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Handle with Care: Empathy at Work


Jun 8, 2021

- Jorge Vargas

And sometimes we forget that at work. We forget that in other scenarios. And at the end of the day, work is important and matters. But but it's work. And we are we're humans and we're people. And we were feelings and we're joy. We're sadness first. And that ends up having a huge influence and work at the end of the day and not recognizing that it's a little bit naive and dismissive of it makes us better workers if we actually are a little more self-aware about how we're feeling, our emotions in general.

 

NEW INTRO

 

Today’s conversation is wide-ranging.  We explore the importance of engaging with your own emotions, the absence of one-size-fits-all solutions to emotional and social health, and the particular challenges of empathetically managing multi-national teams.  I learned so much and I know that you will too.

 

My guest today is Jorge Alejandro Vargas. He works at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that supports our favorite research tool, Wikipedia.  There, Jorge leads Regional Partnerships, engaging with teams across the planet to leverage both private and public sector partnerships. 

 

Jorge calls San Francisco home.  He moved here seven and a half years ago from Bogota, Colombia where he was born, educated, and worked as a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property and Copyrights. 

 

He recently moved to the Lower Height neighborhood from the Mission. 

 

- Jorge Vargas

I love walking around the city, a good friend and colleague said the San Francisco is a collection of neighborhoods rather than a single city, and each neighborhood has its own vibe and its own thing. And walking around is really nice. I also enjoy tennis a lot, so I try to fit a game of tennis at least once a week. Not that I'm very good at it, but I am trying my best to get that time out in the tennis court.

 

And as we ease into our conversation, perhaps there are some listeners that will remember the evolution of Wikipedia with me.  I remember when Wikipedia was looked down upon.  I was DEFINITELY never, ever allowed to use it as a source in high school or college.  But somehow, over the years, we have all come to rely upon the shared knowledge that the platform represents. 

 

- Liesel Mertes

Even the turn of phrase, it's almost like like Kleenex, like you Wikipedia something, because that's where you would go for trusted information. And even as my children use it, how much of a go to resource, which as it relates to your work, I feel like, you know, just in the span of my adulthood, I've seen readership grow, you know, participation, access. And it sounds like that sort of movement of building acceptance, you know, getting stakeholders together is what you're doing in these regional partnerships in a way to continue like moving there.

 

- Liesel Mertes

The influence and the participation of Wikimedia and Wikipedia is that is that like an accurate enough summation of some of the things that you're doing? I realize there's probably way more to it than that.

 

- Jorge Vargas

One hundred percent. And I think that it's been very interesting that so this year we're celebrating our 20th anniversary, actually.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Happy 20th.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Thank you very much. And it's been 20 years human and we call that. And that's kind like the the tag that we've been using for this big milestone of a birthday, because we really acknowledge the fact that Wikipedia is built by humans. It's because of hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world that we have what we work with. They are volunteers. And the movement as a whole, as we call it, is the fuel and the magic that actually keeps Wikipedia alive with a foundation.

 

- Jorge Vargas

What I do and the partnerships team as a whole tries to do is support that mission that is highly built by all those volunteers in the world and work with those partners that want to help us in many different ways further that mission and pretty much reach that vision that we have as a movement of imagining a world in which every single human being has access to the sum of all knowledge, which is an ambitious statement. It's a very bold move, but at the same time, that's what we want to do.

 

- Jorge Vargas

But to do that, the only way is to work with others, and that is the whole spirit and DNA of the partnership's team and the work that we do.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And what I hear in that is at its best, you know, Wikipedia is democratizing the the spread of knowledge, you know, with the with its kind of participatory platform. And yet still fact checking that people are able to do and getting voices from different sectors and different cultures and languages is so important in that continued growth of that mission.

 

- Jorge Vargas

That is absolutely right. I think that what Wikipedia has done in the last ten years has disrupted the parroting. That knowledge should sit with with a few group, with a group of few folks. I would say I remember growing up with the concept that knowledge and information was trapped in this few books that we held with pride in the living room as the encyclopedia that we should look at as the source of trust. The knowledge and Wikipedia, although sounds on paper, is a crazy idea.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Twenty years later, as finding ways to show that knowledge can be shared and can be produced by many people and really democratizing the notion that we all can be experts as long as we follow certain editorial guidelines that the encyclopedia relies on, as long as we are doing the homework. I would say in actually producing information in a way that is accurate, verifiable, neutral, and where consensus can be reached to make that part of the encyclopedia. So it's fascinating.

 

- Liesel Mertes

You talked about managing teams across countries and I want to hear more about that, especially with what's gone on over the last year.

 

- Liesel Mertes

One of the things that we really love to talk about on this podcast is how to build empathy and connection at work. And oftentimes that is something that is seen as not really having space in the workplace.

 

- Liesel Mertes

What comes to mind when you think of within your personal experience, a story of a time when you really experienced the impact of either experiencing empathy at work or experiencing a lack of it in a way that made an impression on you.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Thank you so much for that question. Does it bring some triggers, a lot of the positivity and like the things that I love about the work and specifically about my team. So the partnerships team and specifically the regional partnerships team is focused on, as I mentioned earlier, expanding and bringing ways to create more awareness and increase readership in particular parts of the world. And in order to do that, we needed to hire folks that are living in those parts of the world.

 

- Jorge Vargas

So we have a regional manager for Latin America who in Colombia, someone who is in Indonesia, someone who's in India, someone is in Ghana, someone who was in Jordan recently relocated to to the U.S. So that brought me for I want to say the first time. The feeling of having to work on the same topic, on the same thing with five or six completely different people that came from completely different backgrounds, contexts, languages, time zones. And one of the big things where I realize that empathy was needed was the fact that we were just sitting in completely different parts of the world.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And that meant that maybe someone was going to be having lunch or dinner while the other person was trying to feed them and have a conversation with them. Or maybe someone was in the middle of child care when the other person was actually in the middle of what they thought was an important meeting. So definitely trying to break that construct that we continue to see and that maybe the pandemic has a silver lining left or is leaving of not centralizing everything of where the place of work is physically located, the headquarters of the Wikimedia Foundation or in San Francisco.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because I think it's a very interesting point. What does so paint a picture for us? What does it look like for you to be checking in with yourself in a way that makes you a better manager as you think about what you're about to ask of, you know, a partner or a teammate?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I think that for me, the first thing to I check in with myself is trying to think where the other person is. And by that I mean not just geographically or the times in which they are, but like try to understand maybe where that person is in their life. At that moment, particularly the last year and a half, has shown us that. Work and life, for better or for worse, or the day to day life are completely together, like it's very hard to separate, particularly when we're working from home.

 

- Jorge Vargas

We know that we may have kids in the background. We may have like the mail come in. We may have someone that is needing something from somebody else and requires attention. And for me before this and when I used to work back in Columbia or when I started working for the foundation, I never thought of that. I was just like, well, working like it's just work, which like think of this thing that we need to do, period, no matter what.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Now, I think that being more self aware. Sorry, more self aware about. Where the person is, is it late for them this morning for them. What happens if I sent them right now a ping that I need to talk to someone? And I make the assumption that even though it's late for them, they're probably awake or maybe they are awake, but they shouldn't be responding, but they're under the pressure to do so. So it's really checking in and being like, OK, where is the other person?

 

- Liesel Mertes

Right, that's so good and being part of teams that span the globe, I imagine, really necessary. Do you feel like you're, you're learning curve has really had to, like, accelerate over the last year and all of those things?

 

- Jorge Vargas

Absolutely. I think that for better or for worse, the fact that the partnership's team of the foundation is so remote from its inception allowed us to have a leg up before the pandemic because we were already building in the routines of what being on camera all the time would look like. Having this multiple time zones would look like at the same time, I think that this last year and a half through COVID has trained, has reinforced even more the idea of trying to understand and recognize where the other person is mentally and physically and trying to really be self aware of this is a good time for us to speak, not necessarily timers in the time zone, but.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Maybe this person is going through something right now. Maybe they are going through a lot of stress because they haven't been able to deal with child care at the moment. Maybe there's been health complications with them or for their loved ones. And I think that before the pandemic, I wouldn't have thought about that. I would be like, oh, yeah, I know the Times Zone works or let's let's talk at 7:00 p.m. just so it's easier or whatever.

 

- Jorge Vargas

But now it's more of a check in and think through first, like, oh, OK, but I remember that they said that this was happening mean I should think this through before sending this or asking for that. So it's been a it's been an interesting learning curve, I would say.

 

- Liesel Mertes

So those sorts of things in my work, I call them disruptive life events, which 2020 and 2021 have been full of across the world, whether that is in people's immediate sphere of family and influence or, you know, a little bit more to the periphery. There have been there have been hospitalizations. There have been funerals. I find that even in even in like a singularly within one country, even in, let's say, just a strictly U.S. experience, there can be like people respond differently based on region conditioning personality.

 

- Liesel Mertes

I imagine that that becomes even more complex in how people experience grief and disruption when you expand it to global teams. Are you how have you found yourself navigating, you know, within different cultural norms of expectations as to whether it's OK to speak about these things at work or OK to cry or OK to show weakness? What are some stories or wisdom that you've gleaned in navigating those dynamics?

 

- Jorge Vargas

That is a very interesting point and one that I can speak for me on a personal note. I grew up in Colombia. I shared earlier, and that came with me building myself from a work culture that was very conservative, very strict, where we wouldn't be open about things we wouldn't share or overshare or where feelings were not necessarily part of it, particularly in a law firm. And I remember moving to the U.S. and started working with the foundation and feeling that there was some sort of culture shock on how folks were maybe a little bit more open to do things and how I felt I was not necessarily in a position to be open or share or bring something to the table.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And it took me a little while to understand how the culture would work at the workplace and how different it was to take that years later. I think for me it's now trying to understand the opposite side and now seeing how folks in parts of the world were. Maybe there is a little bit more of a restriction or of an apprehension to be open about things or share grief, share feelings or emotion where power dynamics, especially when it is an interaction between you and your manager, immediately puts you in a situation where you don't necessarily feel comfortable opening up or saying one thing or the other.

 

- Jorge Vargas

So I think that it continues to be a learning curve for me. I think that it will always be a learning curve for me, but. Having to be exposed to so many different cultures, so many different ways to see life, to see disruption, to see grief, sadness or joy or positivity has showed me that there's no one size fits all solution for any way that we want to communicate among humans, particularly in a global context, that we keep working and evolving towards in this and many other places of work.

 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return to the conversation with Jorge in just a moment.  I’d like to take a second to recognize our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting.  If you’ve been listening this long into the podcast, you probably agree that empathy and connection at work are essential for keeping your people engaged.  But how can your grow your empathy skillset?  Let Handle with Care consulting help.  With keynotes, certificate progams, and leadership coaching, we have a solution to meet your need.  These sessions are engaging, combining stories with data, merging science with really actionable tips you can put into practice right away to build up a culture of care at work. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

 

- Liesel Mertes

I imagine to be able to do your job well, there is a necessary measure of curiosity and adaptability, you know, to continue, as you said, to find those things fascinating and rewarding. Would you say that that has would you say that that's a part of you and has always been a part of you, or is that something that you've had to cultivate as you have, you know, moved into different cultures and continue to expand your cultural competency?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I have to say that it's more of the latter. I never thought that. I mean, I do consider myself a curious person and someone who wants to learn more from others from a personality basis. I'm always. Very chatty, very open, very sociable, and to meet people, learn from them, and at the same time, I never embedded the cultural element or the understanding of where others come from as part of that. Being exposed to that now through work has put me in a place where I now are more sensitive or more sensible is the word to that and have my eyes more open and my ears more open to that, the receptiveness that we need in order to make sure that we're taking that into account.

 

- Jorge Vargas

I also think that being the U.S. were, for better or for worse, there's a mix of personalities, approaches in life, cultural context, whereas in Colombia it was way more. One note, a lot of people that would think similarly or act similarly. That also just the fact of me being in the U.S. and being exposed to other different things allowed me to fine tune a little bit more. That element that you're describing as being more perceptive and more curious to understand that cultural part of what just being human and having a human interaction.

 

- Liesel Mertes

What has it been like to build connection across these international teams, because like those truly human elements of connecting, feeling like that person has my back, we celebrate wins together, we support each other during losses that can feel like a complex task even when everyone is coming from the same cultural context. What have you done that has really helped build those elements of connections in the teams you manage?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I definitely think that there's been a lot of conscious or unconscious effort and just being very open and honest about myself with others and just putting myself in a situation where I try to be as human and as real as I can, which that definitely has been a work in progress and hard in the sense of. Being very close and very reserved before being here, much more in a in a space of work, but showing that openness and that willingness to just be human with others, I think that no matter if the cultural context could be different or there's like some translation to be done allows me or has allowed me to build those connections, those personal connections that ease down a little bit of the tension that exists on not just the cultural friction and challenges and differences that we may have, but the dynamics that would exist between you and your manager or you and somebody else that maybe has way more experience within the organization or whatnot.

 

- Jorge Vargas

So. I think that at the end of the day, one of the things that I've noticed myself doing more and more is. Finding ways to come across as approachable as I can and as real as I can and honest about my feelings as I can, and that has required a lot of work on my own self-awareness and realizing that it's important for me to check in how I am feeling at the moment, like maybe I'm not happy for something. And coming up to a conversation with someone in a different part of the world or in the U.S. or whatnot.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Without me realizing, like, no, first I need to know, like, OK, I'm not thrilled right now because of X or Y, is this the right time to talk about this? Is the right time for me to have a conversation about this or that topic that for me, I think has also helped open myself more to others and recognize that, OK, maybe this is a great time for me to say, you know what, I'm not having a great day, but we need to talk about this.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And this is something that we should just do. And that openness has and that being real about things has allowed us as a team at large to just really is way more into each other and see each other more as human, particularly when there's not an element of physical interaction, which is also one of the bigger challenges that we have in in this work and in general with remote work and in the past year and a half with covid. I've worked with people that I've never met in my life in person, and it's been two or three years like I've met my team, which is great pre covid, but usually would have like one or two opportunities a year to do so.

 

- Jorge Vargas

So having to build that rapport and that connection behind a camera and a microphone is very, very different. And I just can, like, wrap up with a nice, I think, example in practice that me and my colleague Yael has instituted in the team. We have a weekly team meeting where we don't start the meeting until we all go on around and just share what's going on in our lives and sometimes is very sad and sometimes has us sharing grief or loss or challenges with each other.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Sometimes it's time to celebrate and share funny memories and happy things and just recognizing that we're all human before being just robots. That work has been critical to being able to build that empathy and that connection with my team and with folks across the organization.

 

- Liesel Mertes

That's so good. And I see that again and again in in high functioning versus, you know, like low functioning teams is this element. Of vulnerability from the top and granting permission in some ways, because so oftentimes there's this power dynamic that exists where especially if leadership like if they never appear vulnerable or human, certainly the people underneath them don't think that it would be appropriate to accept it, OK, for them to share something hard. So, yeah, I think that is incredibly powerful.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And you touched on the, the important thing and the challenge of being able to express your feelings, which is knowing actually how you're feeling, which especially, you know, I know for me and for many people who succeed in in the typical ways of succeeding like, that, you know, their high efficiency, they're going one thing to the next. And it really does take purposeful work and pausing to interrogate yourself and be like, I think I'm actually feeling things right now.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm. What, what could they be? So, yeah, I resonate with the importance of doing that.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And I think that it's a work in progress, I think that I I mean, I hear myself say that and I realize that that hasn't been or that has never been the constant in my life. Right. Like just having that level of self-awareness is taken a while and is definitely taking a lot of therapy and a huge fan of therapy. I encourage everyone to go to therapy. It's just recognizing that were that were people that were human, that were flesh and bones.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And sometimes we forget that at work. We forget that in other scenarios. And at the end of the day, work is important and matters. But but it's work. And we are we're humans and we're people. And we were feelings and we're joy. We're sadness first. And that ends up having a huge influence and work at the end of the day and not recognizing that it's a little bit naive and dismissive of it makes us better workers if we actually are a little more self-aware about how we're feeling, our emotions in general.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Yes. Well, and if we have punishing internal voices that never allow us to feel our own feelings, certainly we are transmitting that sort of energy to the people that we manage, you know, like that's not acceptable here. And agreed. Huge fan and participant in therapy over the years and that work in progress. You know, we I have a there are six people living in my household that span the age range. And so there's lots of emotions and lots of volume all the time.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And but but just because you're expressing them doesn't really mean you're fully aware of them. We put up a poster on the wall that was this like concentric circles of feelings to even be able to look at. And it's helpful for me. You know, I put a sticker on my water bottle. My daughter was asking me even today, someone what you seem a little preoccupied with, what are you what are you feeling? And we went through, you know, the the little circle.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And I it was helpful to get me to what I was actually feeling, not just preoccupied, but something deeper than that. All right, what are times for you as a manager that building connection has felt easy across your teams? And why do you think it felt easy?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I think that the times we're doing that empathy building or that human connection has been easier has been the times where I've managed to be with my teammates and my colleagues in person. I think that being in person definitely makes things makes things easier to just open up, be a little bit more human, be a little bit more approachable. And I have to say that it's been very hard not being able to do that in the last two years, year and a half, because that, I guess, like to to the question like it's hard to like be able to build empathy and understand where others are when we don't really have a proper read on where someone stands.

 

- Jorge Vargas

I think that the physicality of how we act and the faces that we make and the body language that we show to other folks helps a lot when it comes to building that empathy and that understanding of the other. And doing that behind a screen on a little box that shows up in your screen is hard. It's tricky. And sometimes it's very hard to read where others are, right? Yep. I think that being in person has definitely. Or when we are in person, building the empathy and building more of that report, it's definitely easier, right?

 

- Liesel Mertes

And well and especially working cross culturally. I spent a year living in Nairobi and even in person because of some of the cultural differences, the body language differences. You know, I was just always progressively learning like, oh, I'm I am misreading what is going on right here. And I'm in the room, let alone when you know that interaction is reduced to a two inch by two inch screen. What what has helped, as you have done all of the the ZOOMIN or the Microsoft teams or whatever platform you prefer, have you adopted any best practices for effective communication mediated by technology?

 

- Jorge Vargas

Definitely. One of the points that I've been trying to enforce more and more to myself. Is just learning to listen, like just listening more and making myself sure that even if it's behind a screen or even if it's in person, I allow myself to get as much information as possible that allows me to break some assumptions or where someone is emotionally or where someone is presently or not. And that listening or. Has been very, very important, but I also think that someone or something I would say sorry that has helped or that helps a lot, is just allowing myself to be wrong and be OK with that and letting others know that.

 

- Jorge Vargas

I can also be wrong sometimes, and assuming that someone is OK or the opposite and not deluding myself, but by thinking that I have to know it all and that I have to be the super, highly, emotionally, emotionally intelligent person that knows where and how, like just for giving myself a little bit more and allowing others to. Feel OK that they can be wrong about how I'm feeling about X or Y or Z, that has helped both in person but also behind the screen, you know, so often.

 

- Liesel Mertes

The story that we tell our stories of our victories and successes and times that we've done things well, if there's a story that you can share, I would love to hear a story where you realized that you were wrong and went about making repairs and the impact that that had.

 

- Jorge Vargas

I think that sometimes we make assumptions about people that puts us in a situation that makes us defensive or makes us biased towards trying to find ourselves right in an argument and win over something. And specifically, I see that in the past there's been situations where I've allowed myself to join a conversation or start a discussion with a colleague or with a teammate with a lot of assumptions in my mind. And probably that makes me. Weaker to begin with and makes me fail and just takes me to being wrong at the end of the day, and I realize that sometimes that would even take me to a situation where I would have to.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Even think of like, OK, maybe I should actually apologize, because I was I came into this conversation thinking that they were going to do A, B, C or C ABC, and even though they didn't, I took the conversation or two the discussion to that route. And I also, because of the assumptions, I came to that discussion with a lot of emotions, with a lot of anger, a lot of resentment towards was what was going to happen.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And and that made me fail. And that made me be a bad manager at the moment or that made me be a bad colleague or about teammate at the moment and those situations where I failed. For me, it has made it even worse, more complicated to understand is the fact that sometimes. We don't even know that we failed until we really went deeper on that, failing until we really hurt someone or until someone actually calls you out. Sometimes you're not even called out or sometimes it just.

 

- Jorge Vargas

This hurt or damage that you did and you're not even aware of it

 

- Liesel Mertes

And you mentioned that that feeling like, should I apologize? Do I need to circle back? Do you find yourself in the aftermath of some of those situations going and making repairs that way?

 

- Jorge Vargas

Definitely. And I think that I mean, that applies a lot, not just on the the professional level, but like on the personal level. I tend to be someone who and definitely something that I keep working on day and day that could say things and afterwards be like, oh, crap. Like what did I just say? Or like, was this what I really wanted to say? Or was this like my frustration speaking for me and then coming back to being like, OK, what did I actually say?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I wish that I could have like a recorder playback of what I said and how I set it to make sure that what taste left in my mouth after I was in an interaction with someone, actually. Was right or wrong, but usually there's like an aftermath where you're like. Oops, I think that maybe this was not what I had to or maybe I came across completely wrong in this or that, usually if there's that gut feeling, it's because something was wrong, I think.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Yeah, the good thing for me at least, has been just being able to recognise that and be open about it and go back to a person and say. You know what, I may have been wrong, did I say something, did I do this or did I do that instead of just staying with the assumption that maybe it wasn't?

 

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. That I that I'm just going to double down on this or hope that it goes away or all of these coping mechanisms that can feel easier than just, you know, being straightforward and owning our stuff. And I think so often, you know what what I have experienced and what I consistently observe is that can be hard for leaders actually to want to do. They feel like I'm the I'm the leader. Other people apologize to me. I don't apologize to them instead of really embracing them, the transformative power that there is in owning your stuff.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that I mean, there's a lot of ego attached to positions of management that sometimes they bring really great things, but sometimes they don't. And oftentimes it's just realizing that no matter if we are in a different power dynamic, we are all human, we're all the same people. We all have feelings. We only have approached something the wrong way or the right way and. I think it's better at times to go back to someone and say, I think that I may have said something and be wrong about it and be told, no, you were fine, don't worry.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Even, even if it's not really true, even if that person is just letting it pass. But it's better to do that and then be like, OK, at least I did it then just staying with a weird afterthought and knowing anything about it.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Right. Just trying to push it to the side. Yep. What words of insight would you offer to listeners who are sitting here and they think, you know, I, I there's some work that I can do, I want to be cultivating more connection and humanity at my workplace. Where should where should they start? What are some things that have been helpful for you?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I think that a good way for me to kind of like start that conversation or like give those specific tips here. And there is maybe broadly saying that recognizing that we are all people that bring our own baggage to the office and recognizing that that is OK. Like, I think that for me personally. My culture and my context. Was very pushy about the idea that you left your baggage at home and came to work, acted, worked and developed whatever you needed to do and then came back to that, and that is not really true.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And I think understanding and acknowledging that we are human and come to work and engage in work relationships and conversations with the baggage that we have with waking up grumpy, not having a good night's sleep, having issues with our child care, having a fight with your spouse or maybe the opposite, coming in very happy because you had like a phenomenal night the day before or you've been having really good things happening. At least recognizing that that is there and not feeling guilty about feeling those feelings is a good way to start.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And I'm speaking for myself. I used to feel very guilty about feeling feelings at work. And it sounds kind of dumb now that I think about it. But that's pretty much like how a lot of the work culture has been shaped and the idea that we have to separate completely our feelings and our work and our humanity with the day to day office. But then in addition to that, I would say that trying to stay as open and as transparent and as approachable to folks is really is really important.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And that usually starts with just trying to share a little bit more about who you are, about where you are at the moment. I think that you put it very eloquently by saying giving permission to others to recognize that you are human, that you're not this wall and a manager that is just this person that is looking at your work and giving you a qualification that at the end of the day will give you a yes or no pass grade, but actually just a fellow human that needs to recognize that sometimes they have good things going on, sometimes they don't, and allowing yourself to give that permission to others.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And I think that also applies even outside of work.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Mm hmm. It's so good. What is a person or a book, and if a few come to mind, you can feel free to say, that have really positively affected your development as a leader?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I'm going to cheat and not say a book or a person, but I'm going to go to a podcast, although that or very poorly paid work. And Shankar Vedantam has this phenomenal podcast that I think of my favorite podcast called Hidden Brain on NPR. And it's really about understanding all of this things that we as humans have in our brain, in our personality and our humanity, and how that impacts the day to day life, how that impacts work, how that impacts conscious or unconsciously the patterns in human behavior that are part of everything.

 

- Jorge Vargas

And it's a fascinating podcast. It goes on a weekly basis. And I strongly encourage folks to go through it because it also touches to a lot of things that sometimes speak to me personally. Sometimes it speaks to me about work. Sometimes it speaks to me about something specific that's going on in the world. And all in all, I think it has really shaped me, or at least has awakened a lot of curiosity about more of the things that we have hidden in our brains as the name of the podcast stands for.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Are there any questions that it would be helpful for me to ask you that I haven't asked you yet?

 

- Jorge Vargas

I think that I would love to understand or maybe hear based on your experience in the conversations that you've had with many folks about this topic, how much of the cultural context and cultural background that we'll bring that we've discussed in the last hour or so, how much data that comes up? How much do people actually recognize that? That is something that we all need to identify in the context of empathy and empathy at the workplace?

 

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm. Well, that's that's a good question. Let me give you kind of an impressionistic take on the question, which I I was a political science major. My favorite area of study in my undergraduate work was post-colonial theory, you know, different different cultures, speaking back to power structures. So I've I've taken some of that curiosity. Even in my MBA program. I was I was studying supply chain and global management. So it it caught my interest consistently.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Like, how are the assumptions that we're making about how business functions? How do they hold water? How do they not how do we need to be pivoting in a more global context? And the reality is whether it's whether it's global writ large or even within, like, you know, I consult with companies who everybody is living in central Indiana. You know, it's way more homogenous. Some of the companies that I work with on a smaller scale.

 

- Liesel Mertes

But still there are these these differences. I, I introduce people to empathy avatars in my training. These are these go to like postures of our personality that we take on when we encounter someone else who's going through a hard time. So you could manifest as like a Buck up Bobby, which is someone who is that mentality we were talking about, which is, you know, work is for work. We're all about productivity. It's a stiff upper lip.

 

- Liesel Mertes

You know, you just have to keep on keeping on or at. Cheer-Up Cheryl. You know, someone who is always wanting to look on the bright side, forcing someone else to look on the bright side or a Fix-It frank, someone who is all about like, let's let's just what's the solution? Like, how can I get you not to feel poorly? And there's there's seven or eight of those. And they're there like ways of being that people have adopted out of their own personal experience, out of the norms of their cultural context, out of what helped them survive formative pain in their own lives.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And it's continually fascinating to me.

 

- Liesel Mertes

So that's a roundabout way of saying I'm a student. I've seen how these things express themselves when I you know, when I talk about even to talk about like. You know, places like like Japan or China, like those are huge, complex, diverse cultures, but, you know, those are when people are doing work, you know, with their counterparts in those countries, those people identify a lot more with like, again, that the Buck-Bobby or the Fix it Frank.

 

- Liesel Mertes

Like, it's it tends to be that the normative cultural experience is we don't talk about those things and like that. We are not showing vulnerability in those ways. Like you, you have to find somebody else in your life to deal with that stuff is not going to be here. So I'm continually learning. Does that answer your question about some of the things that I've seen?

 

- Jorge Vargas

Absolutely. And it's fascinating that you mentioned something that probably we we didn't look more deeply into, but it's the fact that the power dynamics and the differences in cultures and contexts also speak a lot to just the historical dynamics that have put some cultures, quote unquote, above others and might oppression that has existed in the hundreds of years that we have as like people interacting with people. And that also comes to play a lot when it comes to the workplace and finding ways to build empathy and try to break some things that unconsciously have been ingrained into our system culturally.

 

- Jorge Vargas

It's hard and sometimes it's even hard to recognize, I think that for me, speaking for myself, although I was very. Happy and lucky and privileged to grow up in Colombia, still in an international setting and going to an international school, there was always the sense that. You as a Colombian were less than someone in the U.S. or someone in Europe simply for the fact of where you are, where you were coming from, and that plays a big role as well in understanding that cultural context and that cultural baggage that we bring to human interactions and to human interactions in the workplace.

 

- Jorge Vargas

So I appreciate that you bring that point because it's definitely very relevant and still something that we see now in understanding how history, how race, how political systems keep just influencing the ways in which we bring ourselves to work and bring ourselves to interacting with others. And it's not just that different cultures are different. It's also the fact that some cultures have been historically oppressed by others and. Denying that or not, acknowledging that that is also part of how we interact in the workplace in a global context is this is harsh justice complex and we just have to remind ourselves of that.

 

- Jorge Vargas

So thank you for making that point.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And that's that's part of why one of the foundational tenets I talk about is it's something that that you touched upon is just the importance of paying radical attention to the person in front of you to free yourself a lot of the times from feeling the responsibility of, like, I need to fix this or I need to get out of this situation because I feel personally uncomfortable and triggered.

 

- Liesel Mertes

But to be able to do the work and just coach yourself to like I'm going to be radically attentive here and I'm going to I'm going to have in my mind, you know, almost like a decision tree, different ways that I can pivot and respond based on what this person is indicating that they need.

 

- Jorge Vargas

That is so true and like so, so powerful. And I love this. Time of radical attentiveness, I think that it's really, really great that I'm definitely taking that coined term that you shared with me, because I love that it actually describes a lot of what we were talking about.

 

- Liesel Mertes

So, yeah, well, and it's I mean, we feel it right. Especially with so many devices and demands that take our attention, like whether it's whether it's a partner or a friend when somebody I mean, even if you're not going through a hard time, when somebody just like zeroes in on your story and they're really there with you, you know, I feel like we realize how rare it is just because, you know, we so seldom give that to people or even experience it.

 

- Liesel Mertes

And it's just one of the most powerful gifts that we can give.

 

- Jorge Vargas

That is absolutely true.

 

- Liesel Mertes

All right, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much you I really I am better as a result of the conversation and it is expanding my perspective and my available toolkit. So thank you for sharing.

 

- Jorge Vargas

Thank you so much, Liesel, for doing this work and for inviting me to chat about this, and this was a fascinating conversation.

 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

 

Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Jorge…

  • In order to fully engage in empathy and support, it is important to know how you are feeling in a given moment and interaction.Jorge described the process of pausing to really acknowledge his own emotions, his willingness to share his emotional moment with others, and the work of counseling and introspection that it took to get him to that point of self-awareness.  How aware are you of your emotional state in the course of a given day?
  • Grief, sadness, joy, positivity.Jorge has experienced a range of emotions across cultures and, as he said, there is no “one-size fits all” solution to how people experience grief.  This leads to the importance of radical attention, cultural attunement, and the importance of checking in with those that you work with and manage.  
  • Good leaders go back to make repairs, they apologize, they interrogate their experience and develop the gut instinct that Jorge talked about, the one that reminds them to prioritize the person instead of their own ego.When was the last time you apologized?  Has it been a while?  It might not be that you are always acting excellently.  If you haven’t apologized in a while, it could be an invitation to deeper self-awareness. 

 

OUTRO