How to practically execute empathy in the workplace with Liesel Mertes

Tiffany Sauder: This conversation with Liesel, top five for me. I'd say so far in all the interviews that I've done, It came at a very poignant time. What she does, her business is called Empathy at Work, and she teaches leaders and organizations how to very practically sustainably execute empathy in the workplace.

And she talked a lot about the difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion, and how sometimes the things that we want to do to help don't help. Has a lot of really helpful tips when somebody in our life, somebody in our workplace, somebody who reports to us, somebody who's a coworker or even a friend, honestly, is going through crisis and grief.

We are very uncomfy in that we much prefer to be at people's celebrations and we really, really struggle to walk well with people when they're going through immense sadness and immense crisis. And I walked away in this hour with. A richer toolbox of how to show up in a way that helps people understand how much I love them, language and verbiage to use, to walk into really delicate conversations in a way that people really feel heard and respected and honored.

And literally I think everybody on the planet needs to listen to this conversation, Liesel and I had, it will just make you a better human being. And the work she does is about empathy in the workplace because I think we're specifically terrible at it in that environment because it's professional.

And so we don't know how to like dance around the boundary of personal, professional. What's it look like? we just recently had something really hard happen. In our organization at Element three to an employee and their family. And I think my, my ears were listening so specifically, and my heart was grieving compassionately.

I want it to be empathy. My heart was grieving in a way that I just want to be present and real and human in this moment for them. And. Liesel has been through some pretty impossible things in her own life. And so when she talks about empathy and grief, she's not talking about it in an academic sense.

She's talking about it in a deeply human sense. And, it was really special. So listen in as liesel and I really walk through a difficult road and, give us all some more tools to how to navigate grief.

We, I don't know. We've been in the same city for a long time. have are you an Indy kid?

Liesel Mertes: Uh, my dad's an orthopedic surgeon, so we moved around for his training. Okay. And he did a stint with the Air Force, but from sixth grade onward, they have lived on the north side of Indianapolis.So it's been a orienting point now I've come back to.

Tiffany Sauder: Did you leave for college and then come back or?

Liesel Mertes: did. I left, uh, for college in the Greater Chicago area, Wheaton College. And I was, I was a polys sci major with IR focus. And it wasn't that I didn't like Indianapolis, I just thought that the world was very wide and I would do things in it. So we lived in Nairobi for a while. I got an mba. It was also a season of life. We had a child die and I was applying for PhD programs and had been accepted for PhD in business when we found out that our fifth child had, a congenital heart defect that would require a fair amount of surgery and intervention. And that was a tipping point to really be all in on Indianapolis to say, family is here. Riley has such great resources and indie is no longer a stopping off point, but a place that we were going to remain.

Tiffany Sauder: when you were gonna go get your PhD in business? Like what were you gonna do? I can't even imagine I do with PhD in business teach, be a professor. I don't know.

Liesel Mertes: I love the moment of synergy where something new emerges, where there's an idea and a dialogue and there's a synthesis and being like, we've never looked at it that way before. I'm someone who naturally pulls at the edges of ideas. So, the academy was perhaps a place to land. at that point, again, we'd had these life traumas. We'd have the death of a child. We'd had this real realization in the life of our family that you can plan and you can structure things and they don't always go the way that you want.

And I think that there was something, at a subliminal level that was appealing to. Academia. It's like, well, this is the path. And then you get tenured and you spend, 40 years somewhere and these are your classes for the semester. which is interesting to think as the life now of an entrepreneur runs my own business, how different that was. But I think especially at that moment, that felt really good. And I thought that maybe I'd teach something, that combined some of my international relations like sustainable business practices for two-thirds world development.  I didn't get that far

Tiffany Sauder: So what did you do in Kenya? and like tell me the life stage you were at when you guys moved there.

Liesel Mertes: Yes. Well, we had a five year plan when we got married that included grad school for both of us and no children. But I delivered our first baby a week after our first anniversary. So, so that plan went out the window.

I had really wanted to go before I got like a graduate degree in international relations or something like that, and maybe a PhD. I thought it's so easy to romanticize what living and working overseas is because that's what I thought I would be doing. So we thought it would be good to have a grounding experience.

So we weren't planning on doing it with a baby, but it was my husband and I, we went to Nairobi from 2007 to 2008 and I worked in microfinance development with a Kenyan organization that was helping HIV positive women, make school uniforms, feedback into their local economy. And my husband was teaching well over there and we had this little 10 month old.

Who I think returned to the US thinking she was black. any black person that we would see, she would just like run to them and want to be held. deeply formative in her self-concept, so. Wow.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay, so first baby, and then you moved back to the States.

Liesel Mertes: I moved back 34 weeks pregnant with our second  and I really had come to a realization Wow. Overseas. I thought, I don't have any idea how money works. Like, not really. We were writing these grant proposals and we were in this development world and I thought, I don't know how money works and I feel like that could be important. So I was applying to these, graduate programs in international relations and sustainable development, but I thought, I'm gonna apply to these MBA programs. I feel like learning about money would be helpful. And um, one of them gave me a full ride scholarship and I thought that is a great I thought, mm-hmm.go there. So,

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. So then this is kind of the beginning of the next leg of your journey. So you came back to the states 34 weeks pregnant You have girl, boy, or boy, girl,

Liesel Mertes: Girl, boy, Ada and Magnus. Yep.

Tiffany Sauder: And then, you're getting your mba. and then you had a life trauma.

Liesel Mertes: Yes. Well, and so children, and unexpected pregnancies are woven through the story because I had Magnus, I'm nursing him while applying to these grad programs. So I get accepted in April. We go visit IU in May. and my youngest right now is like, Nine, 10 months old. So I said yes to iu. Found out a week later that I was unexpectedly pregnant with, Mercy. And at that point I was like, we have done kids, we have done multitasking. IU has a great program where you get to go overseas over spring break, and I remember pitching myself to the director of student development.

I should be able to go on this trip. I will have a three week old baby. But I've traveled internationally with babies. They're super easy. Everybody loves it if you have a little white baby overseas. So we just had no idea until at 20 weeks. in the middle of my first semester and accounting and finance, my husband was.

Out of town because by the time it's your third baby, you're like, oh, it's, it's not a thing. So he was in Northern Minnesota and so I was at my first scan with my ob and she was gone for a really long time and came back and said, we've seen something in the scan, you're going to need to go to Indianapolis for more tests.

And Mercy Joan, she had this condition that if it's, a spinal cord defect, if it's lower, it's spina bifida. which you can live with, if it's higher, it's a condition called an encephalite, which is always terminal. But for mercy, it was this large fluid-filled s sac on the back of her neck.it's a condition called an encephalocele, and there's this wide range of outcomes. it can be terminal, it can have mild impairment where, um, they can do a surgery right at the beginning. It's, it's just this diversity. I was going to finance class and accounting. I was coming to Indie for these high risk appointments.

We were meeting with hospice, we were meeting with neurosurgeons. We just didn't know. Um, I gave birth to her on February 15th

Tiffany Sauder: You carried her to term.

Liesel Mertes: Carried her to term. Um, she's the child who has looked the most like me of any of my children. And they did an MRI in those first couple of hours and it was really clear. They said, um, any surgical intervention, she can't breathe on her own. She was like perfectly formed, but can't breathe on her own. And anything that we do will be doing things to her and not for her. know, like that, that path is not actually gonna lead to any improvement. So that Mercy

in the hospital, she was on life support.She was just surrounded by family and friends. Um, all night long people would come and stay with her. My sister would play UK ukulele or my brother was like, No one could die without hearing bono and you too. So everybody, um, was there, but we were able to bring her home to my parents' house, where I grew up. she lived for about a day after they had extubated her and then we buried her. Then I had this three-year-old and this 17 month old and who had been so, hoping for a Mm-hmm.

And it is a big part of the story of our family, which we might get into more of the children that came after. As it relates also to my work, it was this inflection point, um, at a deep level like you're both experiencing and observing it. to look at this training program that I was in, which is all for leaders and managers and realize that over a two year course of study, we were not giving any time to talking. How we manage people during our own disruptive life events or during theirs. You know, I'm a high achiever. I was not like, okay, I've had two weeks to have this sadness and now I'm back and I'm ready to go.

It was an outplay of needing lots of levels of support and realizing some people were really well equipped to do it, and some people had no idea how bad they were.

Tiffany Sauder: you said you were both in it and observing it. I feel like in this part of the conversation, you were observing it. it like to be in it?

Liesel Mertes: I've reflected even on that question lately because in training, so I'll be like, I'm not, okay. Yeah. It was horrible. there's a talk I'm working on right now on Fortitude and it's gotten me back into some of my writing or experiences. It's exhausting at such a deep level, and especially for someone who's used to doing a lot to just wake up and be exhausted. It's, it's this strange thing also because to have a child die, one reason you're so sad is because you so wanted to parent that child. Like you're thinking about your parenthood.but the energy that you bring to parenting your existing children feel so crappy.I felt like I was just easily irritated by them. I'm so mad at because I'm exhausted, Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Sauder: you weren't redeeming even the thing you were

Liesel Mertes: right? Yeah. I'm like, I wanna be a parent so much. I'm I'm a crap  I don't know if every partnership can go like this, but the rates of divorce and disintegration, you are so high. And so our way of dealing with stress, which we have unwound through considerable marriage counseling, to have us at a really happy, stable place. But like we would both value so much Luke and I, showing up for our kids or doing our work. And, and it just takes so much that by the end of the day, by the time you come to your other also sad, also needing something from you partner, it could, it felt like exasperation, like if they did anything irritating or if they needed anything, it was this sense of like, how could you need something from me too. And it was also really hard because I was in this program, like any graduate program that is so designed towards like, well, what do you wanna do? let's give attention to this. Let's sell yourself. And I felt like my capacity to want to dream, iterate, or sell myself was like smashed. I remember feeling like, Well, what, what doesn't even matter to make a two year plan. Like it seems like a crapshoot. You know, you could get scabies, somebody could die, somebody could get leukemia tomorrow. Yeah.

And so, high level of just weariness, and also just your emotions are so unpredictable and you really just have to give yourself space for it. there was a time, so we're going to the library. I've always been a huge fan of the library and it was a free place to take my children. So taking ADA to the library, who's three, and I've got the 17 month old and we had brought the books. To check back in. Like we were dropping off books and checking out books, and this librarian was a box checker to the max. And like, they hadn't officially been checked into the system, So she wasn't checking books out to me. I had, I had zero chill or bounce with it. Like I, I just again, could observe myself as, I'm like, are you kidding me?

You have no idea. I'm like, who is your manager? Who can I talk to? And it just like, by the time I'm leaving, I'm in tears. and you can step back and be like, oh yeah, that's, that's because my daughter just died. It's not the library. It's, I'm sad. So, one of the things I've thought through too about loss is that your body is still physically going through all the emotions. the, the emotions Of just having a baby with your milk coming, all that kind of stuff. Is it just like what in the world is happening? I feel I wanna run away from my body, like, can I

Tiffany Sauder: not get a right second? With no reminder.

Liesel Mertes: um, I'll say sometimes like immediate grief smells to me like soggy cabbage leaves because, uh, there's actually a fair amount of ancient wisdom around what it means to be a mother who has lost a child, because that's way more common in the history of the world than it is now. But, uh, apparently cabbage leaves, somebody told me cabbage leaves in your bra will help, your boobs not hurt when your milk's coming in.So, as it relates also to how you care for people in hard times, longtime family friend. Delivered wordless cabbage to me for about the first week. I would just find it in my fridge. And so yeah, your stuffing cabbage leaves in your bra. We went to Phoenix just to getaway and you still look pregnant. So of course everybody is like, when are you due? And you're really trying to decide in the airport, like, do I just put it all out there and be like, I'm not, my child died or just absorb it. the, the embodied nature of any of our emotions is something that I continue to grow in my awareness of. I was especially at that stage, like experiencing it, but didn't have language or respect for how much our body keeps the score and, uh, how much some of our coping is. Um, totally trying to ignore the body and push it to the side and had to welcome that integration differently.this.

Tiffany Sauder: So did you always have a, like, sense of where you were at in the process of grieving? Or did you hit a wall and realize, I have to pay attention to this in a different way? Because youwere consumed with littles, did you finish your program?

Liesel Mertes: I did finish my program. it actually happened over our spring break, which was strange. Um, because people didn't know you leave pregnant and you come back not, um, I took a lighter load.  it's hard to even say how, uh, aware or unaware, like you, you don't get graded on a scale with your own grief or against anyone else.But something that, uh,is part of who I am that I think served me in the process was, I was not going to put on a face or lie to anybody about where I was at. felt like deeply important, of doing the work and being like, I'm not gonna tell you I'm okay if I'm you can, you can deal it.

I'm not okay. so that impulse helped also, even as it relates to what, what I do now and help other people do. By and large, the people who are closest to me were a really healthy community of people who were.inattention,trying to show up in meaningful ways, not forcing me to be like, why aren't you over this by now?

Like, why aren't you? Okay? And I feel like that gave me the space to, step into my process in a way that mattered. you don't do do it.perfectly or imperfectly, It just keeps right unfolding. Sometimes holidays can hit you upside the head. That continues to be a reckoning, even 12 years out as to what that feels like First Mother's Day. Horrible.

Tiffany Sauder: so this moment though, when you're. Path had a huge impact on the work you do today. so I wanna go there.also, maybe at of this,  we had an employee last week, that's what this little pin is for, lose a 16 month old baby, very unexpectedly. And, um, and so what you're talking about this idea of like of how do you you step in in a way where they feel your love feel your support, um, and you can run a movie fast through your head of all the gonna see and experience and feel. And thankfully those come one at a a time Yeah, dare you.But, um,Butit makes you about, leadership differently. It makes you think about humanity differently. It makes you think about, um, I don't know. It gives a different context to like, The work you're doing, you know, and realize, part of our responsibility is to have a really healthy business so that people have space to grieve and not worry about whether or not they can get a paycheck.

Like, that's part of my good, you know, that I can do in the world. But it's just been, I don't know, it's been a really raw week here. Um, it's not my family, but it feels like family. Yeah. Uh, tell me about the meaning behind the pin and that act of solidarity and, um, mirroring back. How did you decide on that and why does it on that? Um, so, uh, this is what they called Little boy. This is like his nickname. This is Wubs. Um, and like we have a creative team. his father is on that team. And so the creative team, they're like, what we do is make.

Having something tactile to put their own energy and mourning into, I think was a sense of just needing to do something where there's nothing to do really, but needing to do something. And, um, for me, I think wearing it over the last few days, it's like just every morning it feels right. Mm-hmm.  The father has made it clear to us that one of the ways to honor his little boy's life is to life remember him.Mm-hmm. so wanting, even though the day has passed where it it happened, the moment in time hasn't, don't know why I'm, why I know why I'm crying. Um,and so I think for me it's about, creating an opportunity to speak about him, creating an Celebrate his little life. Um, creating an opportunity to just extend others' prayers and impact into their life and space to say like, I know you don't know but it's a lotAnd if you have faith, and, um, so think that's part of it is just like the energy of wanting to do something and somebody's already mowed the lawn,you know? Um, so I don't know how that lands on you or what, um,

Liesel Mertes: oh, first it lands at a human level of a beautiful way to honor and carry WBS into the future family. I think for any parent who loses a child, uh, whether they have words for it or not, um, a fear and apprehension is this person was so meaningful in my would've wanted to know them until they buried me.Yeah.Andpeople are gonna interact with me the rest of my life, and they're not gonna know, they're not gonna know impact and this story. Like, I won't show a picture of my children and they'll be in it. also, I, I talk with people about offering something specific, something that you can do out of a place of abundance.

Are you good at baking? Are you good at notes? Are you good at making things and being able to offer that up. instead of asking people if you ask them, how can I help? They probably would've not have been able to access, will you please make a pin to remember my child? And so that sense of annoyingness, of the team, of creativity, of extending that, like, that's rooted deeply in best practices for displaying care. and

Tiffany Sauder: what. even when you introduce yourself, when somebody asks you how many kids you have, what is your answer? And, and how have you kind of process through the way that you honor Right. You're little girl Mercy Joan.

Liesel Mertes: Yeah. That's a great question. Uh, I don't think that there's a right answer. I gauge that also based on the social setting.you know, sometimes your, your, your kid's school and just go how many kids, what they really mean is, how many people do you have registered for lacrosse? not trying to at that level. So you contextualize it and I don't beat myself up. Um, but especially people that I'm going to be in longer term relationship, like it doesn't ever feel like there's like the right moment to drop, like, We, we literally have a dead body in, you know, in the backdrop.

One interesting thing though that I did notice, and this mattered to me, I pivoted around this one and really adjusted practices within that first two years I would be with my older children, the one who, the ones who, not the ones that came after Mercy, but even, even they, when they had language for it. it would be one of those in passing, you know, how many kids do you have? But I'm not really listening. I'd say four. And my child who is standing next to me would say, no, you, you have five.and that I really had to pause over but I do think there's a core sense of a child of wondering if I were to go. Would I be without a name? Would I be without a space? And so still, especially when I am with those children, whether it's a passing social interaction or a longer term, um, it's very perfect. have five, one of whom died. And, um, some, some of that is also not having to feel the need to manage the other person's That is an exhausting part of grief and a personality thing. Especially you, if you make people comfortable and you facilitate and you're an extrovert, uh, you feel like you have to make it feel better for them. Cuz they obviously, if you're a responsive person, you can't hide it. it's stinks.And so not feeling like I have to manage their response has been a practice of years as it relates to how I feel. I get to carry mercy. um,

I'm sure there's an element of early yearning and intention that pours into the work I do today. Um, I can remember one month after she died, I delivered baskets of cookies to her constellation of providers at, uh, St.

Vincent's 86th Street. I mean, we just received fantastic care, so that felt important. I'm doing that and I just wept in the parking lot. I just cried from such a deep place because it was at this gut level. Um, these were the people who knew me primarily as Mercy's mom, and thought, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life wishing that there were people, you know, I'm ADA's mom, I'm Moses' mom, I'm all of these things.fast forward. Now when I speak, when I facilitate, because of who I am, stories with my children pop up in all kinds of I'm definitely gonna talk about being Mercy's mom we about having empathy and there's a way, for just who I am that continues to be meaningful every time time

Tiffany Sauder: along the way. Yeah. I can see that .So what was it like opening yourself up to adding more kids to your and How did that chapter feel and and

Liesel Mertes: Yeah, again, I, I don't think that there's like a prescriptive after you lose a child, do it this way and you'll feel great. for us, it felt like we, we wanted to have another child, not as any aspect of a replacement, but out of a place of deep yearning and desire. so I, I was pregnant with Jemima as I was graduating business school.which whenwe talk about the toll on the bodies, I think if I had realized how much a bodily toll that was, you, you don't know till, you it was a lot.

Um, but I can remember with my big pregnant tummy in the IU workout facility with all these, you know, hot young college things.

I'm this pregnant grad student. I'm on the recumbent bike. And, uh, one way that my grief was manifesting itself was a hyper focus on names because I had felt like it was so important that we named Mercy and we could pray for her, and she could have an aspect of personhood all throughout that short amount of time.she took up space and I didn't know this next child, how long would we have them? Would they die too? And I was like, we have to name.

Um, so again, grief is funny. So I've got these name books and they're, they're covered with sweats cuz I'm dripping onto them and I'm looking and I'm like, there has to be a name that captures all of the depth and knowledge and yearning.And I would come home with just sheets of paper. I would, and I was drawn to very um, I was like, I was like, what about like, like the Scandinavian, because we're like, like Hilda or Ramona. I felt like it had had to be. And my husband was like, can't, we can't, we can't, do that to the child. Um, we did, we named her Jemima,

Tiffany Sauder: which there is a book, which choice.

Liesel Mertes: It's a bold I like the name. She is, she's a character from the Bible in the Book of Job, who is this character who loses everything.He goes through this deep desolation, but in end of his story, um, he has a restoration and he has children that are granted him three daughters, one of whose name is Jemima. And, um, it felt congruent with the story. Jemima in the Bible also received an equal share of the inheritance with her brothers, which was bold move towards female economic empowerment, which we also liked, and, and she has firm legal footing with her brothers. So, uh, we named Jemima. Uh, she was a very joyful presence in our family. and then Moses, who is our youngest, he's also been in the medical care system. So there's not this sense that if you go through one hard thing, You are spared from that.And he's had to have multiple open heart surgeries at, it's a totally unrelated with mercy. But that was a whole other journey of um, just going deeply into not only experiencing it, but also, you are translating that to your other children. They are forming their sense of safety, predictability.Who am I in the world? I mean, it's been a major part of my parenting journey of companioning my children through that, not only with mercy, but then as they're older of being like, Moses going to die? You know, it's always an undercurrent each time he has to go back to surgery. Um, and I have felt very firmly, I don't want to lie to you.There's this parental pivot that we wanna do in protecting our children to say, no, that will, that will never happen again. Of course not. to step into the, yes. Like, I I it would but it could. Mm-hmm. Um, is this something to walk through? yeah.

Tiffany Sauder: Oh my goodness. So you have made this idea of empathy in the workplace. Your, and when you came up and said, like, what? I'm like, what do you, do you like workplace empathy? I was like, what? This is like startling. I mean, we talk about emotional intelligence, talk about,  fierce conversations.We talk about, you know, picking our language in a way that we're aware of other people's strengths, but to Say this is my box here. Yeah. I'm, I'm doing empathy in the workplace. it says a statement about you and what you value and it also says, your picture of what you believe the workplace needs to look like in your experiences.Sotell me aboutThat and like what it looks like and Right. And can everybody do this  or not,

Liesel Mertes: Well, you've articulated well the intent of being, something that you can't move quickly past to say, down the workplace empathy also implies you can get better at I really, love at the heart of my work is looking at these human-centric skills, not soft skills or people skills. If you are a human working with humans, like empathy and connection and saying, we tend to conceptualize of them as personality traits. Tiffany, maybe you're fantastic at it. I'm terrible. That's just the way it is. But I'm really good at sales and just leaving it at that instead of. Conceptualizing of them as skill sets that we all can and should be getting better in. Because the truth is some people are naturally more gifted or they have a life experience that ushered them into it.

But that doesn't mean that we all can't learn and get better. So especially if I'm doing an introductory training or just getting your feet wet, we talk about the economic case for empathy because it's not just a good idea. The numbers actually continue to show that this is a major reason why people remain, why they stay, they link it to their productivity.

78% of respondents in a recent survey linked it directly to their productivity, the presence or absence of empathy. one of the most interesting data points was that only 50% of executive leaders actually agreed. So it's this disconnect between what people are continuing more and more to say is important, and the skillset that leaders are living into.

And then, especially in an introductory sense, I like to introduce people to what they have in their empathy toolkit. We have these basic things that we reach for in response to our own hard stuff or somebody else's. And it's a question of whether those tools are serving us or whether we need better tools.

And, uh, a way that I make that sticky and memorable is I talk about empathy avatars, which are these, memorable types. So a few of them, you've got the Fixit Franks that whenever time there's problem or emotional disruption, like well, I've got a solution for that. Let me just tell you, uh, have you ever tried this?

Or commiserating Candace, who's gonna rush right in with their own story of something I know that happened to my aunt just last week and let me tell you about it. Or, uh, a buck.Bobby,

We don't have time for that. We're just pushing through. So in looking at some of those things, it allows people some identification with how they've been hurt in the workplace or what they go towards.

And it also allows them a more specific route of saying, if you are this type, if you are a cheer up chair, you've gotta be really careful with those at least statements.

Well, at least you still have ADA and Magnus at home. And to be that never makes you feel better. That makes you feel like the other person doesn't know how to listen.

And then, uh, we, go more deeply into what are meaningful words and actions that really convey care. What are ones that don't? So, that's a beginning point in talking about empathy in the workplace. And you can go all sorts of different places. How do you take these skills into hard conversations about race or access or identity?

How do we talk about fortitude and resilience? Um, how does empathy help you in sales Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Sauder: So, Let's maybe even go back and anchor on like what is your defin? And I'm sure there's like a definition of but I think it's probably also one of those things that, because maybe a little trendy, people get their own worldview of what the means.So let's anchor go on that. Maybe at first.

Liesel Mertes: Yes.Well, and a great resource for people who wanna see it visually. Brene Brown has a nice little, animated short with I think a bear and a fox talking about sympathy and empathy. sympathy is, oh, I'm so sad this has happened to you.

Poor you. Empathy at its heart is not about identifying with having shared the same experience as someone else, but looking at the emotions that underpin the. So how does that really look? I'll give an example and then how it works in the workplace. So, when I was in college, my roommate Heidi, her mother had died like the year before she started college.

Um, my mother's still alive. As we come up on Mother's Day, I know this thing has happened to Heidi. If I am really just looking at the experience of having a mother die, I instinctively wanna move back from that. I don't know what that's like. I can't understand that. I'll never understand that I don't know what to do.

My mother's still alive. Instead of the inclination of looking at what emotions might she be feeling right now, um, she might be feeling sad. She might be feeling really lonely. I have actually felt sad and lonely. All of those things move me closer to Heidi. I might not bat a hundred percent. I might think she's sad and she's really ticked So you, so you pivot in the moment. But, empathy is the recognition that we are, Emotional embodied people in a workplace environment. And that not everything is always going great all the time, despite the fact that we say we're good and we're fine, and that when something hard happens, I want to consider, the emotions that are underpinning it for you.

And then I think the, the fullest step of empathy. I think really to, to actualize empathy is to say, what can I do in response to that? So taking an awareness of the emotions that are there and moving towards someone with care.

Tiffany Sauder: when I've gone through some really hard seasons in my life. There's also a need for me to just be able to compartmentalize sometimes. like, yes, this is deep and rich. And I want to explode. I just can't right now. Because of other things. And I guess in my own experience, some of that has been healthy cuz life does keep progressingRight.Even though you desperately want it to stop. Yeah. And so how, how do you think about that? How do you dance around that? How do you teach people that?

Liesel Mertes: Yes. Well, it gets to empathy being, in art more than a science, because the key is radical attention to the person in front of you. I'm not coming with an agenda of, okay, how I need you to get onto the next thing. Or, I like experiencing myself as a helper. And if you don't share with me, I'm gonna feel deeply wounded going through something hard.You know, I, I can give a bid or a statement, you know, Tiffany, I know it's been a lot since your mom died. I just, I wanna let you know that. I'm here to support you. If there's anything even that you wanna talk about, like I'm available if you choose to step into that.I'm here to hold space. If you say something like, thank you.Um, it has been hard and I'm just glad to be able to show up to work every day. Mm-hmm.

Then I am reading like, oh, she doesn't, she doesn't wanna talk about it. And it's a, it's not a one size fits all. In my own podcast, I, I interview people in the first season who have gone through disruptive life events and there was a woman, who was widowed in her sixties, love of her life.

And, and I'm asking cuz I'm thinking it must have been meaningful to her to have. Ask her how she was doing. And I go, so, so did people, did they ask you? And and she goes, she goes, they asked me and it was the worst. She goes, there I was in Target and they'd asked me what had happened to him.

And she goes, now I'm crying in Target. I've ruined my makeup. She said, do you know how hard it was for me to just get out the door? You know what I wanted people to do? I wanted people to tell me, girl, you are looking good for how hard this has been. And even as an interviewer, I was like, was like, yes, there are a spectrum of things that exist. And if I go through one time with someone like that and I, I am paying radical attention, and I'm like, oh, they, they seem to have just wanted to get past this moment. And they're sending me signals of like, that's not what I need. Next time I'm gonna try a little more of the energy of like, girl, you look amazing.Look at you getting out the door.

And, and we do this, we do a lot of practice interactions because these are. Human skills that have to be practiced with other humans. We talk about metabolizing the content. it's not something that you primarily, get just by listening. There is something through listening, but it's by, okay, now practice that at your table, and now let's throw a wrench in it. How do you do that? and getting the reps in, because we're so grief averse, we're so personally uncomfortable that we just try to get through the situations and we never learn from them as a result. Well, I do think there's

Tiffany Sauder: this like undercurrent sometime of like, well, I didn't wanna bring it up if you were having a good day. Right. You know, and that becomes becomes social barrier to like connecting on it and maybe it's like even setting the stage as I think about what we're dealing with here is to say like,  how do you want us to handle this?Do we have an opening to ask you because that makes you know that we see you and haven't forgotten about it and we don't think this is a small thing or Yes. Do you want to be the one that brings it up because your terms feel more, is is that what you do essentially? Like

Liesel Mertes: Yeah, especially as a leader or a manager.I think there is a setting of the stage that can be important. I talk with, organizations about the important first day, week and month, and those are not magic. They just keep you honest and when it happens to put it in your calendar specifically, check in not with any other agenda. It's not first thing you do in the team meeting, we're gonna get through eight other things that you're just going to call or you're going to stop by, at least at those moments. And with the person who has been affected this setting of the stage. Say, this person's name is John. John, I just wanna let you know, I realize that grief is a long process. This isn't something that you're just going to be done with, with your beloved son, because of that, I wanna let you know, I'm, I'm gonna be checking in purposefully the next weeks and months just to ask you.

You might not feel like talking about it in that conversation. You feel free to tell me that and you can bring it up, but I wanna let you know, I just, I just wanna be checking in to get a pulse on it and that that gives them a sense, okay, they're going to be checking in. I don't have to bear my heart if I don't want to, but it's even at that level of declaring intention, you know, we follow our intention and, and that gets to purposefully being a place where you say we are structurally honoring the reality Yeah. that you person going through something.

Tiffany Sauder: I remember I was going through something really difficult and there was a like, kind of participant in the narrativeThat, that like never again checked in on how I was doing. yeah.And I was so pissed off. That like a couple months later I just like unloaded. Right. you know how, like marginalized, it makes me believe you event to be that you never once checked to see if  I was I was so angry. And their response was like, well, I didn't, I didn't wanna bring up kind of the worst thing that's ever happened in your life.And I was like,  I mean, I get it, but you could've asked me.

Liesel Mertes: and it's, it's our own lack of comfortability and, and the societal sense that we have, we have happy meals. Okay. we wanna keep the balance on it. so I'll do pre and post session surveys when I engage and. In a large enough group, There's always some people that are like, why are we doing this? This is such a waste of time. Um, because they don't feel like they're naturally good at it.

They feel like it's a fixed entity. But on the other side, when you demystify empathy, when we can put it in some understandable practices, Hey, this is where you're gonna wanna skew that response is a silent Sam or Samantha response. So uncomfortable. I don't know what to do or say, I'm not gonna do anything. And the same people who on the other side of training will be like, this was so helpful because I don't wanna be a jerk. It's very few people who set out. And I'll be like, out gonna stick it to Tiffany. Like just, but even for a situation, and this is for anyone listening, this is just a good phrase to have in your back pocket because defaulting to silence is, is suboptimal coping behavior.Something is better than nothing. And just to be able to say week or two, you know what Tiffany, I've. I haven't even fully known what to say, but I just know that this is crappy for you and I haven't forgotten. And I'm thinking of you even that like the, we, we also get caught up in having to have the magic words to make something better and just relieve the pressure.when a child has died, when a relationship has fallen apart, when a job has been lost, there are not magic words that make it better. And just releasing yourself from that pressure suddenly makes people go like, oh, okay. I can, I can interact differently.differently.

Tiffany Sauder: Um, I wanna hear you talked about the compassion side of empathy, which is like actually putting  your desires into some kind of motion. I have a friend who says, we say things like, let me know how I can help. And we're giving the person who's grieving a to-do like,we're better than this. And so he will say like, here's three things I have. Are any of those helpful? Or would you like to replace it?

Liesel Mertes: A wise friend, uh, something that I have is, have a empathy, like almost inventory of ways that you like to help. Um, I'll send it to you if stuff that goes show notes.It's helpful for people to look at in moments where their friends or colleagues are not in crisis to be like, what are things that you like to offer? Are you a helper? because you wanna offer something specific and you don't wanna offer just vague things because yes, we offer, how can I help?

And people never take us up on it. And it feels good in the moment, but it's not actually helpful. And low hanging fruit if you don't know where to start, people in hard times, like they need to eat .and they need their house clean. You know, I'm getting DoorDash DoorDash like, can I send you a sending people cards if you're really good at communicating. But yes, offering something specific and not having too much ego attached to it. If people don't automatically accept, maybe you've offered Indian food and they don't like Indian food, maybe they don't need something this week and you wanna offer the exact same thing next week. Because especially as people are skilling up in empathy, they can feel like I did the right thing and they didn't take me up on it and they must not like me. And trying cut that another thing to skill up beyond is take all the time you need, especially if you are like senior to them organizationally. Again, it's one of those things that sounds good, but nobody means it. It's not true. Like Like you don't actually have. All the time they need. And the other person intuitively knows it's not true, but what they don't know is how much time they really do Mm-hmm. So giving specific amounts of time for the next 72 hours. Don't check your phone, your email, no one's gonna reach out to you. We will touch base then, and we'll talk about the next step. And maybe the next step is take two weeks or take another day. But it buys you time to check with hr and it, it again, puts agency on the person who's in a more stable position and allows someone to really embody the rest that you're wanting to give with that vague statement, but not really giving. Yeah.

Tiffany Sauder: So much wisdom in there. when organizations get to a place where they have awareness of like, we need training or some type of language for this, is it usually in reaction to something that went wrong? Is ita natural maturity of cultural hygiene? Like what, how does that come to bear?

Liesel Mertes: I like that phrase, the natural maturity of, just emotional and, human-centric hygiene Where I get most of my clients are organizations that are already thinking about culture and the employee experience. They have been investing in it, they have been thinking about these things, and they realize in their evolution, this is one more really good tool to have in their toolkit.

It is especially important, um, as we have this phenomenon of growing companies, of people who go from individual performers to managers or newly hired managers. because really these, these human-centric skills of empathy, connection, responsiveness, they live or die in that middle management. It can't only be there, like if your middle managers are great, but your executive team is like, I sometimes have clients who they're like, we love this.

We need this for their company. Their executive team never shows up and the post session surveys show that, that people are like, why wasn't the leadership team here? So especially that situation, it's really helpful. Um, this is not the best fit for companies. Where's the first thing that they're thinking of with culture? They're like, our culture stinks. Nobody wants to be here. Should we do empathy training? Like eventually, why don't you work on like your pay And your discrimination practices and all of that?  I work across industries. There's not a common thread I work with RV manufacturers to government agencies, to banking.

So the most common thread is an executive team that knows the importance of it. Sometimes they've had a precipitating experience. It's more just reading the tea leaves. Like I firmly believe that in the next three to five years, this is not gonna be a one off. This is gonna be deeply integrated in just how we equip leaders because the world has mirrored back to them the reality that they've always needed it. But especially now, always had.

Tiffany Sauder: I, I think also as we look at just, what's happening culturally and societally and, you know, I think And Covid was an inflection point for a lot. we're not as good at being humans and it puts a lot of responsibility on the workplace to really teach.I mean, you know, we even teach financial literacy and those kinds of things start to become part of your partnership with your people and helping them. Continue to grow and get better. And, again, not that they're not doing that in places on their own as well, but it is interesting, I think, to see how some of the social norms of what's playing out but some pressure on the workplace.

Liesel Mertes: We spend so many hours in work related activities that it's not that work becomes like a parent or pushing, you have to, but to really realize these things do affect your ability to work.

There was an article in Forbes within the last week that was saying 69% of managers and leaders were considering leaving their job because their own wellbeing was so compromised. And even if you're just being dictated, not by the human imperative, but by the numbers being like, if we wanna keep our people and there are things that we can do do to be helpful, let's, let's do them. Equip our place for long term. Because also the organizations that distinguish themselves as good at this as people are still in moments of choice being move, like. They will be the long-term winners in, in getting getting and keeping the best people.

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, absolutely.  So I'm gonna do a quick pivot Um, as I experience your almost 40 year old self, you'revery self-aware, very aware of where you're at in your life and space and like your talents.Has that always been you or has that been a journey, you know, on Scare Confident. We talk about the role fear plays in our lives and in our self-perception. So what has that looked like for you?

Liesel Mertes: I've always been a very confident young woman who likes to stand on stages and, uh, as a first child, tell people what to do. I've, I've had Yes. I've that tendency and socialize with the school of hard. One of the biggest things, that I have my feet underneath me and was the work of my thirties is, um, As a, as a helpful way of conceptualizing, Enneagram type three s someone who really has a strong need to achieve, I would want people to tell me all the time that I'm doing a good job. Um, grief screwed that whole equation up profoundly. Like I didn't feel like I was doing a good job. I felt like I was doing a terrible job and I couldn't get out of it. And especially in the aftermath where I was stepping out of a cycle of the applause cycle of you graduate from your MBA and you go do great things.Like I got off of LinkedIn, I hated LinkedIn. Now, now I use it a lot. There was probably a five year period where I just hated LinkedIn. I was not on it because I felt like what I was seeing was all of these people that were just killing it, which is never fully the case. But, um, what that reflected back to me was like, I'm not doing whatever standard of should be doing, and I feel terrible. And I, I did not like seeing people. I remember running in the summer from college and they were like, what are you doing right now? And I was like, I'm giving birth to babies who are dying and having surgery trying to do a few consulting projects. And they were just trying to be nice. They were like, we always thought that you would do amazing things.You asked the best questions in class and they were not trying to be a jerk, like threw me into a tailspin for a week and so reckoning with where does that sense of needing applause and expectation come from? How do I actually have to find a secure place that is not rooted in that? And come and return as you go through that like Dark Valley being like, I feel so crappy  I'm way healthier in that than I used to be, but I think it will also be a lifelong work of not, and not every personality is that. Um, but for me that has been the work of my thirties and will hopefully be a flavor of work

different in my four. Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Sauder: I feel that so hard.  I'm also an engram three. I'm also a firstborn. I'm also, I achiever all the things echo loud in my head I think if, for me it was a shift of an intrinsic acceptance of my gifts and my shortcomings and loving myself the same, regardless of the outcome efforts. Because that just trophy wheel cons. spin hard, spin really hard,

Liesel Mertes: Before, before this became a work I sold to businesses, it was an experience. I lived first with other women who had suffered deep loss, but then the, the global experience of loss and to actually put the self out there that I would've loved to have managed and managed very successfully in my teenage years and early twenties.

But to be like, this is my messy not great marriage on the rocks mom who threw applesauce against the wall because she was so mad at her kids because she was so sad. Like that not saying I wanna remain there been like, I, I am that person right now and I am, am still in it. I'm still seeking fortitude and growth in it opens people up.Give words to their own vulnerable journey, which actually I think there's a fear that like, oh, if we do that well I'll just be stuck together. like, no. When we do that, we actually give ourselves to freedom to be anywhere but when we're always managing that and pretending we're not there, we stay there.So it's, um, it's not a tactic, but it's a gift to receive, to be like, mm-hmm. still being the more actualized version of myself, but I can see that even in the messiness, like I don't have to hide that. Mm-hmm.In fact, sometimes I share it I actually receive a lot from receive. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think we're, we're more attractive when we're willing to show that side of that. Yeah. Totally.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay, last question, 24 year old self, what advice would you give your

Liesel Mertes: It's going, it's going to be sad and there's gonna be really hard times, but. Will not only be that and your act of being faithful to who you are called to be, to your community, to your kids, to your partner, um, will actually be really beautiful. So stay in it and don't be afraid.

Tiffany Sauder: That's beautiful.

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