[00:00.5]
Welcome to Inside Personal Growth podcast Deep dive with us as we unlock the secrets to personal development, empowering you to thrive here. Growth isn't just a goal, it's a journey. Tune in, transform, and take your life to the next level by listening to just one of our podcasts.

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Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from Stillwater, Oklahoma. I don't know if anybody out there knows where Stillwater is, but we've got Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller on.

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I just got her book yesterday. So here it is, the empathetic leader. Melissa, good day to you. How are you in Stillwater? I'm doing well, Greg, and thank you so much for having me on. It's such a pleasure to be here. Well, it's a pleasure to have you as a guest and I want to let our listeners, Noah, just a tad bit about you.

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Before we go into the questions about the book and for all of my listeners, as well, we're going to have look in the show notes below you will see the link to her website. But literally that website is E, Q, V, I A, E.

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Well, it's E Q U V I. And then empathy.com. there you can download a free chapter of her book as well. You can see her TEDx talk as well. So you're in for a treat, to go to that website because that TEDx talk is great.

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So who is Melissa? Well, we're going to find out, but I'm going to tell you a little bit about it. She's an educator, researcher, consultant, author of this powerful new book, which I'll hold up again for the listening audience.

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It's a beautiful cover. Complimented her on that. And the full titer is the Empathetic How EQ via Empathy Transforms Leadership for Better Profit, productivity and Innovation. She brings a rare combination of academic depth, leadership insight, and human vulnerability.

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In her book, she reveals how empathy is not just nice to have, but a learnable, actionable skill that can transform cultures, elevate performance, and restore, humility in the workplace. So through compelling stories, including her own painful experiences with unempathetic leadership, she shows how leaders can move beyond the old command and control models and reshape the future through connection, courage and emotional intelligence.

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She believes that we're at a crossroads, which I believe as well. In a world that's increasingly shaped by data, AI burnout and rapid change, empathy is one differentiator, that can't be automated or outsourced.

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Her work helps leader understand how to use empathy strategically, not as, softness, but as strength, clarity, and organizational advantage. Well, Melissa, welcome to the Inside Personal Growth podcast.

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Thanks for being our guest and being on our show. So, you know, you've had an interesting journey. Tell the listeners, if you would, because people write books at different times in their life for different reasons in their life. You never know why they're writing the book.

[03:36.4]
Frequently it has to do with some personal things. Usually there's a little bit of a memoir in some of these books as well. So let, our listeners know a little bit about you and why you wrote this book and why you think it's so important now. Yeah, absolutely.

[03:52.5]
And I guess maybe I kind of fall into that category where there's a little bit of memoir in there, too. I was a performing musician. I was classically trained. I got to tour. I got to play with people like Ray Charles and, you know, David Ogden Styers and Main Mannheim Steamroller, and just, you know, it was.

[04:12.2]
It was awesome. I loved that life, but it. It isn't very stable. And I really like food, shelter, and clothing. So, you know, I mean, it's nice to have. Right. Benefits. Yeah. So, I went and got my doctorate and started teaching. I was a French horn professor.

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I was tenure track. And I was really excited because it's not. I. A lot of those. I mean, if you think about how many French horn professors you've known over the course of your life, most. Yeah, exactly. Most people are like, they have one of those. Is there such a thing?

[04:44.3]
Yeah, exactly. You know, so, you know, I was really excited when I got that job, but it was only about a month or so. It was within the first term, and I was assaulted by one of my colleagues. Oh. Which was really difficult.

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But then, I mean, it started off bad, and then it got worse. And over the next seven years, it spiraled out so bad between the initial event and dealing with unempathetic leadership and, you know, unempathetic systems within this toxic workplace that I eventually had to leave.

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You know, I mean, like, when I went to the chair of my department, I was told if I was stirring up trouble as junior female faculty, I'd never get tenure. Well, tenure was kind of the least in my worries. Yeah. When I went to my dean, I was told that if I didn't like it, I should just leave.

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Well, which other French horn professorship was I going to get? So, you know, it just. It took time and it unraveled. But by the end of it, I had to actually leave music altogether, and I just didn't quite know what to do. So I spun out for a while, but I kept coming back to the questioning of, why this had happened.

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What was so wrong with this system that it felt it was okay to do this, that it just didn't seem to have any connection with people, that, you know, everybody was just a cog and you were all replaceable. And it kept getting pulled back to this empathy thing.

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And even though I didn't necessarily know that's what it was at the time, I just kind of kept getting pulled in that direction. So I decided to dig in deeper. And long story short, I'm finishing up my second doctorate now on interdisciplinary leadership and the dissertations on leadership and empathy, because I'm that serious about believing that we are at a crossroads and something needs to change, and it needs to change.

[06:36.6]
So that experience at that university with those. With that fellow person and then the administrative staff really was the impetus for you kind of going in this direction. You, you think that if they had changed the culture, and changed the way that they dealt not only with female leaders, but everybody in the culture, that it could have been.

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It. It could have been a different outcome? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I. I thought I was going to be a musician forever and would have been perfectly happy doing that, but it just. With the culture, it just didn't happen that way. Well, so in that same tone you wrote, you.

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You shared that story that you just shared now with this unempathetic leadership and how it derailed your early career and pushed you to the edge of homelessness? How did that experience shape your understanding of empathy and leadership and ultimately, you know, take you to writing this book?

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I mean, what you just told us was one thing, but the other thing, to actually push you close to homeless is a, completely other thing. It must have just been brutal. Yeah, it was. And it was a compounding of situations.

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You know, the assault happened. I managed to make it through about another year and a half, and then by the end of that second year is when I had to spend time in my car. And luckily I found a place to live within a couple days.

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But it was right on that edge where I was in the car with my cat, you know, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. My family was all a long ways away, and they didn't necessarily know what was happening anyway. I didn't have a support system. There was nowhere else to go.

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And if I wanted to hang onto this job. I mean, where was I going to go? You know, you can just. You were between a rock and a hard place, as they say. Kind of you needed the money to live. At the same time you knew you needed to quit.

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And I'm sure there was a lot more to quitting than just quitting. Not that I know anything more about the story, but you obviously had a case against the person in the university. I don't know how far that went, but the reality is you did have one.

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You wrote in your book that 93 to 98% of people have empathy, yet very few know how to use it actionably in a workplace environment. Why do you believe that we have lost this very, very, what I would say in every human soul exists this empathy.

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And what do you think we're losing it to and why? And how do you think that we could, reignite that not only in of ourselves? Because to me it seems like when one person is empathetic and has empathy toward another or compassion toward another, literally that should spread.

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Right. It's like a wildfire. Somebody's going to put a match in the forest and all the trees are going to get burnt up. Right. But the point is, is that it doesn't always happen that way with empathy. And I think it's because there's so much in the way of complexity, Melissa, with people's personality, their feelings, their emotions, that they can't get in there and grab what empathy means.

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Would you agree? I would absolutely agree. And the interesting thing is that it's societal for us. In other countries this isn't necessarily the case. I mean they actually teach like for instance the Norse countries, they teach what's called social emotional learning.

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And that's taken on a different connotation in our country compared to what it actually is. But they'll start kids as young as six and it'll go to 16. And empathy is part of this. So this is part of the culture, this is part of how these kids are trained. So that then when they go on and they go into business and they get MBAs or whatever their equivalent is and they become leaders, this is already in their fabric.

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Whereas in this country we just don't do that. We don't really talk about empathy other as, then just this fluffy thing that's out there. There were a couple studies with MBA programs that were done not that long. Well, one was done and then there was a follow up study and what they did is they actually ranked, things that MBA students thought were important, and they were all soft skills.

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So communication and empathy and da, da, da, da, da, da. And in both studies, in different places, empathy ranked dead last. Wow. Which tells me that these students aren't necessarily learning what it is and how it can be used strategically.

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And if they don't have a hold of that in an mba, how are they going to take that into a leadership position? Yeah. It is fascinating to me, of all the people that have been on the show and talked about empathy, that, when you look at vulnerability, Brene Brown, and you look at empathy and you look at these terms which describe people at their best.

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Unfortunately, in our business world, we've been teaching competition. So there's kind of this, dichotomy between, oh, I'm, the soft person versus, no, I got to go to business school and get an mba, and then I've got to beat out everybody else to be better.

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And then you look at all these videos on the Internet that are talking about all these people that are making success. They don't always think of the successful person as being the most empathetic. Sometimes they're the most ruthless. You know, I don't think that it's onset.

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I'll say this, that most people never described Steve Jobs as very empathetic. Okay. But on the other hand, he was a good business person. Now, I've been told that intuition goes in that way.

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I think Steve and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and all those people used intuition. The question is, is how many leaders do you see using empathy? Well, I think the first thing we have to do is actually have a, definition, because part of the problem with empathy is it is one of those fluffy things, you know, and people think that it's automatically, I feel what you feel.

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But there is so much more to it than that. There are, over the years, there's been 43 different definitions of what empathy is. And really, at its base, it's about understanding and connection through perspective taking. And that perspective taking is the big thing, putting yourself in someone else's shoes.

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So when we're talking about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and saying, well, they didn't have empathy, they didn't have that. I feel that touchy, feely feeling kind of empathy, or at least they didn't display it. But in order to be good businessmen, they were able to take the perspective of their customers, of, their stakeholders, of their board.

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So that empathy suddenly takes on a strategic side that people in business don't necessarily think about, but is incredibly important. So empathy as you've defined it, did you say 34 definitions?

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Is that what you said? Did I get 43? 43 I just mixed up. That's not fair to say. 43. Either way, one thing you said is empathy is not sympathy. It's not warmth, it's not compassion or niceness. Now, that's going to flip a few people on their head because the first thing they think about is that.

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And sometimes these confuse or derail leaders, like, hey, I'm supposed to be warm and compassionate and nice. How can leaders tell that they're using kind of this wrong approach? So the thing to keep in mind when you're dealing with empathy is it always goes back to perspective taking, and it's always perspective taking by seeing it through the other person's eyes and not your own.

[15:23.4]
That's the difference between sympathy and empathy. With sympathy, you're looking at another person's situation, but it's through your own eyes, with your own judgment, with your own feelings and baggage attached to it. Empathy, I'm seeing it through the other person's eyes. So as a leader, that doesn't mean that I need to throw myself wholesale into their emotions.

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And in fact, I actually tell the people I work with not to do that. Because if you're wrapped up in everybody else's emotions all day long, you're heading for burnout. That's really a hard thing to do. But to be able to take that perspective and understand it from their point of view, and that is a skill that you can learn.

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It's cognitive empathy. It's that ability to logically understand where another person is coming from. So, so perspective is the key word here. Yes. In other words, understanding somebody's perspective, taking in other words, their viewpoint on whatever it might be, their perspective, that in some cases doesn't mean it's reality, it just means it's their perspective.

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And that's when people get on their high horse. We've obviously seen plenty of this in the media recently because of the political dividend. And you can't, move that divide when yourself is divided Right.

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With inside of you. Would you want to comment on how, as a society today, we might be able to bridge this, disagreement because somebody else has a different perspective.

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You say it's perspective taking. What? Well, I don't see too many people, whether it's Democrat, Republican, or Independent, looking at the perspective of the other person. Yes, I agree. And again, even when they do the People that I see, they're looking at it through their own perspective.

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They're looking at a situation, but they're putting their own judgment on it. Elon Musk actually made a comment about how we're dealing with suicidal empathy because we are giving too much and we're too soft and too touchy feely and this kind of thing.

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But what I see with that is I, don't see the perspective taking, that he's not actually taking perspective of other people and that his definition of empathy is off because it isn't necessarily about feeling.

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It is, like you said, it's that perspective taking, it's that meeting the other person, where they're at. You know, and I think, the important factor there is that people have to learn that. In other words, it's a learned behavior to want to understand where people are at versus you discounting where they at because you have such strong emotions and opposition to where they are that you immediately default to anger, frustration, whatever you want to call it.

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But in most cases in this political divide, it's just pure anger. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of that. I find that with the organizations that I work with that when people respond in that manner, that usually there's something else going on.

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And I mean, obviously I don't know any of these political people one on one, so I can't say. But I know, like for instance, someone I'm working with now, she's actually really dealing with imposter syndrome. She'll lash out with anger, but it's because she feels she's not being a good leader.

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The thing that she's missing in her case and the thing we're really working on is self empathy, which is something else altogether. Again, there's so many facets to this, but it really is that tie not only between people but with yourself. Well, I think, look, it's about self loving and care.

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You know, self love versus outward love is one thing, but you've gotta love yourself. You also, you know, we've talked about this in the pre interview. You know, happiness is an inside job. You have to be happy with you. You can't expect, you know, your mate to make you happy or somebody in your workplace to make you happy.

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A lot of people don't get that, but when they do get it, they really realize that they were putting the blame on somebody else for a feeling or emotion they thought they should get because the other person should react in a certain way. Now you say emotional intelligence has been discussed you know, Daniel Goldman for years, for more than 30 years, but few organizations use it effectively.

[20:21.4]
Why do EQ programs so often fail to create real behavioral change? Because in the business world, who many listeners are business side, they all know the EQ thing. They all know, you know, emotional intelligence.

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Yeah, the question is, do they know empathetic intelligence, the IQ or I should say the eq, the other eq. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, because the very first article that came out on this was in 1990.

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So that puts us at what, 30? I'll go on, on 36 years. Goleman's book came out in 95. So I mean we've been going around this and most people agree this is important, but it just doesn't seem to stick. And I think it's because we've got empathy in the bucket with emotional intelligence.

[21:15.7]
You know, Daniel Goldman had his five categories and empathy is one of them. But I think empathy has to come first. That's what I think. Because if you have this tool bag of emotional intelligence skills, right, and you've got hammers and chisels and saws and communication and motivation and all of this stuff in there, first you have to connect and understand through perspective taking.

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So that you know, when you reach into that tool bag for emotional intelligence, whether you want to come out with a hammer or a left handed screwdriver without having that connection and understanding first, you're hoping you're going for the right thing. You know, you may have the right thing, you may apply it well or you may be kind of off, you may not apply it well, it may not be as effective and it's because you're missing that connection piece.

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So look at a deep level, you know, transforming the corporate soul. S O U L is really, you know, we're talking about individual souls that make up a collective soul and a collective consciousness and a culture with inside of a company.

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And you wrote that true empathy requires vulnerability and often discomfort. How can leaders who we're addressing today build the courage to lean into those difficult emotional moments rather than push them under the carpet or avoid them?

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I think the first step really is developing that self empathy because if you can't be comfortable with those ideas or conversations or thoughts within yourself, you, you're never going to be comfortable with it anywhere else. Which is why it kind of makes me laugh when people talk about how soft it is.

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I'm like, if it were soft, everybody would be doing it. It's not, it's really a hard thing to get a hold of. And a lot of these leaders are very motivated, they're very high self actualizing. You know, you think of Maslow's pyramid, they're up at the top, they're driven.

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But because of that they don't always show themselves that empathy, you know that they know they could maybe be better leaders but yet they have to give this strong front or you know, they got there because they could pull in the best contracts and make the best money. But maybe they're not as in touch with people as they would like to be.

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And they know that. But without having that self empathy to be able to get in touch with that stuff, you're never going to have it for anybody else because it just, you just can't. Well, it is a shift in perspective, as you've said.

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It's a shift in consciousness. It's a use of a part of our brain which we're not always tapping depending on how we're hardwired. So there's so much of this stuff from as you're aware, having gotten your doctors, you know, this comes from adverse childhood experiences as well.

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Aces. And so these aces can affect people to drink, to do have all kinds of behavior which isn't very empathetic, right? Yes. You know, they can become hard and cruel.

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And so I want to talk about this. You talk about empathy mapping as a practical tool and I think, I'd like for you to talk about how leaders can use an empathy map to strengthen self awareness and better understand what their people in their organization need.

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That is like one of the crux things I think and the reason why I like empathy mapping, because this was something that was actually developed by somebody, his name was Dave Gray in 2010, to be able to relate better to customers.

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So the first time they brought empathy in it was supposed to be to relate to customers. So this is already in place to be able to connect with people. What do they feel, how do they act? How do they think to be able to take this and basically repurpose it. Well, how does this work for my employees?

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How do they feel? What are they thinking? What are they doing? Why am I getting this attrition? Why did all of my directors suddenly leave? Why can I not keep anybody in these positions? It's the same thing with this empathy map and being able to go through and say, well from their perspective this is what I think they're feeling.

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From their perspective, I think this is why they're doing what they're doing. And if you can take this and use this for your people, then have the courage to turn around and use it for yourself. Well, what am I actually feeling about this? Well, I'm feeling anger. But what else is going on underneath there?

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Well, I'm actually feeling a little insecure because maybe my leadership skills aren't as tight as I want them to be, to be able to lead them. Well, I'm actually feeling really sad about the fact I'm going to have to let these people off, you know, lay these people off. But this is for the good of the company and I need to be able to come to terms with how, how that relates to my actions, how that relates to how I'm actually thinking about myself within these contexts.

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So with empathy mapping, where would our listeners go to get some kind of valuable information about empathy mapping? I mean, I know it's in the book, but the reality is when you talk about a map, it sounds like a tool. The question is, is there a tool available at your website or somebody else's that you can give reference to, if they were interested in learning more about empathy mapping?

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Absolutely. In fact, I will put one up on my website. So if people would like to go there and download it so they can see exactly what I'm talking about, I'll, make sure that it's available because I don't know what it looks like. Actually, I'd love to kind of see what it is. Sounds interesting.

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Yeah, it's basically just four quadrants. It's just four pains. And the idea is that it goes in a cycle, so thinking, feeling, doing, acting, and then right back around again. Okay, but I will put that up there so that people can download it. Oh, awesome. Well, good, good.

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Now, you of all people who've been doing this for a while now and written this great book, you've seen what leaders practice, you know, with empathy, consistently. So the question then is organizations experience lower turnover?

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You've said if they are doing this, higher innovation and stronger cultural shifts. So what patterns did you see in teams that embrace empathetic leadership?

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So in other words, what, what are the qualities, the essence of the teams who were doing this and got these results? You talked about lower turnover, higher innovation, stronger cultural shifts. You know, the big thing within these teams, because you're approaching human beings as human beings.

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Right. So you're dealing one on one with people, their strengths, their weaknesses, what they bring to the table. So first of all, within these teams, there tends to be a feeling of safety that you can Bring your whole self to the table as opposed to holding back because you're afraid you're going to get yelled at, or one person in the team, data hoarding, information hoarding, or somebody dealing with imposter syndrome and not necessarily wanting to give to the rest.

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And once you have that feeling of safety, these teams have the opportunity to actually go to their fullest potential. There's a book out there by Scott Page, and the name is escaping me right now. But the point is that we, when we are allowed to come into these safe places and be able to think in a way that is our fullest self, we each bring such different rich background of ideas and thoughts and experiences that then we can bring these to these teams, which is going to help with problem solving, it's going to help with innovation.

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Employee attrition does stop. And the cool thing is, as I say, that you're able to have better profit, productivity and innovation. There's a couple surveys, there's research on it too, but there was an Ernst and Young survey that's out there.

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And I mean, we're talking top four global consultancy. And they actually were looking at the great resignation and trying to figure out why people were leaving and what empathy in particular could do to keep employees. And what they found was that when leaders approach these teams and these employees with empathy, that you could actually raise innovation by 86%, productivity by 87% and profit by 84%.

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And that's not an opinion. That's what came out of the survey. Substantial changes in the KPIs. So, you know, the key performance indicators. Those are big percentages. Those are big percentages. And I've always said that, you know, there's two sides to this balance sheet.

[30:48.6]
There's the human capital. And when you look at most, most businesses and you see how much money is put up in salary and benefits and whatever, the human capital cost is very, very expensive. It's the people we employ, it's, the pensions we pay for them, it's the time off, it's the medical insurance, it's all those things that go into cost of running a business.

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And so you argue that the HR department in one of these companies, who's usually in charge of all these things, cannot be the sole steward of empathy or the soft skills. So what first steps can executives take to begin a cultural shift toward empathy across the organization?

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Because, look, if I even realized first that I had human capital, let's say I was an astute, enough, executive to understand that, and the importance of it first. Secondly is the importance of it. The next thing is the how.

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How do I now take what you're talking about, this empathetic leader? How do I, pardon me, I'm using the term can I clone these kinds of people so that it then becomes a energy which kind of emanates throughout the organization.

[32:15.4]
Because I've told somebody the other day, Melissa, that you can go into certain organizations as a consultant like you are, and I don't know how many you've been in, but I've been in plenty. And you could actually, during meetings, cut the air with a knife, right?

[32:33.7]
Meaning that's how heavy the feeling was when you left the building. You commented to yourself, whoa, this organization has really got some command and control issues. There's some real people, that are challenged.

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So let's go back to the question. How do you help somebody who's listening to us right now as a CEO or top executive in a company, spread this? The biggest, most important thing they can do is walk the talk.

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This is not a, mission statement. This is not a vision statement. This is not something you put in the values on your website. This is something you live every single day. This is a practice, not a performance. So as you're at work, you have to get out of your office.

[33:25.8]
And I understand people are busy work, I totally get it. Leadership is hard. Same thing. If it were easy, everybody would do it, right? But if your people never see you and the only time you come out of your office they assume something is wrong, then there's a real problem with that.

[33:41.3]
Understanding connection. It's really hard to take this perspective of people you don't know. So you have to be out, you have to be seen. And it doesn't have to be for hours and hours every day. But they need to know that you don't just talk about empathy, you embody this.

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You know, I knew one executive that, with the name tags, I mean, obviously you can't know everybody's name but on the name tags. He started having his company do it so that the first name was big, so that he could see it, so that he could come up and actually say, well, hey, Greg, how are you doing?

[34:15.2]
How was your day? You know, and it's a small gesture, but it's that human to human connection. Oh, yeah. Here's another example of somebody that I, I recently worked with. She had a, A, yearly meeting with all of her people. And it, you know, it was healthcare.

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So you're dealing with three different shifts you're dealing with all sorts of people. You're dealing with everything from physicians to janitorial. And she called this meeting and people shifted their schedules. It was like at 7 in the morning. And at the last minute she canceled it because she wanted to be there for her kids first day of school.

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Okay, in and of itself, not bad. But she had never stopped to consider that maybe her people also wanted to be there for their kids first day of school. That maybe they didn't want to stay late from third shift or come in early from first shift because they also had stuff going on in their family.

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And she's a really nice person, she's very kind. It just didn't occur to her because she wasn't walking the talk and she wasn't available enough to her people to be able to say, yeah, that's going to come off as being really tone deaf.

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I understand what you're saying. And I believe that depending on where the pressure's coming from to have the meeting so that you can communicate something that might have an effect over a small team or a group of people is you're getting this order to have this meeting, to do this for some reason, or you chose to do it and you didn't think about, the repercussions of all the people that wanted to be with their kids.

[35:53.1]
Now that brings me to something that seems to be very prominent in every workplace today. And that's the balance between high tech and high touch. As AI expands, artificial intelligence is here to stay.

[36:09.4]
It isn't going anywhere. So why does empathy become even more valuable in an AI driven world? Now, the obvious answer would be because it's the human touch. But it's really more than that because I think with AI and an empathetic leader and an empathetic team, they can really take the company to new heights where the AI can actually be a good partner.

[36:38.8]
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly because AI is an incredibly powerful tool. Right? But it will never have empathy, right? Unless it, unless it suddenly gains sentience, like, you know, in the Terminator movies or something. And those didn't have empathy either.

[36:56.5]
So, I mean, we see all kinds of robots now that are being developed and you know, there's people that are having relationships with AI, right? Obviously emotional relationships, not sexual relationships or anything, but they're having relationships, they're speaking to a lie like it was their brother or sister, whatever, Right?

[37:20.4]
But I think the thing to take from that is that even though AI doesn't have empathy, it mimics. It really well, it mimics it so well that people would rather go and talk to AI to be able to feel that connection, even though there's no connection, than to talk to other humans.

[37:36.5]
And I think that says a lot more about us as humans than it does about the AI. It is truly fascinating what you say, because when I use a thing called whisper flow to speak to Claude, Claude never addresses me negatively.

[37:59.4]
It always comes back with a positive, hey, Greg, that's a great idea kind of thing, right? So you kind of get hooked because no one gives you or feeds you that kind of positive feedback, whatever. You want to call it the loop, because you're like, wow.

[38:17.8]
Well, these guys think it's a good idea. On the other hand, I've been told recently, I didn't know, this, that anything you feed up there becomes their data to access. So they're going to feed back positivity, positiveness as much as they can so that you'll continue to feed them whatever data that you're giving them.

[38:40.4]
Right. So that you get juiced to keep coming back again and again. You believe that's right? Oh, yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And then it also, you know, then they're able to use that. It's that echo chamber.

[38:56.1]
Yeah. Because now you're in the echo chamber and they're going to keep feeding you the same thing. It's just like social media. What's going to give you that, you know, serotonin boost. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's the same reason that people get hooked. And I, you know, people ask me, do you use TikTok?

[39:12.5]
I said, no, I've never used TikTok. TikTok. And I know people that are on TikTok for. I was with two of my friends that are my age. I'm like, oh, we're on it every day for about two hours. I'm like, what? What are you doing on TikTok for two hours? Oh, we're watching all these videos and they're all really cool.

[39:30.0]
And I'm like, oh, my God. Well, unless you're learning something from it, hopefully it's not just pure entertainment. It's got to be learning. But, here nor there. Now to kind of wrap up the interview for leaders who fear that they aren't naturally empathetic, which would probably be a lot of people that listen because they don't, you know, look, this term empathetic leader up till this new age was probably quite a conundrum.

[40:07.3]
Okay. It's like, we didn't hire you to be empathetic. We hired you to get the damn job done and make sure that people got it done right. What early habits or daily practices can help those leaders who don't feel naturally empathetic build the skill and use it more consistently?

[40:28.0]
And I think the key here is the word consistently. It's one thing to get empathetic at a moment or a time and they go, whoa, what happened to Greg? What happened to Melissa? Those are different people. Something happened. Then tomorrow they come back and it's Dr.

[40:45.8]
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Right? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think the first thing is again, going back to that definition, you know, because a lot of people are like, well, I'm not really empathetic. Well, most people have empathy.

[41:02.9]
There's a biological basis there, at least a little bit. So if empathy is all feeling and, you know, compassion, and all these other words that we were talking about, then, yeah, there's going to be people in business that are like, yeah, I'm not a warm fuzzy, I am not a touchy feely kind of person.

[41:20.0]
Right? But tapping into that cognitive empathy, spending a little bit of time going, well, what is their perspective? Well, that person triggers me every single meeting. But, but why? What's, what's their perspective on this? Well, I'm really frustrated with this, this time sheet situation, whatever it is, you know, but what's the actual perspective on this?

[41:41.1]
Well, we're dealing with employee satisfaction scores that are in, in the toilet. And we don't know why, but what is the perspective from the other person? And actually cognitively employing cog empathy, you know, logically understanding it every time, even if it takes 10 seconds, even if it takes two seconds, and saying, well, what is the other perspective here?

[42:01.7]
You know, I'm in my own echo chamber. This is what I think is happening. But is this how everybody sees it or is it just me? Well, one, thing that I'm reflecting on as you're speaking is, you know, everybody has an ego.

[42:18.9]
And so it's the I or the we. Right? And with empathy inside an organization, it's gotta be a we mentality, not an I mentality. But for years, these organizations have run based on the people who have been chosen to be leaders that frequently do have higher egos, many of them.

[42:43.9]
Okay, now they need to be retrained by you. I agree. So hands up, go to, Melissa's website and get some real training and read this book. How would you like to wrap this interview up?

[42:59.5]
What would you like to leave with the leaders that are listening today to transform their organizations for, as you say in your subtitle, better profit, better productivity, and more innovation. So the first thing is just take a second and rethink empathy.

[43:16.6]
It may not be what you think it is, and what I actually talk about is a strategic use of empathy so it isn't all, you know, puppies and rainbows. But the second thing is, is that there is this cognitive aspect we talk about, you know, cognitive empathy versus emotional empathy, which is the feeling part.

[43:35.5]
So what I could wish for for these leaders is that as they think about this and reconsider it and go back to their organizations, that they approach their roles with a cool head and a warm heart. Very well said, Melissa.

[43:52.5]
And to leave on this note, as you were speaking and having this background with the French horn, it led me to this orchestrating empathy. You know, the interesting factor about an orchestra or a band, whether it's a jazz band, they start to get the vibes from other people.

[44:17.9]
They read the music on a page. They read between the lines frequently to hear others playing. And what I think is really, really super interesting about your past and your current is that when the director of an orchestra is moving his or her hands to create the harmony of all of these people playing together, it's the same thing when all those people are together empathetically because beautiful music, and in this case the music is related to better profits, more productivity, more, More innovation.

[45:03.4]
So if they want a correlation, correlate empathy in the music that gets played with inside the organization. And who's the orchestrate? The one orchestrating that. Would that be a weird analogy or a good one? No, I think that's a fantastic analogy, actually.

[45:23.4]
So, you know, I think people, I, I look, I, My wife's in a band, two bands. She's in an orchestra band and a jazz band. And I've noticed when they go to these events that they play at like you did so many times, not everybody always gets along, but everybody knows how to play together.

[45:50.9]
Yes. Because there are egos. Oh, I'm first chair. I'm this, I'm that. You're like, well, come on. It's like, you know, okay. But the point is, when the orchestra leader gets up there to go, you all have to kind of go together, right?

[46:06.8]
Yes. There's no, there's no faking it. At that moment, you're all coming out to try and make a beautiful piece. So, yeah, absolutely. If you got one person that heads off in their own Direction. It doesn't work very well. It doesn't. But it's.

[46:22.5]
It's because the final product is more important than the individual egos. And so thus, that is a statement you made for every organization. The final product is more important than the individuals.

[46:37.7]
And once you see what it is that you create, whether you're a nurse or you're a doctor in a hospital or you're the, You said the janitor in that one case. You are working in harmony to create a beautiful end product, which is the experience that a, customer.

[46:58.6]
You said this all came from customer experience. It's the experience that one has by watching your orchestra, by going to that hospital, by going to Disneyland. And that's the empathy. Yes, absolutely.

[47:15.0]
Beautifully said, if I do say so myself. Yes, indeed. In fact, I might borrow that. I'll give you full credit, though. You don't need to give me credit. I don't have any ego around that. Well, you are wonderful. For all of my listeners, we have the links below in the show notes.

[47:34.0]
Go down there to look at it. Here's the book. You couldn't get a more beautiful cover on a book than this one. You ought to buy the book for the COVID and then read the pages in between. Melissa, thank you so much. And for all my listeners, it's Dr.

[47:50.5]
Melissa Robinson Weinmiller. You have the YouTube video, which I highly recommend watching. The first part's kind of funny about her and her husband lying on the sofa. You gotta listen to that part. But anyway, Melissa, have a good rest of your day.

[48:09.6]
Have a beautiful Thanksgiving with your family. And namaste to you so much. Oh, namaste to you and your audience. Thank you so much for having me. And it's been my pleasure. Thank you for listening to this podcast on Inside Personal Growth.

[48:27.0]
We appreciate your support. And for more information about new podcasts, please go to inside personal growth.com or. Or any of your favorite channels to listen to our podcast. Thanks again and have a wonderful day.