May 29, 2024 • 22 mins
In this episode, Kortney chats with Eric Girard, CEO of Girard Training Solutions and author of the book "Lead Like a Pro," about empathy and trust in leadership. They dive into why empathy is essential for managers and how it can amp up business success. From practical tips to hilarious monkey metaphors, they break down the nitty-gritty of building trust and relationships in the workplace. Join us for an insightful conversation on how cultivating empathy and trust can elevate work relationships and drive productivity.
Connect with today's guest:
Eric Girard CEO, Girard Training Solutions LLC Eric Girard has over 30 years of experience helping improve the performance of managers and employees. He specializes in the development of new managers, focusing on their successful transition to their new role and on their team management skills. He has a high-energy and engaging facilitation style. Eric is a passionate, lifelong learner. As a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor, he is pursuing the rating of Master Scuba Diver Trainer. When not designing or delivering training, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife and twin 15-year-old daughters.
Connect with us at:
LinkedIn: @kortneyross
Instagram: @nextgenworkculture
Facebook: @nextgenworkculture
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the Nextgen work Culture podcast. I'm your host,
Courtney Ross. I help leaders support working parents so that they can
recruit and retain the best people. Join me as
I interview experts and provide insights into the struggles that parents and
caregivers face in the workplace. Learn how your business can become
a place where parents feel included, supported, and
(00:25):
valued. Being a family friendly business isn't just. A nice
to have anymore for the. Next generation and those that are raising
them. It is critical. Welcome back to the
NextGen Work Culture podcast. Today I'm talking with Eric
Gerard, the author of the book lead like a pro.
And Eric, I will let you tell us a little bit more
(00:47):
about you and who you are and what you do. Sure. So
I'm Eric Girard, the CEO of Girard Training Solutions, and
I've been in learning and development for over 30 years, 20
of which I spent in tech, in Silicon Valley, at companies you'd know,
like Apple, Applied materials, Symantec, big, big tech companies.
And during the pandemic, we decided to get out of Dodge and move up to
(01:10):
the Seattle area. And so I moved from being inside of
a company's as an individual contributor to creating my own
company. And my focus is on helping new managers
transform from being great individual contributors or great
employees to outstanding people managers. And so everything
I do, everything I write, all the podcasting that I do is all toward
(01:32):
that end. So I'm just really passionate about helping new managers
hit the ground running and do a great job and not get frustrated
because they don't have the training they need to succeed.
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So a lot of what I talk about here,
next gen work culture has to do with just being, being a good
manager and supporting your working parents and
(01:54):
caregivers that are under you. And a lot of that kind of boils
down to just being a caring person.
And I know the very first chapter in your book, which I
loved, by the way. I think it is a must read for
anyone in management, not just new managers. But the very first chapter is
about empathy, right? The first sentence here says, empathy is
(02:16):
foundational to management and imperative to drive productivity
and business results. And I couldn't agree more. So, Eric, first, could you
just tell us what is empathy? Well, there are lots of
definitions. I am a big fan of Daniel Goleman's
work, and he wrote the book emotional intelligence, and
it's actually been around for quite some time. So my definition of
(02:38):
empathy is the ability to understand and share another
person's feelings without judgment, an empathetic person actively
listens to what the other person is saying and acknowledges their feelings
and life experiences regardless of their own personal
experiences. Yeah, I love that. And it's not quite
the same as being sympathetic. Right, right.
(03:00):
Very different. For a good, a good primer on this, head to
YouTube and look for Brene Brown. Sympathy. So
Brene Brown is one of my heroes. She's an amazing researcher and an outstanding
storyteller. And there's an animated short that
features animals, and one of them is feeling bad
and having a hard time. And so some of the animals
(03:22):
come up and offer sympathy, which is really not helpful. And
then she goes on to talk about how true empathy, you
know, sitting with somebody while you're under that rain cloud with them
is really powerful and impactful to helping somebody get over a
hard time. So it's only a ten minute short, and I recommend it
for a great difference, a great differentiation between sympathy
(03:45):
and empathy. Absolutely. I'll have to check that out. So
I think it sounds like empathy is super important in our personal
lives and our relationships, but why should managers and
business people care about being empathetic?
Well, the first thing I'll say is that empathy is no longer a touchy
feely thing. That's just something squishy that we
(04:07):
do sometimes, or if we even think about it, it's
important because of how stressful the workplace is today.
I mean, I did a very grown up thing a couple of years ago, and
I subscribed to the New York Times. Now, regardless of what you
read, if you're following the news, you're probably a little stressed.
And what's going on in the workplace with AI coming
(04:29):
in and causing us to have to work
faster and more efficiently, and we need to adjust and
adapt to so many changes, one right after the other after the other. I
would say that it's imperative that managers build their
empathy skills so that they can kind of sit and come
alongside their employees and say, look, I hear you. I understand
(04:51):
this is rough. What can I do to help get you
over this hump so that we can get you back to high performance
as opposed to what we used to do 10, 20, 30 years ago,
which is, you know what? If you're not cutting it, I'm just going to push
you harder and harder and harder until you break. And
that's not helpful to anybody. It certainly doesn't help the employee. It's,
(05:14):
it doesn't help the team and it doesn't help the organization. So I
have some statistics that talk about how empathy helps
in the workplace. Do you want to hear those? Yes, absolutely. All right.
This is all about how empathy is perceived in the workplace, and we look first
at motivation. In an empathetic workplace,
59% of employees report feeling more
(05:36):
motivated. In an empathetic workplace, 90% of
CEO's say that they're more motivated than ever. In an empathetic
workplace. Going to flexible working hours.
96% of employees view working hours as a top
empathetic benefit. 39% of
organizations offer working hours. So there's a huge
(05:57):
delta there in terms of working hours being
flexible versus the people who perceive that. It's really, really helpful. In
addition, when you're thinking about why you should care about empathy at
work, mutual empathy between managers and
employees leads to increased efficiency. 88%
creativity 87% job satisfaction
(06:19):
87% innovation 85%
company revenue. You want to guess what that number is? Oh, I bet it's pretty
high. 83%. So
empathy has a real business impact on how well a
company functions. So again, I'll say it again, it's no
longer a squishy skill for the touchy feely crowd. It's something that everybody needs to
(06:41):
build. Yeah, and you've said that a couple of times now that we could build
our empathy skills. So what if I am a manager and I'm just not a
very naturally empathetic person? Am I
just, you know, out of luck, or is there something I could do to become
more empathetic? No, you are not out of luck.
So it's very possible to
(07:03):
build your empathy skills. And this is a progressive skill just a little bit at
a time. So if you're not very empathetic, if it's very uncomfortable
for you, that's okay. You're in good company. And there
are small things you can do today to start building your
empathy skills. So, for example, try seeking out experiences in which
you feel uncomfortable and open your mind to other people's
(07:25):
opinions and ideas. So just start talking to people who think differently than you.
There's no other way to understand how someone else feels about a situation than to
ask them. So go beyond small talk and ask about their life.
In this era of social media and influencers, try following
people with different backgrounds and diverse life experiences. So, for
example, race, politics, religion, worldview,
(07:49):
ask the hard questions. You know, what is, what is life like
for you? What is it like for me? One of the things that the
challenge that I've set for myself that I need to do. I live
in the Seattle area, and we have a fairly sizable homeless population.
I have no problem handing somebody a clif bar or
giving them a bag of resources. If somebody's standing on a corner with a
(08:11):
sign, hey, here you go, I'll help you out, but
it's very transactional, and it's not very personal. It's just me handing something through the
window of my car. My kids volunteer at a local
food bank, and one of the things I've been thinking about is not only
volunteering at the food bank, where you actually get to talk to the clients, the
folks who are receiving the aid, but maybe sitting down and having a
(08:33):
meal with somebody who is unhoused and finding out what their
life is like and how that happened. So, to me, that would be a
stretch, a real stretch that would help me build my empathy muscles.
So that's the kind of challenge I'm looking for, to become more empathetic
myself. So there's lots of little things you can do. You don't have to go
out and suddenly become Mother Teresa. That's not what I'm saying.
(08:54):
But start small and just do little things over
time that gets you more and more curious
about other people's lives and what life is like for them.
Yeah, I love that. So I've been working on some
training in kind of the diversity and inclusion space a lot lately,
and I feel like sometimes people are afraid to ask those
(09:16):
questions about, you know, race or culture or, I don't
understand your beliefs or your culture or
your, you know, whatever, XYZ, fill in the
blanks. So instead of asking about it, we just make
assumptions or avoid the topic. And that leads to more
mistakes, I think, and, you know, more. Not
(09:38):
aggression, but tension. Whereas if we just ask those difficult questions,
get to know the people, learn more about the things we don't understand,
it can help us, you know, in the long run, even if it makes us
a little uncomfortable in the moment. Yeah. And I think
the trick is, like, I wouldn't walk up to somebody who was. Who is different
than me. I wouldn't just walk up and say, tell me about your life.
(09:59):
Right. You know, you've got to start slow and start
small with. With small things and small gestures first. So
you work your way up. It's like anything else. It's like going to the gym.
If you haven't been to the gym for a while, you don't start bench pressing
200 pounds. You work your way up. You know, maybe you start with 25 pounds
and work your way up over time. Same thing.
(10:20):
Yeah. I was really excited to be able to finally bench press
the bar lately, and sitting next to the guy that's doing
200 pounds, it looks ridiculous, but it was slow, incremental steps
that got me there, and I've already gotten past that by adding slowly
a little bit more weight at a time, you know? Yeah. The bar is heavy.
That's 45 pounds. That's heavy.
(10:42):
Yeah. And it seemed impossible to me when I started going to the
gym in January. But slowly
making small changes, adding five pounds a week, you know,
I got there. So it's not like you said about just walking up and saying,
tell me about your life, but making those slow connections and building
the relationship or making miniscule, minor steps and changes in
(11:04):
our life to try to become more empathetic over time. Yeah. And,
you know, starting out, you know, once you've got rapport and a
relationship with this person, then asking quietly,
you know, can I ask you some questions? Would that be okay? Is this a
good time to have a conversation, easing into it so that you don't knock
somebody back? Right. Yeah. You probably shouldn't
(11:26):
ask them to tell the, tell your life story on, you know, the first time
you met them. Yeah. So in your book,
you also talk about how empathy and trust
are pretty related. Why is it important
that employees trust their managers? Well, let
me, let me ask you a question. Have you ever worked for a
(11:48):
manager you didn't trust? Absolutely.
And what was that like? Not fun.
Why not? Ultimately, as I left, yes,
that position, because I did not trust
my manager. I didn't want to go and talk to her about the small
things or the minor problems
(12:11):
that I would go to my other manager about. So
I had an assistant and I would go and talk to her, but really, she
wasn't the person that could make the changes or make the
decisions. And I avoided talking to the one that I didn't
really trust or didn't get along with.
Yeah. And I think you've answered your own question there. It's
(12:32):
like without empathy, without some base level of
empathy where you can come to your manager and say, I'm
having an issue, and this person can respond in a
couple of different ways. They can respond with, we'll go deal with it.
No empathy, no relationship building, or
tell me about it, let's work on this together. And that,
(12:55):
you know, you can see the bar of trust going up and up and up.
Ultimately, you, as the employee need to go do the work.
You know, you're not, you can't hand off work to your manager. You know, you
can't unburden yourself on your manager and expect them to just deal with it. But
a manager who will sit there and listen to you and brainstorm with you for
a couple of minutes is going to build relationship and
(13:17):
build empathy and build trust much faster than somebody who just says, that's your job.
Go figure it out. Right? Absolutely. That
reminds me of a conversation I just had with someone about being an
asshole and falling into the asshole trap.
So you don't want to be an asshole and just keep asking your manager to
do everything for you, basically. But, you know, having
(13:39):
somebody that you could go to and you feel like you can go to when
you have a question or a concern is important, I think,
because it could lead to a lot of problems when we don't have
that level of trust and we don't kind of talk it out before it
becomes an even bigger problem. Yeah, exactly. There's an article that I
talk about all the time in almost all my classes. It's a
(14:01):
Harvard Business review article, HBR. It's free. You can
download it from hbr.org, and it's called who's got the Monkey?
And it was published originally in the early seventies and then republished in
the nineties, and I still talk about it today. So this thing has
legs, and it's actually kind of fun to read
because it's written in a very stiff, 1970s
(14:23):
authoritarian style. So it kind of makes me to giggle to read it.
But so many good learning points. So the first idea
is that if you imagine a workplace as
a place where people are walking around with burdens on their
shoulders and these burdens are squawking monkeys, and
they all need to be fed and cared for. And if I come to
(14:47):
you as my manager, let's pretend you're my manager, and I walk up and I've
got a few monkeys on my back, and I say, Courtney, can you. Can you
help me with this? And you say, sure, I'll handle
that for you. Leave it with me, and I'll get an answer for you by
the end of the day, then you've allowed me to hand you a monkey.
And if everybody does that, if everybody on the team hands you a monkey, by
the end of the day, you are weighed down with squawking, smelly
(15:09):
creatures that need care and feeding, and we are all scot
free. We don't have anything to worry about. We go home and we enjoy our
families and things. And you work late and you work weekends, and
you're completely stressed out because you've taken on other people's
responsibilities. So my catchphrase there is accept no
monkeys. Don't let people hand you their monkeys.
(15:30):
Talk with them empathetically and build trust. While you also
say, how can you handle this? You know, what, what can I
do to help you take care of this issue? And then,
and then I walk away taking care of my own issue, but also
feeling better because my boss gave me some ideas rather
than just dealing with it for me. And then the second thing that they talk
(15:53):
about in the article is kind of degrees of freedom, how far I can go
before I need to check back with you. And level zero is I sit on
my hands and wait to be told what to do, which is awful. And we
don't want any employee to do that. And then, you know, the, the highest
level, level four or five is, hey, I just handled it and I didn't, didn't
even bother telling you, I just fixed it. And so you need to have a
(16:13):
discussion with your employees that is very clearly says
for this task, you can go so far before you need to come to me.
And I would like it if we all got to say level two,
where when I come to you with a monkey, I've got some ideas
about how to feed it. They may not be the right ideas, but I did
some thinking first and I was able to say,
(16:36):
hey, you know, I thought about this. I've got this problem. It's screaming in my
ear. I was thinking of a, B and C. What do you think? And now
the boss is more of a brainstorming partner. And imagine what that does to
trust. So you're building trust.
You're keeping the work where it belongs, which is with the employee
and the problems getting taken care of. Yeah,
(16:58):
that's great. So this reminds me of the pregnant Workers Fairness act, which
protects pregnant individuals in the workplace. But
they, they could ask for accommodations, right, because of conditions related
to pregnancy. So if I am that pregnant employee, rather than going to my
manager and just saying, hey, this isn't working, fix it.
It would be a great idea to have a few ideas for
(17:21):
accommodations or how we can change the schedule or change the way the work
is done, or have some ideas for what you want in that
accommodation before you go to your manager. And then the two of you can have
an discussion with each other about it and decide and come
to a place where you've got something that works for the employee and for the
business. Rather than just, woe
(17:43):
is me, nothing's working. Fix it for me.
Yeah, that's a perfect illustration. And by
doing that, you, the employee, are building up trust with your
manager. So then it's a two way street, which
is incredibly beneficial for everybody involved.
Yeah. Yeah, I could imagine. You want to be able to trust
(18:05):
your employees, too, right? Otherwise we lead to the
micromanaging trap. I would think if you can't trust your employees, then
you're trying to figure out what they're doing every minute of the day rather than
trusting them to get the work done. Yeah, you got it.
Yeah. Well, Eric, is there anything else that
you wanted to share about empathy or trust or
(18:28):
just being a fantastic manager?
Well, I think that. That in order to build
trust, it starts. You have to start
slow. So what I tend to do is, you know, when I bring
somebody into my team is I let them know, you know, like, you're starting with
an a. Like, you're. You're starting at 100%. So I'm
(18:49):
going to go first and give trust first as the manager, as the leader.
That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take that. That leap
and say, as far as I'm concerned, you and I are
great, and you are going to do great things, and I trust you to make
good decisions. So when you start the conversation like that
already, the employee is like, oh, cool, you
(19:10):
know, and they don't feel like they have to struggle to
earn. Now, of course, the employee has to perform.
They, you know, they have to deliver. But if you start the
conversation with, I trust you, you know, I
hired you because I trust you. I hired you because you're competent. So
let's have some discussions about how we're going to work together. Let's talk about the
(19:31):
degrees of freedom. Let me tell you about my philosophy of accept no
monkeys. Let's, you know, let's. Let's talk about some things that you can do to
get up to speed quickly. And let's
have regular one on ones so that nothing falls through the
cracks. Okay? So, like, my favorite thing to do is, is weekly one on
ones, depending on the size of your team, that might be a little challenging, but
(19:53):
I would just say, you know what? Every week, get together for half an hour,
45 minutes and use a template. I offer a template
in my book. I offer a template in my courses. How can you structure a
one on one so it's efficient and the employee gets that
time to build the trust with you and vice versa. So regular
meetings, having conversations just for the sake of it, just shooting the breeze, getting
(20:14):
to know each other, you know, the virtual water cooler talk,
those are all really important to building trust and building empathy so
that when something goes wrong, it's not
the boss who's yelling at me, it's Courtney, my
manager, who I like, who's got a concern
and that just that framing makes all the difference.
(20:36):
Yeah, it sounds like both of these things are kind of all about relationships
and building relationships too, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Can't get it done without relationships. And I'm learning that more and more as an
entrepreneur and as somebody who needs to continually
sell in order for my business to survive. That's all about
relationships. I've been a victim of spammy sales techniques.
(20:58):
I use spammy sales techniques early on. It makes me cringe, but I did do
it. And now I realize, you know what? The only way that I'm going to
succeed is to build genuine relationships with people. And it takes
work, but it's worth it. Yeah, it does take a lot
of work, but you have to be intentional about it. But it's important. And
I think that it's the same whether you're an entrepreneur or
(21:21):
a manager or a CEO. The
relationships are important. Yeah,
absolutely. Well, Eric, it's been great chatting with you today.
If people want to learn more about you or get into your world, where can
they find you? I am all over LinkedIn, so you can find me
on LinkedIn at ericpgerard. My website is
gerardtrainingsolutions.com and my email address, if folks want to reach out
(21:44):
to me directly, is ericerardtrainingsolutions.com dot
awesome. Well, thank you. And I'll be sure that we include all of those links
in the show notes as well. And thanks for coming on today, Eric.
Oh, thanks for having me. This was fun. If you've enjoyed this episode, please
take just a moment to leave a rating in your podcast player
and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until
(22:06):
next time, take care.
Welcome to the Nextgen work Culture podcast. I'm your host,
Courtney Ross. I help leaders support working parents so that they can
recruit and retain the best people. Join me as
I interview experts and provide insights into the struggles that parents and
caregivers face in the workplace. Learn how your business can become
a place where parents feel included, supported, and
(00:25):
valued. Being a family friendly business isn't just. A nice
to have anymore for the. Next generation and those that are raising
them. It is critical. Welcome back to the
NextGen Work Culture podcast. Today I'm talking with Eric
Gerard, the author of the book lead like a pro.
And Eric, I will let you tell us a little bit more
(00:47):
about you and who you are and what you do. Sure. So
I'm Eric Girard, the CEO of Girard Training Solutions, and
I've been in learning and development for over 30 years, 20
of which I spent in tech, in Silicon Valley, at companies you'd know,
like Apple, Applied materials, Symantec, big, big tech companies.
And during the pandemic, we decided to get out of Dodge and move up to
(01:10):
the Seattle area. And so I moved from being inside of
a company's as an individual contributor to creating my own
company. And my focus is on helping new managers
transform from being great individual contributors or great
employees to outstanding people managers. And so everything
I do, everything I write, all the podcasting that I do is all toward
(01:32):
that end. So I'm just really passionate about helping new managers
hit the ground running and do a great job and not get frustrated
because they don't have the training they need to succeed.
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So a lot of what I talk about here,
next gen work culture has to do with just being, being a good
manager and supporting your working parents and
(01:54):
caregivers that are under you. And a lot of that kind of boils
down to just being a caring person.
And I know the very first chapter in your book, which I
loved, by the way. I think it is a must read for
anyone in management, not just new managers. But the very first chapter is
about empathy, right? The first sentence here says, empathy is
(02:16):
foundational to management and imperative to drive productivity
and business results. And I couldn't agree more. So, Eric, first, could you
just tell us what is empathy? Well, there are lots of
definitions. I am a big fan of Daniel Goleman's
work, and he wrote the book emotional intelligence, and
it's actually been around for quite some time. So my definition of
(02:38):
empathy is the ability to understand and share another
person's feelings without judgment, an empathetic person actively
listens to what the other person is saying and acknowledges their feelings
and life experiences regardless of their own personal
experiences. Yeah, I love that. And it's not quite
the same as being sympathetic. Right, right.
(03:00):
Very different. For a good, a good primer on this, head to
YouTube and look for Brene Brown. Sympathy. So
Brene Brown is one of my heroes. She's an amazing researcher and an outstanding
storyteller. And there's an animated short that
features animals, and one of them is feeling bad
and having a hard time. And so some of the animals
(03:22):
come up and offer sympathy, which is really not helpful. And
then she goes on to talk about how true empathy, you
know, sitting with somebody while you're under that rain cloud with them
is really powerful and impactful to helping somebody get over a
hard time. So it's only a ten minute short, and I recommend it
for a great difference, a great differentiation between sympathy
(03:45):
and empathy. Absolutely. I'll have to check that out. So
I think it sounds like empathy is super important in our personal
lives and our relationships, but why should managers and
business people care about being empathetic?
Well, the first thing I'll say is that empathy is no longer a touchy
feely thing. That's just something squishy that we
(04:07):
do sometimes, or if we even think about it, it's
important because of how stressful the workplace is today.
I mean, I did a very grown up thing a couple of years ago, and
I subscribed to the New York Times. Now, regardless of what you
read, if you're following the news, you're probably a little stressed.
And what's going on in the workplace with AI coming
(04:29):
in and causing us to have to work
faster and more efficiently, and we need to adjust and
adapt to so many changes, one right after the other after the other. I
would say that it's imperative that managers build their
empathy skills so that they can kind of sit and come
alongside their employees and say, look, I hear you. I understand
(04:51):
this is rough. What can I do to help get you
over this hump so that we can get you back to high performance
as opposed to what we used to do 10, 20, 30 years ago,
which is, you know what? If you're not cutting it, I'm just going to push
you harder and harder and harder until you break. And
that's not helpful to anybody. It certainly doesn't help the employee. It's,
(05:14):
it doesn't help the team and it doesn't help the organization. So I
have some statistics that talk about how empathy helps
in the workplace. Do you want to hear those? Yes, absolutely. All right.
This is all about how empathy is perceived in the workplace, and we look first
at motivation. In an empathetic workplace,
59% of employees report feeling more
(05:36):
motivated. In an empathetic workplace, 90% of
CEO's say that they're more motivated than ever. In an empathetic
workplace. Going to flexible working hours.
96% of employees view working hours as a top
empathetic benefit. 39% of
organizations offer working hours. So there's a huge
(05:57):
delta there in terms of working hours being
flexible versus the people who perceive that. It's really, really helpful. In
addition, when you're thinking about why you should care about empathy at
work, mutual empathy between managers and
employees leads to increased efficiency. 88%
creativity 87% job satisfaction
(06:19):
87% innovation 85%
company revenue. You want to guess what that number is? Oh, I bet it's pretty
high. 83%. So
empathy has a real business impact on how well a
company functions. So again, I'll say it again, it's no
longer a squishy skill for the touchy feely crowd. It's something that everybody needs to
(06:41):
build. Yeah, and you've said that a couple of times now that we could build
our empathy skills. So what if I am a manager and I'm just not a
very naturally empathetic person? Am I
just, you know, out of luck, or is there something I could do to become
more empathetic? No, you are not out of luck.
So it's very possible to
(07:03):
build your empathy skills. And this is a progressive skill just a little bit at
a time. So if you're not very empathetic, if it's very uncomfortable
for you, that's okay. You're in good company. And there
are small things you can do today to start building your
empathy skills. So, for example, try seeking out experiences in which
you feel uncomfortable and open your mind to other people's
(07:25):
opinions and ideas. So just start talking to people who think differently than you.
There's no other way to understand how someone else feels about a situation than to
ask them. So go beyond small talk and ask about their life.
In this era of social media and influencers, try following
people with different backgrounds and diverse life experiences. So, for
example, race, politics, religion, worldview,
(07:49):
ask the hard questions. You know, what is, what is life like
for you? What is it like for me? One of the things that the
challenge that I've set for myself that I need to do. I live
in the Seattle area, and we have a fairly sizable homeless population.
I have no problem handing somebody a clif bar or
giving them a bag of resources. If somebody's standing on a corner with a
(08:11):
sign, hey, here you go, I'll help you out, but
it's very transactional, and it's not very personal. It's just me handing something through the
window of my car. My kids volunteer at a local
food bank, and one of the things I've been thinking about is not only
volunteering at the food bank, where you actually get to talk to the clients, the
folks who are receiving the aid, but maybe sitting down and having a
(08:33):
meal with somebody who is unhoused and finding out what their
life is like and how that happened. So, to me, that would be a
stretch, a real stretch that would help me build my empathy muscles.
So that's the kind of challenge I'm looking for, to become more empathetic
myself. So there's lots of little things you can do. You don't have to go
out and suddenly become Mother Teresa. That's not what I'm saying.
(08:54):
But start small and just do little things over
time that gets you more and more curious
about other people's lives and what life is like for them.
Yeah, I love that. So I've been working on some
training in kind of the diversity and inclusion space a lot lately,
and I feel like sometimes people are afraid to ask those
(09:16):
questions about, you know, race or culture or, I don't
understand your beliefs or your culture or
your, you know, whatever, XYZ, fill in the
blanks. So instead of asking about it, we just make
assumptions or avoid the topic. And that leads to more
mistakes, I think, and, you know, more. Not
(09:38):
aggression, but tension. Whereas if we just ask those difficult questions,
get to know the people, learn more about the things we don't understand,
it can help us, you know, in the long run, even if it makes us
a little uncomfortable in the moment. Yeah. And I think
the trick is, like, I wouldn't walk up to somebody who was. Who is different
than me. I wouldn't just walk up and say, tell me about your life.
(09:59):
Right. You know, you've got to start slow and start
small with. With small things and small gestures first. So
you work your way up. It's like anything else. It's like going to the gym.
If you haven't been to the gym for a while, you don't start bench pressing
200 pounds. You work your way up. You know, maybe you start with 25 pounds
and work your way up over time. Same thing.
(10:20):
Yeah. I was really excited to be able to finally bench press
the bar lately, and sitting next to the guy that's doing
200 pounds, it looks ridiculous, but it was slow, incremental steps
that got me there, and I've already gotten past that by adding slowly
a little bit more weight at a time, you know? Yeah. The bar is heavy.
That's 45 pounds. That's heavy.
(10:42):
Yeah. And it seemed impossible to me when I started going to the
gym in January. But slowly
making small changes, adding five pounds a week, you know,
I got there. So it's not like you said about just walking up and saying,
tell me about your life, but making those slow connections and building
the relationship or making miniscule, minor steps and changes in
(11:04):
our life to try to become more empathetic over time. Yeah. And,
you know, starting out, you know, once you've got rapport and a
relationship with this person, then asking quietly,
you know, can I ask you some questions? Would that be okay? Is this a
good time to have a conversation, easing into it so that you don't knock
somebody back? Right. Yeah. You probably shouldn't
(11:26):
ask them to tell the, tell your life story on, you know, the first time
you met them. Yeah. So in your book,
you also talk about how empathy and trust
are pretty related. Why is it important
that employees trust their managers? Well, let
me, let me ask you a question. Have you ever worked for a
(11:48):
manager you didn't trust? Absolutely.
And what was that like? Not fun.
Why not? Ultimately, as I left, yes,
that position, because I did not trust
my manager. I didn't want to go and talk to her about the small
things or the minor problems
(12:11):
that I would go to my other manager about. So
I had an assistant and I would go and talk to her, but really, she
wasn't the person that could make the changes or make the
decisions. And I avoided talking to the one that I didn't
really trust or didn't get along with.
Yeah. And I think you've answered your own question there. It's
(12:32):
like without empathy, without some base level of
empathy where you can come to your manager and say, I'm
having an issue, and this person can respond in a
couple of different ways. They can respond with, we'll go deal with it.
No empathy, no relationship building, or
tell me about it, let's work on this together. And that,
(12:55):
you know, you can see the bar of trust going up and up and up.
Ultimately, you, as the employee need to go do the work.
You know, you're not, you can't hand off work to your manager. You know, you
can't unburden yourself on your manager and expect them to just deal with it. But
a manager who will sit there and listen to you and brainstorm with you for
a couple of minutes is going to build relationship and
(13:17):
build empathy and build trust much faster than somebody who just says, that's your job.
Go figure it out. Right? Absolutely. That
reminds me of a conversation I just had with someone about being an
asshole and falling into the asshole trap.
So you don't want to be an asshole and just keep asking your manager to
do everything for you, basically. But, you know, having
(13:39):
somebody that you could go to and you feel like you can go to when
you have a question or a concern is important, I think,
because it could lead to a lot of problems when we don't have
that level of trust and we don't kind of talk it out before it
becomes an even bigger problem. Yeah, exactly. There's an article that I
talk about all the time in almost all my classes. It's a
(14:01):
Harvard Business review article, HBR. It's free. You can
download it from hbr.org, and it's called who's got the Monkey?
And it was published originally in the early seventies and then republished in
the nineties, and I still talk about it today. So this thing has
legs, and it's actually kind of fun to read
because it's written in a very stiff, 1970s
(14:23):
authoritarian style. So it kind of makes me to giggle to read it.
But so many good learning points. So the first idea
is that if you imagine a workplace as
a place where people are walking around with burdens on their
shoulders and these burdens are squawking monkeys, and
they all need to be fed and cared for. And if I come to
(14:47):
you as my manager, let's pretend you're my manager, and I walk up and I've
got a few monkeys on my back, and I say, Courtney, can you. Can you
help me with this? And you say, sure, I'll handle
that for you. Leave it with me, and I'll get an answer for you by
the end of the day, then you've allowed me to hand you a monkey.
And if everybody does that, if everybody on the team hands you a monkey, by
the end of the day, you are weighed down with squawking, smelly
(15:09):
creatures that need care and feeding, and we are all scot
free. We don't have anything to worry about. We go home and we enjoy our
families and things. And you work late and you work weekends, and
you're completely stressed out because you've taken on other people's
responsibilities. So my catchphrase there is accept no
monkeys. Don't let people hand you their monkeys.
(15:30):
Talk with them empathetically and build trust. While you also
say, how can you handle this? You know, what, what can I
do to help you take care of this issue? And then,
and then I walk away taking care of my own issue, but also
feeling better because my boss gave me some ideas rather
than just dealing with it for me. And then the second thing that they talk
(15:53):
about in the article is kind of degrees of freedom, how far I can go
before I need to check back with you. And level zero is I sit on
my hands and wait to be told what to do, which is awful. And we
don't want any employee to do that. And then, you know, the, the highest
level, level four or five is, hey, I just handled it and I didn't, didn't
even bother telling you, I just fixed it. And so you need to have a
(16:13):
discussion with your employees that is very clearly says
for this task, you can go so far before you need to come to me.
And I would like it if we all got to say level two,
where when I come to you with a monkey, I've got some ideas
about how to feed it. They may not be the right ideas, but I did
some thinking first and I was able to say,
(16:36):
hey, you know, I thought about this. I've got this problem. It's screaming in my
ear. I was thinking of a, B and C. What do you think? And now
the boss is more of a brainstorming partner. And imagine what that does to
trust. So you're building trust.
You're keeping the work where it belongs, which is with the employee
and the problems getting taken care of. Yeah,
(16:58):
that's great. So this reminds me of the pregnant Workers Fairness act, which
protects pregnant individuals in the workplace. But
they, they could ask for accommodations, right, because of conditions related
to pregnancy. So if I am that pregnant employee, rather than going to my
manager and just saying, hey, this isn't working, fix it.
It would be a great idea to have a few ideas for
(17:21):
accommodations or how we can change the schedule or change the way the work
is done, or have some ideas for what you want in that
accommodation before you go to your manager. And then the two of you can have
an discussion with each other about it and decide and come
to a place where you've got something that works for the employee and for the
business. Rather than just, woe
(17:43):
is me, nothing's working. Fix it for me.
Yeah, that's a perfect illustration. And by
doing that, you, the employee, are building up trust with your
manager. So then it's a two way street, which
is incredibly beneficial for everybody involved.
Yeah. Yeah, I could imagine. You want to be able to trust
(18:05):
your employees, too, right? Otherwise we lead to the
micromanaging trap. I would think if you can't trust your employees, then
you're trying to figure out what they're doing every minute of the day rather than
trusting them to get the work done. Yeah, you got it.
Yeah. Well, Eric, is there anything else that
you wanted to share about empathy or trust or
(18:28):
just being a fantastic manager?
Well, I think that. That in order to build
trust, it starts. You have to start
slow. So what I tend to do is, you know, when I bring
somebody into my team is I let them know, you know, like, you're starting with
an a. Like, you're. You're starting at 100%. So I'm
(18:49):
going to go first and give trust first as the manager, as the leader.
That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take that. That leap
and say, as far as I'm concerned, you and I are
great, and you are going to do great things, and I trust you to make
good decisions. So when you start the conversation like that
already, the employee is like, oh, cool, you
(19:10):
know, and they don't feel like they have to struggle to
earn. Now, of course, the employee has to perform.
They, you know, they have to deliver. But if you start the
conversation with, I trust you, you know, I
hired you because I trust you. I hired you because you're competent. So
let's have some discussions about how we're going to work together. Let's talk about the
(19:31):
degrees of freedom. Let me tell you about my philosophy of accept no
monkeys. Let's, you know, let's. Let's talk about some things that you can do to
get up to speed quickly. And let's
have regular one on ones so that nothing falls through the
cracks. Okay? So, like, my favorite thing to do is, is weekly one on
ones, depending on the size of your team, that might be a little challenging, but
(19:53):
I would just say, you know what? Every week, get together for half an hour,
45 minutes and use a template. I offer a template
in my book. I offer a template in my courses. How can you structure a
one on one so it's efficient and the employee gets that
time to build the trust with you and vice versa. So regular
meetings, having conversations just for the sake of it, just shooting the breeze, getting
(20:14):
to know each other, you know, the virtual water cooler talk,
those are all really important to building trust and building empathy so
that when something goes wrong, it's not
the boss who's yelling at me, it's Courtney, my
manager, who I like, who's got a concern
and that just that framing makes all the difference.
(20:36):
Yeah, it sounds like both of these things are kind of all about relationships
and building relationships too, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Can't get it done without relationships. And I'm learning that more and more as an
entrepreneur and as somebody who needs to continually
sell in order for my business to survive. That's all about
relationships. I've been a victim of spammy sales techniques.
(20:58):
I use spammy sales techniques early on. It makes me cringe, but I did do
it. And now I realize, you know what? The only way that I'm going to
succeed is to build genuine relationships with people. And it takes
work, but it's worth it. Yeah, it does take a lot
of work, but you have to be intentional about it. But it's important. And
I think that it's the same whether you're an entrepreneur or
(21:21):
a manager or a CEO. The
relationships are important. Yeah,
absolutely. Well, Eric, it's been great chatting with you today.
If people want to learn more about you or get into your world, where can
they find you? I am all over LinkedIn, so you can find me
on LinkedIn at ericpgerard. My website is
gerardtrainingsolutions.com and my email address, if folks want to reach out
(21:44):
to me directly, is ericerardtrainingsolutions.com dot
awesome. Well, thank you. And I'll be sure that we include all of those links
in the show notes as well. And thanks for coming on today, Eric.
Oh, thanks for having me. This was fun. If you've enjoyed this episode, please
take just a moment to leave a rating in your podcast player
and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until
(22:06):
next time, take care.
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