Mental health issues are on the rise because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The show’s guest today is Heather Younger, the CEO, and Founder of Employee Fanatix and author of The Art of Caring Leadership. Employee Fanatix is a leadership development consulting and training firm that teaches you to achieve real business results through caring leadership. Heather chats with Melanie Parish on how we need to be more compassionate and empathetic in our workplace to uplift our organization. If you’ve built trust and shown care, your members will feel more empowered to take action. Tune in and learn more about the art of caring leadership! 

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The Art Of Caring Leadership With Heather Younger 

I’m here with Heather Younger who is a best-selling author, international speaker, consultant, adjunct, organizational leadership professor and facilitator who’s earned her reputation as “The Employee Whisperer.” As a champion for positive change in the workplace communities and our world at large. Heather founded Employee Fanatix, a leading employee engagement and leadership development consulting and training firm to inspire others by teaching the caring leadership that drives real business results. Her new book, The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations was released on April 13, 2021. 

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Heather, I am so excited to have you on my show. It’s great to have you here. 

Thank you for having me. 

I want to dive in and I’m curious, what are you up to in your own work and leadership now? What’s happening to you these days? 

The exciting thing is, as a business, my company is called Employee Fanatix, we help organizations listen more effectively and create cultures of listening for their organizations. It was me and 4 or 5 contractors on the outside of the business for a while, then I have hired two employees. It’s cool to see everything shaping up, people taking ownership, and things coming together. That’s what I’m up to immediately. 

You have a brand new book out that’s exciting. 

It’s The Art of Caring Leadership. People who were saying it seems we need this more now more than ever, I didn’t do it for the time. I feel like this will be a classic, to be honest, but it does seem to be super appropriate. 

I think it’s so appropriate. Leaders have had to dig deep into compassion this year, for themselves, the teams and the people that they lead. What do you think is important about this time and compassion? 

This is a big topic. It’s interesting. People are coming to me a lot, asked me to talk about it. When we think about 2020, there have been so many deaths and mental health issues that are going on. Kids are coming to stay at home. Parents who were by themselves, are now living with their children. It’s a lot of different change going on and so expressing care like during all of our frustration, we are all challenged to do that and what does that mean? Specifically, that’s what I decided to do in this book is to tell you. What does care look like? What does it feel like? What does it produce? Inside of that is this idea of compassionate action. 

I say that because, during 2020, I’m going, to be honest, it has come to the very tip-top of my mind, the difference between empathy and compassion. If compassion is the act behind empathy. Empathy is sensing someone else’s needs, getting in their shoes, listening, and deep understanding, then you stop there and compassion takes over. That’s where the action where you go in you are alleviating the pain of another person by doing some action to help to alleviate it. Those two combined are like a special sauce. I call it like an elixir to what care can feel like. 

I like this idea that those are two separate things because we use them almost as synonyms sometimes and compassion is action. That’s a very cool thought. I’m curious because it’s come up for me with clients in 2021 when employees need compassion or they are asking for compassion. They are asking for leaders to take some action that relieves their suffering in some way but because of whatever suffering they are having, their productivity is lessened or leaders worry that if they are too compassionate, they give too many exceptions. They take care of people too much, especially in these work-at-home times with kids’ home from school and things like that. They are setting bad precedents or people aren’t doing the work that they are being paid for. How do you talk about that with your clients? 

I always tell people don’t confuse my kindness for weakness because that’s all the stuff I talk about as the empathy to compassion and the care, the love, the connectedness. I talk about that all the time but I can tell you that every person I have ever led will tell you, I also can be a tough leader. I can have high expectations. Around all of the care, concern and kindness that I talk about inside of that is this idea of course-correcting team members when they go down the wrong place, the wrong down, and the wrong road. For example, these exceptions, you keep talking about that need to be made, the business has to still move forward. Work still has to get done. 

I don’t think it’s this or that, they are two separate things. I think they are going to have to be intertwined and they really now, even more than ever. People being at home, someone you do hybrid work situations, that line is going to be blurred a lot, leaders who I think to thrive through this are going to be super successful, and being okay standing on that blurry line and working in between both sides. In the end, if you have built trust, shown care, expressed, helped them grow as people, you have put them first and you have been there to help them in the past. They know that you are meeting them where they are at and you are leading the whole person when you get to that place where they don’t do something like their productivity is slipping. 

You can have that conversation. You can say, “Leslie, I’m concerned because I know your value system. I know what you value the most. You value this because of that. I was concerned when I noticed this and it was counter to that. Let’s talk now. What we can do to help you move past this tough point?” I say we a lot because it’s not about me or them, it’s about us, what we do as a team and for each other. When they hear that language, they sense me moving in that direction. They don’t feel like they are pissed at me. They may be a little disappointed themselves because, in the end, they let the person down who they know believes in them deeply, who cares for them deeply but when they leave, they should feel uplifted or empowered to go take some action on their own behalf. That’s how I see those conversations going. That’s how they have gone for me but it’s because I did that hard work. It is hard work to be empathetic, compassionate, consistently is not an easy thing to do 

The way that you deliver the, “This is falling short.” You can be empathetic and kind when you deliver that message. You don’t have to be mean or yell at people. The longer I work around leadership and leaders when I hear that parental tone a leader might take. They have stepped out of compassion and become hierarchical. They are failing at that moment. If they are not having a face-to-face, equal-to-equal dialogue about that performance, they are missing something in their own leadership to be able to do that. 

The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations

I had an interaction with a team member. She directly reports to me and she was working with me on this. It was a new client that was onboarding in the tech space and I was leading customer experience. She was part of the customer experience team. We were supposed to be meeting with this large franchisee of a big name brand to help them onboard. She was supposed to be there to help because she was more of the technical lead and she didn’t show up. I’m equal with customer and employee experience so for me, it’s always a balance between those and making sure that we do have as much as we can to balance. 

I called her, I did not yell but I was hurt because we had double-checked and triple-check. She was going to be on the call. She didn’t show up in the call and we happen to be in the same office. It was virtual at that point we were doing. It was the text we were doing like demos and things on our computer. I look over and I go three-set whatever he was, “I can’t remember the time. Can you come here?” We walk over aside and I think people could see from my demeanor. I wasn’t screaming. I wasn’t yelling but I said, “You do recall that you and I were supposed to be meeting with a so-and-so client and this was our third reschedule. You insured me you would be on that call?” She was like “Yeah.” “You weren’t there so the customer was not at all happy. You know how I am about customer experience and teamwork. We were both supposed to show up to this. Now, what are we going to do to fix this relationship?” 

That was pretty much it. I shut up but everybody was surprised because I’m not a mean boss or manager. At that moment, you see my body language. You could see I was a little ruffled because we were already struggling to keep this client. It was a big client. She assured me. She was there. It wasn’t like she was bleeding somewhere. She was out with her catch-ups and I will know that. We are always working but she knew I wasn’t happy. I didn’t yell but everyone knew if I came to you this way, I’m pulling you aside and we are on this discussion. You can see me going, “Hmm.” You know I’m not happy because I rarely get mad at work. I have a huge amount of self-control and emotional self-management when I’m at work and if I do, you can see. Sometimes, you have to do that. You have to call people right on the carpet for being subpar and their delivery of service for them not performing in their job. I didn’t do it in a way where I was yelling. 

I was hoping that she kept her dignity when the interaction was gone. I needed her to be crystal clear about what I value and what our team values were. Being customer-centric and having excellence or at the top of that, I still think it’s caring of love. I’m doing the work. As we think about caring leadership, we are all on this journey every day. I want to be consistent, be more empathetic and compassionate. I want to make sure I’m meeting them where they are at. I’m going to listen to them, not like through my lens but their lens. All these things I want to do. If I’m doing all this work, you fall way short and you show no remorse for doing it, now I’m getting a little ruffled. I’m only human. 

It’s interesting because you are talking about you being a straight talker. I know that part of your work is about how to create that culture on a team where people speak freely. I call it feedback loops in my book but it’s like, “How do you have everything on the table? How do you allow that there can be productive conflict on a team? How do you have productive dialogue that is taking the work forward, sort of natural friction when you have a lot of ideas flying around? How do you think about creating that culture?” 

When you say that, there are a couple of leaders. I highlight about 80 leaders in my book. One of them is Larry Sutton. He’s the President and CEO of RNR Tires. A pretty big tire company. He talks about this idea. He tells people, “If I say something stupid, you have permission to slap me across the face. I am the CEO and I want you to be very forthcoming with me. If I am not presenting your right, I’m not aligned or I’m not showing congruently to people, call me out.” What I’m saying with this is that the leader needs to speak the truth themselves in a respectful way and model what it is they expect. Also, by asking for it, inviting people and making sure that you are very aware of any triggers that might happen, you are in control of your emotional management. 

You don’t want to say that, “Please, tell me the truth,” then you go off or you start to get all of this. People sense the tension changing in the room. That’s the key. The leader has to lead. The leader has to show them well so they can emulate you, then the other thing is making an express invitation for them to do it. Making sure you stay rational, objective, open again all the things you want people to see and model. You have to do that. I would say those are the main things. That’s the way you would do that because otherwise if you don’t, they don’t even know what it looks like. They don’t even know how to copy. They don’t know what to do and they don’t feel comfortable. Let’s say, as a leader, who didn’t do it and they were coached by me, I’m like, “You want to have to create more environment. Here’s what you can do.” 

All of a sudden, leader starts to go into these meetings and they start saying like, “Shelly, let’s put it out there. What is it that I didn’t do right with this project or whatever it is? Tell me what I could have done better. Don’t be intimidated. I want you to tell me, I do. I promise nothing to have it.” You do that, then when they do it, you have a positive response. It’s like, “Shelly, thank you. I did not think of that.” All of a sudden, Joe says, “This is the other thing I was thinking.” He goes, “Joe, let’s put that right on the whiteboard.” You see where I’m going, then it’s like, “This person is listening. They are digesting all of this feedback that I’m telling them.” It’s not a bad thing and we are not like killing each other. 

I work a lot with personality profiles. One of the places I fall that I know is that I always sound like I know everything. I can’t help it. I’m sound like an authority, even if I learned it five minutes ago. I always tell my team like, “I’m always going to sound like that but pretend I know nothing if you think something more than me, please say it. It’s my job to speak with authority in the company but you’ve got my back. If you know I’m flailing, then please tell me what you see as the truth because the fact that I sound that way doesn’t mean it’s true.” My team will often be like, “Melanie, I don’t think that’s right.” I had a client. I was doing a Facebook Live and the interface change it. She was like, “You are still on Facebook Live.” I’m talking to my kids. I’m like, “We have to take that down right away.” We fail as leaders all the time. It doesn’t have to be an earth-shatteringly horrible experience if we are not so impressed with our own importance. We can be taken down. It’s okay to take us down as leaders. That’s a good process. 

Caring Leadership: Empathy and compassion make a huge difference for turnover. It has a huge impact.

I think that express invitation is pretty critical. 

I liked that a lot that the “call me out,” that’s lovely. I’m curious, you are a strong woman leader. I like to talk about this with people. What do you think are the unique challenges for women leaders? 

I was talking to someone about this and it was this idea of, “Do women show up more on the softer side? Do we show up more empathetic at work? Do we show up more compassion?” I said, “I have to tell you, the trend that I’m seeing is that we are lessening the thing that I personally think is our strength. Many of us are trying to put that aside and show more male tendencies, have more confidence, be very strong and know not to be that person who sits with our people,” I’m finding the people that are attracted to this caring leadership message. 

There are a lot of men from all over the world coming for me like, “Thank you so much. I’m making these changes.” There are women too but it’s amazing. I have been very pleasantly surprised to see how men have been. The trend I’m seeing is I don’t want us, please don’t, women out there in the world. Don’t lessen the thing that is a nurturing way. Not all women are nurturing. That’s a stereotype too but there are things that we do have as women, even if they don’t have children. As a result of that but don’t give it away, don’t put it away or put it in the closet, I would say lead with it because I think again, men are coming around, organizations, boards are coming around. They realize that is empathy compassion thing to seeking an understand-listening thing that we are onto something. It makes a huge difference for turnover, for the bottom line, for anything in the mark, it’s a huge impact. 

I am seeing especially women in tech becoming super tough. They are tired of swallowing their words and I find myself uncomfortable with it occasionally like that edge. They are walking across an edge now. I do see men opening up. I don’t know if it’s like the Me Too Movement. They were like, “We better figure this out.” I do see a change in those roles and what people are talking about, how they are thinking about leadership. I have started asking men about women in leadership a lot and it’s interesting to hear their responses. I have decided, like hearing what men think about women’s leadership is something we don’t do much. Any of my guests who are men, fair warning. I’m going to ask you about women’s leadership and race. It’s interesting to talk to everybody about those and let everybody do the work. Where can people find you? If they want to get your book or they want to get to know more, what’s the best way for them to find you? 

There are only two places I would say, go to TheArtOfCaringLeadership.com. That’s the book website that also leads you to my personal speaking website and the consulting website. I would say LinkedIn. If you look up Heather Younger on LinkedIn, you will find me. It will pop up. 

Thank you so much for being here. It has been so fun to dive into this topic and to contemplate the things that you are an expert in. I appreciate your time. 

Thank you very much. It has been great. 

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I have been talking with Heather Younger. I love how she talks about leaders going into meetings and being very explicit about saying, “Call me out. Tell me if you think I missed something or I go in the right direction.” Their response needs to be, “Thank you for that. I didn’t see that,” because that opens up what I call feedback loops. It’s an amazing piece of advice and a great way to upskill your leadership right away. I hope that you have enjoyed knowing about Heather as much as I did. Go experiment. 

Important links: 

• Employee Fanatix 
• The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations 
• Heather Younger – LinkedIn 
• RNR Tires 

About Heather R. Younger

Heather R. Younger is a best-selling author, international speaker, consultant, adjunct organizational leadership professor, and facilitator who has earned her reputation as “The Employee Whisperer.”

As a champion for positive change in workplaces, communities, and our world at large, Heather founded Employee Fanatix, a leading employee engagement, and leadership development consulting and training firm, to inspire others by teaching the kind of caring leadership that drives real business results.

Her new book, “The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations” was released on April 13, 2021.

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