Jul 6, 2021
- Tegan Trovato
There's an awakening happening in corporations and people are now choosing their jobs based on values. And that will force organizations who aren't already inclined to that thinking to really start rethinking their approach to caring for their people and the beautiful thing.
NEW INTRO
Today, we talk about the awakening that is happening in the workforce as a result of COVID, change, and choice. How workers are choosing jobs based on values and what top leaders are doing to welcome and nurture the whole person at work.
And I am excited to have both a colleague and a friend on the show as a guest: Tegan Trovato is the Founder of Bright Arrow, a premiere Executive and Team Coaching firm supporting clients nationally.
Tegan is an HR industry veteran specializing in Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, and Organizational Learning. She has served as an executive or leadership team member for companies like Levi Strauss, Zynga, Xerox and Cielo.
At Bright Arrow, she and her team offer executive coaching, leadership team coaching, and group workshops. All of Bright Arrow’s coaches value authenticity, confidence, courage, growth, and leadership and make these values a priority in every interaction.
Tegan is also the is wife to Brian (a fellow entrepreneur), mommy to Athena (who is really, really bute), and mom to her two fur babies - senior kitties Pascal and Dedier (pronounced D.D.A).
She loves nature and we began our conversation hearing about her recent break from work here in the Indiana summer.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
I would love to hear some of your favorite things that you've gotten a chance to do on your staycation so far.
- Tegan Trovato
Oh, you know, just being outside and my husband and Athena and I all being together as a family is everything, because with the pandemic, we still don't have child care yet. We do have someone starting soon. But we've just been like ships passing in the night, just handing Athena off for for one of us, one entrepreneur to have a meeting and the other one goes and takes care of her and then we switch off again throughout the day.
- Tegan Trovato
So just being together has been and I don't even know what the word is, heart filling.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Have you have you gotten a chance to eat some good food? Are you finding your being outside a lot? It's been raining and muggy that you know,
- Tegan Trovato
That doesn't stop us. I'm from the South, from the real South where it is always rainy and muggy and we just go do your thing anyway. So, no, that hasn't stopped us. And there's been enough breaks in the rain and we've spent a ton of time. Yeah. Walking on the trail and jogging and setting up the little kiddie pool outside for her.
- Tegan Trovato
So, yeah, that's been that's part of what nourishes me is being outside and and yes. Eating healthy food. So we always eat relatively healthy, but we've been doing a little more of the salads because we've had time and all that good stuff so.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Well, and who wants to be slaving over their oven or stovetop too much in the high heat of summer? The salad is a great option.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
One of the things I would love to talk with you about is how you've seen the need for empathy grow and change specifically over the last year and a half within your coaching practice. Give us a little bit of a 10000 foot view of what your typical client looks like.
- Tegan Trovato
Hmm. Thank you for asking that. It does help set the stage a little bit for who is seeing what inside of the businesses and from where they're seeing this all unfold. Right. So the clients that we typically work with at Right Arrow are executives. So VPs and above inside the organization, they tend to be very driven, pretty holistic leaders, meaning they do want for their employees to feel good and be healthy and often at their own peril. Right.
- Tegan Trovato
So they're not often not taking care of themselves and trying to pour out for others. The organizations they work for tend to be in either hypergrowth or undergoing major change.
- Tegan Trovato
And that's often why we're brought in is to act as a support mechanism. And sometimes when it's a hypergrowth situation to help the leaders stay on track with the organization's growth so that as the leaders that got the company to where it is, they may also be the leaders that get them to the next growth level.
- Tegan Trovato
Right. Everyone has to grow in tandem with the organization itself. So so we tend to be working with leaders that have been working really hard already. And now with the pandemic, it just folded in multiple other layers.
- Tegan Trovato
On top of that,
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
What is the biggest change that you experienced in in the presenting needs of your average client as a result of COVID? And granted, like every one story is not every story, but is there a common thread that runs through?
- Tegan Trovato
There is a common thread. There's a few common threads that run through. And I have a lot of thoughts on this. So don't make me wonder too, too far afield. But there's a few things that come to mind when you ask that question. I think, one, the first thing we're seeing is that everything that existed before the pandemic was magnified. Right. So anything that was already a little out of balance was certainly out of balance during the pandemic.
- Tegan Trovato
And so that's a major change we saw in some of those things are not having great boundaries when working at home. You know, we worked with a lot of leadership teams that were already distributed across the U.S. and working from home.
- Tegan Trovato
So that became magnified, not having great access or balance when it comes to time with family because they're feeling overstretched at work. That became magnified.
- Tegan Trovato
What is newer is the need for attentiveness to the humanness of the employee population, so great leaders already had some sense of wanting to care for their people.
- Tegan Trovato
And I would say that characterizes the leaders we work with. What changed, though, is that we we entered into this collective suffering together during the pandemic.
- Tegan Trovato
So we went from as leaders needing to care for people in pockets of intensity, right, so an employee's parent may pass away or their child, you know, an employee's child might be struggling with something at home and a leader could offer up a little extra care in those times. What changed during the pandemic is that the leaders themselves were suffering in tandem with their employee population and suffering, meaning we're not sure how to balance everything.
- Tegan Trovato
We're not sure if it's safe to go out in public, to go to work, to vaccinate our children, to not vaccinate don't vaccinate ourselves, to not vaccinate ourselves. Right. I mean, you name it, that list is so extensive.
- Tegan Trovato
And in the meantime, also trying to a lot of employees and leaders trying to manage their children's schooling while also working and selling and managing new product launches. I mean, it was just exponentially difficult. And so that led to suffering.
- Tegan Trovato
It's leading to exhaustion. And so I think that it's while it's tough that everyone was sort of suffering together, it has also created this really amazing opportunity to feel more connected than ever before because we share that suffering.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
I appreciate the emphasis on the opportunity for connection that is possible, because I think sometimes when we talk about providing support for the humanness of the workplace for a certain type of leader or manager, that feels like one more ask. Like, I can't believe that you're asking me to have to do that to, you know, to be somebody is like there's all sorts of ways that derisive sentiment can be expressed, like to be somebody's counselor or their nursemaid or their mom.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
It can be couched very much in the negative. What is this going to take from me or for me, instead of seeing it as really such a deep potential for connection and trust and the, you know, trust, vulnerability, connection, that's the foundation for creativity, for innovation, for thriving cultures that people don't want to leave.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
And if we're only experiencing that moment as a pain point, it's going to cause us to want to, like, hold back, you know, not fully engage instead of be like, no, this is these are the deep waters that lead to all that good stuff that we want to write about in our Harvard business reviews.
- Tegan Trovato
That's right. Well, you know, a colleague of mine, Sarah Martin of Welcoa, that's their organization, helps to create workplace wellness. So they work with companies of all sizes to create wellness programming, essentially, and whole employees. She and I were talking the other day and she said, you know, what is about to happen? And most of their clients know this. What's about to happen is that the future workforce over the next year plus is going to ask during their interview process, what did you do during the pandemic to take care of your employees?
- Tegan Trovato
Mm hmm. It's now going to be a screening question, right. For, you know, do I even want to work here?
- Tegan Trovato
So to your point, there used to be an option. I think it used to feel much more optional for leaders to say, OK, that's too far. I don't want to have to do that much caring or that being that concerned with someone's personal well-being. I think that it became less of an option through the pandemic.
- Tegan Trovato
And now the question is how optional do we want to make it again when we go back to sort of business as usual air quotes. Right, right. So we're in a really interesting time when it comes to that and. You know, and I do want to say I think only other leaders will ever understand how hard it is to lead. And to lead well, and I get why a lot of not a lot, but a good percentage of leaders will say, no, that's not my job, making sure someone feels good at work.
- Tegan Trovato
It's not my job that's up to them. And some of that is totally true. It really is up to us also as employees to want to feel good and to experience the goodness around us. It's a mindset thing, right? But that's only a part of it. So I get why leaders feel taxed in that, but it's really no longer optional. So I think the future leader profile looks very different going forward than we're used to.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
I would love to hear some of the things that you found when you are confronted in your coaching practice with some of that that resistance is is this my job? Is this what I need to do? What have you found has been most effective in guiding those conversations and those people to their own journey of meaningful growth in these leadership capacities?
- Tegan Trovato
What a great question. It's a resistance was a key word in your question. And, you know, I always like to say and it's a common, common knowledge, maybe more for coaches than in the rest of the world. But impatient resistance, rather, is either fear, impatience or ego.
- Tegan Trovato
Those are the three causes of resistance. So when I feel someone resisting the call of their employee population for support, whatever that may look like is a big bucket right now.
- Tegan Trovato
We'll explore which one of those things it might be. And most often it is a little bit of impatience. I can't do it that fast or that much. It's very seldom ego right now, it's truly very seldom ego. It is most often fear based. When we really get down to the core of it, executives, leaders really of every level are afraid they're not going to get it right.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Hmm.
- Tegan Trovato
And if we really peel this all the way back, Liesel, most of us could say we aren't perfect at this at home. I would say that I am you know, I'm still always growing and how I emotionally show up in my household. And so if we don't feel like we've nailed it at home and most of us wouldn't dare say that, right. I'm 100 percent awesome at my emotional management and and taking emotional cues and tending to the people around me.
- Tegan Trovato
I'm awesome. So we can't say that at home then. We certainly wouldn't probably venture to say we're nailing that at work and leaders strive to be great. It's part of why they're in their seat. They want to be good at what they do. And so I think when it comes down to empathy at work, tending to that human factor at work, it's a big, messy piece of work. And leaders, most of us kind of are humble in that we know we're not maybe one hundred percent at that yet and we'll never be you.
- Tegan Trovato
And I know that right will never be 100 percent. But I think it's fear that keeps writers from feeling super inclined to saying, yes, yes, yes, on the front of just taking care of the human needs of employees.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Right. Well, and I hear within that also the dimensions of, you know, when we talk about our home lives or just our personal spheres of how we support people or receive support so many times, that's so informed by our own personally contextualized experience. You know, what were the expectations of my household of origin and how, you know, emotion was expressed or not was I told all the time that big boys don't cry or to stop whining or the context that sometimes I hear within the coaching I do of, you know, people who were vulnerable when they were 19 years old and their first relationship.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
And they felt so burned and exposed and they made this this agreement like, I'm never going to go there again.
- Tegan Trovato
Yes.
- Tegan Trovato
And I love that you brought up this personalization of that employee experience as a leader. That's so important. And we talk about this now when we are, you know, kind of behind the scenes discussing diversity, equity, inclusion, like my coaches and I just had a whole, like, focus session on this to try to think about what tools we need, what education materials, what we just want to be ready to provide clients who are venturing into that, you know, trying to be more inclusive leaders.
- Tegan Trovato
And one of the things we kept landing on was for a leader to be ready to fully show up for their employee population. They had to they have to have personalized the experiences their employees are having. And what I mean by that is, you know, you and I may not be able to identify with the exact same stories, but if we can identify with the human feeling we may be having at work and personalize that, somehow we feel much more inclined to support.
- Tegan Trovato
So, for example, just to characterize this, there was a study done that demonstrated that CEOs who have diversity, equity, inclusion on their agenda as executives, a high percentage of them have daughters. Hmm. So they they're able to personalize the need for inclusive at work because they can imagine their own daughter at work, not not getting equal pay, not getting the promotion, not being heard in a meeting, you name it. And that is true across all of our initiatives at work when it comes to this human engagement.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
I resonate with that deeply. I would love to hear what is it time that you have found yourself needing to engage with that sort of capacity for imagination and personalization in an encounter where you're like, I, I need to extend myself to to connect here?
- Tegan Trovato
Mm hmm. I'll give you a really current one. You know, I will say we have several coaches that are in community right now. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have. You know, about a dozen or so coaches who will work with our clients, at Bright Arrow, and I've been really deliberate about making sure that our coach population is very diverse and that our clients then get to meet with a diverse slate of coaches, which will bring different perspectives from their own.
- Tegan Trovato
I mean, there's just a ton of rich reasons why this is important, and I just scratch the surface of those tons of reasons. But in a meeting we had my coaches and I get together once a month for some community and continuing education. One of our coaches was talking about an inclusive party training that he had created, and he is a Black coach who felt very impassioned by this. And he built this gorgeous program and then has not launched it.
- Tegan Trovato
And when I sit in my chair, I'm going, I build a program, you sure as hell believe I'm going to launch it, right? I put all that time into it, all that hard, all the intellectual energy, and it's going to launch. But where his path was different is that he's also dealing with all the traumas he's experienced as a Black leader in corporate America. He's inspired by having to carry extra weight. That's not his as a black man in a white world.
- Tegan Trovato
So when it came time for him to launch this program, he had already wrung out his soul and had to relive all of his own personal in preparation to then facilitate rooms full of white people and help them understand their role in creating inclusive leadership. And I don't even as I'm telling the story, I recognize I don't even have all the right language to intimate what this man is feeling. And so it was my it has been and continues to be my job to be aware of that lack of full understanding, but try really hard to understand even better and to do what I can to support him as he launches that.
- Tegan Trovato
Now, all of the coaches are already decided we are all coming together. We're going to help him get what he needs in terms of support so we can lift this program because it's gorgeous. It's an amazing program. But I think that's a very recent example for me of. Really having to stretch my own understanding, right?
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Well, and if you had not engaged in that process, if you had only been looking through, you know, wow, what would keep me from launching a program? You know, I I'm not lazy. I would launch this program, you know, did he just run out of there all kinds of ways that you could backfill the answer with assumptions about him or reasons why that wouldn't be true and that would really like distract you. And so that important pause to not and, you know, we're so often making those like intuitive leaps to backfill and how empathy ask for a little bit more of a pause and some humility of saying, oh, yeah, my my life experience is different.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
My answer might not be congruent with what's really going on here.
- Tegan Trovato
Yes. And a key to that. And you just prompted this. Ah, thank you. I didn't assume any of that back story I had. I asked. Right. So he shared that it was reliving trauma. He shared the exhaustion he was feeling. Wow. The assumptions I could have made and filled story in. They're right because and this is exemplified by well, if I built a program, I would just launch the thing. Right. That would be such an asinine place from which to fill in the details for this man.
- Tegan Trovato
So the key was we were in community. We were curious. We had zero judgment. We worked hard to take his perspective and understand his lived experience. And with that comes a whole lot of needing to be humble. Right, and not making those assumptions. So thanks for prompting that very important detail about how we arrived at his story together.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Yeah, I would love to hear I'm struck that in your role as a coach. It's it's different than being a manager. It's both like coming alongside sometimes, you know, leading a little ahead. But what have been some of the most important skills of connection and empathy that you have felt you needed to grow in in the last year and a half for myself?
- Tegan Trovato
Yes. Mm hmm. Actually, you know, empathy was one of them. And I took your training because of that,
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Which you were such a pleasant participant. Why, thank you. Thank you for trying to do my part. Yes.
- Tegan Trovato
But, you know, it's funny because I would say as a coach, if we're worth our weight in salt, we probably have rather advanced empathy skills from the from the average person. Right. Because we have to be in our empathy with clients and compassion in order to make the space they need to figure out their story.
- Tegan Trovato
Right. So we have to take their perspective, practice, non-judgment, recognize when they're experiencing emotion
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
And a judgy coach is a jerk.
- Tegan Trovato
Oh, you should fire them ASAP, but also not just recognizing their own emotion, but helping them learn to communicate it if they need that help and vice versa, communicating what comes up for us as we experience their story.
- Tegan Trovato
However, what I knew was going into this pandemic, what we were in the middle of it, I think when I took your training, I was curious if my concerns myself concept of empathy was really right or not right. So I had never taken a class on empathy.
- Tegan Trovato
I've read about the core emotion of it. So I think that that was a place I went. I think empathy and compassion were to places where I went deeper. So empathy is that recognizing emotion and trying to take other's perspective. This is for listeners. I know you know this, but compassion.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
No, I like it. Keep going.
- Tegan Trovato
Compassion is also empathy sort of can be a foundation of that. Compassion is then taking action to try to alleviate the suffering of others. And I think that my my practice over this past year and ongoing is recognizing when to exercise one over the other and how to do it. Well.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
And tell me more.
- Tegan Trovato
I think what I learned, I'll just share a little about what I learned in your course, which I thought was really helpful, is first just being very careful with the empathy space not to bring our own story in when someone's suffering, which is a really tempting right. For instance. I lost both of my parents have passed, and I'm pretty young for that to have happened. And both of them died rather tragically. And when I experienced someone else going through that, do you know how tempting it is?
- Tegan Trovato
I know what you're going through. I lost my parents, too. And and then once you start down that path, details want to start spilling out. Right. That is not helpful when someone really needs empathy. And I think that that is certainly not something I would ever do in my coaching practice, but in my personal life, that could easily I could easily say that would be a tendency I would have had. And so going deeper on that level of practicing empathy and really making it a hundred percent about the other person.
- Tegan Trovato
Was a tune up for me, like that was a level up the compassion piece, the reason there's growth there for me and maybe for others is that we can feel compassion and wish for their suffering to end.
- Tegan Trovato
But it cannot be our responsibility that we're always taking action for everyone. Right. That leads to compassion fatigue and the beauty of me being on that journey, as I can then see that going on for the leaders I'm in community with or coaching, because that that was very much what was happening through the pandemic as executives and leaders were just they were just running around with buckets of water, trying to put out all the fires.
- Tegan Trovato
And meanwhile, they had their own stuff they needed to attend to as humans through this rather traumatic time everyone's in. And so there it was easier for me because I'm in the middle of that work to have conversations with them about, like, OK. Which pieces can you have compassion for and wish for the ending of suffering, but know that it may not be your job to take action, right?
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Yeah. I appreciate you sharing in that journey of discovery. And, you know, it's ongoing and the very real pressures of compassion, fatigue of where do I need to take action? Where do I need to actually claim my rest in this space? Because there's a little bit of a lie that gets perpetuated in in leadership, in dimensions of capitalism, the sense of like we have to be always active and always producing and always caring.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
And, and another phrase that I've I've been using lately that has found traction is change fatigue, especially as we are, you know, stop start, two steps forward, one step back out of the pandemic is there's a lot of organizational change that's going on that people are suddenly having to absorb, pivot within, decide if they're going with it or making a stand against it.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
And that's that's its own additional layer on top of what can make it difficult to show up in ways that really manifest our values.
- Tegan Trovato
Absolutely. And that's a good example of something that's been happening in organizations before the pandemic that's been magnified. Right, right.
- Tegan Trovato
Change fatigue is very much I mean, it could just be the tagline for corporate America. We're always the only thing that's the same as everything changes. I mean, there's all kinds of one liners about this. And yes, it is on steroids right now. It absolutely is.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Sometimes I get a question that I'd love to have your thoughts on, because I imagine that you're equipping your clients with guidance in this, which is OK. I am not the top leader at my organization, but I really do want to see more empathy, more of a culture of care. How do I move that conversation along? How do I, within the constraints of my position, like become an advocate for the change I want to see?
- Tegan Trovato
Oh, I love this question so much. What immediately came up for me is the first opportunity for leaders at any level is to embody empathy within your own leadership station first. So work hard to sort of become the poster child of an empathetic leader and and through that, it's not from a place of ego, it's from a place of practice, because empathy is a practice. It's an emotion, but it's also a practice. And so I think when leaders can just kind of get their own backyard straightened out first, it creates the credibility that's helpful to lead that further, that language or that narrative further in the organization.
- Tegan Trovato
Now, you don't like let's not wait for perfect because perfect doesn't exist. Right. So be measured in what you think you need to do before you have that conversation. But I think that's the first piece.
- Tegan Trovato
I think the second piece that's important is there is a lot of research out there now which if you follow Liesel, you will see a lot of this in her work that demonstrates the business impact of empathy at work. And, and it is, as leaders, always important that we can say, look, this will save us time or money or help us work better or produce faster, that's the truth.
- Tegan Trovato
We need some of that included in our narrative that doesn't need to be the predominant part of our narrative, but it doesn't hurt if we want to grease the wheels to get our get the attention that that initiative would need to be able to also tie it to business outcomes.
- Tegan Trovato
But also, I think the third thought that comes up for me here is that this is a great time to bring that up.
- Tegan Trovato
We are on the heels of having lived something that proved the need for empathy and care at work. And employees are going to be asking in that interview question in the future, OK, what did your company do? Why should I work here? You take care of me if something happens in the world again, can I trust you?
- Tegan Trovato
So I think even bringing up that question and helping your organization focus on what's coming, that also would help grease the wheels a little bit, right?
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Yeah, I love the beginning point of embodying the change you want to see.
- Tegan Trovato
I feel for the leaders who are trying to figure this out, because it is it can feel like a really big lift, but I am humbled, as I'm sure many of these leaders are, by the fact that we are in the midst of something really wonderful happening, I think. I really do.
- Tegan Trovato
There's an awakening happening in corporations and people are now choosing their jobs based on values. And that will force organizations who aren't already inclined to that thinking to really start rethinking their approach to caring for their people and the beautiful thing.
- Tegan Trovato
So that's part of why I say it's time. Now is a great time for you to get brave and and just start asking, you know, the questions that are empowering to your organization. Like, what can it look like if we did better at X or Y, we could do better at X? Or could I take the lead on putting putting together a focus group on the topic of caring for employees with H.R. right now is a great time to to put your hand up for that stuff.
- Tegan Trovato
So.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Right. Well, and again, I love coming back to the focus on the the positive accrual that can come out of this.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Do you have a story or two that you can share in some of the clients you've worked with who have been on their own growth journey where they've come back and been like, wow, you know, this is this is how my team has changed. This is how I've grown that I feel like success and progress stories as a result of growing in these capacities?
- Tegan Trovato
This awesome leader who is he's a super people developer. I've been working with him for years and just kind of watched him rise through the ranks of his executive space. And he, like many people, transitioned out of his individual contributor role where he was a rock star at his job.
- Tegan Trovato
And then all of a sudden, like most of us, got dropped into a leadership role with 20 people. All of a sudden he was managing and no education in between. This is most leaders story, right? You're great at your job. And then you're going to manage a bunch of people, you know, good luck. Yeah. So his struggle was, why don't people just see what I see? Like, why won't they just do what I say?
- Tegan Trovato
And there was this new learning.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Sounds like the parental struggle as well. Why would I stay the course?
- Tegan Trovato
And it is actually very much a parallel. But there is this level of again, it's trust building. It's just giving people the tools they need to do their best work. And when he was able to pivot from telling to asking. The right questions, everything started to flow for him, and that's part of the human element, too, right, of just caring about the fact that people are getting stuck because, again, they're either afraid or there's not enough trust.
- Tegan Trovato
And that comes back to relationship. And just OK, intellectually, if you believe in your team and they're not moving, there's something underneath that and that's usually relationship oriented.
- Tegan Trovato
And there were definitely times earlier in that work where I was not at all thinking about relationship because for me the work was rewarding. So of course, everyone else would just be rewarded by getting in there, doing the work right. No, that's not how it works. These are where humans, right, and so I, of course, wasn't tending to my own human needs in that process and by proxy wasn't tending to the needs of others.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
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MUSICAL TRANSITION
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
If you could wave a magic wand and for all the leaders you work with, get them to like and at a deep, like, bone, soulish level, understand or like have an understanding or change behavior, whatever connects.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
What would you say is just essential across the board. Hmm.
- Tegan Trovato
I'll lead with the headline and then I'll unpack it a little bit, what came to mind for me was if we could just start caring for each other at work the way we care for family. We would be on a completely different track really fast. And. The reason I think that's becoming possible and necessary is we spent, I don't know, the last 15 years talking about work life balance and then it became work life integration and then it became, I don't want to talk about it.
- Tegan Trovato
Right. People, people, people's reactions to that idea are so triggering because it is so hard to tell where the boundaries and lines are now. Work has just permeated our personal lives and vice versa. We're having to fit our personal lives in around work, doctors appointments, soccer games, weekend stuff. I mean, you name it. I think the truth is that there is very little separation now, but intellectually, we're still trying to tell ourselves that it must be separate.
- Tegan Trovato
So I think that we're still working on getting clear on the fact that this is what it is now like work and life out of fabric, they're so interwoven and so behaving with our co-workers, like their health, well-being, emotional existence isn't part of our job is amiss. Right?
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Well, or like its just an inconvenience that gets in the way of work.
- Tegan Trovato
Yeah. Or just thinking we still have an excuse to be like, no, it's work. Well, yeah, no, that's outmoded. That's actually not true anymore. Yeah.
- Tegan Trovato
So I think that there is a really beautiful opportunity right now for us to just, you know, stop being so worried about overstepping and in learning to offer care and making it an option for people to take advantage. I wouldn't want to force ourselves on people, for goodness sakes.
- Tegan Trovato
But, you know, when someone's struggling or you or you can tell they're having an emotional reaction, developing the skills we need to be a container is it's very much what's on the horizon.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Yeah, I love that. Is there any question that you wish I would have asked you that I didn't ask you?
- Tegan Trovato
You know, I think there's a question around my personal experience with empathy and why. Why, what I've experienced that makes it matter to me yet, because let me let me ask you, I know that this as a personal connection for you and empathy and why it matters.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Tell me a little bit more.
- Tegan Trovato
Years ago, before I started my practice, I went through my own personal trauma is the word I would use to describe it. So sparing all the details, I will say that I went from having a super career high moving across the country to accept this really exciting job, getting married. And the week of my marriage, my mother died tragically and unexpectedly and I had to go back to work within a couple of weeks, like all good corporate citizens have to do.
- Tegan Trovato
And I was a mess. Well, you know, I thought I had it together and I was pouring myself into work as a coping mechanism, which was a habit of mine. But I wasn't doing OK, you know, and I was new in my job. I had just moved to another state halfway across the country. I didn't know anyone. So I had almost I have really had no support systems other than my poor husband, new husband, new marriage.
- Tegan Trovato
So I think my experience of that was I found work to be such a cold place through that experience. And, you know, I was because of that, able to look back and question my own leadership over the years of how kind of leader was I before I struggled myself, when it came to caring for others who were going through really tough personal life circumstances. So. I you know, it's easy for me to look back and criticize the people I was working with and for and, you know, that lack of care, but really I found more empathy for them as I reflect.
- Tegan Trovato
But that's because I've had to do my own thinking around. OK, what does it look like for leaders to do a better job then? And what do I need to develop in myself so that I'm living and demonstrating, embodying that for the clients I work with, for the people I lead, so that I'm modeling that. But it started from a place of not having it myself, you know. So I think the workplace is really naturally the way it's built is devoid of empathy and humanness, it is our job as the humans who comprise the company to bring that into the culture.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
I love that. Thank you for sharing that a hard season that really, you know, allows you to identify with the clients that you help and be a part of creating something that is more human and more life affirming. And that's not to put like some easy, pretty bow over a hard experience. But if there is a way to use something which is just crappy and how hard in your first week of marriage and a brand new job, but to be able to use that to be of service to others is a beautiful thing.
- Tegan Trovato
There is purpose in everything. Sometimes it just takes a little while for us to get clear on what that purpose is right after a hard time. So I totally agree sometimes.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Sometimes it takes some dark night of the soul before we can come to that moment.
- Tegan Trovato
Look, it gives us grit as leaders. It really does. And credibility and connection to others when we get to those things.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
So if if the last year and a half has been anything, it is a great leveler of some common experience.
- Tegan Trovato
Indeed. Indeed.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Well, thank you, my friend. Anything else you'd like to add before I stop?
- Tegan Trovato
No, I mean, this has just been a real pleasure and I'm just excited to hear what listeners might take away from this. And I just am really proud and humbled to work with leaders who are keen to do more of this and to create a more human workplace. And I would say there a majority. Yeah, people I've come into contact with. So I'm excited about what's what's ahead for all of us.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes
Well, and if some of those leaders are listening and they think, wow, Bright Arrow sounds awesome, I'd like to find out more what is the best way for them to do that?
- Tegan Trovato
Check out our website. And there's a contact form there, which is www.brightarrowcoaching.com and it's really easy to find me on LinkedIn as well.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Tegan…
- I love the positive vision that Tegan cast for what this time can be.Yes, it has been a rough go and a time of tremendous, shared suffering. And yet, this time can, conversely, provide an opportunity for connection, trust, and vulnerability like never before. Are you viewing the call to connection primarily as a burden or as an opportunity?
- As leaders and team members, it is important to tap into our own personalization of empathy.When is a time that you have needed extra support? That you have felt weak or in need of care? Considering these experiences can allow you more space to imagine what it could be like for another person. And while we will never, 100% “get” what it is like for someone else, this consideration can move us forward in empathy
- How you care for people now will mark your organization moving forwards.I think it is such an insightful, true point. Prospective employees, in years to come, will ask what you did and how you cared for your people during a year and a half of tremendous disruption. As you think about your current practices and procedures, would you be happy and proud to talk about them in coming years?
OUTRO
Learn more about Tegan Trovato and her coaching work here: https://www.brightarrowcoaching.com/