On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, you’ll score your own level of empathy and compassion, reflect on your upbringing, unpack your privilege backpack, flex your muscles of understanding, and rise about the noise. (03/04)
What’s it really mean to be empathetic and compassionate? Do I really need it to be a good leader? We hear these words together all the time: empathy and compassion. But you don’t have to be Mother Theresa to be an empathetic and compassionate person. And you surely don’t have to discredit your hard work and compare yourself to others when it’s unfair.
On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, you’ll score your own level of empathy and compassion, reflect on your upbringing, unpack your privilege backpack, flex your muscles of understanding, and rise about the noise. Alex tells personal life stories on how he navigates privilege and bias, and how treating teammates as unique individuals is key to leadership in the workplace.
In our third segment, The Foundation, Alex will discuss how we’ve all internalized inferiority and superiority within ourselves. You’ll learn how to unpack your privilege without guilt, and ask: What can I control when it comes to privilege? How can I use empathy and compassion to understand others, past their privileges (or lack thereof)?
Tune into our final segment, The Frame Out, where we explore what happens when you work hard but don’t check your privilege: Entitlement. You’ll learn the 4 components of authentic compassion, and how you can show up for others on your team and not burn-out.
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[00:00:00] Alex: Hey guys. Welcome back to episode six, to the foundation where we are diving deeper into this thing of empathy and compassion really land the foundation of how do you do it? How do you do it? Now, in our last segment, the level, we talked a little bit about these two roles that all of us play, the agent and the target.
[00:00:27] Alex: Now, You gotta go back and listen to that to ultimately understand what those are and how they connect to you. Now, what you need to understand, because of those two roles that we played, the agent and the target. All of us, all of us, all of us, all of us, all of us, every one of you listen as well as Alex, we are oftentimes challenged with oppression because of those two roles.
[00:00:49] Alex: Now understand because of both. At times we play both the agent and as well as the target. We have two things that are going on inside of us, oftentimes two things. Now this is interesting, so hear me out. I'm gonna slow down just a second, because we play both the role of the agent and the target, and we play those roles multiple times in a day, depending on who you're with, what meeting you go in, those two frames, clash and collide.
[00:01:15] Alex: One person becomes the agent, the other person becomes a target. It switches back and forth quite frequently. As a result of that, we have these two factors, what I like to call internalized, internalized inferiority and internalized domination, internalized inferiority and internalized domination. Right now, hear me out, my friends.
[00:01:39] Alex: I got a chance to see this in action several years ago, and I will be honest with you, I didn't know this concept of internalized. Inferiority and internalized domination at the time. It wasn't 10 years later that I heard this concept. I'm like, oh, that's what that was. So I'm gonna tell you a story so that you can begin to understand what is internalized inferiority and internalized domination.
[00:02:02] Alex: So in college, in college, I made great friends. With my suite mate in college, made great friends with my suitemate in college and uh, one week he came to me and said, Alex, hey man, I'm going home for the weekend. Would love for you to come home and hang out with me to just check out my hometown. So I'm like, Hey dude.
[00:02:19] Alex: Cool. Let's do it. So flew to his hometown with him. He lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. So we flew to Charlotte, North Carolina. And uh, when we got there, unbeknownst to me, my friends, this guy was freaking loaded. I mean, dude, the dude's family was freaking loaded. His dad owned half the McDonald's in Charlotte.
[00:02:41] Alex: As well as his dad was a part of NASCAR and owned a couple racing team. Right? So, loaded, loaded, loaded, loaded, loaded, loaded. And so when we got there, we jumped into his dad's Porsche nine 11, and we are riding, we jumped on, I think the, I think the highway is 77, highway 77, if I'm not mistaken. And he, we are riding, I mean, we're in the nine 11 Ps flying.
[00:03:03] Alex: We were at least going 170, 180 miles an hour. Like a bad outta hell. My friends, two young kids in their twenties having a great time. Maybe 19, 20, something like that. And lo and behold, what do you think happened? You guessed at my friends. We got pulled over by the damn police. And I'm gonna be honest, I'm sitting in the passenger's seat and I am scared Jet right now.
[00:03:27] Alex: The police officer came to the door, knocked on the window, my buddy let down the window. I'm gonna pause for a second. What do you think my buddy did? Most people when I tell that story, they say, oh, he must have named dropped. He must have done this. He must have done that. Not only did he name drop, he cursed the police officer out.
[00:03:47] Alex: My friends, it was so bad that I'm sitting in the passenger seat and I'm like, oh shit. I know how this is going down. I put my hands up at 10 and two as if I was holding the steering wheel because I'm like, oh, buddy, you done messed up. Now I know what's about to happen to you. So I'm holding my fake steering wheel because I just, I'm waiting for this police officer to respond because I'm like, dude, they about to snatch you out this car.
[00:04:13] Alex: Ooh, it's going to be ugly, my friend. Well, guess what? My friends, the police officer, when my buddy did that and name dropped at the same time, He apologized to my friend. He said, oh, Mr. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize it was you. Hey man, you kids, slow it down. Get outta here. Have a good time. It was in that moment and I'm like, holy shit.
[00:04:36] Alex: There are multiple levels to the life, right? Oh man. It's crazy. But it was in that moment, for the first time I got a chance to experience these two things of internalized inferiority and internalized domination. Right. What was it? Well, understand this. My friend, because of where we were, because of who his family was, because of the resources that he had, he was dominant even in the face of authority, in the face of authority.
[00:05:06] Alex: A person who had way more power and way more authority than him because he had these resources where we were who he was connected to. He didn't care about that cuz he was dominant in that position. He had internalized domination. In the face of authority in that same scenario, because of my lack of resources, because of my first time being in this city, because I felt and knew we were in the wrong, I had this internalized inferiority because of my lack of resources.
[00:05:32] Alex: Now, be a right or wrong, please, please, please understand because of this agent and target stuff that we all go through. All of us, my friends, go through this internalized inferiority at times and internalize domination at times. As a result of that, we have what I like to call unearned privilege. Ooh, that's a tough word.
[00:05:53] Alex: And people are like, don't go there, Alex. Don't do it. Don't do it. I gotta do it guys. I gotta do it my friends. What is privilege? What is privilege? And I ask people, is it real? What is it? And is it real? And oftentimes I hear people like, no dude, we're not going there. We are going there today. Most people, when you hear the word privilege, there's only one type privilege that most people throw in people's face.
[00:06:15] Alex: And what's that? My friends, I'll pause for a second. As the Jeopardy music plays. Oh, you don't wanna say it. Most people don't wanna say it. Let's be honest. White privilege. People say white privilege, right? And I'm like, dude, there are multiple levels of privilege. And that typically turns people off. I, I had a class in a rural part of the country and I talked about that white privilege and I asked the team, Hey, where do you think that came from?
[00:06:38] Alex: And I had a middle-aged white foreman there in the classroom. We said, oh, Alex, cuz we get comfortable and we have great talks in class. He said, oh Alex, clearly that came from a black man that came from a black man, dude. I'm like, uh, no sir. Didn't it came from a white woman? Actually, she actually wrote a paper in the eighties about it and it kind of took root, I think it was in the Washington Post, talking about skin color and white privilege.
[00:07:00] Alex: But understand it's my friends. We tend to forget that we all have multiple privileges on multiple levels, and that privilege is a slippery slope as well. But what is privilege? Well, I want to clarify this privilege is any advantage, opportunity, headstart, or general protection from negative societal mistreatment.
[00:07:21] Alex: Here's the key though. It is an unconscious and invisible benefit, meaning my friends, most people who have it don't even realize they have it. It's what I like to call walking around with a backpack full of stuff that you can take out at any given time. You can use it. You can write a blank check any way, any time you want to.
[00:07:41] Alex: Right, and it goes far beyond skin color. I tell people here in the United States, one of the biggest privileges that's very invisible to all of us is being citizens of the United States or being in this country. Understand my prince, I don't care how difficult or how challenging it is, I wouldn't wanna be anywhere else.
[00:08:03] Alex: Think about it. In this country, you can be a homeless person and go to the hospital, and it's mandatory that they treat you. There's some third world countries where they wouldn't give a shit about you privilege. That's privilege, my friends. And oftentimes we get so caught up on other people's privilege that we don't think about our own.
[00:08:24] Alex: So I challenge people to slow down, unpack their, what I like to call privilege backpack to see what's in it. Because the more I can begin to unpack my privileged backpack, the more I can begin to show empathy and compassion to other people because I don't know their story. Let me give you a few things that.
[00:08:40] Alex: Come out of most people's backpack, they that they don't think about your family structure. If you came from a phenomenal family, please understand you didn't have shit to do with it. You happened to be born to that family, right? And even if you didn't have a great family structure, if you ever had a mentor coach or somebody who saw potential in you for some damn reason and help bring and steer you along, you didn't have anything to do with that.
[00:09:05] Alex: That's privilege. If you were in a great school system, that's privilege. So there are a lot of things that we have to unpack to understand that maybe those people who are in less sports in these situations, it's not that they're not working so hard, maybe they haven't had the level of privilege that you, so what's an activity I want you to try.
[00:09:23] Alex: Here's, here's an activity. I want you to try my friends. I would love for you to unpack your privileged backpack to think about a few things. What got you to where you are today? What are the bumpers in the road that if one or two of those things were removed from your life, you would not be where you are today experiencing the level of success you experienced.
[00:09:45] Alex: And I have to slow our teams in construction down and say, Hey, you have to slow down and understand privilege got you to where you are. There are no self-made peop, and I know you don't like me saying that. Zero, zero self-made people because, because of one or two things in someone's life. If you remove that, they wouldn't be where they are.
[00:10:06] Alex: Be it the privilege of being abled body and not disabled. Be it the privilege of being born in a country or having parents who came to this country and were able to do that. Be it the privilege of a safe neighborhood, the privilege of never having to worry about where you're gonna get your next meal from.
[00:10:23] Alex: A lot of shit that happens to us in life out of our control. And when you can begin to think about that, you can begin to do a great job. Of showing empathy and compassion to other people because you're not so judgmental, because you don't know their story, you don't know where they're from, and you're willing to really work with them.
[00:10:44] Alex: In the next segment of my friends, we're gonna understand. I'm not saying you enable them, I'm saying you have empathy and compassion toward them, right? So, so understand in the last segment, the frame out, we're gonna frame it out of how do you do this? How do you have phenomenal empathy and compassion?
[00:11:00] Alex: How do you recognize privilege? Be able to understand you played the role of the agent and the target, as well as expand your identity to connect with someone and do a phenomenal job of being able to offer empathy and compassion to 'em. So I look forward to seeing the next segment to frame it out, but we understand how to do it all, put it all together to make you a phenomenal leader so that your high performing team connects better together.
[00:11:26] Alex: They understand the belonging environment and they're able to run through brick walls for you. I'll see you in the next segment, my friends. I want to thank you again for tuning in to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the number one go-to source for leadership development in the construction industry. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube as well as your favorite podcast and platform, and make sure to hit play on that next segment.