What’s the Big Deal with Empathy?

BELAY Ad:
Needing a break this summer but not sure how you’ll find the time. If that to do list feels never ending, you may be holding on to tasks you should be delegating. You wouldn’t pay someone your hourly rate to do administrative tasks, right? When you’re tackling too many of these for your business, you’re overpaying. Belay gets it. Every dollar counts and a full time hire might not make sense right now. That’s why Belay offers fractional support that provides full time quality help for a part time price. Your time is too valuable to waste on managing your inbox or scheduling meetings. A US based Belay Executive assistant can take it all off your hands.

BELAY Ad:
To learn more about the power of delegation, download Belay’s free delegation worksheet and guide. Inside you’ll find three simple exercises to discover what you can delegate today so you can enjoy summer tomorrow. Just text the word exec to 55123 for your free copy today. That’s exc to 55123 to have your best summer ever with Belay Foreign.

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, Executive Vice President with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. One of the things we want to continue to encourage you to do is this is a tool for you to use as team development. We have a lot of teams and leaders and organizations that will take these podcasts, send them to their team and then say hey man, when we start our our team meetings this week, give me your number one takeaway. Use this as a tool. That’s why we do this. And we’re hoping that a lot of this content just resonates with you because it is coming from what we get to do in organizations around the world every day. So thanks for joining us.

Chris Goede:
I want to encourage you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can leave a comment there, question, or if there’s anything we can do to serve you. We would love to be able to do that. Today’s topic is what’s the big deal about empathy? Yeah, I could not agree with this more.

Perry Holley:
That’s your personality.

Chris Goede:
This is it, right? Yeah. So Harry wrote this for me on behalf to be able to send this to my wife a little bit later on. But no, this is.

Perry Holley:
She’s actually Here with us today.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. As she walks out of studio and she would not be afraid to sit down here, this conversation with us. But this is something that a lot of leaders are asking, especially in the, in the, in the corporate environment, in the boardroom, leading team, making decisions. What, what’s the big deal about this? We, we have a job to do. We’ve got to get things done. Right. I think the big thing is a lot of us just lead right out of here, right from our brain, from our head, thinking logically, just like you said. It’s just like I’m wired and they forget about.

Chris Goede:
We got to have somewhat of the heart. Now some of you are already checking out, you’re like, I don’t want to talk about heart leadership. Just like a lot of people when we talk about servant leadership, they don’t get it and they don’t want to do that. But it’s really essential to understand you have to lead with both of them. And so we’re going to go through.

Perry Holley:
The whole group of us that lead just from the heart. And that’s right.

Chris Goede:
And it could be the other way. That’s right.

Perry Holley:
Think about John Maxwell talking about, I always love the law of connection. He said that you leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. But you have to do both. You have to touch the heart, but then you have to ask for the hand. You can’t. People like me are all, touch the heart, touch the heart, touch the heart. People like you are ask for the hand, ask for the hand. And both of us are going to have a problem.

Perry Holley:
So we’ve got to balance that quite a bit. So you know why this empathy is a big deal. And what it is a big deal is that all of life is other people and everything is working. I don’t care what business you think you’re in, you’re in the people business. And you do it through the vehicle of whatever your business is. And people, when you have this empathetic style, this empathetic communication that you exhibit empathy, you’re actually telling people that, that you see them, you value them, you care for them and that you feel for them and with them in doing that. And guess what happens when that happens? People will offer you the hand. You touch my heart, they’ll offer you the.

Perry Holley:
They will double down on their work. They’re bought in. The law of buy in kicks in. They’re bought into you. You make me feel, however, and I’m going to either double down on the work or I’m going to Pull back and not work. So I think it’s a retention tool. It keeps people on your team. It’s just got so many advantages to.

Perry Holley:
But you have a choice. And I notice right now in the conditions and we’re in the United States, but we do global work. And so I’m working with global teams right now. And it’s tough, it’s tough everywhere. And it’s really easy to get head down into overcoming a lot of the distractions and the challenges of business these days and forget the people side of it.

Chris Goede:
I’ll never forget, I had a friend of mine, good friend of mine, co worker of ours, and I made a statement years ago before I went through a growth cycle and I said, well.

Perry Holley:
Before you were enlightened.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, before I was enlightened, I said, well, we had a good tension discussion. And I just said, well, I’m sorry you feel that way. And we had another good conversation and he coached me through some things and he’s like, you understand? You made me feel that way. And it really opened my eyes as a leader to understand that, that how important that is. It is absolutely essential as I work on increasing my influence with people. And when you think about everything that we build this podcast off of being the five levels of leadership methodology at level two, there’s, there’s some phrases that we use around that where people want to be on your team, they will also give you discretionary effort. Now, the motive is pure. But I don’t know about you, but I want people that want to be on my team and what we’re doing and I want them thinking about our business when it’s outside business hours.

Chris Goede:
Right. And so in order to do that at level two, this empathy is, is saying to them, hey, you matter to me. Right. Like, it’s not just what you do, but, but who you are. And there’s that four letter word. I’m uncomfortable saying how you feel about being a part of that team. And being under my leadership is super important.

Perry Holley:
Right. You’re, I’m flashing back to some marriage struggles years ago about she’s wife would say, but you make me feel a certain way and pump out my chest and said, you choose to feel. I don’t make. Nobody can make you feel anything. You’re choosing to feel. And when I, when I became enlightened, realized, no, you are, you are always making people feel something.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And you have a choice and you.

Perry Holley:
Say that, could I make her feel something on purpose? Could I make the people on my team feel something on purpose? And it starts with, am I going to exhibit these empathetic skill set? I think that you need. That’s where I’d like to go. Yes. I get you to start us off and, and finally see how many there were. But there’s several.

Chris Goede:
But let’s dive in.

Perry Holley:
Where’s it built from?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. So the first thing is, and this is a word that as leaders, we’re talking about more and more. It’s just this curiosity. Okay. So all of a sudden we went from this soft, soft kind of empathy feeling to are you really being curious? Are you getting to a place where your team, your wife, my individual I was talking about earlier, feels like I’m genuinely, genuinely interested in them. Am I asking open ended questions? Am I just waiting to respond? Or am I really digging to figure out do I understand where, where they’re coming from? Am I willing to trade certainty of what I know logically for maybe to discover, to discovery of something a little bit different? And I think if I can figure that out and have the courage to keep asking better questions and be curious, it’s a great way for me to become more empathetic in my leadership.

Perry Holley:
And we have an entire podcast. I remember Jake, our technician, helped me. I don’t know if you can call it that, but I said curiosity is a miracle skill for leaders. And can you really say that? Yeah, I think it is. I think this is the number one skill that says it creates an environment of learning. It says that you we’re going to. Number two, I go ahead and give it away is vulnerability. We talked about it last week.

Perry Holley:
We don’t need to go down that path again. But vulnerability says I don’t know all the answers. I need your help. I make mistakes and I’m curious about why you think what you do. We talk about, I want to be confident, but I also want to be humble. And this idea of, of, you know, that I can talk like I’m right, listen like I’m wrong, I ask good questions. I, I don’t judge. When I hear somebody say something, I, instead of saying, oh, you’re out of your mind, I say, oh, tell me more about that.

Perry Holley:
Where did that come from? And it opens up this window to my team that says I, I care about you, but also care about what you think and I care about how you feel being on this team. And like you said a minute ago, I want you to want to, to be on this.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
I want you to want to be in this boat rowing with me.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And it’s also Setting up. I think when you go about it, a learning culture, it’s modeling for your team that you are continuously learning like you are inquisitive. And, and I, I think there’s, there’s multiple reasons on why it is powerful to be able to. To do that. Let’s move to the next one where we talk about how do we become more transparent? How do we. How do we get to a place to where we’re being transparent with our team? That’s going to build trust. We know that that’s foundational for that, but we’re talking about increasing this influence.

Chris Goede:
And so this is when you get to this point. And again, we’re talking about being an empathetic leader. You have to become transparent with your team.

Perry Holley:
Well, they think about transparency and it goes back to almost the same with vulnerability, they build trust. And it’s. It says that you can’t tell everybody everything. Obviously you have some things you need that you’re working on. You can’t tell everything, but there’s a lot of things you can share with people and so that they see you in action. They know that you’re being transparent with your communication. And you’re open. You don’t respond in defensiveness when people question things.

Perry Holley:
It’s saying, I’m open. And this trust building is what’s so important there to say. I can say things to you. You’re okay, you’re not going to fight back or push back. That curiosity kicks in. Instead of saying, what are you out of your mind? You tell me more about that. Where did that come from? I’ve never thought of it that way. Explain that to me.

Perry Holley:
I think it’s a huge piece of the. How you communicate empathetically says I’m open, vulnerable, transparent and. And very focused outwardly, not just on.

Chris Goede:
Me, but I had a recent situation on my team very similar to this, to where I am very comfortable, very transparent with the team. To your point of what I am able to be transparent with, one of the things that our team talks about is, hey, I appreciate you just sharing that, like, what’s going on, what type of conversations you guys are having as a leadership team, where we’re at kind of, I know the scoreboard and all kinds of good stuff. But recently we were having a dialogue in one of our team meetings and there was a little bit of tension coming from one of our team members about questioning something that we were doing. We’ve changed a lot of new processes and systems, and I’m very comfortable with that. Like, I I am very transparent.

Perry Holley:
You are.

Chris Goede:
And no, you. I want all of it back. Right. Because that’s the only way we’re going to get better. Well, I have a new team member on my team who’s getting used to that. And we walked out of that meeting and it was like, what’s wrong? Like, you know, it got to its place and so are we in trouble?

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And that’s right. And we’re having this conversation. I’m like, no, that. Like, that’s what we. As a team, like, we’re transparent. We’ve been together a long time. We’re comfortable with each other. Like, we’re going to say, hey, I think this is going on.

Chris Goede:
When you do that again, that becomes more of an empathetic team. So now with. Let me give you just an example from the empathetic side, the team member that was new, I didn’t immediately. Although logically I would have been like, that’s just how we are. I was able to kind of back up and to say, well, tell me, what was it like? And did you feel like it was personal? And so I began asking questions. I’ll try to be curious again. Modeling some of the things you’re teaching us here in this thing, to live that out. Because we needed to have that type of transparency so that everybody on the team, no matter what seat they’re coming from, what we’re talking about is that we can do that.

Chris Goede:
Now, when you do that as leaders, you begin and you’re transparent. Remember, your influence in the five levels model is earned over time, and it’s going to take a while. So you can’t just, like, show up. Great story. This is early for her. A couple meetings. She doesn’t necessarily have the trust from the entire team to be that trust and vulnerable with each other. And so one of the things we got to do is as a team, we got to protect that and understand that.

Chris Goede:
But then also know that as we teach in the five levels model, as you begin to work your way up, it takes time. But if you do something that jeopardizes that, for example, maybe I shut down the transparency. Maybe I should have told the team something that I didn’t that would have all of a sudden that trust and will take your influence in a heartbeat right down. We talk about this in the five levels where it takes a while to earn the trust to go up through the levels, but you can go down very, very quickly.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, yeah. No, you’re a. You’re a model of this. And I. I can imagine I didn’t think about somebody new coming in and seeing the pushback you got on that topic. And it wasn’t rude at all. It was very professional. But it was definitely pushback around.

Perry Holley:
And tell me more about that. I don’t understand. You know, and a less trained leader might have taken offense at that and been defensive. You weren’t. And you’ve trained us this way over the years. Is that. Bring it. I want to hear from you.

Perry Holley:
I can’t fix what I don’t know. And if you’re hiding or not, if you’re not being open with me, I don’t know what to do. But somebody new coming in, it’d be like shock. I go, we in trouble? Is there going to be a fight? I mean, what’s going on? Are you allowed to. Is that guy going to get fired? No, no. He’s actually probably going to get a pat on the back because. Thank you. I didn’t know that that was confusing.

Perry Holley:
I didn’t know that that could be perceived that way. And the intention. I intended it one way. But they perce. Oh, not even be more clear my communication.

Chris Goede:
So here’s one other thing about transparency. This is again, everyone deserves to be led well and we need to lead everybody the way they need to be led. I have a team member also that sometimes the transparency doesn’t come out right away and we’ll be at the end of the conversation. And so I ask, on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel about that conversation of sharing everything that you’re concerned about? A six. Well, then let’s have some more conversation. Right. Like. And so you just got to understand everybody’s gonna receive it differently and everybody’s gonna want to communicate it differently.

Chris Goede:
And that’s why leaders, you get paid the big bucks. You gotta learn to understand how each of them do that in order to be empathetic to every single person. It doesn’t look the same. And so you got to work through that. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Tell me about the word eq. Your emotional intelligence, your emotional quotient about your. I consider your people skills. This is what all this is. Comes at all of it. But is can you work on that? What do you. What do you think about eq?

Chris Goede:
I absolutely think you can work on it. Ton of topics out there from a leadership standpoint that you can research, a ton of books you can read. I know from your vantage there’s tons of them from an avid learner that you’ve dug into, but I think you absolutely can begin to recognize Your triggers, I would call them sometimes my own emotions. If they’re negative. Right. Or maybe even positive, and I can begin to understand that and then regulate it or those that lead. From a very emotional energy standpoint, it’s a little bit harder for me. It’s a little bit easier because I’m a little bit more consistent, a little bit calm in my, in my demeanor.

Chris Goede:
But I’ve seen some leaders that have a ton of energy and a ton of passion that we would go, oh well, their EQ is not very high. But then you put them in a situ situation and I’ve seen them be able to manage that and be composed under stress and to have the understanding of reading the room, you know that also the emotional side of the room. One of the greatest lessons that I continue to learn from John is when I’m in meetings with him, I watch him and I observe him and I listen to what he’s saying. And then afterwards I say, hey, tell me what you saw, tell me what you heard, tell me what you think. Because part of the EQ side as leaders, when it’s a one on one situation or it’s with your team, is are you able to recognize others emotions in the room and what’s the dynamics and the temperature of people in the room?

Perry Holley:
Yeah, it’s a, I think raising your level and EQ really is all about recognizing emotion in you. Can you name and label your emotion, what are you feeling? But also reading the emotions of others and, and the example you gave about the team member who might have been rising tension in their voice and their emotion coming out, but you’re not you, you can, you can receive that. You, you’re able to manage through your eq, you’re able to manage tensions and things. That conflict resolution I think goes to another level when you’re able to, when you’re able to manage your own emotions with somebody else losing theirs, can you maintain and stay and stay calm and really recognize the emotions in you and you use them for your advantage to help make that connection with people going forward. So I think it’s, it’s a, it’s a big piece.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, it definitely keeps you connected to the team. Well, our next topic, right. Is based off of even what we talked a little bit about last week.

Perry Holley:
Yep.

Chris Goede:
Not going to spend a ton of time on here around authenticity, but we are going to talk about the purpose side of things. And so understanding authenticity is great. And purpose. And so what we need to do is make sure that our people know what our purpose is. And to be able to connect with them and what is their purpose. If we want to be able to be empathetic to them, we’ve got to be able to understand what’s their purpose. And my daughter right now loves what she’s doing, loves the organization she’s working for. Right.

Chris Goede:
And she’s. It’s her first big girl adulting job, and she comes home after about, I don’t know, maybe it’s two months in, she calls her mom and was like, this 8:30 to 5. Like, is this every day? Like, there’s so much more purpose out there. Like, I, you know, like, people are changing the world. How do we have time to do that? And, you know, my wife’s like, well, you got to work this into your schedule. Right? You got to have your job. And then, you know, and it’s such a big thing these days. I think with other generations understanding that if.

Chris Goede:
If we want to be empathetic and have empathy as a leader, we need to make sure that we understand the purpose of what’s driving the individuals on our team.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, I’ll just add that it really brings focus to what people are doing and what they’re about. And that empathy, your understanding about them fulfilling their purpose, helping them to fulfill purpose. I just did an exercise with a group. I said, I was talking to one of your technicians, and I asked them, what do you do here? And they said, I just fix cars. I go, anytime anyone on your team uses the word, just when they tell you what they do, I have a problem with that. That’s not just what you’re doing. Tell me what you’re really doing. And I had to be cheesy, be.

Perry Holley:
Be over the top. What are you really doing? And helping people and showing that care from you in understanding that. And just wrap it up with the last one. I just had to add in here. I’ll title it Mentoring and Modeling. But if you want to have an empathetic culture where people treat others with dignity and respect and understanding and care, you need to be modeling that if you are the culture carrier here, and if you’re not exhibiting empath empathy and understanding to people, it’s not going to flow well through the corporate organization.

Chris Goede:
And another thing you can do is from a mentoring standpoint, because no doubt about it, this skill set is easily identifiable and it’s modeled by certain leaders. Is have some of your leaders that are really, really good at this naturally or even learned begin to say, what does this look like? If you go out and mentor some of our other people so that they can see how you listen, how you communicate and how you care. Well, here’s our challenge for you today. As we kind of wrap up, we talked about a couple different elements in becoming more empathetic as, as a leader. Curiosity, vulnerability, trust, EQ authenticity. Like we talked about. Mentorship. Are you willing to say, which one of those do I want to pick out this week? And maybe look, dig in, maybe work a little bit more intentional, being a little bit more intentional this week on that.

Chris Goede:
Start small, ask better questions, listen more, share a little bit of yourself and I promise you, you’ll be amazed if your team doesn’t come up and say, you okay this week?

Perry Holley:
Like what?

Chris Goede:
Like what’s going on, what’s a little bit different? And it’s not easy for us. We all have KPIs. We got to hit right. We always got goals and there’s deadlines and all that stuff. But as Perry said previously, we are in the people business. And by the way, none of that happens without our people. And so we gotta back up and say, hey, let’s check in, let’s make sure we’re thinking about this empathy when it comes to my leadership style. And then how is my team receiving that from me?

Perry Holley:
Yeah, I’ll add to that. Also, these are difficult, challenging times right now and especially the youngers on your team may be feeling some anxiety. There may be. Actually some of the olders may be feeling anxiety and concern for what’s going on. And that’s a really great time to exhibit empathy on your team. Maybe call people in for a one on one, maybe have a cup of coffee maybe just.

Chris Goede:
How you doing?

Perry Holley:
Yeah, yeah, just checking in, let them know we’re on plan. We, you know, we’re making, we’re doing good. It’s uphill all the way, but we are making progress. To do that, I think lets people know that it’s a great way to exhibit empathy in today’s environment to do that. So as Chris told you at the beginning, if you want to know more about our offerings, actually, you want to know about more about our podcast offerings, we have a new one about leading the generations. If you like hearing from Tim Elmore and Susan Davis on our team about leading that younger generation. It’s a great new podcast we have out there. You can also learn about our other offerings and you can also leave a comment or a question.

Perry Holley:
You can do that at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

Transcript created by Castmagic.