In this insightful episode of the The Leading Below the Surface podcast, host LaTonya Wilkins chats with Loren Sanders, author of Empathy is Not a Weakness. Loren shares about her transformative work with empathy as well as providing tips and tricks as you approach conference season; how to strategize, maximize learnings, and the value of building your network.
Resources from today’s episode:
– Change Coaches Guide to Create Psychological Safe Conversations Across Differences
– Change Coaches Newsletter
– Connect with Loren on LinkedIn
– Loren’s Website
Transcript:
00:01:05 – LaTonya Wilkins
Hi, I’m LaTonya Wilkins, your host, and today I’m joined by a guest. Her name is Loren Sanders. So let me tell you a little bit about how I met Loren.
00:01:33 – LaTonya Wilkins
So we actually met in Champaign, Illinois, of all places. And what was so interesting is she had reached out to me because we were kind of doing similar things in our careers, and we had such a great relationship. I invited her to speak at one of my classes at the Gies College of business was a leadership class. Students really enjoyed it. And then our lives have evolved.
00:02:00 – LaTonya Wilkins
And over time, she has kind of moved on from champagne. She’s kind of doing some other things now. She wrote a book, empathy is not a weakness. So we’ve connected on that. One more little nugget about Loren.
00:02:15 – LaTonya Wilkins
Actually, her dad is in the same profession as my partner. And so it was so funny because he is like this well known person in that profession. So we had all these little nuggets of connection, and that’s one of the things that kind of brought us together. And what’s really neat is that we’ve stayed together as friends, as partners, as supporters. So, Loren, what did I miss?
00:02:36 – Loren Sanders
I think you missed the part where I want to be you when I grow up, and you think I’m kidding, but I’m actually serious about that.
00:02:45 – LaTonya Wilkins
Oh, I love that. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah, you just made my day with that. But I appreciate that.
00:02:53 – LaTonya Wilkins
But, yeah. So let’s dive right into this. So today, folks, we’re talking all about how to make the most of your learning investments. We’re going toa talk about other things, but personal learning investments. Like I said, Loren’s also written a book, and that’s kind of where I want to start.
00:03:11 – LaTonya Wilkins
But don’t worry, we will get into the learning stuff. I know it’s fall conference season, so we all want to get into that topic. But first, Loren, tell us a little bit about your book, why you wrote a book about empathy.
00:03:23 – Loren Sanders
I would tell you that I didn’t write a book about empathy, but I wrote the book on empathy. And the difference is there’s a lot of books out there about empathy and what it is, and people are always talking about what it is and how it’s different from sympathy and, and how everybody needs to do it, but nobody ever gave anyone a plan about how to get there. And my book is really a seven week reflection for people to be able to self reflect and determine whether or not they might have a problem with empathy. And the readers have interestingly told me that they read it twice, the first time for the content and then the second time to actually work through the process. And it just makes my heart happy when people say that it all stemmed from having been a toxic leader in my past and not actually recognizing that I was that person.
00:04:20 – Loren Sanders
And I tell a little bit of that story in the book, but self reflection is really the catalyst for change. Self awareness makes a difference, and if you don’t know that you really suck, then you’re never going to be able to change. And that is really, it’s, the book’s a little bit about my journey. It’s a little bit about other people’s stories who have ever been treated horribly at work or who have overcome being toxic leaders. And it blends all of that together with some framework around what you can do to continuously practice being empathetic.
00:05:00 – Loren Sanders
Because I will argue all day long, and if people want to contact me for this argument, they are more than welcome to do that. But it is a practice. It is not a skill.
00:05:12 – LaTonya Wilkins
So you shared a lot of vulnerability. That’s one of the things that I was listening for as you were talking, and one of the things I noticed. So is that what made you write this book? It sounds like maybe you were, you were kind of sick of people, maybe not being empathetic, or maybe was there something, a defining moment in your career that made you say, okay, we need to write a book. I need to write a book about empathyuse really, I need to write the book about empathyus. Really I really want people to see something different.
00:05:42 – Loren Sanders
For me, I love hearing other people’s stories and having taken the journey of being not empathetic at all to being a much more empathetic human, I started listening more to what people were saying and similar to you with leading below the surface. There is real impact in hearing other people’s stories, especially people who don’t look like you, maybe don’t act like you maybe are outside of whatever the box is that you’re used to being in, and hearing their experiences, especially in the workplace, and recognizing that we have a huge problem with toxic leadership. And it goes beyond the impact of people at work. It hurts them, not just at work, but it gets taken home, and it impacts families, and it impacts everybody that surrounds people who are in this space. And we really need to do a better job of creating opportunities for leaders like this to not be recognized for being great leaders because they make a lot of money for a company, but to leaders to be recognized when they actually help other people be better and drive business results that way.
00:07:09 – LaTonya Wilkins
Yeah, yeah. Those are all such important points of how this affects everyone. And really, one of the things I really heard you say, too, is that you are un empathetic at one time. And just admitting that and being able to say that because it can be hard to be empathetic. You know, it’s interesting, I was doing a keynote the other day, and after my keynote, someone came up to me and he asked, how do I do this?
00:07:35 – LaTonya Wilkins
How do I do this? And, you know, I gave him your book as a resource. But, you know, I was, you knowus. And that’s what I talk about. Like, how. How do you access them?
00:07:43 – LaTonya Wilkins
I mean, it’s hard. And, like, your stories are good because people can go into that and see themselves in those stories.
00:07:50 – Loren Sanders
I think out of all the stories in the book and all of them impacted me and all of the people who shared their stories, I cannot than enough. But there was one person who told me their story about how being overworked and burned out and in a toxic situation drove them to a psychological crisis that ended up putting them in the hospital. They were actually having delusions of things that weren’t true and realizing how much impact one person can have on your life. In some ways it’s harrowing, and other ways you kind of think, well, that’s ridiculous, but it’s real and it’s happening to people, and it’s not okay.
00:08:31 – LaTonya Wilkins
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about? We’renna, come back to this later. And I want to get into some of the other stuff that we’re goingna talk about because again, you wear so many hats and so you have so much great knowledge that I think people are looking forward to hearing.
00:08:50 – Loren Sanders
The last thing I’ll say about this is if you’re not practicing empathy, you’re getting worse.
00:08:55 – LaTonya Wilkins
- Yeah, that is powerful. If you’re not practicing empathy, you’re getting worse. Yeah. And it’s like you don’t have to be right, folks.
00:09:06 – LaTonya Wilkins
You don’t have to completely understand. Right? You don’t have to agree. But we’re getting into fall and people are really starting to step into fall conference season. And so a lot of folks are also investing in new programs. A lot of folks are going back to school.
00:09:23 – LaTonya Wilkins
A lot of folks are going to be going to new conferences. They’going to be taking on some new learning experiences. So what’s some of the advice that you would give them to make the most out of these learning experiences? And the reason I ask is because I know I was recently at a conference that was probably one of the best conferences I’ve been at in a long time. It was the Institute of coaching at Harvard, and I just haven’t had time to kind of go back to everything. I mean, the connections were great, but what would be some, maybe a couple tips that you give people around how to navigate this conference season or a new learning and making sure they get the most out of their dollars?
00:10:04 – Loren Sanders
The first thing is, if you think the magical budget fairrry is going to come out of somewhere and give you the budget to go to these things, we’re doing the wrong thing. A lot of organizations are not even paying for conferences right now, so I would choose wisely. If it’s your own personal budget and knowing that you’ve made that investment, I want to ask the listeners, how many of you have notebooks full of notes that you’ve taken from conferences and never looked at again, it might be a good opportunity to go back through and read through those notes and figure out what am I going to do with this information? And if you’re headed to a conference, maybe have a reflection plan in mind at the front end, there’s the breaks in between the conference sessions, and we run around and some of us take everything we can from the vendors or run around and try to get that card filled out and then get all these little chotchkis that we end up getting rid of later because we don’t need all of those things. Maybe take that ten or 15 minutes to just sit, even for five of them, and think about what am I going to do with the information I just got? How am I going toa put this into practice in my work, in my life, in my ability to grow somebody else and just take a note on that and then compile those when you get back home, take the time, schedule the time so that you can intentionally go through what you learned and figure out how it fits for you and how you can use it to develop yourself more or develop your team more.
00:11:44 – LaTonya Wilkins
Yeah, I love that. So the reflection plan and making sure that you have that out and that you have that pretty much done before the conference, would you say yes?
00:11:57 – Loren Sanders
Definitely.
00:11:57 – LaTonya Wilkins
Okay. And maybe even setting up some time in between. Ye yeah. And then, like, I think the other question around that just to ask a follow up is, what do you think is enough to get from a conference? Because I find a lot of times people are beating themselves up or they’re thinking, oh, my gosh, I wasted money. But if they do one thing, or if they’re able to do one thing differently, what would you say that could be?
00:12:26 – LaTonya Wilkins
Or how should they think about that?
00:12:28 – Loren Sanders
I will say, again, I’m a super nerd. So prior to going to a conference, I will pour over the education sessions.
00:12:35 – Loren Sanders
And try to figure out what I.
00:12:37 – Loren Sanders
Want to get out of the conference before I even show up at, at the conference. Choosing my sessions very carefully because of what I’m trying to learn or what I’m trying to take away, and then creating the reflection plan around whatever that plan is and deciding you can’t boil the ocean, I think it’s important to know what I’m wanting to get out of this is x, and I want to implement maybe one to three things in the next. I would say six to twelve months, and maybe it’s longer than that. But understanding the why behind the choice of the sessions and what they can do for you, for your organization, for your own development, I think that becomes more important than the quantity, I think really choosing well and thinking about outcomes versus how many inputs can I get?
00:13:39 – LaTonya Wilkins
Yeah, I like that. You know, and it’s interesting when I brought the IOC conference, it’s interesting because I feel like I made a lot of connections, and there are a lot of people there that I’d read leading below the surface, or they’d been to other, they’ve been to webinars or workshops that I’ve run. And so that part was the part that was kind of intangible. And so let’s kind of talk about that? Like, what about how do, what’s the trade off? Or what’s the relationship with that? Because you might have a plan and then the entire plan goes down the tubes when you find out that someone you really want to meet is there. Or you get into this side conversation and it’s so deep that you decide just to stay with them instead of go to a session.
00:14:25 – LaTonya Wilkins
So would you say relationships are just as important?
00:14:29 – Loren Sanders
Oh, yes. I think relationships are fuel for helping us grow. And so if you meet that amazing person and you have a great conversation and you think about things that you can do together or how you can help each other, that’s as valuable as a conference session. And I wouldn’t throw that away. Most of the time you can get the notes from the session you were going to go to from another person.
00:14:54 – Loren Sanders
A lot of times they’re posted on websites. Sometimes they’re even recorded and you can listen to them, or that person has a site you can go to and learn a lot more about what they do. Chances are these days they probably have a podcast, too.
00:15:08 – LaTonya Wilkins
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny. Yeah, I’m glad you were re saying. Cause it’s like I still have all these notes in a folder and I, I went back and I’m like, okay, I think I probably got more from that than I thought.
00:15:19 – LaTonya Wilkins
So I did have one more question as we’re talking about this before we end, and this is probably a question that is on many of your minds, so, AI. So when I was at this conference and other conferences, but actually IOC specifically, Martin Siegelman had a chat bot assistant that he had rolled out and he was having a beta test during that time that basically you could ask questions about positive psychology or other items, and he had preloaded the answers. And so you were able to get these answers to these questions. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on AI and learning and development. I know for me, for myself, I use chat GPT, I have a couple other AI’s I use mainly for writing, sales purposes, marketing purposes.
00:16:15 – LaTonya Wilkins
But do you think, what are your thoughts around? Is AI going to be a big, is it going to make a big splash in learning and development? And maybe how can we use it? As we’re talking about these conferences and we’re talking about forgetting everything we’re learning, is it a viable tool today? And if not, how do you see that evolving in the future?
00:16:38 – Loren Sanders
I think AI is here to stay and it’s been here for a really long time. We just wasn’t in the form of.
00:16:44 – Loren Sanders
Chat GPT but we’ve used it for a lot of things where I think it’s helpful in learning and development is maybe you need to create a rubric on something and you’re not really sure how to put the phrasing into it, or you’re trying to create some sort of video script and you want to make sure that it flows. But the problem is you better know your content before you start to use AI because it lies. It’s not always accurate, 100% and nobody AI is not going to take your job. Somebody that knows how to use it is going to. And the more you can partner with it, the better off you’re going to be. I love to say never accept the first answer the AI gives you. There’s so much more impact in just continuing the back and forth. And please always check the research and the references that it gives you because a lot of times those aren’t right. It’s not perfect. It’s a partner.
It is not. It’s not doing your job for you.
00:17:52 – LaTonya Wilkins
Yeah, it’s very limited in. It’s interesting because the new version starts to have sources, but it’s like the same sources over and over, which it’s helpful to get started then. But I agree, and I think one thing I was really surprised about is I could dump in a description of something or ask it for a learning plan, and it’s pretty good with that. But you’re right, the facts. I probably wouldn’t trust it maybe just to get started, but it’s pretty good with anything.
00:18:23 – LaTonya Wilkins
Writing, planning. I found it to be pretty like does a better job than I would, but especially if it’s my content first and making it better.
00:18:32 – Loren Sanders
And I would tell you also, it’s not super innovative. Remember, everything that AI has and accesses are things that have already been done or things that have already been researched. So if you’re trying to be innovative and want to be future focused, forward, different, it can give you ideas. But that’s not the tool. Your brain is a better tool.
00:18:54 – Loren Sanders
Your collaboration with other people is a better tool.
00:18:58 – LaTonya Wilkins
Yeah, yeah, I agree with all that as well. So finally, how can people find you?
00:19:05 – Loren Sanders
Definitely find me on LinkedIn. That’s probably where I share the most impactful content that I have. I also have a coaching website and a book website. Loren three six five.com is my book website.
00:19:22 – Loren Sanders
Rocxaloccoaching.com is my coaching website. I will respond to anybody who reaches out to me through LinkedIn or any.
00:19:29 – Loren Sanders
Of those other ways.
00:19:32 – Loren Sanders
I don’t ever turn down a conversation with somebody unless they’re trying to sell me something weird, which happens a lot, but real, intentional conversations with people I love.
00:19:45 – LaTonya Wilkins
Thank you so much for joining us, Loren. And folks, have a wonderful conference season and we’ll see you next time.