whenever I had that amazing care experience, I went up to the team leader, and then healthcare, it’s very unique, because these are dynamic teams. They don’t tree up to an org chart, right? These are all people working together that have quote, unquote, different bosses, but they’re all working together to provide the experience. And I walked up to the team leader every time we had an amazing experience. And I said, What do you do differently here? The experience I have on this floor is just different, okay? And I had this one nurse leader say, Jeff, I teach everyone this for just lead with compassion. And when I heard that, I was also working on a project with this health system, and I talked about being able to tie the metrics they believe in. I went back to the administration, to the CHRO and the CFO and the CEO, and I said, I want you to run some numbers for me. I want you to run the patient satisfaction scores and the employee engagement scores for this one floor, mm. Okay, just do that for me. It’s just a, you know, just something I viewed, and I just, I want to see what the results are. The CHRO called me a couple days later and said, Jeff, it’s through the roof, both of them. And I said, this is why, if we measure team by team, and not necessarily a team is a tree up to an HRIS system and an org chart, the teams where the work actually happens, the people working together to create an experience when we find the pockets of brilliance. Now we have something actionable, because what I know is now I know where my best team leaders are, and when I know where my best team leaders are, my best team teams are that are five out of five, all engaged, that have each other’s back. Now we model it. Now we scale it across the
Maria Ross 15:44
organization. Now we deconstruct what they’re doing and scale that across the organization. So how do you in that scenario, which that makes a lot of sense, and it’s also very design thinking. It’s almost very like, let’s just use this as a beta and then replicate that across the organization. How do you help leaders and other teams who that that wasn’t the way they were doing things that doesn’t come naturally for them? What do you do, or what do you recommend organizations do to upskill those other leaders who had never embraced that kind of thinking
Geoffrey Smith 16:16
before? Yeah, actually, the secret sauce to engagement and the local team leader, and that phenomenon is pretty simple. I’ve had the privilege to work with one of the world’s leading researchers on people, performance, team dynamic at work. He was the original author of strengths finders since been to built a better system of surveying employees and figuring out what their strengths are, so that then we can give that back to the team leader, so the team leader can view each of their people as unique individuals and figure out what their needs, wants, desires and their career are. And the key is attention, if people feel seen, heard, valued, understood by their team leader. That’s where the magic happens. And in healthcare, it’s it’s very difficult, because a lot of times these nurse teams have a 90 to one span of control. So you have a nurse leader, and they look at me and they say, Jeff, how am I supposed to give 90 people attention? And it is really challenging, but one thing we found through the research, and sometimes, even though empathy and compassion is a human connection, we have found ways to use technology.
Maria Ross 17:34
So share with us what some of those ways are that you help them do that, because that’s actually a really targeted question that people have, my team is too large, right? I don’t have time how. What are some strategies you can share with our listeners about how you have overcome that obstacle with larger teams and being able to give them attention at an individual level.
Geoffrey Smith 17:58
Well, the beauty is with the evolution of the workforce. And I do a lot of speaking on the demography change of the workforce, and how, you know, the baby boomers are retiring at the you know, and all of this. And we’re going to need to cater to a new age of workforce. So a lot of times, technology is
Maria Ross 18:17
attention. What do you mean by that? What do you mean?
Geoffrey Smith 18:21
So, for example, for this nurse leader that had 90 to one and did not know what to do, threw her hands up and said, Jeff, just help me. We put together a technology that had an app that just asked every one of her 90 direct reports once a week, three questions. Okay, it said, What did you love about last week? What didn’t you love and how can I help? And what we learned was just getting those that quick technology check in was attention, because we saw the teams inside this organization that checked in once a week, engagement doubled over, the teams that only checked in once a month,
Maria Ross 19:00
how did you help the leader, though, manage all the ways people asked for her help.
Geoffrey Smith 19:06
So that’s the beauty of it. When you do have 90 people responding, you’re not going to have 90 people that require a face to face, right? One might be very simple. For example, what did you love last week? Well, that answer might help a leader, help them lead, help that employee lean into their strengths, do more of what they love. The same reason I left my cushy corporate job, I wasn’t doing enough of what I loved. I wasn’t doing enough of impacting patient outcomes. I was dealing with stuff like commoditized payroll and tax compliance that I could care less about. Yeah. So why I made the shift to working 100% on what I love? Because if I do that, that’s where engagement happens. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the for the nurses, the patient satisfaction scores go through the roof. So when you know what someone doesn’t love about their job and what someone does love about their job, you. It’s really easy to get people in a position where they’re using their strengths and they’re loving what they do. And in healthcare specifically, it’s a lot of what I talk about on my podcast is not just the connection to purpose, because doctors and nurses are genuinely empathetic and compassionate.
Maria Ross 20:19
Yeah, they’ve got a pretty clear purpose there, yeah,
Geoffrey Smith 20:21
but the system of healthcare rips it out of them. Yes, I’m sure you have an opinion on Empath empathy fatigue. I don’t believe there is empathy fatigue for healthcare workers. I believe it’s not fatigue. It’s that they’re burned out. It’s that they’re cynical. It’s that the system has stripped it from them. And a lot of what I talk about on my podcast, what was that moment that reconnected you to purpose with a certain patient or a certain so the idea is, if we can define what people love about their job and what people don’t, we can help shape them and get them to a place where they’re loving what they do more, okay? And the How can I help? Question. Now 90 people on that team are not going to fill something out on that, but the six that do, yeah, now we can have face to face. We can have that human connection part of it. But what we found was not everyone’s answering that question, so the leader was not overwhelmed, or
Maria Ross 21:23
they’re answering it. And there’s a trend, yeah, like more than one person is saying they need something that’s something to pay attention to. It’s not necessarily an outlier, and I’m just curious on the I know I’m getting really tactical here, but my audience really loves that. So with that leader, is it that you help them carve out time in their week to go through the responses they get, and you help them with time management in terms of, like, don’t read them all as they come in, like, batch them, set aside some time. Like, what is the practical application of that if someone listening is like, that sounds like a really good idea, but then I’ll just be spending all my time worrying about these weekly or monthly surveys, right? So, yes.
Geoffrey Smith 22:05
So what I recommend in that case is, we have people that are aspiring nurse leaders, correct? And your team of 90 have them review.
Maria Ross 22:16
Ooh, them involved. Yeah, keep
Geoffrey Smith 22:19
you on the floor, face to face with your nurses making rounds doing all this, and have somebody that wants to be that next leader, then inform you of which ones need direct attention, right, right? And that was how, by the way, that’s unique in that into healthcare is that we do have that crazy span of control. Yeah, but in many other industries, it’s very manageable to look at those three answers.
Maria Ross 22:46
It is and it isn’t. I mean, I think with a lot of what’s happening, especially like in the tech industry and other industries, layoffs and budget cuts teams, direct report teams, are getting larger and larger, and it’s almost unmanageable to be able to you know, or feels like it’s unmanageable for folks. Of like, how do I spend the time giving each of these individual folks attention? And that’s when you know, I’ve talked about this in other episodes with other guests. It’s about also figuring out where you’re spending your time as a leader, and if you’re spending your too much of your time doing and not enough time leading, that should be a big red flag, because that actually is where you should be spending the bulk of your time of empowering and motivating the team and figuring out what’s important to them. That’s actually your role. Now you’re not, you’re no longer a doer. You are and you’re not even a manager of tasks, per se. You are a manager of you know, you’re a leader of people. And so being able, you know, I would challenge anyone listening to this with a skeptical ear to say, if you think you’re too busy to do something like this, that’s actually a prioritization exercise of looking at, what are you actually spending your time doing, and what should you be spending your time doing
Geoffrey Smith 24:02
and it comes back to what we talked about earlier, as far as evidence based research and science, but steeped in human connection. Because the one thing is, we have all the data. If they put in a system like this, we can see where the teams that are high performing where the teams are low performing are, and we can go back and say, Hey, our best leaders are reviewing the check ins once a week, right? Here’s the change in engagement, here’s the change in patient satisfaction, here’s the change, change in health outcomes that only have their people checking in once a month, or only have half their team checking in, right? We have all these proof points to then show people why it’s important. And by the way, I used to use that system of the check in with my previous employer. It took me two minutes a week just to say those things, and I didn’t always say like my leader could help. Me, I’m a pretty autonomous person, right? But there were times where I said, Hey, listen, this corporate initiative really drained my energy this week. Yeah, you know, on the what didn’t you love? And hey, but you know what I did love. I love doing that employee engagement and leadership development all day workshop, you know. And then it was okay, how can we get you to do more of that stuff,
Maria Ross 25:19
right? Right? I love that. So you talk about, you know, obviously, and this is something that a lot of thought leaders talk about, evangelizing a bottom up versus a top down approach to measurement and execution of these modern people Healthcare Strategies. So again, that’s something that’s great, and people usually nod their heads Yes, bottoms up. But what does that actually look
Geoffrey Smith 25:43
like? So that’s what I talked about, as far as the team by team approach. Got it okay? So I’ll give you an example of a top down. So we have this healthcare organization, or it could be any industry, but they measure their employee engagement once a year in an annual survey, top down where they have an organizational metric. And I got called into a healthcare organization recently, and they said to me, Jeff, we need you to tackle first year nursery retention. And I said, Okay, tell me about your people strategy. They said, Well, we have a top you know, we have a organizational survey once a year. And I said, Okay, how long does it take to tabulate that data until you can actually do something with it. And they said, Well, you know, like six to seven months. And so I said, So for some of your new nurses, you are trying to tackle a zero to 12 problem in 17 months. Yeah? Like, just say it out loud, yeah. You know what I mean, yeah. And it was like, you have a lot of smart people in the room, and they’re just looking at me like, oh, boy, you know, didn’t because they weren’t. They didn’t even have information in a time to address No. Their biggest problem was, meanwhile,
Maria Ross 26:50
a half a year has gone by that that person is in that role feeling like they sent information in and never heard anything about it,
Geoffrey Smith 26:57
right? So what I then do is I say, Okay, let’s measure team by team. That’s what the bottom up is. If we measure team by team in real time, okay, in the worst case scenario, at least once a quarter, I like even more, you know, more frequent pulses, right? But if we know where our pockets of brilliance are, where our teams that were like that floor, that it just felt different, right? If I can find them, yeah, then I can model right? That’s what the bottom up approach is really about. It’s let’s take the all this wonderful information we get from our surveys, our hrs, whatever the case may be, let’s put it in bite sized pieces where we can actually take action, yeah, well,
Maria Ross 27:44
and get outside of the ivory tower to try to figure it out. And say, These people have already figured it out. Let’s just go talk to them and see what they’re doing.
Geoffrey Smith 27:54
And I you talk about ivory towers. I talk about this all the time. Is in health care, sometimes employee experience and patient experience don’t even work together, and it’s the same thing. I talk to people every day. I’m like, you gotta get we gotta get you two together. Yeah, yeah, because you know you’re doing the same work, right? You’re
Maria Ross 28:13
just a different input and output.
Geoffrey Smith 28:16
It’s because, and that’s one thing you said earlier. What did my journey teach me. That was one thing. It really taught me, because I saw the correlation between employee and patient experience. Well,
Maria Ross 28:27
that’s like the old school advice from Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, that said happy employees equal happy customers. It’s that idea of, if you take care of your employees and empower them, they will deliver a better experience to your customers, and that’s going to result in more sales, more loyalty, more word of mouth, more all the things. And
Geoffrey Smith 28:49
that’s where, as you say, empathy is good for business because, but a lot of companies need those dots connected. Yes, so I built a system over 25 years ago. It’s called red light, green light. And what I’ve found over the years is I’ve never implemented a positive, a successful people project or successful technology to do with their people, or anything with someone I deemed a red light after 20 minutes. And what I always did in a first meeting is tried to figure out, does this organization view their people is their greatest asset or Their largest expense. And largest expense is a red light. And in 25 years, I had a healthcare organization that’s launching a new product to market to really impact the front lines. And they came to me and they just said, Jeff, we need you to help change some red lights to green lights. And I said, Doesn’t happen if they’re you know, the goal is to fill your cup to feel energized every day. Just find the green lights because they’re out there. Yeah, and don’t try to change the mentality of somebody that looks at their people as their Payroll Expense. Find the people that, like you said, the CEO of Southwest Airlines that says you. Happy employees equal happy customers, and when we find those first of all, because in many industries, healthcare, specific, I say it’s at the forefront of clinical innovation, yet lags 30 years behind the private sector and people strategy, doing anything the way that’s not the way we’ve always done it is a challenge. Yeah, yeah. And for a red light, it’s an impossibility. So find the people that are looking for different ways to innovate, different ways to engage a multi generational workforce, and when you find those people, that’s when you bring amazing solutions that can be scaled and can make true impact in
Maria Ross 30:38
people’s lives. So I have kind of a curveball question for you on the whole making this a local phenomenon, could there ever be a scenario I’m taking the glass half empty approach? Could ever be a scenario where you do this and you realize there is no model team, there is no no one is kind of doing it in a constructive way. What would happen is that more of a symptom of the overall corporate culture.
Geoffrey Smith 31:09
It could absolutely be. It could be a symptom of, are we putting the right people in leadership, which, you know, is a big challenge, you know, Hey, she’s our best nurse. She does the best IVs. Let’s, you
Maria Ross 31:19
know, let’s, let’s put her in charge of everything. Yeah, you
Geoffrey Smith 31:23
know, you do need what you need. Because I talked about this in another podcast recently. We talked about the local phenomenon versus importance of senior leadership. All I need from senior leadership is to be open to innovation and to be a green light. That’s all I need from them, because the most important part is the local team leader. And the beauty with most of the projects I work on today are enterprise level in nature. So we’re dealing with 1000s of employees. If I went into a healthcare system and couldn’t find one leader that had their team five out of five, all and engaged, yeah? Maybe you’re right. I would be, you know, I’m tend to be a half full person. But, you know, I was asked on another podcast recently, can health care be great again, or be great? And I said, Hey, can we just try to make it good? First, I’m normally half full, but in this one, I’m going to Baby steps. Baby steps, yeah? Because there’s a lot that needs to occur. Yeah,
Maria Ross 32:22
well, there’s a lot of archaic systems colliding within healthcare. That’s part of the problem. Problem to your point, also to your point, also sucking the empathy out of the people who got into healthcare, who were very purpose driven and excited to make change and excited to help people, because
Geoffrey Smith 32:40
the broken system, yeah, it sucks it out of them. And one thing I’ll say is, healthcare never created a system. They just evolved. So the broken systems are kind of a misnomer, because there really are no systems. It just, it’s like trying to change the tires on a moving bus. Healthcare is a 24/7 365, business, and they can’t slow down to fix the overarching I’m part of a bunch of groups trying to reinvent healthcare and trying to slowly but surely, but it’s a huge challenge because the systems are so broken. And one of the reasons I said I don’t know if healthcare can be great is there are a lot of people making a lot of money on that broken system. Yeah, so do the people in charge want things to change? Right? And that’s where the red light and green light comes back in, because the ones that don’t want change are like, Hey, we’re doing great. We’re making a lot of money. We’re not going to change anything. But the green lights are human centered and are open to starting to work on a broken system. Okay,
Maria Ross 33:46
so leave us with something positive. Leave us with what is your best advice for leaders out there who are are trying to innovate, who are trying to change something that seems like a Herculean effort? What are some gems you want to leave them with?
Geoffrey Smith 34:01
I think the most important thing is to focus on attention, as I mentioned, make people feel seen, heard, valued, understood, understand the uniqueness of each individual team member and help them find more joy and love in what they do. Because that’s really the secret sauce, is loving what you do, and not everyone does. Not everyone’s that lucky. I’m I took a, you know, I believe uncertainty can be empowering, uh, and I, you know, because I’ve never found anything bigger in my life without walking through a phase of uncertainty first, right? So I took that jump to love what I do more. And not everyone can. There’s a lot of people that are stuck in a job that that’s just making ends meet, but for the leaders that have the ability to listen, make people feel seen, heard, valued, yeah, understand the uniqueness. Sense of not just the strengths of the person when they look in the old mirror, because a lot of people look in the mirror and say, here are my strengths, okay, but what a good leader does is figure out how each individual team member strengths show up to their other teammates. The number one factor in employee engagement, the number one question or statement that if it’s rated five out of five, strongly agree, and that I we have a ton of research behind this is, do my teammates have my back? And those are the teams that are five out of five, all and engaged, to say, strongly agree to that question. So it’s interesting. I took a strengths based evaluation of myself, and I looked at the strengths. I said, this is, you know, 15 years and I looked at I said, That’s not me at all. And I went into my mentor and my Leader’s office, and I said, Look at this. Look at what came out. Like, Jeff, that’s what every team member goes to you for. Wow. That is right on, uh huh. So it’s not about finding out where team members view their old strengths. It’s finding out where team members how they show up to their teammates, yeah, and how they show up to make a difference, and then the job of the team leader is to have them do more of that. I
Maria Ross 36:23
love it. That’s why self awareness is my number one pillar in the new book The Empathy dilemmas, being able to understand your strengths and your challenges and your blind spots and your triggers and all those things, but not just for you as a leader, helping your team do that for themselves as well. So I love that piece of advice, Jeff, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation and all your insights. You’re doing such tremendous work in the world. We’re going to have all the links to you and your podcast, moments of experience. And I know on that podcast you will explain what that show name means, so I will let people tune in and listen to that. But for folks on the go, what is the one best place they can find out more about you?
Geoffrey Smith 37:04
It would be moments of experience.com but it’s mo dash Mentz. Of experience.com that’s my website. You’ll see very quickly why it’s mo dash Mentz. It’s named after my 14 year old Beagle, Mo, who during a very difficult time of tragic loss and life threatening family illness gave us moments of hope, compassion, empathy, selflessness, that got us through a very difficult time and we tell stories on the show of some of the world’s leaders and employee, patient, caregiver and Just plain human experience, yeah, and what was the moment that truly connected them to their purpose?
Maria Ross 37:45
Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for having me, 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 with a friend or colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care, be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
