Episode 442: The Magic of Empathy with Maria Ross

In this episode, the brilliant Maria Ross invites us to challenge and resignify what it means to be an empathetic leader. Throughout this episode, we discuss empathy in leadership, its role in accelerating a company’s growth and impact, and its influence on how quickly teams connect and engage. Maria also talks about the five pillars of becoming an empathetic leader, the role of effective communication in inclusive cultures, and much more. 

Steve Shallenberger: Welcome to all of our “Becoming Your Best” podcast listeners, wherever you may be in the world today. This is Steve Shallenberger, your host, and we have a wonderful guest with us today with an amazing subject. It’s going to be a great takeaway for all of you who are listening. Thank you for tuning in. We love that. So, as we introduce this guest today, she is a speaker, facilitator, author, and empathy advocate who believes cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. She has spent decades helping forward-thinking leaders and teams connect and engage through empathy to accelerate growth and impact. So, we are so grateful to have with us today, Maria Ross. Welcome, Maria.

Maria Ross: Thank you, Steve. So glad to be here.

Steve Shallenberger: I’d like to tell you just a little bit more about Maria before we launch into our interview. She’s authored multiple books, including her newest book, “The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries.” Her previous book, The Empathy Edge, sparked a movement, and she now hosts the top-rated The Empathy Edge podcast, speaking with leaders, change-makers, authors, and activists about how to achieve radical success through empathy. Well, these are amazing accomplishments. Way to go.

Maria Ross: Thank you.

Steve Shallenberger: She delivers powerful talks and leadership training for companies such as Salesforce, New York Life, and a host of others. We love having her here. She’s spoken and been a 10x speaker. So, before we jump into this today, let’s just talk about your background. Share with us any really significant events that have had a big impact on your life and helped you get where you’re at today.

Maria Ross: I began my career as a management consultant in a Big Six firm and then quickly got back to my love of marketing, working on both the client and agency sides for companies like Discovery Networks. Eventually, I worked at an advertising agency where one of my clients was Monster.com. I learned a lot about the breadth of marketing, and then in 1999, I got seduced to come out to San Francisco and join the dot-com boom. I became a brand manager for a now-defunct dot-com, but that brought me out to San Francisco and Silicon Valley. I was able to then go into B2B marketing and use a lot of those skills—first from B2C and then B2B—and really understand that it doesn’t matter whether you sell B2B or B2C; you’re selling to human beings. So, it is really all about empathy. Then, I went off on my own in 2008 and started my own brand consultancy, Red Slice. As you mentioned, I’ve been working with forward-thinking leaders and teams ever since on their brand stories, messaging, and now on how to really embrace empathy. Not just from a brand perspective, but since brand and culture are two sides of the same coin, helping them on the inside with their leaders and their cultures so that they can be a genuinely empathetic brand and achieve success with their customers and clients.

Steve Shallenberger: That’s a good background. Tell us about The Empathy Dilemma.

Maria Ross: I’ve written books about branding. I took a left turn and wrote a memoir about recovering from a near-fatal brain aneurysm and getting back into my work and my business. But the first empathy book I wrote was back in 2019. I had been researching it for three years: The Empathy Edge. That book was about how to provide the business case for the ROI of empathy for leaders, cultures, and brands. The data and the research were out there; it just needed to be curated. That book came out, and then the pandemic hit, and lockdown happened. All of a sudden, everybody was talking about empathy at work and empathy in leadership. So, I’m sad that it took a pandemic to start that conversation, but honestly, the conversation was starting way before then. Now that I’ve been out doing leadership workshops, keynotes, and ERG talks, this book that’s coming out now, The Empathy Dilemma, was the result of what I was hearing back from leaders. The first book was for the skeptics; this next book is for the converts. It was about, “We’re on board. We want to be more human-centered leaders. We understand how that leads to not only success, morale, and productivity but also better bottom-line results. But here’s where we’re having challenges, especially in a post-pandemic world.” Across all my hundreds of interviews and research, I found five common threads for empathetic and effective leaders that they all share. These are five foundational pillars that, if you shore those up for yourself, you can balance empathy with accountability and performance without burning yourself out. I think that’s the holy grail for many people these days: how to juggle all these different demands that leaders now have on them.

Steve Shallenberger: Tell us about empathy. How do you define empathy, and what’s the role it plays in the workplace?

Maria Ross: So, there are a lot of different definitions of empathy, but it’s also a word and a concept that has evolved as we’ve learned more about the brain and science. The way I look at it through the lens of being applicable to the workplace is that empathy is about seeing, hearing, and, where appropriate, feeling another person’s perspective. Further, it’s about using that information to act with compassion. Compassion is empathy in action. It’s about what you do with the information you’ve gathered about someone’s context, why they feel the way they feel, and why they think the way they think. I try to get away from the idea of walking in someone else’s shoes because it’s still you walking in someone else’s shoes. I much prefer the terminology of seeing things from another person’s perspective. When you do that as a leader, you uncover more opportunities, discover risks you may not have seen, and see challenges, problems, and opportunities in a whole new way because someone else’s lived experience gives you a different viewpoint.

Maria Ross: In the work context, it’s those leaders who understand that their perspective is not the only perspective and are willing to listen to and synthesize other perspectives and experiences to make the best business decisions moving forward. There’s data proving that empathetic cultures have more innovation, better customer rating scores, and more customer loyalty. It all trickles down into the bottom line. So, when we talk about empathy at work, it’s really a mindset and a leadership paradigm. The old ways of command and control, hierarchy, and hoarding information just don’t work in today’s day and age. We require a new type of leader to solve today’s business challenges and, quite frankly, world challenges. When we talk about empathy at work, it’s not about being nice to everybody or crying on the floor with your employees. It’s about having the ability to put your ego aside and listen to another perspective. It doesn’t mean that you have to necessarily make a different decision or avoid tough decisions, but it’s about how you get the best from everyone’s ideas, engage everyone in the process, and then communicate the decision back to them, even if their perspective wasn’t considered or their idea didn’t win. How do you communicate that back and implement it in a way that everyone still stays engaged and can be on board? That’s the only way you move the business forward.

Steve Shallenberger: Well, this is a big box to talk about, as you know it.

Maria Ross: How much time have you got, Steve?

Steve Shallenberger: With our book, “Becoming Your Best: The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders,” through our research and interviews all over the world of highly successful leaders, we discovered what sets them apart from everybody else, including highly effective teams. One of those twelve principles is to be an effective communicator, and right at the heart of being an effective communicator is empathy. Yet, maybe like you, we’ve discovered that this is one of the most difficult skill sets to build. So, tell us about the five pillars you just talked about. What are they, and how do they play a role in helping us be more effective in using empathy?

Maria Ross: I just want to make a note on what you just said because our work is so similar in helping people unpack the best practices and secrets of high-performing, successful teams. It was funny, researching the second book, trying to dig into these leaders who were successful and empathetic. They almost didn’t know why it was so innate for them to operate in a certain way. I had to really tease it out of them and understand it. On the flip side, though, something you said sparked this: you can learn to be more empathetic. It is something that is innate to human beings, but for some of us, that muscle may have atrophied. However, an atrophied muscle is still there, so it’s about making a conscious, intentional decision to say, “I’m going to be an empathetic leader so I can reap all these rewards. And how do I do that?”

Maria Ross: That’s why in the first empathy book, The Empathy Edge, I gave actionable habits and practices leaders could use to strengthen their empathy muscle. The second book, which, as I mentioned, is about the pillars, identifies these five ingredients that seem to be there, and I bet they overlap a lot with your work. The first one is self-awareness. The second is self-care. The third is clarity. The fourth is decisiveness. And the fifth, kind of surprisingly, is joy. When leaders start with self-awareness and understand where their blind spots and strengths are, they can determine for themselves which of the five pillars they need to shore up in order to be more successful as empathetic leaders without quality slipping or burning themselves out from trying to people-please all over the place. That’s not empathy; that’s submission. So, when those pillars are present, and in the book, I go into details on the strategies and some actionable tactics for each of those pillars. It’s like a little buffet where you can pick, based on the self-awareness pillar, which ones you need to work on and which ones you might want to shore up. Let your team know that you’re working on these things so they can complement you and you can learn together.

Steve Shallenberger: How have you found, Maria, that you can spot a leader, team, or organization where empathy is a real strength in their culture? You mentioned that there’s research showing that this drives the bottom-line action and the success of an organization. I’d love to hear what you’ve observed about that.

Maria Ross: What a great question. A few markers come to mind offhand. These organizations tend to have very inclusive cultures where ideas can come from anywhere and do come from anywhere. The leader often has a servant leadership attitude. They don’t come in saying, “I know all the answers, and I am going to decide everything, and you minions are just going to execute on everything I do.” Those tend to be the cultures where people burn out, and there’s high churn, high turnover, quiet quitting, and resignation. So, when you have an inclusive culture where good ideas can come from anywhere, you get more innovation and encouraged risk-taking, which helps the company lead in the market. The second marker I see is, for lack of a better term, a relaxed atmosphere or a sense of levity in the work. Even if the work is hard, it doesn’t mean the work is enjoyable every second of the day. It just means there’s a sense of levity and camaraderie, which is all about psychological safety and trust, as you know, doing the work that you do. So, it’s where people can feel free to challenge, add, play devil’s advocate, and bring ideas forth. When you have that level of trust and levity, there’s more kinship and camaraderie.

Maria Ross: One leader I spoke to in the new book reiterated this. They have tried so hard to create an atmosphere where they get to know their people and find enjoyment. He said, “So when I really have to make a big, painful ask, people trust me because they know I have their back. If I didn’t have all of that foundation established, that’s when I would get pushback. But now that I’ve created this foundation, if I have to make a big ask of someone, whether it’s extra work, working late, or doing something Herculean to support a client or customer, they know I’m asking for a reason, and they trust me.” I think that’s such an important marker of understanding. If you have all of these different elements, people feel seen, heard, and valued. They can do their best work in that environment because they know it matters. People just want to matter, even at work.

Steve Shallenberger: I love it, and thanks for identifying these markers. Of course, every day, whether it’s one of our associates working with a customer who may have a compliment, a complaint, or an issue, or it’s a sales representative or an outreach person trying to represent their product well, or in relationships within the office, between a leader and a direct report, empathy is right at the heart of all this. Sometimes we see it, and sometimes it’s just crushing because you don’t see it. What’s your advice to me and our listeners? How can you really take a breath and, rather than just start talking, be empathetic and listen? And then, what do you do with it once you have it?

Maria Ross: Well, I think that’s really the important thing: it’s about listening. Curiosity is the number one trait of empathetic people. It’s because you don’t guess what someone’s perspective or context is; you ask them. You don’t make assumptions, and you don’t let your own biases get in the way about what this person wants to do or doesn’t want to do, or what motivates or doesn’t motivate them. You’re actually just having the conversation. What I get from leaders a lot is, number one, this is going to take a lot of time. And my answer is yes, and that’s why you’re a leader. That’s the job now. You do need to get to know your people, understand what motivates them, be open to their ideas, and understand them as whole people. What do they need to be able to do the work you need them to do? Because that’s ultimately what it’s all about. So, ways that you can strengthen your empathy: number one is to practice presence. If you’ve got too much going on in your own head and you’re too focused on self-preservation, you have no room to take on another person’s perspective. You need to practice some mindfulness. It doesn’t have to be yoga and meditation. It could be whatever recharges you and silences your mind a little bit. It could be knitting, exercise, prayer, or crossword puzzles. For me, it’s having a coffee or tea in the morning without a screen in front of me to ground me so that I’m not so focused on my own stuff, and I can make space to listen and hear.

Maria Ross: The other is to get really good and focused about asking questions, even when there’s conflict. The tendency is, if I have a conflict with you, Steve, you’re my employee, and I want you to do something you don’t want to do, I want to spend all my time telling you why you’re wrong and I’m right. But what if I just tried to get to the root of it? Get curious and say, “I can tell you are bracing against this decision or task. Tell me what’s going on for you.” Then you talk, and I say, “Tell me more.” The three magic words—keep going until you get someone to really explain their context and mindset. Now, you and I can have the real conversation we need to have. It might not be about the work. It might be about you taking care of an elderly parent at home and being super stressed. It might be that you did a project like this in your last job, and it failed miserably, and now you’re scared. It might be that you’re not getting along with a colleague I’m asking you to work with. It could be a host of other things that are not about the thing. So, being able to ask questions, be patient, and leave space for someone to answer and think through how to explain what’s going on for them is just so key. And I have to admit, as you can tell, I’m a talker. For me, it’s about activating my inner Shusher. “You’re talking too much, Maria; let’s hear from Steve.” If I know I’m going to talk more, let me ask a question instead of trying to put my opinion, perspective, and experience on you in the conversation.

Steve Shallenberger: Oh, that’s great. There are so many wonderful recommendations—guidelines, and ways to do it. I’ll tell you, this has already been worth it for me because you’ve reminded me that curiosity is the number one trait of empathy. It’s not about being right or wrong.

Maria Ross: No, and it’s not about agreeing either. I spend a lot of time busting myth about empathy. Empathy does not mean agreeing with someone. You and I can have different points of view and approaches to a business problem or any kind of issue. The goal is connection, not conversion. We both want to solve the problem; we just have different ways of solving it. So, I can still say, “I don’t agree with you, but I understand where you’re coming from.” Now, maybe we can find a third way that benefits both of us, but we can’t have that conversation unless we’re listening.

Steve Shallenberger: Yeah, that’s the leadership aspect, isn’t it? It’s really difficult as a leader to explore the best third options unless you really have a listening and understanding culture. That comes from this quality of being empathetic.

Maria Ross: Absolutely. I want to add one thing because I know the thing I always get hit with is, “But in the end, if someone doesn’t like the decision you’re making, if you have to do layoffs, if you have to have budget cuts, if you have to withhold bonuses because of the way the economy is going, those are all business decisions.” It doesn’t mean you don’t make those tough business decisions. When we’re talking about being an empathetic leader, we’re talking about making those decisions in the context of understanding the impact on your people. So, the way you communicate them might be different if you’re actually putting yourself in their position. The way you answer questions, the way you make yourself available for support. But it doesn’t mean you have to change your mind because the business decision is the business decision and it’s not going to change. One of my most empathetic leaders was someone who had to lay off the entire marketing team. Because he was empathetic, his approach—the way he was prepared to answer all our questions, the way he made referrals and recommendations, and the way he’s still a mentor to this day—shows you that you can make those tough decisions. You don’t necessarily change your mind because someone is upset. But it’s the approach, it’s the mindset that you take, that makes you an empathetic leader. So, I hear a lot of leaders say, “Well, if I’m empathetic, people are going to think I’m weak.” Empathy actually takes great strength to take on another person’s point of view without defensiveness, fear, or ego.

Steve Shallenberger: And you’ve said two things also that I love, which is, unless you are at peace yourself, unless you have the energy—and you called it mindfulness, in the space—it’s really hard to have empathy. That’s kind of building a muscle. What are some of the traits or habits you found that help people get in that good place where they’re thinking all the time, “You know what, one of the best tools I have is listening and having empathy that begins with curiosity.” Thanks for the reminder. But I also have to have my own emotional strength, especially not only as a leader, and not only when there’s a crisis and the pressure’s on, but also as a parent, where you can get into this mode of “tell, tell, tell.” That can happen in leadership too, right?

Maria Ross: Yeah. There are so many parallels with parenting. Sometimes I hesitate to bring it up because it can sound patronizing, but you get it. It’s very similar. It’s about having a group of people or a person you’re trying to motivate to do something you need them to do. What you’re touching on right now is really where that second pillar, the self-care pillar, came from. If you’re running on an empty cup or an empty tank, think about in your own life, when you’re hungry and tired, how do you act with other people? You’re just all about taking care of yourself. You don’t want to hear anything difficult. You don’t want to take the time. You just want to get to your next meal or get your head on the pillow. You’re running on a depleted tank. When we talk about self-care, we’re not talking about manicures, pedicures, and massages. We’re talking about re-energizing ourselves and getting our brains to think in a different way. It could be active or passive. It could be art, sports, exercise, language, or knitting. Figure out, from the self-awareness piece, what energizes you and helps you get into a creative space. A lot of leaders I know, and I don’t know if this is true for your research, like to do walking meetings. Walking and moving their bodies, even while they’re on the phone, on Zoom, or in person, activates something different in their brains. It’s why we have our best ideas in the shower; we’re doing something else, and then, bing, the big epiphany comes. That’s the same for certain people when they go walking. Make sure you’re finding that time and modeling it for your team. I think that’s the important piece, too. All the pillars are important for the leader, but it’s also important for the leader to model their importance to their teams so that their team members can practice the same thing. Everyone can be running on a full tank when they’re interacting with each other.

Steve Shallenberger: I was just thinking, while you’re talking about having a moving meeting, how deep your discussions can be on a hike. There’s nothing else out there, and all of a sudden, you’re getting into it, having a meaningful discussion. Empathy, as it becomes a culture, as it becomes a habit—and I love the fact you said it’s a mindset—I want to come back and ask one more question on that. But it also has another powerful impact: it builds trust. It builds trust within your organization and creates an environment that’s far more effective and innovative than not having that type of communication.

Maria Ross: 100%. There are many studies—I’m not going to cite a specific one—about what happens to our cognitive abilities and executive functions when we’re under stress. They don’t work well because we are in self-preservation mode. Extrapolate that to a business environment or a workplace culture where people are fearful, stressed, tired, and constantly watching their backs, worried about the next time the boss is going to come out and yell at everybody. Are they really at their sharpest focus? No. Science says no. Your brain cannot work to its best cognitive ability that way. I like to challenge leaders to ask if that’s really what they want. Is that really the culture you want—a bunch of people who are not thinking at their full capacity? I don’t think that’s what you want, because you want your bonus next year. You want to make your numbers, hit your KPIs, and do all the things. Creating an environment like this is not coddling. I get that a lot, “Well, that’s just coddling everybody.” It’s not. It’s brain science.

Steve Shallenberger: How true. Now, you mentioned one thing earlier, and it’s about the mindset. So, what have you learned? What have you discovered to help you have the right mindset that helps you get into the skill set?

Maria Ross: I love this question because I might be an empathy expert, but I’m not an expert on empathy—and you can just ask my husband and my 10-year-old. I am constantly practicing. I think that’s the important lesson: this isn’t necessarily something that will just come naturally for us. For some of us, it doesn’t. Also, because our stress levels, health levels, and sleep levels ebb and flow every day, we’re going to be at different capacities for empathy no matter what. I think two of the biggest things I’ve discovered—and I admit, like everyone else, I don’t always put them into practice: number one is taking a pause. When things get tense, when I feel the triggers in my body, it’s being really aware of what’s happening in your body when you get agitated, when you feel confronted, when you feel challenged. Recognize the signs in your body: is it that your face feels flushed, your hands start to sweat, or you feel like you want to interrupt someone at every moment? Recognize those triggers, stop the conversation, and take a few deep breaths. When you have that pause, it re-engages your cognitive abilities. It puts your cognitive abilities back online, as I like to think of it. The moments when I’ve had the presence to do that, especially with my son, it’s a better outcome and a better conversation. In the moments where I didn’t—like just last night—it’s a horrible outcome. We’re still dealing with the fallout from this morning. Everyone’s mad. So, that’s number one: the power of the pause. I’ve learned that from a lot of my podcast guests. The other is to practice self-empathy. By that, I mean what I was alluding to earlier. You’re not going to be perfect every time, and it’s going to feel forced and awkward at first, especially if you didn’t grow up in a very empathetic environment or your workplace is not very empathetic. It’s going to feel strange and weird, but keep going back to the empathy gym and working that muscle. You might be sore, and that’s okay, but have some compassion and forgiveness for yourself. You can make it right the next time. You can have another chance. You can repair that relationship. There’s always that opportunity.

Steve Shallenberger: Well, I have loved our visit today. Can you believe we’re at the end of the interview already? It’s been 30 minutes.

Maria Ross: I know. Crazy!

Steve Shallenberger: It’s been a delight. Thanks for all the helpful ideas and the emphasis on how powerful this is in human relations, leadership, and having winning teams and organizations. It does make a big difference. So, how can people find out about what you’re doing?

Maria Ross: They can check out my main website, red-slice.com. They can check out the new book; it’s available for pre-sale right now but comes out September 10: The Empathy Dilemma. It’s available in all the places. I would love for folks to connect with me on Instagram, @redsliceMaria, or on LinkedIn, Maria J. Ross. But if they connect with me on LinkedIn, they have to tell me they heard me on Steve’s show.

Steve Shallenberger: All right. Well, it’s been a delight, and we wish you the best in all that you’re doing. You’re doing great work.

Maria Ross: Thank you. I wish you the best, too. Thank you for your work in the world as well.

Steve Shallenberger: It’s a pleasure. To all of our guests, thank you for joining us today. This has been chock-full of a lot of good ideas that really make a difference. So, thank you, and we wish you all the best. This is Steve Shallenberger, signing off. Goodbye.