The Business Case for Cultivating Empathy

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Empathy. It's a word we hear all the time, and it's easy to dismiss as some touchy-feely, soft idea. But here's the reality: empathetic leaders attract great people to their company, empathetic companies attract profitable and sticky clients, and empathetic cultures become a competitive advantage when it comes to employee retention, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and building an enduring company. Welcome back to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. I'm business coach Steve Sandusky, and my guest today is Maria Ross. Maria is a brand strategist, speaker, and author of the book The Empathy Edge. In today's conversation, we discuss how to become an empathetic leader, how to build an empathetic company, and how to do it from a place of authenticity that leads to faster growth and happier clients and team members. With that, let's get started with Maria Ross. Maria, let's go back to August 2008. I think that's a memorable time in your life. So tell me what happened then and how has that shaped your work and life since then?

Oh yeah. Well, 2008, the previous year I had moved to Seattle from the Bay Area with my husband who got a job at Microsoft. And in 2008, I decided to start my own consulting business after years of marketing and consulting on my own. And I started my company Red Slice, and it was kind of a chaotic time because we bought our first house, we got our first dog. I was launching this business. We were in this new town. We didn't know anybody. We were making connections, and I suffered what can only be described as the worst headache of my life randomly. And fast forward for a month and a half of severe migraines, neck and back pain, and I ended up collapsing on my bathroom floor because it turned out it was a brain aneurysm that had initially just sort of slowly leaked and was causing all these symptoms, but then it ruptured and I had a, a brain hemorrhage. And so miraculously I survived. It's, it's something called a subarachnoid hemorrhage that I think the survival rate is about 65%, 55%. Don't quote me on that, but I was able to get to the hospital and began the long process of being in the hospital for 6 weeks and then recovering. And so it was a really interesting time because I completely had to halt everything. Everything had to stop— my business, my clients, our lives. And so as I began to heal from that process and the experience that I had at the hospital that gave me my care, University of Washington Medical Center, I realized how important empathy is in terms of us building connections. But for me as a business strategist, I started to realize the connection between being a large organization and being able to show empathy through every touchpoint. And I thought it was so interesting. And so I, I ended up volunteering for the hospital where I had my care as a patient advisor. After I got back on my feet again. And what I learned was it wasn't an accident. It wasn't that I just got really lucky with great nurses and staff. It was actually empathy by design within this really large bureaucratic organization. They followed a philosophy called patient and family-centered care, and it put the patient and their family at the center of the care experience. So everything they did, every policy they created, communication training they did for their new hires and their, their seasoned rose was about creating an empathetic experience for their patients. And I found that fascinating that, you know, normally we think, oh, empathy's great for like the mom-and-pop organizations where you can get to know your customers on a personal level, but you actually can operationalize empathy. And that was the seed of what eventually became my research and my book called The Empathy Edge, which gives leaders and organizations a playbook for no matter what size they are, there's no excuse. You actually can infuse empathy into your culture and your leadership and your brand.

Well, it seems like every podcast I do over the past few years, somehow empathy comes into the conversation. And sometimes people think empathy is just this squishy type concept. So in your research and in your work, how have you made the connection between being empathetic is just a good way to live. It's a good way to interact and communicate and relate to other people, as well as it's actually good for business. Have you seen that connection that it's good for business, and what is that connection?

Yeah, and that's actually why I wrote the book, was to build the business case for empathy and meet skeptics where they are, which is to say, show me the proof. And as I embarked on this journey of researching and finding the data around how empathy impacts retention, customer engagement, employee engagement, profits, stock price, lifetime customer value, all of these vectors. Innovation, for example, they've done studies on how empathetic cultures boost innovation. It became very clear to me that there was a business case to be made for empathy. And, you know, you want to genuinely embrace empathy. It's not about just like, well, let's paint a coat of brand empathy on our business and then we'll succeed. But it's when there's a real commitment from leadership to start with themselves as people or the employees as people and build that individual empathy and then expand that out into the culture that they build. What is the environment of empathy that we're creating? Are we creating a psychologically safe environment? Do people feel free to take risks? Do they feel like they can trust each other? Do they feel like they can be seen, heard, and valued? That's about like what I was talking about earlier, operationalizing empathy. What are your policies and procedures and rewards and accountability? And then that further expands out into the customer experience, which is an empathetic brand. So how do we make our customers feel? What is their experience and their policies and their procedures and the training that we do of our customer service reps or our sales reps? How do they engage with the customer to create what's perceived by the customer to be an empathetic experience? So it It was very important to me to make that connection because again, that's why I wrote the book, was I was feeling very disheartened about the examples of leadership that I was seeing in the world around 2016, 2017. And for my son who was 2 and a half at the time, I thought, here I am trying to teach him lessons about empathy and compassion and sharing and collaboration, but was it really helpful in the world for him to build those skills? And thankfully it is very helpful for him to build those skills because it helps you succeed in group environments. It helps you succeed in business. It helps you succeed as a collaborator and a leader. And I love that there's been this proliferation of, of research and studies that just continue to hammer the point home. In fact, last year a study came out that talked about empathy as the number one trait required for success for leaders in the 21st century. And it's because our problems are getting so complex that they have to be solved in groups. You can no longer be this lone wolf saving the day. And in order to have that group work cohesively and effectively, there has to be respect, there has to be understanding, there has to be listening to new ideas and understanding different points of view. And that's really what the output of empathy is. And so if you want to succeed in the 21st century, you've really got to build up that empathy muscle that we're actually all born with, but it just, you know, it atrophies over time.

Yeah, and I wanna touch on that a little bit more in terms of authentic empathy. I think you've also called it the veneer of empathy. But before we go into that, I wanna make sure we are on the same page when it comes to definitions here. So we've got empathy, we've got sympathy, we've got compassion. How do you distinguish between those three?

I love this question because this was a big part of my research at the beginning of the 3-year process. And the definition of empathy has actually changed over time. Back in the 1500s, I think even the 1500s to the 1800s, the word sympathy actually meant what in modern times we consider empathy. So if you've ever heard of the play Tea and Sympathy, that's what that means. It's about making a connection with another person. But really what it comes down to in terms of where science has gone in understanding our brains and how they work, but also psychology, empathy is about being able to, to see things from another person's perspective and in some instances feel what they're feeling, but that's not always required. That's emotional empathy. That's not cognitive empathy. And further, use that information that you glean from seeing things from another person's point of view to decide on your next course of action or your way of communication. So one side of it is seeing things from another person's point of view, and then when you actually put that information and you act on that empathy, that's what compassion is. Compassion is an action. Empathy is a mindset. And empathy is, you know, really what I, when I talk to C-level leaders, for example, who are a little uncomfortable with the idea of empathy, I tell them it's just another way of information gathering. It's another way of seeing the person at the table in front of you and understanding what might be going on for them. And that can often elicit an emotional connection. Sometimes, sometimes not. It doesn't have to. You can still have cognitive empathy. When we read books, when we see documentaries, when we travel, we learn about people different from ourselves, and that flexes that empathy muscle. And then you talked about sympathy. Which sympathy as we understand it today is more about feeling for somebody versus feeling with them. And it's often related to a feeling of pity, right? We often talk about sympathy when someone dies or someone goes through something tragic. Empathy is not about sort of looking at the person and feeling for them. Empathy is about feeling with them. And understanding things through their point of view, even if you haven't experienced it. Can you relate to those feelings maybe with a similar situation that caused those feelings? So empathy is the mindset, the information gathering. Compassion is empathy in action.

Okay, so let's say somebody's listening to this podcast and they're like, Steve and Maria, this is awesome. I wanna have an empathetic organization. I want all my people to display display empathy. But if we didn't hire people or screen for those people at the beginning, can we take someone who's with us today and try to create an organization that emphasizes empathy? Yeah, try and say that 3 times fast.

Exactly.

That emphasizes that. Can we do that with someone who didn't come into the organization with that as what the culture was? Can we make that shift, or do we almost have to start from scratch? And it's like, we probably need to turn over some people here if this is the direction that we want to go.

Well, the good news is you come into the world with empathy. So science has shown that empathy is innate in the human species. It's how we have survived through collaboration. You know, we often talk about survival of the fittest, but Darwin did many other writings around the fact that Nature is collaborative. That's how it survives. And so all the studies that have been done on babies and children show that we are naturally inclined to empathy, unless, you know, I should give the caveat, unless you have certain psychological disorders, which are very, very rare. What happens is that muscle atrophies over time, whether it's through your childhood or maybe a bad work environment you were in, or maybe, you know, models of success that you saw. That taught you that you should hide your feelings, you shouldn't connect with people, it's all business, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so all we need to do is help people in our organization rebuild that muscle, send them to the empathy gym again and strengthen it. And part of that is learning actions and habits they can take to strengthen that muscle. And I should add, it doesn't happen overnight. I just recorded a podcast episode for my podcast, The Empathy Edge, where I talked about I wish one workshop from me could help change your culture, but that's not how it works. So it's just like anything else. It's like yoga. It's like running a marathon. It's like learning how to play the piano. You've gotta practice and pretty soon it becomes part of your muscle memory, even though it might feel really awkward and weird at first. And so that's what I shared in my book. There are those habits and those practices. There's many, many more out there, but you know where they can start to build that. So the quick answer is you don't have to give up on those people. It's a matter of creating a curriculum. Creating the opportunities for them to strengthen that empathy muscle, but more importantly, what I mentioned before, creating that environment that rewards and celebrates and acknowledges empathy. So it's not enough to just shore everybody up and shore up their empathy muscle. Are you as an organization, as a culture, are you putting your money where your mouth is? Are you rewarding people for exhibiting empathy by whatever actions you denote for your organization? Are people hired, fired, bonused, promoted based on empathy like Airbnb does, for example? And again, like you mentioned, are we making screening for empathy and emotional intelligence part of the hiring process going forward? So the good news is you don't have to give up, but, you know, it may come to a point where you have someone that just refuses to embrace empathy, refuses to understand that human beings are working for them, and human beings are the ones responsible for the output and for making them successful as leaders. And if you have a culture where you're going to deem empathy as an important value, values are meaningless if you don't act on them. And so just as much as if you don't act on them is if you don't have consequences for someone who doesn't act on them. If you're not counseling out people, if you decide you're gonna become an empathetic culture, but you put up with bad behavior because someone's just really good at their job, that sends a mixed message. And then it's in no one's self-interest to sign up to show empathy because they're like, oh, but the organization's not really serious about it.

So how would you respond if someone says, I'm concerned that if I become a much more empathetic leader, that I'm going to go soft, that I'm just going to give in to what everybody else wants to do because I have empathy and I have sympathy and I have compassion. How do you respond to that?

I say that that's a misunderstanding of what empathy is. So empathy is not about being nice. You can be really nice and bake really good cookies and bring them into work, and it doesn't mean you're seeing things from other people's points of view. Empathy is also not acquiescing to crazy demands. That's submission. Right? So you can make a really tough business decision and you can do it with empathy. It's the way that you do it, the way that you operate. Are you getting input? Are you trying to think about what people need as you're doing layoffs, for example, or as you are maybe delivering a very difficult performance review? Is it about shaming and blaming, or is it about trying to understand what's going on for that person so you can ultimately help them improve their performance, which is really what you're both after? Right? The purpose of the performance review is not to just criticize someone till they cry. The purpose is to help them improve their work so that the company succeeds. And it's interesting because actually empathy requires a huge amount of confidence and strength. Because if you are going to be strong enough to be able to see things from other people's points of view without getting defensive and without being fearful, that actually takes strength. That's anything but weak. Because what happens is, you know, you are not a strong leader if you can't hear another point of view without putting your defenses up because it wasn't your idea or because you think that shouldn't come from that person, or, you know, whatever the myriad reasons we have for doing that. And so you actually have to, one of the tips I have in the leadership section is to build your own self-confidence, not arrogance, but your own self-confidence. 'Cause you have to be grounded first before you can be empathetic towards somebody else. So some of the strongest leaders out there, when we look at Marc Benioff of Salesforce, when we look at Mark Cuban, so many leaders I could name from companies that we've never even heard of, they're actually very strong, decisive, ambitious, confident leaders who also, it's a both and not an and or, who also operate with empathy as a way of getting people on their side, as a way of inspiring and engaging their employees, and as a way of showing respect for the people that do the work in their organization.

I think what you just described there ties into something I heard you say on one of your podcasts earlier, and I think it's connected to some of Joseph Campbell's work on the hero's journey. And one of the things that he talks about in the hero's journey is a mythological element that is sometimes used. It's this idea of putting on the enemy's skin. And we see this in movies where in order for the protagonist to get what they want, they have to put on the outfit of the enemy so that they can look like the enemy and they can infiltrate them and they can get their goal met. But I also heard you say, and I'm going to quote you here, I've heard you say that you do some acting and you were talking about that and you said, quote, one of the cardinal rules of acting is that you don't judge the character you're playing So people that are playing horrible people doing horrible things, they don't play them as I'm a horrible person. They play them as trying to understand what's behind the actions that they're taking. So tell me a little bit more about this idea of getting into another person's skin, how that relates to empathy. Is that a technique that we might apply ourselves to become more empathetic?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's about not only just trying to figure out how that person's sees the world, but not assuming you know how that person sees the world. I think that's where we get into a lot of issues with organizations that are working on diversity, equity, and inclusion, for example, is you want to be curious. Curiosity is the number one trait of empathic people. And so are you asking questions so you understand and don't say, you know, you're not always assuming, well, I think this is how this is for this person or what they might be thinking. It could be as simple as Tell me how you feel about this decision. Tell me how you see this strategic effort. You know, please tell me more about why you disagree with that budget proposal. It's being able to ask the questions as well as put on the skin, for example, because you don't always want to make assumptions because those assumptions are also going to be based only on your own worldview. And so if you say, well, I know how Steve feels, I'm going to pretend I know how Steve feels because I think he's doing this and this and this. That's a start, but a lot of it has to come from you and it has to come from a dialogue between us. I can do some work trying to learn your world and assume your world, but then I have to start asking questions. And what I loved in my research that I found, another tidbit, is that empathy is the number one trait of successful salespeople when it's combined with ambition. So you mentioned earlier like, oh, well, people think I'm soft. Well, you have to have the ambition part, but it's because they go into a sales meeting maybe with a prepared pitch, but they take their cues from the prospect that they're talking to, and then they pivot in the moment based on what that person needs or what that person is communicating to them at the time. That's actually a form of empathy too, because I'm going to adjust versus just here's what I'm gonna say, just sit there and listen. It's, oh, you're telling me what you need. Let me adapt the sales conversation to what your particular problems are or your particular challenges. And then it becomes a consultation. It's a conversation at that point. And so I love that it's this idea of when we think about sales, one of the empathetic things that most successful salespeople do that they might not even realize is empathetic is when they deal with objection handling. So I'm gonna go into a sales situation. Here's where I think the customer's gonna get stuck. They're gonna balk at the price. They're going to wonder about the length of the engagement. And when you are actually thinking of someone's questions in advance, that's empathy. So we actually do it a lot more than we think we do, and it's just about being more intentional as we move forward. And that's, you know, to your point, that's about putting on the prospect's skin and going, here's, here's what I'm imagining the prospect might be thinking and feeling. And that is such a great way to approach it, whether you're approaching a prospect or you're going into maybe a contentious budget meeting with a colleague. And it's like, okay, where might they get stuck? What might be their motivations for the plan they wanna implement versus the plan I wanna implement? And given that, let me ask some questions so we can find common ground in the conversation.

Yeah, I like how you framed sales as empathy. And what I mean by that is good sales. Yeah, good sales. Ethical sales. Ethical empathy sales. A lot of people don't like to make sales for whatever reason. They don't like to picture themselves as a salesperson. Yet if you think of sales as you're describing it, as being empathetic to the needs of another person and trying to understand what is it that they need, sort of like the consultative sale, as you talked about, but put that empathy frame on it, that I'm here to help you in the best way that I can, and I have a service, in this case financial services or whatever product or service somebody may be selling that's listening to this. If I so strongly believe in what I offer, then I should want to do this all day long because I'm in the business of helping people. And if I have empathy and I know you have a need and I have a service or a product that meets your need, It's like, am I selling or am I just meeting people where they are and helping them accomplish what they want?

I love that you said that because in my work as a brand strategist, that's what I work with my clients on a lot. It's sort of like, if you're not the most excited about your service, about your service or your product, who else is going to be? It's not just about pushing something on people who don't need what you have to offer. That's actually not empathetic, and that's why Being really good at marketing and targeting your marketing based on the needs people have is actually a more empathetic and ethical way to market because then you're just reaching the people who have a need and who need to know about you. And that's what I tell like a lot of my solopreneurs, especially when I work with financial planners or designers or consultants or coaches. It's this idea of if you can help someone, it's your obligation to market and let them know your solution exists to solve their pain, right? Because that's what marketing is. I, my whole career, I've gone on this rant of using marketing for good rather than evil, which, which feeds into my work with empathy. And it's this idea of marketing is not about lying to people. It's about elevating the truth of your story so that the people who need what you have can find you. And so when you think of sales, and I'm using air quotes here, I know people can't see me, it's actually about a conversation with someone who needs a problem solved or craves a benefit, and you have a solution for them. And all the sales conversation is, is about getting to what their particular challenge or need is and helping them understand how your solution could be a good fit. And that's why, you know, you, you mentioned financial advisors and financial planning. What I love about really great financial advisors is they can work with someone who's very, very risk-averse and conservative, and they can work with someone who just wants, like, money as fast as possible in the stock market. And if you're a good financial advisor, you can work with both of those people because you can adapt to where they are and what they need. And that's not a cookie-cutter approach. A cookie-cutter approach to any work that you do is actually very, very non-empathetic.

Yeah, and it's interesting how empathy shows up everywhere. We did a podcast recently with Andy Crestodina, who is the co-founder of Orbit Media. And right on his website, it says, "Web design is a test of empathy." So he's in the business of building websites, and he says, it's all about empathy. It's all about trying to understand the visitor to your website and how can we make it as frictionless as possible? How can we understand what are the questions that they're asking? And how can we answer those questions? How can we understand what their potential objections are? How can we solve those? How can we have testimonials? How can we prove our credibility? So on and so forth. So it's interesting that it shows up everywhere in every business. And so it is imperative. And of course, that's why you wrote the book, to make the case as to why this is imperative that all entrepreneurs, all business owners, all leaders need to be more empathetic. So a couple things that I do wanna touch on here before we have to wrap is what are some things that we can do as leaders to cultivate this empathy muscle, as you talked about earlier? And then I also want to talk about, as companies, what can we do to be more empathetic organizations? And I know in your book, you mentioned Brighton Jones, who a lot of folks listening to this podcast are familiar with that organization, a very large, very successful RIA firm out in the Seattle area. So I want to talk about them. I want to talk about REI, one of my favorite companies that I like to shop at. So first, let's start with what are some of the characteristics of empathetic leaders? I think in your book you've got 7. I'm just going to quickly run through them. And if you could give a comment or two about each of those. So the first one is practice presence.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned earlier, it has to start with you and your own foundation. And if you have a weak foundation of self-doubt, of scattered brain, of anxiety and stress, you're going from meeting to meeting to meeting, you're not actually focused on where you actually are in the moment, you have no space to read people. You have no space to actually be in it with the person that you're talking to and allow that person's point of view to be heard without you being defensive. So some of the best, most empathetic leaders, the most successful ones, have some sort of mindfulness practice. And I know that word, that phrase scares people. You know, it doesn't mean 7 days at a yoga retreat. It can be whatever it means to you to ground yourself. It could be jogging in the morning. It could be sitting with a cup of coffee without your screen. It could be meditation, buffering time between meetings so you have a chance to, to settle and get into it and be completely present. Because when you are present, you have space in your brain to take on another person's point of view.

And I want to combine 2 of these and just have you sort of compare and contrast because they might seem opposite of each other. So one is listen more, stay humble, and then the second is cultivate confidence. So we want to be humble, but we also want to be confident.

Yeah, I mean, it's about keeping a learner's mindset and remembering that you may not have all the answers, that others can contribute and have an idea that could be amazing. And so if you are empathetic and open to new ideas and new perspectives and new experiences, you're much more likely to be successful because you'll be able to have the aperture opened on what is possible. But if you are arrogant and believe that it's your way or the highway and you're the only one who's an expert in this, you're never going to be able to have the advantage of other experiences and other people's viewpoints that could augment and catapult you to growth. And so it's very important to continue to always have this learner's mindset, this growth mindset, as they talk about. And that's what we mean by staying humble, because confidence is not the same thing as arrogance. Arrogance is, I know better than anyone else and I'm the smartest person in the room. Confidence is, I have a unique set of skills that I bring to the table, but so does everyone else in this room. That's confidence. And so you want to build self-confidence, again, kind of related to number 1, to shore up your own, you know, self-doubt or imposter syndrome or anxiety so that you're open enough to not see someone's perspective as a personal attack and merely as information.

Another one here is be curious. I think you touched on that a little bit earlier. Another one is explore your imagination. How does that apply to empathy?

Yeah, exploring with your imagination is about, again, building that empathy muscle in a safe environment. So we touched on it briefly, but read literary fiction, read biographies or listen to them on audio, watch documentaries, travel, eat different food from other countries. The more that you expose yourself to people who are not like you, The more you exercise that muscle of, this is interesting, I'm learning about someone else and their experience and their culture and their heritage and what it must be like for them because I have no, no sense of what it would be like to grow up in this place or in this socioeconomic status or with this gender or with this race. And so the more that you consume different media, art, music, books, film, you know, this is, I always joke, this is when I do my workshops with leaders is that this is your chance to binge on Netflix and it's, you know, It's personal development, right? And so that really helps you exercise that muscle of, gee, you know, what would it be— how would I feel if I was in that situation? Or, I never knew that this was what it was like for people. Or even, I love this one, it's like, wow, that person I thought was really different from me, we're actually much more alike than I thought. You can learn a lot of that through books, through theater, through movies, through art, through music. And so Take that time to explore with your imagination.

And I think you touched on another one here too, find common ground. You just mentioned briefly about we're more alike than we are different.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. That one's great when you're going into like a negotiation or tense business discussion is to not put yourselves on opposite sides of the table. So as much as you can in those situations, state your shared goal out loud. As crazy as it might be, you know, as obvious as it might be, you know, Steve, you and I both know we don't wanna get fired tomorrow, right? Can we both agree that that's a goal? Or, you know, can we both agree we really wanna hit our numbers this quarter? Now, your way of doing it seems to be different from mine, but can we both agree that that's the destination we're both headed in? And that just does something to the tenor of the conversation. And if you can keep checking in with each other, That remember, this is our goal. We're just trying to hash out different ways to get there. That's where you can really find common ground and be much more empathetic to, oh, I still, I still don't agree with you, Steve. By the way, empathy is not agreeing with somebody. I still don't agree with you, but I understand your context now and I understand why you feel the way you feel. And since our common goal is X, maybe we can get to X. By doing it this way where I'm comfortable and you're comfortable, you know, it actually opens up that productive dialogue.

When people say, well, let's just agree to disagree, is that a cop-out? How do you think about that as it relates to empathy?

You know, I don't think it's a cop-out because if you're at least willing to have the conversation and you, and you've heard each other, heard each other, listened, that active listening is part of empathy. You can still walk away not agreeing with each other, but seeing each other as human beings. There's a man named Edwin Rutsch who runs the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. He does empathy circles, which he's trained people all over the world. You can sign up, it's free training at his site. It's empathycircles.com, I believe. And he's done these empathy circles at the most divisive political rallies that we've had in the US the last few years. He's actually gotten people from opposite sides, very extreme people, from opposite sides into an empathy tent to hear each other, to listen to each other. But it doesn't mean what the goal of the conversation is to sway your opinion or to sway my opinion. The goal of the conversation is to just be able to have a dialogue and say, you know what, I still disagree with you, Steve, but I understand why you feel the way you feel. And I didn't have that understanding before. So we are going to agree to disagree. In that respect. But now it's not so contentious. It's not so, you know, I'm dehumanizing you. That's a helpful phrase, but only after you've heard both sides and after both people have been given an opportunity to be heard and listened to.

Right. So empathy helps us have civil discourse.

Yes.

As opposed to some of the really nasty discourse that we seem to be having.

And you might discover something about, like, That's actually a really good point. And now I understand. I still don't agree with your method of getting there, you know, so I'm going to respectfully agree to disagree. But, you know, your context for your experience is valid, right?

Let's talk about Brighton Jones for a minute. I think you've done some work with them. You talked about them in your book. They're a large registered investment advisory firm based in the Seattle area. Tell me about how they have been thinking about empathy.

Yeah, they came on my radar when I was doing the research for the book, as they had a director of compassion at the time, and they were very committed to creating a different kind of company, different kind of culture, and a different type of relationship with their clients where it went beyond just wealth management. And so they implemented a training series within their organization to shore up everyone in the organization's empathy and get everyone on the same page in terms of emotional intelligence. Because they wanted to create relationships with their clients. And so many companies talk about that, but they don't actually do it, right? They say, oh, the relationship is I take you to a ball game, or I send your kid a gift on their birthday. But they really wanted to get to the root of that emotional connection. And so empathy was a part of that work. And they felt so strongly, as I said, they hired a director of compassion at the time. And what they were doing was not only doing this training for their internal employees, they ended up expanding that training out to their clients to the community. You know, that's how they stood out as a wealth management firm. The founders put a lot into— you know, there were lots of personal experiences that I talked about in the book that led to them having this epiphany about, we do not just manage people's money, we are helping them achieve their goals, support their families, you know, all the things they say in nice financial advertisements, but they were actually going to live it.. And part of how they were gonna live it was not only ensure they strengthened everyone's empathy and emotional intelligence that existed in the organization, to your question earlier, but also start hiring for it. And so they put a very specific process into their hiring and screening and interviewing process that was about searching for and identifying emotional regulation and emotional intelligence, because they said, if we are going to create this culture, We wanna make sure the people we continue bringing into this culture are going to add to it and not, you know, toxify it. So they were very, very serious about that and they had some aspects of rewards and accountability around that. So it was just very, very impressive and, and made them stand out. And that was a genuine, you know, when we talked about the empathy veneer earlier, it wasn't this like Machiavellian board decision to say, we're going to look better as a wealth management firm if we do X. It came genuinely from the purpose and the values and the hearts of the founders to actually want to do this work in the world in this way. And that's what we mean by authentic empathy. It wasn't meant to be a publicity stunt, and that's why it required so much work and took so much time.

Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that as we hire people, we need to screen for emotional intelligence. And I think there's lots of different ways that you can do that. So people can check that out on Google, our favorite resource, but lots of different types of assessments and profiles I think that people can use for that. I also want to talk about another great Seattle company, REI. And I want to go back to Black Friday, of course, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. And I think this was in your book, or maybe I heard it on your podcast, about what did REI do as it relates to Black Friday? And first of all, tell us, who is REI?

So REI is an outdoor outfitting company. It's a co-op, and they, you know, you can go there to buy camping gear or ski gear or clothing or equipment or everything outdoors. And that is actually their mission, is to help people appreciate and enjoy the outdoors and get outside. And so years ago, in an employee meeting where they were talking about how they were living their values around the holidays and tying that to the brand. The discussion came up of Black Friday, which many people know, and it's actually now a worldwide phenomenon, not just the US. It's the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after our US Thanksgiving. And they talked about how just the commercialization of the holidays and how, oh, it used to be about our family and our friends and giving and sharing, and it's just become so commercialized. And of course, if you've ever worked retail, nobody wants to work on Black Friday because it's absolute chaos. And so organically within this employee meeting where they were talking about their values and talking about what the holidays meant to them, what those values meant to the brand, someone said, well, what if we just closed on Black Friday and gave everybody the day off? And of course there was laughter and people said, oh, we, but we could never do that. And the leadership in the room said, I don't know, can we? And they explored it and they decided to take a big risk which when I interviewed at that time, the head of customer experience said he was surprised it wasn't really a hard sell because the company was so mission-driven. Every decision they made came back to their mission. It wasn't just a pretty poster on the wall. It was about helping people develop a love of the outdoors. And when you looked at it through that lens, of course we shouldn't have people stuck in a mall fighting in lines. To get a deal on something. And for our employees too, they should be able to enjoy the day after Thanksgiving with their family and their friends. And so they took a huge risk and they created the Opt Outside campaign, #OptOutside, which still to this day continues. And other companies have adopted it because it brought them nothing but success. It brought them new members in their co-op. It increased their revenue. It was the most genius, you know, PR that they got from it. But the point is it didn't come from, again, that boardroom meeting of how can we look really good and look really empathetic. It came from very mission-driven values within their organization to stop and look at something that was actually hurting their employees and potentially annoying their customers, right? And so saying, okay, well, what can we do about that? Can we rethink this and can we flip it on its head? And it's been super successful for them.

Yeah, I just love that example because it really shows authenticity about they are walking the talk here. You know, they're living the brand, they're living what they say they're all about, and they put their money where their mouth was. So I appreciate you sharing that example. So I got one final question, but before I get to that, tell us, how can people learn more about you? Tell us, where can they get the book? I know you've got a podcast. I'd love for you to plug that again as well.

Thank you. Well, my main hub is red-slice.com. That's my branding business, but it's also where you can find my books. I've written The Empathy Edge as well as some other books. You can find them there. You can find them in all the usual suspects online. And then for the podcast, the podcast is called The Empathy Edge to continue the research that I started with the book, speaking to leaders, to psychologists, to bestselling authors from all facets of empathy and how to be very practical in Applying it to your business and your life. And that can be found either through the main website or its standalone website, theempathyedge.com. And then folks can connect with me on Instagram, redslicemaria.

Excellent. All right. Final question here. This comes from our previous guest, and she had no idea who was gonna be on the receiving end of this question. And her question for you is, if you could remove one piece of technology that could never come back in the world, what would that technology be and why?

Oh my gosh, that is such a good question. I often question whether the smartphone was the best thing that ever happened to us or the worst thing that ever happened to us as a society. I don't really know because I use a lot of technology and it augments my life, so I can't really think of one that I would take away forever, because again, you can always use something for good or evil, right? So right now, nothing's— I'm blanking on what's coming to mind. I, I don't know if it's so much technology as I do have a problem with some social media channels. That would be the only one that I would pick is maybe like removing a few of the social media channels that unfortunately we've become very reliant on. To connect with each other, and we don't. It's caused more harm than good.

So maybe something like a dishwasher, because when I was growing up as a little kid, we didn't have a dishwasher. And I can still remember, we all had chores. We had one person would wash the dishes, one person would dry the dishes, one person would put the dishes away. Now we just throw them in the dishwasher, and we could get rid of the dishwasher and we'll have more family time.

I can't be with you on that one. As the mother of an 8-year-old, I cannot be with you on that one. But I see, but I see I see your point. So I see how that could be. You know what? Maybe not so much a technology I would get rid of, but a technology that I wish would be created is that if your phone knew you were eating, knew you were at a meal or a restaurant, it would automatically not get reception.

Well, I'm sure with AI we're going to get to that point at some point.

Yeah. The worst thing I can think of is if airplanes are going to let people use their cell phones while in flight. That would be the most awful thing for me.— since we clearly don't have enough willpower on our own as human beings, if maybe that technology could get invented of like when you're entering a theater, when you're entering church, when you're entering somewhere else, all the reception goes off. Yeah.

Oh, I'm— I'll bet we have that technology today with—

I'm sure we do.

Yeah, it probably is. Field communication. And, uh, sounds good. All right, well, Maria, this has been fantastic. I appreciate your time today and encourage everyone listening listening to this to check out all the great work that Maria is doing.

So thank you. Thank you so much, Steve, for having me.

I appreciate it. What I really like about my conversation with Maria is how she's able to take a concept like empathy, which many people would consider a, quote, soft skill, and give us some tangible ways to cultivate empathy as individual leaders and how to infuse it through our company. Being empathetic is not a strategy or a tactic. It's a way of being. It's a way of showing up in the world. And the more empathetic each of us can be, and the more we can cultivate it in our workplaces, the better off all of us will be. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

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