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. (01/04)
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 first segment, The Takeoff, you’ll take an honest look at your own empathy and compassion, and learn tips and tricks to develop your muscles of compassion in the workplace. Alex addresses the assumptions people reflexively make based on appearance and non-verbal cues, and explains how you can start to evaluate people on an individual basis.
Tune into our next segment, The Level, where we’ll broaden our definitions of our identity, and you’ll learn about what it means to be an “Agent” and a “Target” within power dynamics. As Spider-Man once said: with great power comes great responsibilityBe sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts as well as the YouTube channel to watch full video episodes and be notified as soon as the next episode is live.
Helpful Links
[00:00:00] Alex: Hey, what's up guys? Alex Willis here, CEO of Leadership Surge, and I wanna personally welcome you to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the go-to source for leadership development in the construction industry. My friends, my friends, we have a phenomenal show for you today. A very challenging show that's going to challenge you to think differently.
[00:00:26] Alex: We're diving into something that we don't talk about often in the construction industry, and that's empathy and compassion. It's talking about, Hey, how do we lead in a way that's empathetic and compassion and still get shit done? So, hey, tune into the show. You don't wanna miss it. Let's dive right into it.
[00:00:44] Alex: Let's jump into the takeoff, my friends. All right, my friends. Hey. Welcome to the takeoff where we're jumping into this challenging subject of. Empathy and compassion and understand this, we're really continuing our series on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Truth be told, as it pertains to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and ultimately creating belonging environments, it's important for the leaders to show empathy and compassion.
[00:01:07] Alex: Now, Harvard Business Review, I know you're like Willis, why are you talking about Harvard Business Review? Well, they're supposedly the smartest people in all of college, right? Well, here's the deal. They say one of the key components that every leader must have in order to have high performing, high functioning teams and belonging environments is empathy and compassion.
[00:01:30] Alex: Now, oftentimes we don't talk about this enough in construction, and so I wanna start off today before we even jump into the show. I want you to really begin to grade yourself out if you had to give yourself a score. My friends, as far as em, empathy, compassion, how are you? Where, where are you on a scale of one to 10?
[00:01:46] Alex: One being you don't give a shit about people, 10 being you are so overly empathetic and compassionate to a fault that people take advantage of you. Where do you find yourself? Where do you fall? Now, as I go around the country during this course, We find that most people range, uh, anywhere between three to sometimes seven, right?
[00:02:07] Alex: Three and seven range is what we find in the construction. It depends on who I'm dealing with. If I'm talking about the front office, the front office usually is a lot higher, right? When I talk about the front line, well work actually gets done with tools. We find it very, very, very, very low and people often say, leave your damn feelings at the gate.
[00:02:26] Alex: And I challenge them to say, Hey, listen. This thing of empathetic compassion. It is very important. And if you can master it, man, you can get people to run through brick walls for you. You can create belonging environments. You can do a phenomenal job of creating high performing teams, right? So first, let me confess my friends, I will confess, I am not the most empathetic and compassionate guy.
[00:02:48] Alex: So if you wanna know my score, truth be told, I am a three, maybe a 2.5 on the Richter Scale. Oh, so you'll probably say, well, damn it Willis, why are you the one leading this segment? Well, because I've learned a couple tips and tricks, some things to help you build that empathy and compassion muscle to develop that muscle so that you can begin to turn it on a little more.
[00:03:10] Alex: I've gotten a lot better as I go through some of the activities and exercises that we're gonna talk about today, right? So as we start this segment, have you ever thought about this, my friends? How do we come to value what we value? Think about that for a moment. How did you develop your level, your current level of empathy and compassion for most people?
[00:03:32] Alex: For most people, I love to remind them of what I like to call the spheres of influence. The spheres of influence. As little kids, we start with our family, our neighborhood, our peers, our school groups like Boy Scouts, girl scouts, church groups, youth groups, all of those things. And they kind of develop how we think.
[00:03:50] Alex: Now based on that upbringing, usually we are a little more empathetic or, or not because of what we've seen in our environments around us. Let me give you an example. It's pick on Alex Day picking on Alex. If you think about the neighborhood I grew in, the neighborhood I grew up in taught me a lot, my friends, it was very apparent in my neighborhood.
[00:04:10] Alex: You don't let people borrow your bike. If you do, you're not getting your shit back. That's simple. That's simple. So, so from a young age, I learned really quickly to safeguard myself. And man, empathy and compassion was a secondary thought because it was all about protecting yourself. Safeguarding yourself.
[00:04:27] Alex: So think about that. So, so my upbringing, my neighborhood, began to really begin to shape and form how I saw empathy and compassion. Now, let's push it a little further as we talk about those spheres of influence, right? Starting with that inner core circle of family, friends, peers, neighborhood, we branch out a little more right to things like extended family, neighbors, the apprenticeship program, college, other interactions, other relationships that tend to solidify what we were taught.
[00:05:00] Alex: Or maybe correct it as we get into those other circles. Now for Alex, it really solidified it and cemented my thoughts on empathy and compassion. Think about it. I went from my tough neighborhood to being a walk-on at the University of Florida, showing up to practice every day, working my ass off, understanding that you only get what you work for from there in the N F L, where you had to show up and practice hard every day just to get a spot.
[00:05:25] Alex: So my mentality was really shaped to say, Hey, listen. If you're put out and you work hard enough, you get certain things in life, and if you don't, you just don't get it. And so therefore, empathy and compassion for me because of those things, very, very, very low and I'm having to work at it to really develop better habits of it, right?
[00:05:46] Alex: So that could be a better leader for my team as well as my family and my community. Now I want you to pause for a second. We're gonna take, you know, a little time out to think about it. I want you to really begin to think about your life. How did you get to where you are? Did it help you become more empathetic?
[00:06:02] Alex: Are you leaning on the higher end of em, empathy, compassion, or, or are you on that lower end of empathetic compassion with where you operate? Right? So understand the first thing that you need to be able to analyze is upbringing, experiences, what you've gone through, and how that's had an effect on your thoughts and mindset for empathy and compassion.
[00:06:20] Alex: Step number two, my friends, is this, please, please, please understand anytime you walk into a room with people. You are telling the room something and the room is saying something back to you, right? Without either of you saying a damn word. I know you're like, what you talking about Willis? I, I get it, but hear me out.
[00:06:38] Alex: Hear me out. Here's what I'm saying. When Alex walks in the room, let's, let's pick on Alexy. So let's pick on Alexy. When Alex walks into a room, what do you see? And when I ask that question, most people are skeptical. They're hesitant, you know, they don't wanna say it. I'm like, you can say it. And, and finally someone usually screams out a black male.
[00:06:54] Alex: I'm like, damn it. Exactly. You see a black man, when I walk into the room, you see a black man and I ask another follow-up question to our class. I say, Hey, gay or straight or bi, gay, straight, or bisexual. And my class immediately usually le yells out straight straight. And I'm like, how? Why would you think that?
[00:07:13] Alex: I've never said anything about it. Never said anything. And I'm just showing people that signs how a person is dressed. How they carry themselves, their mannerisms. People are picking up on things, making their own assumptions, ruin it on you without you saying a word. Right? So think about that. I walked into the room, no one said anything.
[00:07:36] Alex: Now I had one guy say, dude, metrosexual. I'm like, yeah, my prison back home. Call me metrosexual. I like to dress up, you know, I'm the guy who, you know, I like spa days, right? So I can get, I understand that, but, but I'd love to show people that not saying anything, people assume. I play this game a little more and I push it a little farther.
[00:07:54] Alex: I say, okay, hey listen, Alex, black guy straight right now, Democrat or Republican, this is a shit show. When they see that, they're like, oh, you're a black guy. Democrat. Democrat. I'm like, whoa, whoa. Why would you say that? I never told you anything? And they say, well, how your mind thinks And you're open mind and you challenge us in, in, in how you grew up and all of these different things.
[00:08:14] Alex: Alright? Now, truth be told, I'm an independent. There's times I voted Democrat. There's times I voted Republican. But I just love to show people that without words being exchanged back and forth, we make assumptions. We throw things on people. People throw things back at us. We're not saying one word. Now.
[00:08:33] Alex: Here's why this is important as it pertains to empathy and compassion, my friend, because we tend to dictate on our judgment and assumptions how much empathy and a compassion a person deserves. So think about it. We take all of our background, all of our upbringing, all of our experiences, the things that we've gone through.
[00:08:53] Alex: We compile that data, we mix it with our nonverbal assumptions on people back and forth, and all of a sudden we say, well, Timmy doesn't deserve much empathy and compassion because he's living on the street. Because of what I think about that, what I see in my upbringing, right? Hopefully no one listening to the show's name Timmy today, right now.
[00:09:15] Alex: But understand that so, so it's important that you begin to slow down and understand that your mind, my mind, tend to think in the format of this or that. I often show a picture and I ask people, I show 'em a picture of a hotdog and I say, is it a hotdog or is it a sandwich? And man, people fight to the death over that shit.
[00:09:37] Alex: They're like, well, no, no, it's a hotdog man. It's a hotdog. And I said, well, it's bread to me. Why couldn't it be a sandwich? Because it's a hotdog, Alex. I said, well, if you grew up the way I did, and they couldn't afford a hotdog bus, and now what is it? They were like, well, it's a hotdog and regular bread.
[00:09:50] Alex: Right? But jokingly, but seriously, our minds tend to want to make things quite simple and make things black or white. It's this or it's the, as it pertains to this thing of empathy and compassion, my friends, it is very gray. Please, please, please understand there's a lot behind the scenes with people that we work with in the construction industry on job sites.
[00:10:14] Alex: There's a lot behind the scenes with people that we see who are homeless on the side of the road with parents who are struggling with drug addiction, how they're treating their kids, all kind of different things. Lot of gray area that we have to evaluate and not allow our minds to just categorize it as this or that.
[00:10:34] Alex: To understand when and where, and how do we offer empathy and compassion. If you can begin to do that, my friends, you can do a phenomenal job of slowing yourself down, being able to connect better with people, challenge your assumptions, and really begin to open yourself up to start showing empathy and compassion, right?
[00:10:58] Alex: It requires you to challenge your stereotypes, challenge your assumptions. Think outside of your upbringing and your experiences and things that you've gone through to really begin to push forward to say, let me get out of the this or that mode. Focus in on the gray area and begin to evaluate people on an individual basis to understand.
[00:11:20] Alex: I'm not gonna compare 'em to me and my upbringing. I'm not going to dictate the level of empathy and compassion that they deserve based on my upbringing, my thoughts, and what I think. You'll see why this is important as we kind of dive even deeper, and you'll begin to understand that there are different levels and at times you have to put all of your thoughts and assumptions to see that person for who they are, to be able to offer empathy and compassion.
[00:11:48] Alex: And by doing that, You get the best outta. But how do you do it? How do you do it? Nah, I'm gonna leave you on the cliff. I ain't gonna listen with my friends. How do you do it? Well, you have to show up to the next segment to understand how to do it, because now in the next segment, my friends, we're gonna really begin to talk about how do you develop those muscles?
[00:12:06] Alex: So I, so I gave you theory in this segment here, this segment, right? Understanding the theory of it, thinking about it. But in the next segment, we're going to really begin to lay down. Some real hardcore principle. On things that you have to implement to be able to open yourself up, to be able to show more empathy, more compassion to each other, to others even when they don't necessarily meet your expectations.
[00:12:32] Alex: So stick around. I'll see you in the next segment. Looking forward to seeing 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.