One of the hardest jobs in business belongs to anyone with a C in their title. Today you’ll hear from Tina Kuhn and Neal Frick, co-authors and successful executives of global companies who have gone on this journey and had tremendous success.
We talk about the ROI of empathy from their own experience and what they have learned about embracing empathy as a strategic advantage. We discuss how fear and bias show up for executives and impact their decision-making. They share the rewards of being an empathetic leader, the best way to bring a leader on board to an empathy mindset, how to practice empathy when your large team is remote, and why simply being a “nice boss” without accountability can be super toxic.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Reactive leaders harm their organizations. Empathetic leaders advance organizations and the lives of those in the organizations.
- There’s a difference between being a nice boss and being an empathetic leader. Being “the nice boss” is actually one of the most toxic things in an organization, and that is not empathetic.
- Build in time for team building in remote environments. If you choose the right activities, you can create those connections.
“The way that I have found the most effective has been leading by example because pushing someone into a vulnerable space is the quickest way to be met with resistance.”
— Neal Frick
References:
- The Empathy Edge podcast: Teri Schmidt: Empathy-Infused Team Building for Lasting Impact
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 Tina & Neal:
Tina Kuhn is an accomplished CEO spanning cybersecurity, commercial, and US government.
She has extensive experience in organizational transformations, growth strategies and implementation, M&A due diligence and integration, financial improvements, process and risk management, operations management, business development, and proposal development.
Ms. Kuhn has served in a variety of executive leadership roles, including the President of Proximas Group, focused on integrating 6 companies and developing a growth strategy to take advantage of each company’s strengths.
Neal Frick is the CEO of Avandra Consulting and most recently served as CEO of CyberCore Technologies, which was sold to HP. He’s an author with more than twenty years of experience in organizational growth and leadership and has led successful initiatives around transformational change, strategic planning, and revenue, working with companies such as Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Lockheed Martin. His experiences have fueled his commitment to cultivating inclusive work cultures, where diversity and empathy are not just buzzwords but integral components of business ethos.
Connect with Tina & Neal:
The Lanzar Group: thelanzargroup.com
Tina’s LinkedIn: Tina Kuhn
Neal’s LinkedIn: Neal Frick
Medium Profile: medium.com/@TinaKuhn
Book: The E Suite: Empathetic Leadership for the Next Generation of Executives
tinakuhncommunication.com – The Manager’s Communication ToolKit – Dealing with Difficult Personalities
Connect with Maria:
Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.com
Learn more about Maria and her work: Red-Slice.com
Hire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take my LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with Empathy
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
X: @redslice
Facebook: Red Slice
Threads: @redslicemaria
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
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. One of the hardest jobs in business belongs to anyone with a C in their title, whether CEO CFO or CMO, you’re tasked with managing p&l performance, and often a large amount of people who may or may not be geographically dispersed if you’re working for one of the largest companies on the planet, empathetic leadership can feel like a luxury you can’t afford, or worse, a waste of your time, while we clearly know it is not a waste of your time, and can result in bigger revenue, gains, more market share, and improvements in everything from retention to innovation, All bottom line benefits. But how can we help stressed execs balance all the things and build their empathy skills to better empower their people when so much revenue is on the line today, you’ll hear firsthand from two successful executives of global companies who have gone on this journey and have had tremendous success. Tina Kuhn and Neil Frick are co authors of the new book The E suite, empathetic leadership for the next generation of executives. Their vision of the future of leadership based on their in the trenches experience leading large global teams, winning multimillion dollar proposals and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Together, they help executives embrace the future of leadership and unlock success the way they did. Tina is CEO of the lanzar group, and her career as CEO has spanned cybersecurity, commercial and US government. She’s led organizational transformations, growth strategies and implementation M and a risk management and more. Her executive roles include the president of Proximus group, where she integrated six companies, CEO and President of cyber core technologies, and vice president for Northrop. Grumman, managing over 1600 personnel and $440 million in business across US, government and international customers. Neil frick is the CEO of avander Consulting, and most recently served as CEO of cyber core technologies, which was sold to HP. He’s an author with more than 20 years of experience in organizational growth and leadership, and has led successful initiatives around transformational change, strategic planning and revenue, working with companies such as Boeing Booz, Allen Hamilton and Lockheed Martin. Interesting thing about Neil from an early age, he understood that investing in people leads to inevitable profits, and he learned these lessons from his father’s leadership, helping an employee through drug rehab and back into the workforce once sober, his father’s actions instilled a lifelong conviction in Neil about the inherent value of people over profits. Neil’s approach to leadership is grounded in the power of empathy and investment in people. His experiences have fueled his commitment to cultivating inclusive work cultures where diversity and empathy are not just buzzwords, but integral components of business ethos. Today, we talk about the ROI of empathy from their own actual experience and what they’ve both learned about embracing empathy as a strategic advantage and how you can get skeptical leaders and colleagues to see the value and strengthen their own we discuss how fear and bias shows up for executives and how it impacts their decision making. They share the rewards of being an empathetic leader. The best way to bring a leader on board to an empathy mindset. How to practice empathy when your large team is remote, and why simply being a nice boss without accountability can be super toxic. This was a rich conversation. Take a listen. Big welcome today to Tina Kuhn and Neil Frick, who are here to talk about the E suite and specifically empathetic leadership from the executive level. Welcome to the podcast.
Tina Kuhn 04:35
Thank you, Maria. We’re really happy to be here, and I want
Maria Ross 04:39
to start off as I do with all my guests to find out. And Tina, I’ll start with you. You are both co authors of the book The E suite, empathetic leadership for the next generation of executives. We’ve heard your wonderful BIOS at the top of the show, but tell us specifically what is the passion, what is the purpose behind you getting into this work and writing a book? Like this. So for me, really
Tina Kuhn 05:02
the catalyst was Neil. We were executives working together, and he started talking about empathy, and we realized we have very different styles. I’ll put that out there. We still have very different styles, but we realized when we applied and work through some of the aspects of empathy, our decisions together were much, much better than they were when we were making individual decisions. And it took a while for us to get there. Neil can can add to that, but we just found that it was this additive by having empathy and really looking at the big picture and not being myopic and taking into account everybody’s point of view.
05:56
Neil,
Neal Frick 05:56
I think you know, for me, throughout my career, had seen leaders do things two ways, very reactively, which ended up hurting organizations and really impacting the bottom line. And then I had a couple of examples really empathetic leaders. Tina, also being one of them, I don’t think she gives herself enough credit, who really advanced their organizations and advanced the lives of the individuals who worked for them, and I saw my career advance significantly working under those leaders, and started to model my own kind of philosophy around that. And then thought, Okay, how do we take this and apply it within the work company that we worked at? But then also, how do we kind of capitalize on this movement? Especially we started writing this during covid, when people’s perspectives on work were changing, and we thought, you know, how do we get this message about empathy out there? So that was for us, I think, the big push behind writing.
Maria Ross 06:58
So as you were both researching this book and really coming to this epiphany of the power of empathetic leadership. I know, you know, Tina, I know that you’ve discovered a lot of the same data and research that I discovered when I was writing the empathy edge around how there are CEOs out there who align empathetic leadership to business performance. What was surprising for you, especially as a CEO and as a C suite leader, what was maybe the one or two biggest surprises that you found in the research of wow, I didn’t even know that empathy was able to be a catalyst like this for business performance. So for
Tina Kuhn 07:37
me, I don’t know if I learned anything new, but it came to my just came to realize how important empathy was. You know, we’ve all been on teams where we had big deadlines, we worked together, we really everyone was highly productive, and we all felt good about it. I think everyone’s been part of that. That’s one of these why sports teams are so good. You have that community, you have that belonging and and when I consciously brought empathy into the workplace, it also brought in this belonging, and had other people feel that that belonging.
Maria Ross 08:20
So it was more that you kind of unlocked what that secret sauce was that you had kind of seen be present in teams, but you couldn’t really name it is that, would that be accurate to say that correct?
Tina Kuhn 08:29
And putting a name to it, and looking up the research and really embodying it into me allowed me to use empathy consciously instead of unconsciously, to build high performance teams.
Maria Ross 08:47
And Neil, how about you? Was there anything you were skeptical about in terms of trying to make you know, as I did, make the business case for empathy in executive leadership? Yeah,
Neal Frick 08:57
I think the biggest challenge for me was trying to understand the difference between sort of empathy, sympathy, compassion, and how to appropriately apply them. And the thing I go back to right is you may have someone on the team who is performing poorly, but they’re going through a really difficult time, and so you’re sympathetic to their plight, but the impact of that individual in the organization and the rest of the team is really detrimental. So as a business leader, you have to look at the whole picture and make a informed, strategic, empathetic decision about how to move forward. And I think that is something that you know, the the improper application of empathy, sort of the nice boss versus the empathetic boss. Yeah, can really kind of get in the way, and that’s something that I’ve struggled with. And I think through research with Tina, really kind of helped refine what that meant
Maria Ross 09:53
exactly, and that I’m on a mission to tell people empathy is not the same thing as being nice. And in in the new book, The Empathy. Dilemma when I talk about the five pillars of being an effective and an empathetic leader, you know, some of those pillars are about clarity, decisiveness, and the the empathetic thing is almost in the mode of how you do it, but it doesn’t mean you necessarily are making different business decisions. And would you say that that is something that executives embrace, or is it something they sort of struggle against, thinking, well, if I’m making a tough business decision, I have to be cold, I have to be data driven. I have to be, you know, I have to do it this way. What are you finding, Neil, in rolling out this work? What’s been the reception from other C suite leaders that you’ve been talking to.
Neal Frick 10:41
You know, it’s funny. It almost, it almost comes down to, I don’t want to say it’s generational, but it’s almost philosophical, which sometimes almost, almost becomes generational, where, if someone is receptive to the concept of empathetic leadership, they’re willing to have conversations around how to apply it appropriately. But if they think of empathy as sort of a weak scale, a soft skill, then that’s what they point to. But the education around it and showing them that look empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. Empathy and niceness is not the same thing. The nice boss is actually one of the most toxic things in an organization, when applied and appropriately, can really help to reshape people’s opinions about empathy, but it is a difficult initial conversation, because they’re like, oh, empathy, you’re gonna make me spend all this money on my employees, and, you know, I’m gonna have a bunch of people who aren’t working very hard. It’s like, no, no, that’s that’s not what I’m that’s not what I’m advocating for,
Maria Ross 11:37
right? Right? I always say, like, it’s not empathy. Is not you crying on the floor with your employees. That’s not what we’re talking about here, right? And so Tina, tell me a little bit. You know, you mentioned at the beginning that you and Neil have slightly different leadership styles. So tell us about what your leadership style as a C suite leader was, and did it change from doing this empathy work
Tina Kuhn 11:59
absolutely changed for the better, and I think my decisions are better, and I look at the big picture more from my style tends to be fast, fast decisions. I look at something, and I make a decision, and then I move on. And Neil helped me to slow down and really look at the big picture, look at different aspects of the decision. And I think I helped him maybe speed up the decisions. Yeah, and so together, we ended up with decisions. Because the worst, in my opinion, one of the worst things a leader can do is to not make a decision. So we were able to make very good decisions in a timely manner when we really look together and Neil. Neil helped me to see other points of views in the organization and other aspects of the decisions that I may not have looked at before, and so yes, it absolutely made me a better leader, but one of the things it did do is that it also allowed me to see where my weaknesses Were. Because Neil challenged me, I was able to to really see Oh, and sometimes it hurt and sometimes it was hard, but that challenge culture was also a way to bring about much better decisions in the organization, and I think the company was, you know, 1,000% better because of that challenge and the work on empathy than if we didn’t have that.
Maria Ross 13:48
Yeah, you’re touching on two of the five pillars in my new book, which is self awareness is the first one, and decisiveness and this idea that people think you can be either empathetic, the binary thinking kills me all the time, right? You have you can be empathetic or decisive. You can be empathetically decisive in terms of understanding other points of view. So you see the problem, or you see the challenge, or you see the opportunity from multiple perspectives, which some you might miss, but then you have to swiftly be able to make a decision, you can’t leave it lingering, because that’s actually the most unempathetic thing we can do as a leader, is to leave our people hanging right? So I want to switch gears a little bit, Tina, and talk about what you uncovered around fears and biases, whether they’re hidden or not, and how executives deal with their fears and biases, whether it’s ignoring them, whether it’s actually opening their eyes to them and being defensive about it. Tell me a little bit about how they play out with someone in such a senior role. You know, you’ve led, you’ve both led very large teams, you know, half a billion dollar companies, and how. Does that play out if there’s a C suite leader that is unwilling or unable to see their fears and biases and they just think, I don’t have any fears and biases, I’m a really strong, fair leader?
Tina Kuhn 15:11
Yeah, that’s a great question, and that was part of my growth process, was to find what are my hidden biases, what are my open biases, and what are my hidden biases? And what I found is that, you know, anger is that emotional energy that’s fighting against a fear or a threat, right? And so whenever, whenever you’re angry, it’s it’s really because there’s some fear behind it. And so I started looking at my anger. When did I get anger? Why did I get anger? And what was I afraid of? And it was a real pivotal moment for me to understand where my fears were. And I think it comes out in leadership by only wanting to have. I’m putting this in quotes, yes men around them, having people that are not having people to challenge their decisions. You know, there’s lots of fears that CEOs have. I mean, they’re the there’s a lot of pressure, and there’s a lot of people that kind of surround a CEO, the stakeholders, the customers, the employees. There’s just a lot there. And it could be a fear of failure that makes you angry. It can be a fear of failure from an employee, and their failure causes you to look bad. It can be a loss of your job, a loss of status, a loss of being treated unfairly, a fear of not being good enough to succeed. So those are just a few that you know, pop pop out, but that that fear and anger is a is a really interesting thing that I think every leader should explore, because it helped me to, for one, not be afraid, uncover my hidden biases and understand where my fear was, and once your fears are uncovered, then it’s easier not to have that fear anymore.
Maria Ross 17:18
Wow. Okay, so there’s so much in there to unpack, but I think, you know, one of my, my bigger questions that I haven’t really dived into in my work, is, what do we do with C suite leaders? Because this is really a personal development exercise when it comes right down to it, we want to talk about the ROI. We want to talk about how this is a leadership trait for success, but you also have to have a willing participant. And whether it’s at work or in their personal lives, there are just people who don’t want to go there. And so, you know, Tina, I’ll start with you, and then I want to bump it to Neil, what have you found works well with reaching these these C suite leaders who have spent their whole careers, you know, performing at a high level, having the answers, you know, doing all these things. What have you seen that helps them get to the point where they’re willing to do some of that personal development work that developing this skill of empathy requires?
Tina Kuhn 18:17
Yeah, that that’s a great thing for every CEO, and the people that work with CEOs to look at and, and I would say, probably one of the worst things to do is to come at the CEO with anger, because they’re not looking at, you know, anger just puts up barriers. And you want to, you want to do things that break, breaks down that barrier and have a good conversation. So I’ll just talk about what Neil did for me. So he came and, you know, actually talk through some of, you know, some of the decisions and why this was a better way to do things. And initially there was some resistance. And he just, he kind of kept at it, didn’t get angry, and really kind of gently pushed me into into a better place. And I think working with CEOs, if you have a or, or anybody that you work with that comes out with, you know, fear, anger, resistance to other people’s point of view, controlling, you know, all those kind of bad, difficult behaviors, to confront them with those same type of behavior, the bad behaviors is not going to go anywhere. You have to confront them with empathy.
Maria Ross 19:45
Yeah, you kind of have to model empathy in the interaction. Yes. And so now I’m going to flip that, because that is super interesting. So Neil, what do you think worked well to have you know, Tina, look at this in a new way and the other executives that you work with now?
Neal Frick 20:01
Yeah, sure. Well, I think you know, the first thing you have to do, obviously, if you’re going to approach someone that you’re working with, you got to do a lot of that work yourself and make sure that you’re in the right place to be able to understand where you’re coming from. As Tina said, you can’t approach someone in that headspace. But you know, there are going to be people who are not receptive. Regardless, Tina is a very receptive and was a very receptive leader. I’ve worked with people who were not as receptive. And the way that I found the best way is, typically, you have to understand what motivates that individual, right? Is it the bottom line? If it’s the bottom line, a lot of times, that raw data showing someone that, hey, this approach is historically demonstrated to do better through these studies, this company does this, and this is why it works better. Or, Hey, I did this this way, and we got this better result with this customer. Those can be really difficult to argue against when you’re a logical person, that can be something, you know, if you come at someone who is not very emotional with an emotional argument, they are going to potentially reject it, because that is not how they process information. So you really have to understand the person that you are approaching and approach them in a way that makes sense to them. And then the other thing you know that’s if you were working with someone directly, if you’re coming at it as from the outside, as a consultant, you know, I think if someone is approaching you and looking for ways to improve their organization, the likelihood is that they are receptive in some way, and the methodology is very much the same, understanding them and Understanding what is motivating them to make that change, applying that principle of empathy, listening and understanding, and then flipping it and showing them the way to grow their organization or to make those changes in a way that makes sense to them, is going to be the way to lay that sort of foundational trust. And then once you have that trust, then you can start to pile on some of the more complex, ideological or philosophical pieces that maybe they would be initially resistant to, but you just got to build that trust first, right?
Maria Ross 22:08
And that’s where you know, ultimately, they eventually have to make some behavior changes in order to embrace empathy as a leader. But I love the walking them through, because the reason I love this conversation is that that was the whole reason I wrote the empathy edge and researched it, because I thought, okay, the moral argument is not working, that people need to be more empathetic. So I’m just gonna meet people where they are, and I’m just gonna make a business case for it. And that’s how I got the skeptics along. Now the new book is actually for the converts, not for the skeptics. That’s the one for like, Okay, I’m on board. Ooh, here’s why it’s hard. Here’s where it gets sticky, right? And you kind of alluded to this in your answer, but I want to see if it, if there’s anything else to add around just the general complaint I hear about working with difficult people. It’s not necessarily coming from the C suite for their workers or from leaders for their teams. It’s kind of across the board. People are looking for advice and actionable strategies for how do I just work with difficult people? So what you said about convincing a leader sounds like it might be something similar to how you may want to approach a colleague. Would that be an accurate statement to make
Neal Frick 23:25
absolutely I mean, I think you know, all businesses, I mean, most interactions in a professional sense, are about people, and the key to understanding a person is to level set and to try to bring some common understanding right, to build that initial level of trust. If someone is difficult to work with, there is a reason. And it goes back to Tina’s comment about you know that that anger or that reaction being fear based, if you can try to genuinely work with someone to understand where they’re coming from and let them see where you are coming from, more often than not, you will be able to build some level of trust and start to work through it. Now that’s not across the board. Some people are really resistant. You’re always going to have some difficulties, but in most cases, people want to be successful. They want to work well with others, and so they’re looking for an opportunity to do that. So approaching people in that way by initially doing that work on yourself first, can be a really effective way to kind of start that conversation, especially if you are in a environment culturally that promotes that. It’s obviously much harder to do if you’re in a very toxic environment, of
Maria Ross 24:34
course, of course, yeah, and I think that that’s the important thing for all leaders to learn, is that even while they’re trying to develop their own empathy and improve their own leadership style, they need to create fertile soil for other people to be on that journey with them. Because them changing only their behaviors is only half the battle. It’s really creating that environment of maybe you vulnerably share with your team. And that, hey, I’m working on improving my empathy as a leader, and you know, I’d like you to go on this journey with me, and you can start to model those behaviors, or create protocols, create rituals within the organization where it starts to get modeled, it starts to get celebrated, it starts to get rewarded. So then, all of a sudden, that’s just the way we do things around here. But I think you know so many leaders, and you know from your experience as a C as CEOs, you know, I think we know why leaders are scared to admit they don’t have all the answers, and they’re scared to admit they may not know the right way to operate. But what have you found is the best way to unblock that for people. What is a way that you’ve gotten people who will say, I’ll never be vulnerable with my team, or I’m never going to share this, or I don’t need to get to know them personally. Has there been one or two methods or insights that you have found really helps them unlock that vulnerability and really understand what we mean by vulnerability? Again, not crying on the floor with your employees, but being able to admit. You know, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going to figure it out together. Or I don’t know the best strategy. Let’s get some more inputs. What have you found to be the best way to get leaders to make that leap? Tina, I’ll
Tina Kuhn 26:17
start with you. So as I think about some of the difficult people that I’ve worked with in the past, I think I really agree with what Neil said, and figuring out what motivates them, and then making sure they feel comfortable around around that. So I’ll just you know somebody who’s really controlling. Why are they controlling? What’s their motivation behind that? Is it a fear of failure? And so they have to control everything? I’m coming back to the fears because we, yeah, that’s a that to me. It kind of that’s traces down to everything. It’s like the bottom, bottom of the the funnel. And once I, once I figure out what their what their fear is, or motivation and reason why they act that way, and reason why they’re putting up roadblocks. So for somebody that’s controlling, give them something that will give them success, and start feeling comfortable with you, and start feeling like, oh, they can do it. They don’t have to. They don’t have to be like that. They can have success in a better way. And
Maria Ross 27:29
Neil, do you have anything to add to that about helping leaders unlock that vulnerability of being able to admit you know, they need other perspectives. They need other viewpoints in order to achieve the goals of the organization. How do we get them to be more vulnerable? Yeah,
Neal Frick 27:44
the way that I have found the most effective has been leading by example, because pushing someone into a vulnerable space is the quickest way to be met with resistance. And I’ll give a kind of a personal example. You know, I write a lot on medium, and I wrote an article when I was going through a particularly difficult time about, like, mental health issues. And as a CEO, writing about mental health issues, I got a lot of feedback from colleagues that was like, Whoa, you’re going to lose the respect of your team, and what are you doing? And I found the exact opposite. I found that I had team members come to me and say, Wow, thank you. I actually feel a lot more comfortable coming and talking to my boss now about what I’m going through, because I know that this environment is one where I can have an honest conversation about what I’m dealing with, and I’m not going to get fired, or I’m not going to be looked at as someone who’s maybe weakening the organization. And then I point to that and say, Hey, look at what this vulnerability, this thing that was really hard for me to do, and I didn’t like doing because vulnerability is hard, right, right? But this helped this person overcome something. And now I’ve got someone who is more willing to put in sweat equity for the organization, more willing to be, you know, a team player who also I’ve in some way improved their working condition because they’re less anxious about, you know, hey, if I show vulnerability, am I going to have some kind of negative impact to my job that is all positive, and all it took was me being honest. That cost nothing. What’s the return on investment that it’s immeasurable. But obviously that takes a leader who is willing to put that level of vulnerability out there, you know, so that it really starts with that individual.
Maria Ross 29:32
And that is so interesting, because I also think it’s worth mentioning that, you know, there’s a lot of leaders, when they hear this, either roll their eyes. They’re probably not listening to my podcast if they’re doing that, but or they say, Well, you know, I don’t, I don’t have that kind of vulnerability to share, right? I don’t have I don’t have a personal pain in my life. I don’t have this, like, hard luck story. I don’t have this whatever, when we talk about vulnerability. It’s not just those stories. It’s also the vulnerability of, Wow, this is a really hard decision we have to make. I would like other people’s input on it. So the vulnerability is, again, I don’t have all the answers. It’s not necessarily a personal vulnerability about something that’s happening in my personal life. It could be a vulnerability about how I’m dealing with something at work, in the context of work. And for some people, maybe that’s a that’s a good starting point of, okay, you don’t want to reveal everything about your personal life. I get that. That’s cool. You don’t have to have a hard luck story. You don’t have to, you know, but I bet there’s times in your work you’ve you’ve lacked confidence. I bet there’s times in your work you haven’t know what you don’t you haven’t known which route was the right route to take. I bet there’s a vulnerability around someone you really, really liked, who was underperforming, and you had to have a difficult conversation with them. Maybe one of the first I’m like, thinking out loud with with all of you, is maybe one of the first steps is, where are your vulnerabilities in the work context? If that makes you feel more comfortable, try sharing that with your team. Try showing your team that you actually are a human being and not a robot, and that these moments of insecurity, these moments of indecision, these moments of dueling priorities, happen to you as well as anyone else.
Neal Frick 31:25
Yeah, there’s, you don’t have to open the curtain and show anything personal. That’s not necessary, right? I talked about, you know, when I took over as CEO, I talked about imposter syndrome. And I think that is something that executives deal with a lot. They may not call it that, but it is this idea that, you know, we don’t always know what we’re doing. We don’t always know that the best decision, especially we have to make calls sometimes where we don’t have a crystal ball. We don’t know what the outcome is going to be, that in and of itself, and then the willingness to say when we do make a mistake, hey, that was the wrong call, and here’s what we’re going to do to fix it, and here’s how we what we learn from it, that vulnerability, in and of itself, is all it takes to set the foundation of we’re in an organization where if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. And here is that safety net that starts that conversation, and that starts that cultural shift,
Maria Ross 32:13
absolutely creating a culture where it’s okay to take some innovative risks, it’s okay to make a mistake, it’s not irreparable. I think is so important. And you know, if you as as a worker, don’t see any of your leaders admitting those vulnerabilities, you’re going to go, wow, oh, it’s not safe for me to do that, which means I’m probably not going to innovate, because I’m not going to want to step outside the lines, which is a detriment to the organization at large, right? So, so as we wrap up, I just want to ask both of you individually. Tina, I’ll start with you. You know, you’ve managed teams of like 1600 people, I assume, across the globe or in different locations.
Tina Kuhn 32:53
It was across 40 states and six countries. Wow.
Maria Ross 32:57
Okay, so what’s one piece of advice you have for a leader. You know, this is the way we’re working now, some leaders are used to it. Some leaders are not. They’re used to you know, everyone’s in the same four walls, and I can see everybody. And we’ve talked about hybrid work and remote work on this show before, but I want to hear from someone who’s done it and been in it. What are one or two tips that you have had as a leader for making sure you were creating a cohesive team across geographic dispersion.
Tina Kuhn 33:28
Yeah, that’s a huge topic now, because of all the remote work, exactly being hired and you know just that, continued communication with people is just critically important. But I also want to go back to one of the things that was just said, one of my kind of favorite things to tell people is, if this isn’t the let’s make a decision. If it’s not the right decision, we’ll remake the decision so that decision so that they don’t feel that the decision is the end of the world
Maria Ross 34:07
exactly right,
Tina Kuhn 34:07
exactly and if it’s not right, we’ll just remake it and take a new path. And I think having people hear that over and over makes them able to make a decision and not get, not get stuck and not feel afraid, and not bring something to me that that maybe will change the decision that I already made, right? So I just wanted to add that to No. I
Maria Ross 34:36
think that’s great,
Tina Kuhn 34:37
that fast decision, um, I think people get so stuck there all the time, and I think that causes a lot of bad behaviors. We need to take fear of decisions. Yeah, we
Maria Ross 34:49
need to see more of a design thinking approach, even with our decision making. And, yeah, I understand that some decisions, you know, it’s it’s a little bit of a harder pill to swallow if the decision you’re going to make is going to cause. Cost the company $3 million right? So we do understand there’s ramifications of different decisions, but if you have the support of your leadership and if you have the support of the company, that’s the only way you disrupt, that’s the only way you innovate and stay ahead in the market. If you play it safe all the time, you’re never going to get further ahead. So I think that’s a really important point. And I want to go back to the question that I asked you, which was, you know, you mentioned communication is such an important part of that, and that’s such a broad term. So I want to get very specific. Was it about you making time for Team communications, as well as one on one communications? How did you manage your time to be able to keep that communication flowing. Was there some sort of structure in something you did every week, every month, every quarter? How did you how did you balance it between group meetings, where you know not every personality type can participate very well to individual or small groups? Can you share a little bit about that process of what that communication looked like, so that you were able to create that team environment, even across distances.
Tina Kuhn 36:09
Yeah. So I think the most important thing is to make sure your employees feel comfortable communicating with you, because the bigger your team with, I couldn’t do individual
36:21
talks with people, that’s all you’d be doing. Yeah, right.
Tina Kuhn 36:24
And even with even with smaller teams, you can over communicate, and I see it, especially when the remote work first started, managers were afraid that their employees were being productive, and so they kind of over communicated, over did things, so there’s that that bounce, but the most important is for them to feel comfortable coming to you when there’s an issue, so it’s more of a demand on talking. And that worked well. And I did go, and I traveled a lot, and I went and I met everyone, and I made sure that they knew that if there was any issue, that they could email me or call me. And I did get calls and emails, and it was, it was great. And then I, you know, dealt with with that. But it’s, it’s to make sure they your employees, know that they can come to you when they need to
Maria Ross 37:23
exactly, exactly. And Neil, any final thoughts on how to help executive leaders right now deal with the changing face of work and making sure that they can still create that team environment and get to know their their people, and maybe not, you know, get they don’t have to get to know all of them on a personal level. But how can they continue to build that empathetic culture, especially if they have a large, dispersed team?
Neal Frick 37:51
Yeah, I’ve worked, I actually was running some remote teams before. You know, remote teams were a thing, and the collaboration tools that we had back then were not great, but I found that one of the most effective ways to do things were to build in a little bit of extra time, even at like the top of meeting or at the bottom of a meeting, for I don’t want to call it chit chat, because it sounds not productive, but that opportunity to have sort of just a conversation, Just to have that a little bit of time to build relationships between members of your team, because things that happen naturally when you’re in an office environment don’t happen naturally where you’re in a remote space. And more often than not, some of the bonding that happens in an office environment really does allow for that interpersonal relationships to build, and it’s very difficult to do in remote environments. So, you know, build in a little bit of extra time to do that sort of team building. I don’t It’s tough when to do, you know, like specific remote team builds, but even just building in a little bit of extra time just to have those conversations and facilitate them can really help to just make people feel more comfortable.
Maria Ross 39:07
I love that. And actually, you’re reminding me of a past guest I had, Terry Schmidt, who talked about team building with a purpose, and how to actually make it happen in a remote environment. And so I’m going to put a link to her episode because her advice was gold around how you can how you can simulate that and still create connections in a remote environment if you choose the right team building activity, which most leaders don’t. So I’m going to put a link to her episode in the show notes. I want to thank you both today for your time. Tina Neil, thank you for sharing your insights. I definitely want folks to check out the book, the E suite, empathetic leadership for the next generation of executives. We will have all your links in the show notes. But Tina, can you just tell us real quickly for folks on the go or who might be exercising while they’re. Listening to us, where’s the best place they can get more information.
Tina Kuhn 40:03
So the link just, you know, HTTP, HTTPS, the E sweet.com
Maria Ross 40:10
Okay, the E sweet.com is where you want to go, and again, all those links will be in the show notes. Thank you both so much for your time today.
40:17
Thank you.
Maria Ross 40:18
Thanks 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, rate, review, follow and share with a friend or colleague until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathyedge.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.
