SUMMARY KEYWORDS

leaders, compassionate, people, compassion, resiliency, leadership, mental health, feel, marissa, workplace, pandemic, human, organizations, optimism, empathy, followers, simply, bit, book, psychology

SPEAKERS

Marissa Afton, Lindsay Recknell

Lindsay Recknell  00:01

You are a people leader or an HR professional, working hard to create an amazing employee experience for your team and your organization. But between the operational tasks of your job managing emotions and politics both up and down the corporate ladder, and trying to find some semblance of work life integration in your own life, I suspect you are also overwhelmed and burnt out. If even the thought of navigating the complicated world of mental health at work probably seems like too much to handle.

Lindsay Recknell  00:30

Let this podcast be your not so secret weapon to help fix that. I’m your host Lindsay Recknell. And my mission is to help great leaders like you feel less awkward and more confident talking about mental health at work. So you can stress less, take more action and continue to make a valuable difference in your job as a leader positively impacting the lives of your I’ll be bringing you the experts insights and actions that will give you the skills you need to navigate mental health in the workplace and foster a workplace where everyone’s mental health can thrive.

Lindsay Recknell  01:04

Today’s guest is Marisa Afton, a driving force behind leadership development and change initiatives at multinational companies. She helps leaders and organizations unlock their potential to create cultural excellence and superior performance, resilience, and innovation.

A mindfulness practitioner for over 25 years, Marissa is recognized for her breadth of knowledge and deep experience in transforming organizations by transforming the mind. She is a sought-after speaker at leading HR and leadership conferences about the impact of mind training on high-performance cultures, as well as the mental qualities of excellent leaders. She has worked with leading companies, including Accenture, Bloomberg, Cisco, Eli Lilly, and others.

Marissa is co-author of Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (HBR Press 2022). She also has written articles for various publications, including Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.It’s my pleasure to have Marissa on the show, so let’s get to her interview.

Lindsay Recknell  02:02

Before we get started, I want your time to be valuable here. So in order to get the most from this podcast, head to my website at https://mentalhealthforleaders.com. And download the  Guide to Influence & Impact at Work, which has the step by step action plan, you’ll need to embed a focus on mental health into the employee experience of your workplace, it’s totally free. And it’ll give you the start to your action plan steps to follow to create engagement to build a budget and a method to measure the value influence and impact that you are going to be making as you lead this transformational change in your organization. We haven’t been taught the mental health skills we need to truly lead our organizations into the future. So let this guide and this podcast be the advantage you need to elevate your career, your leadership skills and the positive impact you’ll bring to your organization, head to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the free  Guide to Influence & Impact at Work now. The opportunity is yours, and I cannot wait to see what you’ll do.

Now let’s get to our guests. Hello, Marissa, welcome to the show.

Marissa Afton  03:04

Thank you, Lindsay. Great to be here.

Lindsay Recknell  03:07

It is such a pleasure to have you here. I cannot wait for this topic. It is super topical. I probably could have come up with a better word than that. But it is super topical for the world we live in right now. And I’m very excited to talk about compassion and leadership and all that good stuff as it relates to mental health for leaders. So maybe we’ll just jump right in and ask you to share who you are and what you do.

Marissa Afton  03:33

Oh, thank you. So I am a partner at a international firm called potential project. We are a leadership development research and consulting firm we operate in 28 different countries and the core of what we do is really helping to create more human workplaces. Where I come in is I have a background in the psychology of workplace health and well being. I’ve spent many years going especially to high risk industrial sites, helping people to understand the psychology of workplace behavior in order to optimize their safety and well being. But then also personally, I’ve been a mindfulness and meditation practitioner for over 30 years, which I know dates me a bit. But it’s also by saying I was inspired by my father who was a corporate attorney in New York City in the 70s and 80s, when it really would have been career suicide to talk about using the power of training your mind to enhance your wellness and manage the day to day stresses and pressures of being a global corporate attorney when he was a general counsel at an international mining minerals corporation. So back then, what he did inspired a lot of Who I am and what I do now,

Lindsay Recknell  05:02

that’s so powerful, so powerful, or the psychology of organizational behavior. I’m just imagining you on a mining site, trying to convince these fine folks that they need to think about the psychology of anything, and how it contributes to better health outcomes and safety outcomes. What was that experience like at the beginning of your career?

Marissa Afton  05:30

It was very enlightening and very humbling. At the same time, I recognize early on that I look, I grew up in New York City, I was a little bit out of my element, although my father, I shouldn’t say completely out of my element, because my father also worked for an international binary minerals corporation. So I did have a little bit of peripheral exposure, but really not my area of expertise. But at the same time, there was a common denominator, which is the same common denominator for everything that we’re talking about today. Relation to Compassionate Leadership is that we’re all human, and human to human, when you’re relating to other humans, and you’re relating on factors such as, What is the purpose of you even wanting to stay safe? Well, we want to stay safe. We want to be able to, to perform at our best for the things that matter most in our lives. And so when we’re able to connect human to human, and we’re able to inspire and motivate people, for the things that matter most to them, then it’s easy, then it’s really easy work.

Lindsay Recknell  06:34

That feels so so powerful, interesting. I heard you use the word want, and that how we’re intrinsically motivated by our wants, right as, as the humans that we are, we’re, we’re intrinsically motivated by our wants. And I had a conversation with a professor earlier that was talking about exactly that. If somebody tells us, we have to do something, or we need to do something. And we’re not intrinsically motivated by that thing. There’s no way we’re going to put our energy or focus or our attention on that. And I think that’s part of the evolution of where are organizations are going, recognizing that want and really tapping into the, to the motivation of the humans in the workplace, which feels very, very compassionate.

Marissa Afton  07:20

Yes, exactly. Right. And I think that this is we’re kind of at the leading edge of a paradigm shift in in the organizational corporate working world. And I don’t want to focus only on you know, big global companies, corporate environments, I mean, any workplace environment, people want to be themselves, they want to be having a sense of belonging, they want to feel like they’re included, and they can be authentic and genuine. And goodness knows the last two years, if it’s taught us nothing else, it’s that we can actually be a little more vulnerable, we can be a little bit more authentic, because Hello, we’ve all been in each other’s living rooms. And maybe in some ways, we’ve sometimes been in each other’s, you know, other other areas of the couch, the house, the kitchen, or what have you. And when we’ve been able to really just show up as ourselves, then we actually feel more connected, more genuinely connected than having the work persona that we’ve all used to carry prior to the pandemic. So hopefully, it is something that we can bring with us outside of this pandemic reality that we’ve all been living in. Because if we lose that, then we really lost that ability to connect genuinely with one another. And I think that’s what people are craving and really wanting, and we probably wanted it before them, but now we actually feel empowered to actually expect it.

Lindsay Recknell  08:43

Yeah, the empowerment and the expectation, you know, people always say what do you what do you want to keep out of the pandemic? Well, that the empowerment and the opportunity to continue to have these kinds of discussions, and I know that this is a big, clearly a very big passion of yours, but something that you speak about a lot. And that’s how you and I got connected is that you are a speaker at the upcoming SHRM Conference, which is happening. If I do the math, we are recording two weeks out from the show, which is happening. Very exciting. Yes, very, very exciting. Can you tell us a little bit about your topic at the show and what we can expect to hear when we come listen to your talk.

Marissa Afton  09:28

I couldn’t be more excited to be coming back to SHRM, and I’ve been there several times before and really excited to be there. Again, this session, I will be speaking very specifically on the topic of Compassionate Leadership, with the subcategory the subtitle, how to do hard things in a human way. And this topic is born from a book that I and my colleagues at potential project published through Harvard Business Review in the beginning of the year nga January of the same title, Compassionate Leadership, how to do hard things in a human way. When we started writing the book, when we were first, given the opportunity, this is our second book with Harvard Business Press to write on the topic of Compassionate Leadership, it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And what we really were interested in investigating was, you know, leaders had to make some really, really core and difficult decisions at the time of the pandemic, leaders had to decide, you know, how do we pivot everything that we know about how our ways of working, are optimized into something that never really had been done before. And in some cases, leaders had to make really tough calls? You know, a lot of companies struggled financially. There were layoffs, as we know, and how do leaders do these really, really tough things while still embracing their humanity while doing it in a caring and compassionate way. And what we know is that leaders have struggled a lot in these last few years, and have had to bring in all different kinds of skill sets that were never expected of them before in terms of showing up and more with more care and compassion. But the leaders who were able to really succeed and excel and actually come out stronger are the ones who are able to blend those two pieces that didn’t see it as a binary choice. They either had to make really, really tough decisions and kind of divorce themselves from their humanity, or just be caring and compassionate, but kind of shy away from making those tough calls. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about.

Lindsay Recknell  11:37

Don’t I can’t even wait. Because you said, you said the magic words right there. For me, mental health skills, we have not been taught mental health skills as leaders, I just I believe so strongly that there is a gap in our knowledge and education, as managers as leaders of organizations that the pandemic has highlighted as truly as a big gap. And Compassionate Leadership is one of those is one of those topics. In fact, we have a module within our mental health skills training program called Compassionate Leadership. So can you can you preview for us without giving it away? But can you preview for us some of the the ways that that you’ll speak about how leaders can become more compassionate and maybe some of the research around that?

Marissa Afton  12:27

Yeah, well, the research is actually really clear. And the research that went behind the book, and again, this is in partnership with Harvard Business Review, where we were able to have one on one conversations with 350 C suite executives. And maybe I’ll just step back a bit and say, our primary focus in terms of leadership for the book, were two types of leaders, CEOs who are responsible for the core business strategy and implementing it to move the business forward CHROs who are responsible for bringing that down to the people. So we figured that these two core groups really encapsulated businesses that were successful in doing hard things in a human way. So we did the interviews with the 350 C suite executives, across many different industries. I mean, this is across multiple industries across 70, plus geographies, different countries. But also what we did was we were able to do assessments of over 70,000 leaders and their followers. And the research came back really crystal clear that there are different types of leaders. And we kind of categorize those leaders into what we call the WE leaders. And then also the ME leaders and the YOU leaders. And let me break that down a little bit for you. The WE leaders are the ones where there’s some real synchronization between how the leader sees themselves as compassionate and also able to do tough things able to really see clearly and make tough decisions. And their followers agree. And those WE leaders where there was real consistency and how the leader perceived him or her themselves and how the followers perceive them. Those those leaders had better internal motivation, better job satisfaction from employees, better retention, which we know in today’s world is incredibly key, lower workplace stress from their people, better engagement, all the good stuff by a multitude factor, not just by a little bit by a huge double digit factor. The other two categories were the ME leader. And in this case, the ME leader is a leader that says I’m doing great, I actually am really compassionate, and I’m pretty smart too. And the followers are like, Huh, that’s not what we’re seeing. In those cases, those leaders created cultures where people were feeling highly stressed, not super motivated, weren’t satisfied in their job more likely to quit, disengaged by also a multitude factor. Then there’s a third group of leaders and those leaders we call the YOU leaders and YOU leaders, Y-O-U leader are the leaders who thought, If only I could do more, I’m not doing enough, I should be doing this. They’re thinking they’re working and thinking about their people so much. But it’s causing a lot of stress for them. And their followers are saying, Yeah, you’re doing okay, it’s not as bad as you think. And what’s interesting is that for the YOU leaders, the ones who think they’re not doing enough, they’re the ones who are prone to burnout, they’re the ones who are more likely to quit, because they just can’t seem to feel like they’re doing enough. So a lot of what we’ll also be talking about is how do we get to more of that WE leadership persona, where there’s good balance between how I perceive myself, and how people perceive me, because then that’s kind of the secret sauce to everybody working well together.

Lindsay Recknell  16:11

I love that closing that gap, the perception of ourselves and the of our followers, but also their perception of how we’re doing. Exactly, it makes me so I don’t know if you know, an author called Dr. Tasha Ulrich, yes, yes, totally butcher her name. But her her book is called Insight, and I heard her speak, and she is amazing. And I’ll link to all of the places, you know, to her book, and get it right in the show notes along with your book. But her talk was all about self awareness and self awareness, unicorns who know they’re self aware. But one want to continue to be calm, more self aware, have that real growth mindset around self awareness. And then you know, the second category who, who aren’t that self aware, but want to be more self aware, you know, are actively working towards that, and they’ve got a little bit of ways to go. And then the third category of leaders who are completely unaware, completely unaware and have zero desire to learn any other ways. And it it there’s parallels in the work, it feels like in the work that you’re doing, but specifically around compassion. And that is a skill set, that I don’t think a lot of us have self awareness around what it even means to be compassion, compassionate, or to be a compassionate leader, let alone you know, maybe be able to articulate the benefits of that. Could you share with us what, what it means to be a compassionate leader?

Marissa Afton  17:56

Well, the good news is, it is a trainable skill. So even for people who feel like oh, maybe that’s too lofty for me. I mean, anybody is capable of actually training and compassion. And I will say that awareness is one of the keys, you know, having the awareness of your biases, your blind spots, the things that trigger you the things that you know, what the natural tendency to be attracted to certain groups or individuals in your team and maybe aversion for others. I mean, all of that awareness is kind of step number one. And when we think about leadership, one of the things that we talked about in the book is leadership starts in the mind. And it starts the mind by us having an awareness of our own capacity for compassion. And compassion may sound kind of lofty in an ideal state. But actually, we’re, we’re pretty hard wired for it. Humans are wired for connection. And we’re wired for connection through care. You know, there’s this idea that, you know, survival of the fittest is just, you know, myself versus everyone else. But the societies, the teams that thrive are the ones that work well together, and are actually able to support one another through good times and bad and to be able to balance out each other’s different capabilities and skill sets. So that compassion piece really does start with our awareness piece, and simply wanting to be of benefit. And so when we are defining compassion, were really thinking about the difference between compassion and empathy. Because empathy, also empathetic leadership is very, very, kind of in vogue right now. And it’s, it’s, you hear it a lot. And it is also incredibly, incredibly important. So empathy, as, as we look at it from a neurological perspective, when we’re looking at people’s brains, and we’re asking them in an FMRI machine to feel somebody else’s feelings, which is his definition of empathy. If it shows up as an emotion in the brain, it shows up the same way other emotions, it lights up the parts of our brain that that that trigger our emotions. Now that is great and good. And we actually need the spark of empathy to bring us into compassion. But the challenge with empathy alone is it can be narrow minded, we tend to empathize with people who we like or who are part of our tribe or our group, or however we want to term it. It’s tough for us to empathize with more than one person at the same time. So we can really be focused on one person at the expense of others, it also makes us really focused on a person rather than the big picture, and being able to take the long view and the strategic view. And it tends to be short lived, I can be really empathetic in this moment, but I might forget to check in with you. If I know you’ve been having a hard time in a week or two weeks or a month. And we know in the last year I mean, people have lost loved ones. And you know, are we able to sustain our compassion, versus just being empathetic. So the compassion piece, and I’ll just define that versus empathy is shows up in the brain as a rational part of our brain, it actually shows up as an intention. So the compassion piece is simply wanting to be of benefit I feel for you. But I don’t get a meshed in your emotional experience. I stepped back and I asked, What can I do to help?

Lindsay Recknell  21:34

It makes so much sense what you’re saying I had never, I’ve never heard empathy and compassion described in relationship to each other that way before. I mean, the language of mental health is something I am so passionate about. And it’s exactly these kinds of conversations, because so often, we recognize these words, but we don’t. We don’t have context, we can’t articulate what it means. I mean, to know how it shows up in the brain. fascinating to me, and I hope everybody else as well, but it just in that language, it builds connection, right? It helps to give us that confidence, to be able to have these kinds of conversations when we know the words to use, and we aren’t afraid that we’re going to get it wrong. Because we’ve got this foundation of language that feels so important.

Marissa Afton  22:25

I do think language is really important. And at the same time, you know, I we shouldn’t let language be a barrier, right? Because somebody’s definition of compassion, or empathy can equal my definition of compassion, the real piece behind all of this is that intention to be of help the intention to be a benefit. That’s the unlock key here for leaders, when leaders are asking, How do I become more compassionate, it’s not in what we it’s not in that traditional way of just joining in the suffering of somebody else, it’s being able to step back and see what I can do to help that individual. And it could be, sometimes the best action is no action. And what I mean by that is, so often, the other trap that leaders fall into is trying to solve the problem when the person can solve it for themselves, but simply want to have a listening ear, they just want to be heard, they just want to feel seen. And the other big piece that can help us into that space of Compassionate Leadership is to simply be more present. You know, how often do we take the time to check in with somebody just to check in with somebody to not just say, how are you how you doing today? But say, hey, Lindsay, how are you? Really, so we’re simply giving the space and time for us to land again, in the space of shared humanity, so that we can share that sense of care and compassion, and then also see how we can help.

Lindsay Recknell  24:02

So beautiful, yeah, staying present holding space, I think, you know, we are in the workplace, we have been taught to solve problems, to take up issues and to find solutions. And I feel like if there’s something we have definitely learned over the last few years, it is that there’s so much out of our control that we simply don’t have solutions for and it’s okay to sit in that for a bit. You know, we are we are building our resilience through these times. And we can’t build it without going through it together as a community with each other.

Marissa Afton  24:43

So true. And in fact, there is even evidence that says that the trust between leaders and followers is increased. When a leader can say I don’t know, rather than trying to come up with an answer that they don’t have Just for the sake of seeming like I need to have an answer for every scenario, well, the reality is we don’t know what the next thing is going to be. And we certainly don’t have all the answers. But the leaders who try to have an answer for something they don’t have an answer to actually break that sense of authenticity and trust among their people more than those who simply say, You know what, I wish I had all the answers. I’m gonna try to have all the answers. But in this moment, I simply don’t know.

Lindsay Recknell  25:30

Because if you say you do, they’re gonna see through it anyway. So it’s likely

Marissa Afton  25:35

Right, exactly right.

Lindsay Recknell  25:37

Can we talk about resiliency a little bit? Because I feel like coming on the other side of whatever it is this this current season, because there’s going to be next season. But can we? Yeah, let’s let’s talk about resiliency and how we can cultivate resiliency as part of our Compassionate Leadership, perhaps.

Marissa Afton  26:04

Absolutely. And resiliency has been, you know, so key, and I would say it was the word of 2020. It was the word of 2021. So many leaders and different companies have looked to us to help with supporting resiliency for their leaders for teams. And resiliency is again, another trainable skill. And some ways you can think about resiliency is the ability once again, to stay present, to remain balanced, and simply to stay calm in the eye of the storm, you know, things are swirling around us, but how can we stay grounded and calm and clear, so that we can focus on the action that we can take. But I also would suggest that there’s something kind of beyond resilience, if you will, you know, if we have built some core resiliency capabilities, then what and so a lot of what we’ve been looking at is around the idea of optimism, and optimism, not just for optimism sake, not just having that glass half full, everything will be okay. We call that a naïve optimism, that naïve optimism is just making an assumption that if I just sit back and let the world happen, it will all turn out all right. And we know frankly, that doesn’t actually come to pass and it can actually be it can actually get in the way of our being able to take action and influence the things that we can influence. So the tweak that we like to put on it is calling it wise optimism, where wise optimism is bringing wisdom into it, it is grounded in reality. So we are still being very realistic about you know, some days our options are between crap and super crap, you know, there might not be the best options for us to take. But if we’re able to face that squarely, while also holding a seed of influence in hope that is action oriented, we are able to move through with optimism and see clearly that there’s something beyond and honestly, there are going to be times when we don’t even know that there’s a silver lining to what we’re experiencing now. So if we’re able to keep that wise optimism mindset and it is a mindset, then we’re more likely to pass through it with resilience.

Lindsay Recknell  28:29

So beautiful. I love it. I love that length. Again, back to language, it just it feels so easy to understand when you say it that way. Because, you know, it’s not Pollyanna. It’s not, you know, sit back, let the car drive itself. It’s gonna be okay. You know, it is truly taking action over the things you can control. You know, I do work in positive psychology and the science of hope. And we talk a lot about the the the language of Hope versus optimism and what that what that means. And in my definition, the difference between hope and optimism is that hope has action attached. It has agency, it has that sense of controlling what you can control. And that’s exactly what I hear you describe in your wise optimism is bringing that wisdom bringing that experience bringing that perception of the world and making sort of, you know, critically thinking about the scenario and helping to drive it in the direction that is creating a future better than today.

Marissa Afton  29:40

That is optimistic at its best.

Lindsay Recknell  29:44

I love it when things come to light. You know, it’s quite beautiful, quite beautiful. Agreed. Well, Marissa, tell me where do you see the future of this work going?

Marissa Afton  30:00

Hmm, what a great, great question. I mean, in my optimistic viewpoint, I do think that we are at a pivot point here, you know, this is an there’s huge, huge opportunity for leaders for organizations, for people today to really lean into becoming more compassionate and caring. I mean, if not, now, when. And I do see this happening. I mean, a lot of our our, the companies that we partner with, are doing really impressive things in terms of becoming more people centric, people oriented, human focused. And I think that the companies that succeed in the future are the ones who really recognize that if we’re not listening to our people, and we are just relying on our old paradigms of how we work and how we work together, we are going to lose our best talent. And so I really do think that there is a future for Compassionate Leadership and compassionate workplaces. And actually, we’re learning more from our clients than they are from Austin, this regard sometimes.

Lindsay Recknell  31:17

I imagine that it goes both ways. So I have to, I have to imagine that it goes both ways. Speaking of your clients, when the audience that’s listening to this show wants to get a hold of you and continue this conversation with you and the fabulous people that you work with. How would they do that?

Marissa Afton  31:33

Oh, well, they can always find us through our website, which is potential project.com, all one word. And we do have a lot of resources on our website, white papers and publications, we part we publish on Harvard Business Review on Forbes on Fast Company. And you can find those postings, also at our LinkedIn channel, you can find me on LinkedIn as well, I post a lot of our thought leadership. And I’m happy to connect with anyone.

Lindsay Recknell  32:07

That’s amazing. And that is how you and I got connected. I feel so lucky to have had this conversation with you. And I feel so lucky to to be going to the conference in a couple of weeks so that I can meet you in real life and hear more of your thought leadership, it has been a real pleasure to get to know you, we will absolutely post all the links to your book and your LinkedIn pages and your website and all of that in the show notes so people can easily get a hold of you without any effort at all. A simple click will will get you there. So thank you, thank you again for bringing your wisdom, your optimism, and your compassionate Joe. It’s been a real pleasure.

Marissa Afton  32:46

Well, likewise, Lindsay, it’s been a great pleasure to meet and have this great conversation with you. I look forward to seeing you in person.

Lindsay Recknell  32:53

Thanks for joining me for another awesome episode of the mental health for leaders podcast. To make sure you don’t miss any future episodes, please go to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and subscribe to have these episodes delivered right to your inbox each week. You’ll also find all the show notes, links and resources that my guest mentioned on the show and the link to the Guide to Influence and Impact at Work freebie I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.  You’re listening to this podcast because you know our people need us more than ever. But being a people leader and an HR professional is especially hard right now. If the thought of figuring out how to best support your people and yourself feels overwhelming and impossibly hard. Let’s talk. I don’t promise I can make it easy, but I can make it simple. So let’s do that together. Go to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the Guide to Influence and Impact at Work now. Until next time, take good care. And as always, call me if you need me.