Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi. It’s Nicky Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host. And for nearly two decades now, I’ve been an executive coach and a leadership development consultant. And on this show, I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership, and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life, and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here, and let’s go on with today’s episode. Welcome to this episode.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:47]:
And today, we’re diving into a subject that I think is vital for leaders, but particularly for female leaders, and it’s the concept of the empathy dilemma. And for those of us who naturally lead with empathy, setting boundaries can feel difficult and even counterintuitive. But as I’ve discovered through my own coaching journey and my own leadership journey, finding the balance between backbone and heart is essential, especially when we’re striving to show up as effective leaders, partners, and parents. And today’s guest, Maria Ross, understands this challenge well. Maria is an empathy advocate. She’s a speaker, a strategist, and author of The Empathy Dilemma, How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries. And through her work, Maria has taught leaders around the world how to embrace empathy while also maintaining the strength needed to hold firm boundaries, a balance that transforms empathy from a soft skill into a powerful strategic tool. As a TEDx speaker and host of the Empathy Edge podcast, Maria has been a trailblazer in helping leaders cultivate empathetic work cultures that lead to success.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:08]:
She’s shared her experiences with audiences worldwide, and today she’ll be sharing with us practical strategies to lead with empathy while maintaining personal boundaries. Whether you’re managing a team, a household, or both, this conversation is packed with insights on how to nurture your well-being and drive real impact. Join us as we learn how to navigate the empathy dilemma. I won’t keep you any further. Let’s welcome Maria. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Maria Ross [00:02:41]:
I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:43]:
And all the way from The US, and you’re out in California, aren’t you?

Maria Ross [00:02:48]:
I am. I am. I’m in Northern California, so not not directly impacted by the wildfires right now in Southern California.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:56]:
Thankfully, that’s good to hear. Well, I can’t wait to dive into this subject with you because having read your book and kind of followed what you’ve been putting out into the world, I know that we’re gonna have such a rich conversation around this, and I think the world needs this more than ever. So this is such an important time to be talking about this subject. So for those that don’t know about you and your work, can you share a little bit about what you do and how you came to do this work, like your journey to to become an expert

Maria Ross [00:03:37]:
career of management consulting and marketing leadership road, roles and then started my own business, Red Slice, in 02/8. And my work initially has been around brand strategy and brand messaging, helping entrepreneurs, helping businesses, companies, organizations tell their story to connect and engage with the right audience. And a big part of that work is empathy. It’s really understanding who your audience is, what they care about, their aspirations, their fears, their goals, and creating messaging and creating a story and a narrative that resonates with them. So empathy has always sort of been a superpower of mine, although I didn’t call it that for decades. And, I’ve also authored books and taken stages, And my third book came out in 2019 called The Empathy Edge because I, started researching that book in 2016. My son was two and a half at the time, and I got really disheartened by the models of leadership that I was seeing in the world and on the news and in our government, all these places. And it was really hard because as you know, you know, when your kids are little, you’re reading them all these books about sharing and compassion and empathy.

Maria Ross [00:04:55]:
And it felt kind of hollow because I thought, why am I bothering to teach him this if this is the world he’s growing up in? So I didn’t wanna take that as an answer, so I decided to research. I said there had to be brands and leaders who were winning with empathy, with compassion. And to my delight, all the data and the research were out there that, yes, this is actually not just good for society, it’s great for business. It’s it’s a strategic advantage. It boosts engagement, performance, customer loyalty and retention, innovation. I mean, there’s so many vectors where an empathetic leader and an empathetic culture can impact the organization for good. So I wrote my first book, The Empathy Edge, to explore how empathy helps leaders, helps teams, and helps brands. And then the pandemic hit right after it came out.

Maria Ross [00:05:50]:
So, it really struck a chord because people who didn’t get the book I was writing before, like, I don’t understand. Is it a business book or a professional a personal development book? Now they started to see the link between empathy and the workplace. And my work took off in terms of speaking to leaders, keynotes, workshops, a TEDx talk, like everyone was hungry to figure out, well, how do I, strengthen my empathy, and what is the benefit? What’s the ROI? And so through that work, over the four year the four or five years, I then came out with my most recent book, The Empathy Dilemma, and that one is more for the converts. The first book was for the skeptics to give them the business case for empathy, but this book was more for the folks that were saying, yes, yes, yes, Maria. We’re on board, and we want to embrace empathetic leadership as the way forward, but here’s where we’re struggling. So I wrote The Empathy Dilemma, and that’s what I do talks on and trainings on now, around how do we balance the needs of the business with the needs of our people, especially in a post pandemic world. So that’s where I am now, and I still do brand work, but only for right fit clients that embrace empathy as a value. But it’s really about helping you know, it’s sort of my way to make the world a better place for my son by starting at work.

Maria Ross [00:07:14]:
And I feel like if we practice this skill at work, it will obviously spill over into our personal lives.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:21]:
I love that mission and kind of purpose. That feels something that I can really relate to as well because I know we’ve got children the same age. And it’s absolutely right, isn’t it? I think particularly if you look at what’s happening on a global kind of stage at the moment about Mhmm. Teaching our children empathy and kind of the morals and the values, and often that isn’t represented in what we’re seeing in terms of who might be leading the businesses or leading Right. Countries and and that kind of discourse. So I love that this this feels a really right conversation. So tell me about when we talk about the empathy dilemma then, what, what is the dilemma in this? And I think we can all kind of guess, but what, what did your research show when you started to dive into this?

Maria Ross [00:08:08]:
Yeah. I’m kind of a nerd when it comes to all the research, even though I’m I’m horrible with numbers. I love I love the data. And, it’s really about well, first, it’s about understanding what empathy is and what it isn’t. So that’s sort of the first level of the dilemma is that the leaders who are who are saying empathy has no place in the workplace, which by the way, that number’s getting less and less every year as people start to realize that work is about collaboration and understanding, They don’t really understand what empathy is, so they think it’s crying on the floor with their employees, or they think it’s I have to be overly emotional with someone, or they think it’s just doing what everyone else wants. And those are the myths of empathy that I like to help bust. It’s not about just being nice. It’s not about caving into unreasonable demands, and it’s not even about agreeing with someone else.

Maria Ross [00:08:59]:
You can disagree and have an empathetic conversation where you’re trying to understand their point of view and their context, but you don’t have to walk away. I like to say empathy is about connection, not conversion. So, how I define empathy through this lens of my work is that it’s the ability to see, understand, and where appropriate, feel another person’s perspective. And then to use that information, you know, you’re sort of being a detective, your information gathering, which really helps my left brain people engage empathy. When you when you collect that information, you can then choose a right next action, and that is compassion. Compassion is actually empathy in action. Now that I know where you are, where you’re coming from, what you need, I can decide, is my next action just simply holding space for you to talk? Is my next action acknowledging your point of view? Is my next action maybe changing or compromising on a decision? It could be, but it doesn’t have to be. And so that dilemma is where people dip in to sort of, take empathy to the more emotional and, acquiescence part of the spectrum.

Maria Ross [00:10:14]:
Right? And they say, oh, I need to be empathetic at work, so that means I just have to do everything my employees want. That’s not empathy. Right? It and it’s not, you know, not you can make tough business decisions and still do it in an empathetic way by really acknowledging where people are, supporting them and helping them through it, but it doesn’t mean you have to change your mind. So that dilemma, I think, is where people with that misunderstanding of empathy dip into people pleasing, they dip into submission, and that’s not good for their mental health. And so the dilemma is how do I be there for my people and still take care of myself and still maintain high performance?

Nicky Lowe [00:10:55]:
I I love everything you’re saying. It is so much fun to say. Firstly, to say how impressed I was with that definition because when I read it in the book, I was like, ah, you’ve you can tell how deep you’ve gone with your kind of research and understanding of actually what empathy is because that, you know, see, acknowledge, and where appropriate, I thought that was really important because often people feel that you have to feel what the other person’s feeling, and you put that actually, sometimes that’s not appropriate. And so where appropriate, yes. And how then, as you say, you put that into action about that compassion piece. So I really, like, I really appreciated that. I could, like, go from an academic because I’ve got a I like evidence and research, and I I I could just see the the vast information you’d captured in that one definition. And there was something else you you said there that’s gone out of my mind.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:58]:
But it also reminded me when as I was reading your book in preparation for this, I had an actual experience this week, and it just made me think this showed that so beautifully and the impact of it. We live out in the countryside. We’re kind of in in the countryside here in The UK, and we’re not on a mains kind of gas or mains sewage. So we are kind of like a farmhouse, and we’ve got our own gas tank that we get filled up every so often to supply our heat and hot water. And this weekend, we ran out of, gas. We were meant to have a delivery last week, and they couldn’t access the tank, which was our fault. We’d got something in the way. And we thought we’d got enough gas to last us, and so we ran out this weekend.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:43]:
So I’d got no hot water and no heating. And it’s it’s pretty cold in The UK at the standard. Some places in the world would go, that’s not cold. But for our standards, it’s, you know, it’s the middle of winter. And so I rang up the gas company to say, look. Is there any chance you could get this delivery to me? And they were kind of like, well, we tried last week, and I was like, I know. Totally our fault. But if you could get to me as soon as possible, I’d really appreciate it.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:07]:
And she said, well, it’s gonna be over a week. And I was like, wow. I was like, no hot water and heat. I was like, I’ve got young kids. If there’s anything you could do to help me, And she started quoting back to me, we are not obliged because there’s a there’s a big gas company in The UK that when you’re on Maines Gas, they have to. If you’ve got young children, elderly, or vulnerable, they have a kind of SLA that they have to meet within a certain time frame. And she started quoting back to me, we’re LPG gas. We don’t have to meet any of those requirements just because you might be elderly, vulnerable, or have young children.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:45]:
And I was like, I totally get that. All I’m asking is if you get a cancellation or if you can help me, I’d really appreciate it. And she went, well, let me just remind you. And she started reading back kind of me, and it was just like, there’s no empathy here. I I understood what she was saying is, like, there’s nothing I can do at the moment, and I was like, I get that. I just needed her to say to me, I understand. If we can do anything, I’ll try my best. That’s all I needed to hear.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:14]:
And the fact that she just missed that moment of empathy, I just I wanna change our gas company. Like, I did not need that in that moment.

Maria Ross [00:14:25]:
Oh my gosh. I mean, that’s you know, I come at this from a brand strategy perspective. That’s my initial work that I do. And when I wrote the Empathy Edge, I had a section on how empathy impacts your brand. And that kind of customer service experience will ruin your reputation, but not just in that one lost customer. In that customer sharing that story with everyone else, putting reviews online, there’s a statistic from some research that talks about eight out of 10 people say that empathy is the most important element of the customer experience with a company, and 97% of customers will show more loyalty to a company that shows them empathy, even if their problem is not solved, even if, you know, it’s just about the interaction and the human interaction, and are you training your people in that skill? Are you hiring for that skill? Are you, doing continuous learning around that skill, having them deal with role plays and scenarios? And, you know, like the information you read in the empathy dilemma, are you helping those people with the first two pillars of empathetic and effective leadership, which is self awareness and self care? So who knows what was going on for that woman at that moment in time, but maybe she didn’t have the capacity to connect with you because of whatever was going on in her own life, right, and however she was taking care of herself. Because when our tank is low, we can’t make space for another person’s perspective or point of view. It’s just like, you know, as a mom, when I’m tired and hungry, I’m a terrible mom.

Maria Ross [00:16:06]:
Right? I’m short. I’m I’m angry. I have no patience. And you have to replenish that tank for yourself and your employees have to replenish that tank, and you as a company have a responsibility to help your employees replenish that tank. Whether it’s with you know, and this is where we talk about operationalizing empathy. Right? You can actually what are your benefits? What are your, services that you provide for your employees that will help them tap into their empathy? Do you provide paid time off? Do you provide flexible work hours? Do you provide, mental health benefits? Those are all deemed empathetic benefits in many, many research studies that an employee says, if my company provides that for me, then I see my company as empathetic because they understand what I need beyond just the job they want me to do. And it’s not about, you know, it’s not about coddling and it’s not about like, oh, now all of a sudden we have to be our employees therapist. No.

Maria Ross [00:17:10]:
Do you want your employees to perform at their absolute best? Yes. Then these are the things you need to do, just like investing in capital expenditures, just like investing in recharging your phone at night. It’s it’s not extra. It’s to enable you to optimize if we’re gonna be, you know, jargony, optimize the assets you already have to perform at their highest ability so that the experience for the customer is a great experience that they will come back to again and again. And this is why, you know, I felt like I had to make the business case for empathy because the moral imperative doesn’t work with some people. So if you can be like, fine, let me show show you what’s in it for you. Let me show you the ROI of empathy, and it can’t be denied. It’s just, you know, there’s such a low bar when it comes to business of the customer experience that when you act with empathy, people talk, they come back, they stay loyal.

Maria Ross [00:18:10]:
And, you know, hopefully one day, I, you know, in a in a in my perfect world, it won’t necessarily be a competitive advantage because it’ll be table stakes. But right now, your company, if, you know, if you’re a leader listening, your company, your team, your culture can have a huge advantage to attract the best workers and the best customers. If you lead with empathy, if you model it, if you celebrate it, if you reward it, and if you operationalize it within your organization.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:40]:
I love that. And you make such a good case for that in your book. Like, it comes across really strong. And as somebody with a commercial background, I really appreciated that because if if you lose that almost that battle at the beginning, you don’t get to have the the kind of conversations that make the real difference. And I thought it was interesting in your book. As you said, it was written after the pandemic. And there was a couple of studies that you quoted, and one was that what we were seeing were HR professionals increasing kind of their awareness and attention to empathy. But, actually, it was showing that CEOs was, post pandemic, kinda going, oh, yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:19:16]:
We we kind of we did what we needed to. Now back to work. Yeah. Yeah. Is that still the case in in what you’re seeing?

Maria Ross [00:19:24]:
Well, it’s really interesting. That’s from a report by Business Solver. That’s actually a free report available to everyone. I would encourage folks to go to businesssolver.com/edge, and they can access the report for free. They it’s a a yearly report they do on the state of workplace empathy. And the reason why it’s wonderful is they’ve been doing it for nine years, so they have trend data around what’s been happening. And that was that was kind of the big takeaway from this past year was well, two big takeaways. One was that gap between CEOs going, look how amazing we were during the pandemic.

Maria Ross [00:19:57]:
We were great. Our organization is so empathetic, and HR people who were sort of in the trenches, HR leaders saying, wait. Hold on a minute. No. We still have issues. Like, we can’t you know, we’re talking about forcing people to return to the office. We’re talking about taking away the flexibility we gave them during the pandemic and all the ways that that that impacts people sort of on the ground in your organization. So, you know, some of the CEOs seem to have their head in the clouds a little bit about really what’s going on in their organization, and that was apparent through the results of the data.

Maria Ross [00:20:32]:
But, you know, they still there there it’s still a really positive trend in terms of CEOs saying that empathetic culture impacts financial performance. That number has been going up over the last nine years because it’s sort of like more people are joining the team and understand they’re seeing the light and they understand the catalyst that empathy provides within their culture, when you look at, like I said, vectors like engagement or innovation or retention. And those are those are bottom line benefits. Those are not just fluffy, nice to have.

Nicky Lowe [00:21:06]:
I love that it’s kind of by hook or by crook. It they’re they’re getting that because it’s like Yeah. The the moral argument doesn’t work. Let’s kind of profit kind of side, and that will help you.

Maria Ross [00:21:19]:
And on that, I think what’s and I I talked about this in my TEDx talk because I I got some heat for that of, like, well, how can you make this such a transactional thing? You know, empathy is supposed to be about connecting with people and and I get that because that’s actually the place I’m coming from is that I’m trying to get more people to connect. But, we also have to meet people where where they are. And so, it’s it’s okay to let someone know that, hey, there’s if you adopt this way of being, if you adopt this way of connecting with other people, it will bring you a host of goodness, it will bring you a host of joy. Because for me, what I’ve experienced in my own career is that it doesn’t really matter how people get to it. Once they practice empathy and they see the results, first of all, they’re having the conversation. They’re seeing the other person’s perspective. They can’t unsee it after they see it. And I’ve seen that they wanna do more when they’re positively rewarded by the interaction.

Maria Ross [00:22:21]:
They they start to go, oh, I get why this works now. And now they start to strengthen that muscle and it be becomes their default mechanism. It might be contrived at first. It might be for optics or whatever. But again, once they’re being empathetic, they’re being empathetic. They’re getting in the room. They’re having the conversations. They’re seeing the other person’s point of view.

Maria Ross [00:22:43]:
And for me, I don’t really care how they get there because once they do, they’ll be transformed.

Nicky Lowe [00:22:48]:
Yeah. And I think this and we can come on to talk about the pillars that sit behind this, and you already alluded to, like, a really, really important one, which is that self care piece, which music to my ears because as you say, we if we are depleted, we haven’t got that capacity to give that to others. And looking at actually, the area that I work with a lot of my clients on is how do we look at our own well-being but then use that as building the competency within leaders to lead with well-being. Tell me a bit about how you kind of arrived at your pillars. What was Yeah. Things that led to this? And if you can share with us what they are, that would be great.

Maria Ross [00:23:31]:
So the five pillars, I call it the five it’s not necessarily the five pillars of empathy. It’s the five pillars of being an effective and an empathetic leader at the same time. So, they are self care self awareness, self care, clarity, decisiveness, and joy. And I came to those through hundreds of interviews through my own podcast, The Empathy Edge, and other work that I’m doing, delivering trainings and doing keynotes, audiences that would come up to me and share things with me. And then my own research since the since the last book of what are you know, I was sort of looking at these model leaders who we all know them. Right? We’ve probably, hopefully, been lucky enough to have a leader that is just like that leader. You know, they they are empathetic. They’re approachable.

Maria Ross [00:24:17]:
They’re fun to work with, and they are excellent at what they do. They actually achieve very high performance and, you know, exceed their goals. And it was sort of like, what’s the recipe of those people? How do you deconstruct what makes them that way? And in interviewing many of them who were not always self identified, but identified by others as this kind of leader, it required some thought on their part of, like, how I don’t know how I do that. I just do it. So I sort of had to tease it out of them. And these five common traits kept coming up over and over again with all of these leaders. So, you know, we can go into those in in detail if you like, but it it just they came up over and over again. And it was really funny because I only had four at first.

Maria Ross [00:25:06]:
And then I started to say there’s something there’s something else here. There’s some other sort of magic seasoning in this recipe that I can’t put my finger on. And that’s when I struck on it, that it was joy. It was this, ability to bring levity to the to the work even when the work is tough, even when the work is stressful. These leaders just had a knack for creating an environment where people could relax, people could laugh at themselves, they could get comfortable taking risks, they could be more creative because when we’re not under stress or anxiety, our our executive functions are, you know, full full on. And so that that was always an element of the work was that they created this environment where people became friends or people could laugh with each other or, and so I was like, that can’t be overlooked. And it doesn’t mean you have to be the funniest boss in the room. It just means that you’re creating that environment and not just you creating it, but enabling your team to create it as well.

Maria Ross [00:26:03]:
You don’t have to do it all by yourself. But being able you know, those people being able to bring fun things to work, to talk about their lives, to to, interact with each other, not like in a forced team bonding kinda way, but they really genuinely wanna hang out with each other. And you don’t have to, yeah, you don’t have to be best friends, but but, you know, do you care about each other?

Nicky Lowe [00:26:26]:
Yeah. And and I think we overlook that. When I saw that in those five pillars, I was like, isn’t it interesting? Because we don’t talk about joy very much in the workplace. We might talk about, you know, what are our employee engagement scores or, you know, happiness scores. But that’s a joy. I think the choice of it is really, really powerful, and it reminds me of you may not be familiar over in US, but I know your your husband is kind of from from this side of the The Atlantic. The England soccer team, so our England football team Mhmm. We were renowned for kind of underperforming for years.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:04]:
You know? We haven’t world won the World Cup since 09/00 the and we, in most recent times, have had a guy called Gareth Southgate who’s been heading up our kind of our team, and there’s something very specific he did when he took that team over. Mhmm. And there’s loads of research being done in this. I work a lot in the elite sports kind of arena, and he brought a lady in called Pippa Grange. She’s a a sport a psychologist. And the specific thing that she did with this team was to bring joy back. Mhmm. Because when they were performing for England, there was so much fear because for years, they’d been seen to underperform, and it was almost like it was this great privilege and honor, but it came with such massive responsibility and almost like a dark cloud.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:51]:
Mhmm. Joy was sucked out of it, And he specifically said, I wanna create an environment where you have the joy of when you were a child playing on a Saturday and just the love and the joy of it. And he said if we can get back to that, everything else will be sorted because I know you’re world class players. You play for some of the best teams in the world.

Maria Ross [00:28:12]:
Yeah. You’ve

Nicky Lowe [00:28:13]:
lost the joy of playing for England. And so it’s really interesting that that was and he’s a really empathetic leader. Like, he he embodied everything that you’re talking about, and so I I loved seeing joy in that list.

Maria Ross [00:28:25]:
Well, you know, that’s so interesting because I I tell a story at the end of this book about the, basketball champion coach Steve Kerr here in The US of the Golden State Warriors, and his whole philosophy is around empathy. And that is how he gets the best out of his players. That’s how he coaches to the player based on what they need or what motivates them, And that’s what we mean by empathy. But more than that, he tries to help them create empathy for each other. And that’s where the joy comes in. That’s where the camaraderie comes in. It was funny because I was like, what do I call this pillar? It’s not humor. It’s not laughter.

Maria Ross [00:29:03]:
And I I struck on joy because it that means different things to different people, but it implies this is a place I want to be. And, again, even if the work is, you know, excruciating I mean, we’re talking about environments like police stations and emergency rooms where that’s not necessarily fun to be there, right? But can you create a joyful culture and can you create a culture where people genuinely are looking out for each other? They’re not competing, They’re not trying to hoard information. They’re not trying to stab each other in the back. Yes. Maybe they won’t be friends when one person leaves or the other person leaves, but can they be friends while they’re working there? Can they be friendly? And there’s lots of data around, there’s a wonderful expert in friendship called Shasta Nelson, who you should have on your podcast. She writes about, her most recent book was about the business of friendship and all the data around how much more engagement you get if your people have a friend at work, how much more likely they are to stay, how much more likely they are to over perform, how much more likely they are not to suffer from mental health challenges

Nicky Lowe [00:30:11]:
And well-being. Yeah.

Maria Ross [00:30:13]:
Well-being, all of that. And so so the data is there again to show us that what I what I love about the sports analogy you brought up and and the sports scenario is, again, Steve Kerr is a national championship winning coach, and he was he was a player on the the Chicago Bulls years ago when they had their dynasty. And they created a dynasty, created a dynasty with the Golden State Warriors. So we’re talking about an industry where it’s pretty black or white, right? Sports is you win or you lose. There’s no gray area. There’s no, I mean, you know, there’s no really like, oh, you came in third. Yay. Right? Like, they are there to win.

Maria Ross [00:30:53]:
And if they can succeed with an empathetic mindset and an empathetic leadership philosophy in such a, you know, for lack of a better word, cutthroat industry, surely your software firm or your accounting firm or your gardening business or your whatever can employ empathetic leadership to win in your specific industry, because this is one where it’s very binary. And the fact that the, you know, and especially in England, given that these these coaches and these leaders are embracing empathy and joy, it should tell us something. We shouldn’t ignore that.

Nicky Lowe [00:31:29]:
Oh, I love that we’ve gone there. I wonder if we could kind of take a step back and kind of explore the other pillars because you started with self awareness, which feels really important place. So tell me a little bit about that and why that’s so important.

Maria Ross [00:31:44]:
So I’ll just do a brief like thirty second on each one. So self awareness is the ability to understand your strengths and your challenges, your blind spots, and your emotional triggers. Because if you know how you show up in the interaction, you are better able to be present and you’re better able to take accountability of what happens in the interaction because of what you’re bringing to it, right? If I’m self aware, I’m gonna be more cognizant of how the interaction is going while I’m in it. Self care, like we talked about earlier, is really about replenishing that tank. So I can show up and listen to your point of view without defensiveness or fear. And that doesn’t, you know, that’s not just, I always say in the book, that’s not manicures and pedicures and massages, that’s self maintenance, not self care. Self care is really about what are you doing to revitalize and rejuvenate your mind, body, and soul. It can be active or it could be passive.

Maria Ross [00:32:39]:
It could be yoga and meditation or it could be rock climbing and training for a marathon, whatever it is that sort of gets your brain working in a different way. Clarity is about being very clear with expectations and values and roles because we can’t hold someone accountable to an expectation we haven’t clearly set. And clarity, you know, Brene Brown always says clarity is kind. It’s also empathetic because if you think of it from the other person’s point of view, you don’t want them to be unsure. You don’t want them to be tentative. You don’t want them to be wondering, do I am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to do that? I don’t know which way to go. You want them to be very clear on the direction they’re headed in and what they need to do to achieve success. So, career progression maps as an example of a very tactical thing, that’s empathetic.

Maria Ross [00:33:28]:
When you provide people with this is how you can progress in this role or this job, this these are the next steps, these are what we expect of you, then people can actually perform. And then when you have a problem, you have something to refer back to, to say, help me understand what part of this was not clear. Decisiveness, you know, sometimes in the name of empathy, leaders, women especially, will delay a a tough conversation or tough decision because they don’t wanna hurt anyone’s feelings, but that just actually leaves everyone in limbo. So it’s much better to be able to take in multiple points of view, don’t be a dictator, take in multiple points of view, synthesize it quickly, and then make a firm decision so people know where to go next. It’s kinda linked with clarity, because without direction, they’re operating in fear and anxiety, and they don’t know where to go or what to do next. So decisiveness is really, really important. Again, not dictatorship, but how can you synthesize multiple points of view and then let’s say the scenario is I’m getting multiple points of view on a strategic direction and, you know, Nikki, you give me some feedback, I need to then transparently and clearly communicate back my decision. And when I do that, I can say, you know what, Nikki? We we considered the input you gave us and it was really great, but here’s why it wasn’t gonna work with this decision.

Maria Ross [00:34:59]:
But please keep that feedback coming because we had a really great conversation because of what you contributed. So when you do that, I I I explained that we did consider your input. I encourage you to continue giving input, but I also clearly explained why that wasn’t gonna work in this scenario. So now you’re in a better position to, okay, I, you know, I don’t like it, but I I’ll accept it. And you know that it wasn’t just perfunctory that we were asking you for your input. And then as we talked about, joy is the last one. So really in in various combinations and degrees, those elements are all there for those most successful empathetic leaders. And what I wanna do with the pillars is give people a framework to say, if I’m trying to be an empathetic leader and either I’m burning out or my the team’s performance is dipping or people are unhappy, maybe look to see which one of these pillars might need to be shored up.

Maria Ross [00:36:01]:
Because if they’re all operating at full throttle, then you should be able to get the performance and the balance that you’re seeking.

Nicky Lowe [00:36:09]:
Brilliant. And I wonder because my my audience is obviously mainly females and female leaders. What what does your either lived experience from with your clients and your research show about female leadership and empathy? Like, where are we strong and where might we kind of be missing the mark slightly?

Maria Ross [00:36:29]:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I, when I was researching the first book, I, and I don’t go too far down sort of the gender gap because, the gender identity part of it, because, when I was talking about the first book, I did have a have a book agent that said, we love your concept, but can you make the book about female traits being a competitive advantage, not empathy? And I turned them down because I don’t I don’t like us genderizing these human traits because empathy is a human trait. We are innately all born with it as a species. Right? It’s how we’ve survived. It’s just for some of us, the muscles a little atrophied than others. But, but I feel one of the things I looked at with the first book, the first empathy book, was was there some sort of a a a trend of are are female leaders more empathetic than male leaders? My lived experience says no because two of my most psychologically abusive leaders were women, and two of my most empathetic leaders were men. So that’s just my sample size of one. But, I did speak to an expert on women’s leadership, Carol Vallone Mitchell.

Maria Ross [00:37:38]:
And, she initially said it’s not so much her her research back then showed that it wasn’t so much that women were necessarily more empathetic. It was that successful female leaders would often cite their ability to be empathetic and collaborate as a reason for their success. So kind of a slightly different nuance. Then when I interviewed her a few years later on my podcast, she said, actually, there is data that show that women tend to gravitate towards those skills that would imply empathy, right? Collaboration, nurturing, you know, be emotional connection, that sort of thing. But I I dislike talking about it only because I feel like it gives people a pass and an excuse to say, well, then I, you know, I’m I’m never gonna learn empathy because if you’re an adult and that empathy muscle has atrophied, you can intentionally build it back up, but you have to make an intention to do it. And just like any other skill, just like going to the gym, it’s you’ve got to make a commitment to say, I want to lead in a different way. And it’s gonna take practice, and it might feel weird, and it might feel awkward sometimes, especially if you haven’t been engaging with your team, and then all of a sudden you start engaging in a different way, they start wondering what’s going on, right? You can actually share that with your team and say, hey, I’m improving my leadership, and I wanna let you all know that I am, and what I’m trying to do is create better connections. So I’m gonna be working on this.

Maria Ross [00:39:14]:
I I invite you to work on it for yourself too, because it’s not just the leader’s job. It’s everyone’s job to be empathetic. And so it’s okay to be vulnerable and transparent with your team that that’s something you’re working on, and let them hold you accountable. Let them be part of it because that’s gonna be a powerful model for them to then interact with each other in the same way.

Nicky Lowe [00:39:36]:
And I love that you raised that actually because it’s one of the myths that you bust in your book, isn’t it? That it’s not just the leader’s job to be empathetic. So if there’s somebody listening, I completely get that. I my muscle might have kind of acted over time. Yep. Where would you encourage them to start? So as you say, maybe making that kind of statement to say, look. This is gonna you start to notice me do some stuff differently, and here’s why. And then what what are some of the practical steps that somebody could take?

Maria Ross [00:40:04]:
I love this question because I actually have some habits and practices, outlined in the first empathy book, the empathy edge. But the first thing is to practice presence. Again, it it empathy starts with you and you getting your own house in order to be able to meet someone with empathy. So how can you practice presence? You can adopt a mindfulness practice every day. Experts say ten minutes alone is enough and that can be whatever that is for you. It could be yoga or meditation like we talked about. It could be just sitting with a, coffee without a screen in front of you. What do you do to ground yourself at the beginning of your day or before high stakes conversation? When you have that conversation, are is your computer shut? Is your phone off? Are you fully present and focused with the other person? The other great practice is to embrace curiosity.

Maria Ross [00:40:56]:
Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people because they don’t guess at your point of view, they ask you about it. So get used to, instead of going into something with here’s all the reasons I’m right and you’re wrong, start with questions. Even if it’s controversial, even if it’s something you don’t agree with, tell me more is the magic three word phrase. Tell me more about that. Tell me more and get them talking because it will lower the temperature of the engagement, but it will also help the other person feel heard and you’ll gain valuable information. So, you gotta kind of put ego aside when you embrace empathy because ego kills empathy. So embrace curiosity. And then when you do, practice active listening.

Maria Ross [00:41:39]:
And I know that’s easier said than done. So one way to do it is to practice reflecting back what the person is saying to you before you launch into your rebuttal or your response. Right? So that you make sure you’re having the same conversation. So even no matter what it is. Right? So I could say, you know, Nikki, so what I hear you saying is that the sky is purple and frogs are yellow and, you know, grass is black. Is is that what I is that what you said? Am I accurately hearing you? Because and that’s an extreme example, obviously, but I’m I’m trying to do that without judgment to make sure that we’re having the same conversation. It also gives you a beat to formulate your response so you don’t react. And so someone can go, no.

Maria Ross [00:42:25]:
That’s not what I said. What I actually said was x, y, and z. Or they can say, yes. That’s exactly what I said. And now they feel heard. And then my another fun tip I have for people is to explore with your imagination. So this is everyone’s license to binge on Netflix or streaming. Consume books, movies, biographies, drama, theater, music that is created by people who have a different lived experience than you.

Maria Ross [00:42:53]:
And when you do this, you’re able to practice in a safe environment wondering what something is like for someone else and what you might do in that situation. So it gives you a safe place to do that and to kinda get a peek into someone else’s life, especially if that person is very different from you. So the more you can read, the more documentaries you can watch, the more, even fiction movies, you know, fictional movies about other people’s lives, it helps you flex that muscle. So when you’re in the real world and you meet someone different from you or with a different opinion, you can practice that skill. So those are kind of the top top line ones to share.

Nicky Lowe [00:43:35]:
I love that. And I love that last one because that’s such a a different take on how you build kind of diversity of thought and and kind of that openness and curiosity to other lived experiences and and importance. So that’s really powerful. So we’ve covered so much here, but if there was just one thing that somebody took away from this conversation, what would you want that to be?

Maria Ross [00:44:02]:
I want people to understand that empathy is a strength, not a weakness because it takes great strength, presence, self confidence, self assuredness to embrace someone else’s perspective, like I said, without defensiveness or fear. So don’t be afraid of your empathy. It absolutely has a place at work because wherever we interact with other human beings, empathy is required. And if we’re going to collaborate and interact and innovate effectively together, we’ve got to understand different points of view and be able to, you know, still hold fast to our own values and our own expertise and our own perspectives, but to never assume that we have all the answers and that we’ve seen the challenge or the problem from every possible point of view. This is why diversity in the workplace is so important because when you have that diversity, you actually can uncover risks and opportunities that you wouldn’t have seen if it wasn’t for that other person’s perspective. So leverage empathy as a strength, not a weakness. And if you can keep the pillars strong for yourself, especially the self awareness and the self care, you know, what are your emotional triggers? What are your what are your challenges? It can help you avoid dipping into people pleasing and submission, which I know especially there’s I know a lot of male leaders that struggle with it too, but especially female leaders because of socialization. So don’t think that empathy equates to doing what the other person wants.

Nicky Lowe [00:45:34]:
Love that. So where can people find out more about you? And I can put all the links in the show notes.

Maria Ross [00:45:40]:
That would be wonderful. So, they can actually go to the empathydilemma.com, which is the book page on my main site, and they can get a free chapter of the book there. They can sign up for my email list and my insights and inspirations. My core business is Red Slice, so it’s red-slice.com. But if they just go to the Empathy Dilemma, they’ll get there anyway. And I would love people to tune into the podcast as well, the empathy edge, because I feature leaders and thought leaders talking about empathy from every angle.

Nicky Lowe [00:46:10]:
I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It’s there’s so much you’ve covered in such a short space of time, and I just really appreciate the work that you’re putting out in the world, not only for kind of leaders today, but also for our children for the future. So

Maria Ross [00:46:24]:
Absolutely. Thank you for helping me amplify the message. I appreciate it.

Nicky Lowe [00:46:29]:
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you, so head over to illuminate-group.co.uk, where you’ll find ways to stay in touch. And if this episode resonated with you, one of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on iTunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening. Until next time, take care.