McKenna Sweazey
Slack is a news feed, it's actually pretty rude to put a news feed on people's work computers. We know that Facebook is bad for you, it is literally bad for you. It's bad for you to have that kind of news feed. Yeah. And now we've decided we need a work-one.

Jeff Ma
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. But we want to tackle topics that most business leaders tend to shy away from. And we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And I am always looking to have conversations with real people, real practitioners and real experts around different ways that love and empathy and things like that might show up in the workplace. So today, my guest is McKenna Sweazey. She is a digital empathy and management speaker, author, and consultant. And she spent her career working in global organizations, managing teams around the globe, and really having a passion in helping people harness digital empathy to be to better connect, and and have success. So welcome to the show. Mckenna how are you?

McKenna Sweazey
I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, I'm gonna go, like just right out and ask it before we even dive into anything else. Digital empathy, like, that's going to be I already know, we're gonna be talking around that. And so I want to, I want to get back to you. And although your story, I definitely need to get there. But let's just I just need to know digital empathy. Can you just sum that up for the audience? What is digital empathy?

McKenna Sweazey
Yeah, exactly. And I think so on the one hand, I feel like I made this up. But I actually think it's also a term that UX teams use as well. So I definitely did not make it up. But digital empathy is what empathy is the ability to share and understand the feelings of another. And digital empathy is the ability to do that. So sharing, and particularly understanding the feelings of another over a virtual connection, anything that's not in real life, whether that's email, text, Slack, video conference. And I want to also clarify that I'm really talking about cognitive empathy, when I think about it in a business sense. So cognitive empathy is the sort of the understanding and knowing what the other person's emotions are not necessarily being affected by them. Obviously, we are humans, we are affected by them. But it's more about knowing than it is about the emotional as your own reactionary emotional aspect. Because I think that can get people into you know, places they may not want to go. But understanding how your colleagues boss direct reports is our feeling is really critical for working well with them both in the office and online.

Jeff Ma
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. There's a whole chapter in our book about it. But But gonna dive into that, thank you for that quick definition, bouncing back to you. What, what led you from somewhere in the past, doing something else to digital empathy, and all the things you're doing speaking authoring those things today?

McKenna Sweazey
Yeah, I think probably the same for a lot of trends that were caused by the pandemic it was happening. And then it really happened because of the pandemic. So obviously, I've been managing teams, I've been working in a global role for a lot of my career. And that means you know, remote management just by default, and remote it really more like hybrid actually. And I had been kind of taking notes always thought I was gonna write a book, Love management books, and, you know, love some of the real classics out there. You know, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Gosh, now he's now his name's gonna escape me, Jack, the GE CEO. But a lot of those books have some real tenants in them, but they're a little bit old fashioned. But I found them really inspirational at the same time. Another pandemic happened. And I was actually on maternity leave for the beginning part of it. And I was like, Okay, I'm stuck here, world's collapsing. And I need something to do with my brain because it cannot leave the house. And that's when I sat down and really started researching the sort of scientific basis for some of the ideas that you know, we all know intuitively, but you know, Is there research to support that to deny that and then of course, in the pandemic, there's a ton more research on what good virtual and remote working looks like.

Jeff Ma
Where it is, I guess, when you're when you're doing this work, where does your passion like center around like, what are you trying to, I guess, convey, get across or teach?

McKenna Sweazey
Good question. So My favorite part of work is being someone's manager, and making sure that they get to be the best version of themselves, and that they get the best opportunities, and the best chance to shine and the best feedback so that they can grow and learn. For me, that's like, absolutely the most fun part of working. And if I have any good management skills, which I hope that I do it, trying to codify the things the feedback that I've gotten that people have said, This is really helpful to me that you did this as my manager. That's sort of the genesis of what I am passionate about. And a lot of that was about thinking, how is this going to land with this person? How can I deliver this in a way that it reaches them correctly, you know, trying to put myself in their shoes. And walking that line? Because as I mentioned before, you know, it's not about doing bending over backwards and putting yourself or the company goals on the backburner? Because it's going to hurt someone's feelings. Of course, not like we are in a corporate setting, we do have a job to get done. We are literally paid to be here and do that. But how can I put their feelings into the conversation also, because not only because I'm a human being, but because it's hard for people to get work done if they're feeling threatened, or like they're unsafe or betrayed by their manager. So trying to really work in a way that, you know, includes those feelings. Without, again, getting to the point of effective empathy and thinking that the feelings come before You know, the business need.

Jeff Ma
Yeah. I'm gonna dive right in this rip the band aid off, because, yes, this is a topic. I'm often involved in conversations around it. And I think one of the things I get a lot is feelings, and things like that are a very complicated factor in the workplace. Because even if you agree that they're important, even if you're on the side of wanting to care for them, they're complicated, like human relationships are complicated. And so they muddy things up, there's, there's, there's a way to go too far, there's a way that they can get to, you know, all sorts of things. And that's a tough challenge to try to balance those things. And so, the first question I have for you, when I hear about working with people on digital empathy is, how much do you see kind of the solution or the right approach? How much of it is tactical? I guess, is the way I'd put it? How much of it like is it like tips and tricks and things that a manager can do? And how much of it is, like a mindset and attitude around? The leaders themselves, the managers?

McKenna Sweazey
I would like to think it's a mindset. But I think that is much, much harder to change. And I don't think a book can really change your mindset. I think that is years of coaching and being surrounded by people who do it really well. I think my or at least my perspective has always been tips and tricks, and the little things that you can think about, and very particular examples. And you know, I have like a everyone's favorite blog post of mine is about Slack, and how I think it's passive aggressive. And whether or not you agree, you know, I have some salient points about, like, Slack doesn't have a subject line. So when something lands in someone's inbox, like, that's just a bomb, not inbox in there, like newsfeed, it's just a bomb there. And if you needed to preface it with a subject line, maybe you should be using email. And that's really about how it's going to land with someone else. So ideas like that, that are very practical that I hope people can think, Oh, I see what she's saying there. You know, I'm not giving the person a chance to put themselves in the right mindset before they receive this message that might make them feel uncomfortable. And for some people, that activity is really natural, and they're always doing that. And for some people, it's not natural. And I so I think those like concrete ways of looking at it can be more helpful particularly like in our like, kind of snappy culture, you want to get some ideas that you can just start using. And also if you are the recipient of those bombs dropping into your Slack newsfeed like what are ways that you can, you know, very rationally and bury from like a sort of whether it's research based or like, you know, very business corporate based way say, this isn't working for me, for X, Y & Z reasons that are like a perfectly reasonable way to expect to receive information. So yeah, I'm more of a Tips and Tricks kind of person.

Jeff Ma
Perfect. And I think my opinion is, I think it's a balance I think. I don't think you know, a manager who really has no actual care for their people and follows all the tips and tricks will not you know, it's going to be transparent that that's not actually working. And vice versa if you if you have all the mindset but you're not actually trying to kind of practice the right things. You're not going to succeed either so No, thank you for that. Follow up, I guess is about tips and tricks. Can you kind of share some of the big ones? I guess? Yeah, just right off the bat.

McKenna Sweazey
And I just want to come back to one thing you just said, which I think is really interesting, I actually find it really hard to believe that you'd have a manager who's doing all the tips and tricks. And where it wouldn't be. If you've seen this happen if you have someone who's not naturally good at something, but they're trying so hard, and they're using the tips and like, they have like a checklist or whatever, you're inclined to think the best puts them in a position. Well, you know what, they're not perfect, but they're really trying to better manage it. So I think it does, I completely agree, it is both but like, if you are really making an effort, and the effort is visible, I think people you know, everyone likes that they want to know your tribe.

Jeff Ma
And I think I put that out there because the reality is, is I've seen and this is for those leaders out there who are trying to better their organizations. But if you if you come from it, even like something like this only from the tactical standpoint, what you'll do is your critical, you might say, Hey, I talked to this, I talked to McKenna, and she's giving me great advice like these tips, I love them. And so you have all of the managers do these things. And so you do get some people who Yeah, they will practice all these things in the sense of they were kind of commanded to yes, that's and then you do get these environments as that trickles down the ladder, that this is the norm that must be done, which is good in some ways that you set those standards. But then you will find managers and pockets and things that kind of like don't understand the intent, don't understand why all they have is the orders and it ends up going that direction.

Unknown Speaker
Totally. And I think what No, no, when you ask about like, you know, what are some things and I think the first one, which is more of a mindset than the tip and a trick, but it does have some very applicable actions you can take is that transparency, and trying particularly in a remote first environment to be as transparent and possible, as possible. So with the whys and the wherefores in the hows. And if I asked you to do something, I should be giving you as much context as I'm able to, and really, maybe even over a context thing, because you're missing a lot of the accidental context, the overheard conversations, the whispers, the sort of secondary relationships that people have that are not in their core workgroup. So being the kind of manager who when they explain why we're going to make this policy really sits down and tries to explain it, like above and beyond. I think that's hugely important. So anything, again, that you have this this playbook for, when I think about the other thing I talk a lot about is communication channels. I mentioned slack. And I think we have so many channels. My other personal favorite that I like to talk about is document commenting. Because that is a huge part for a lot of knowledge workers is working off the same PowerPoint or the same word document or even the same Excel sheet. And you have a lot of commenting going on, you know, I think you should change that you should change this. And people I've seen and I don't know if you've seen but I've seen a lot of like either intentional or not intentional weird aggressiveness, pettiness focusing on things that don't matter. You know, I think most people don't get a PowerPoint into their inbox. The ask for revisions and shoot over sort of a basic like, this is what I thought of the presentation, you kind of launch in and you start saying things like I don't like that font. And I put that next slide here. And if you went through it once, you might find that actually, it didn't make logical sense the way they were going, it wasn't the way you want it to do it. But the reason they didn't have that slide there is because they were building a crescendo or whatever it is. And I just had so many experiences where I thought people were going in. And their goal was to give feedback because the person requested feedback, but their goal was not I want to make this presentation or Word document or Excel, whatever. measurably better. And so I'm going to start with that sort of overarching what can you do at a hierarchy? You know, you see a massive typo, maybe you don't even have to comment on it, maybe you just change it yourself. You know, so word spelled wrong. You don't need to prove to everyone that we all you know how to spell hygiene. So and so, you know, thinking about the audience for these things, thinking about, you know, is my commentary making it measurably better? And am I going in from a place and this is definitely empathy based? Am I going in from a place on the assumption that you have done a pretty good job here? And I'm just here to like, tie it up as opposed to him going in and I'm looking for I want you to make this the way I would do it. Or the way I think is right. And I guess you know, there are some people who are master storytellers with PowerPoint. For most people, you know, your way might just be as good as mine. It's just different. So I think for every communication channel, there are probably some Do's, Don'ts, tips, tricks, really an etiquette, you know list of how to behave in that environment. So that the other person feel seen feels heard but that at the end of the day, we walk out with the best work product that we could have had, without having to bring too much of our ego to it.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I'm hearing a lot of what we just talked about, right. Like, I think everything you just said to me was a mindset piece. And I know that there's tips at the tips at the end of all that, but But absolutely, it sounds like you know, you, you have to when you open up a document for commenting you have that mindset, fork in the road, where do I want to have the mindset of just have kind of assuming good intent, assuming that expertise, and giving them the feedback holistically, or do I want to go in and start wrong spotting and picking it apart? That's, that's, that's awesome. Yeah, I think my follow up, I guess is I think you mentioned slack and document I kind of, I'm sure you have like a huge list of the tips and tricks like, what what are give me like an example of like your, your favorites of like the specific kind of checklist items that tactically people should be looking for.

McKenna Sweazey
So I'll diverge and I'll go back to everyone's other favorite one, which is virtual meetings. And thinking about the the checklist there. And let's see if I can do it from memory. And this one is funny, because a friend was telling me a story yesterday about how he got a calendar invite into his calendar with no agenda, and no piece of information. And humans, when they don't have information. A lot of them think the worst and you think, Oh, my God, am I gonna get fired? It just says discussion. And I think that's something most people can feel that in their gut. Yeah, when my boss sends me a calendar invite with no information. So meetings is a great one. So meetings, there's the agenda. This is like super critical. The purpose, why are we having this meeting, is it to inform it to create something? Is it to agree on something that we have our some other team has already discussed, and we want everyone's buy in. And you need to state that in the beginning. And then the guest list. And this one's funny, because it's not as much a tip and a trick, or it's a little less, wrote, meetings are the theater of work, we go into meetings and who's invited and who's not invited is a part of corporate life. And you can't pretend that every meeting is going to have only perfectly the people that are action item oriented in there. That's not how it works. You do have to say, okay, but we need to invite so and so's boss. And actually, if we don't include HR, they're going to be really upset about it, even though we don't need their buy in for this particular project. So acknowledging sort of the nuances in a guest list. And being realistic about this is not just about getting work done. This is about being a group of human beings who get things done together. So the guest list. And then my, I mean, these are all my favorite topics I love talking about this is that the knowledge, retention and distribution after meeting, so who's taking notes? What's going to happen to those notes? How useful are those notes? Where's the action items stored? Do we walk away saying this is what we're going to get done? Next time. I enter the roles, which is not unrelated. But I was at a meeting last week where a junior colleague, just shut it down and the best way and she said, Guys, we are not following the agenda. I think we need to come back to that we can table this point. And she just left in like a superhero to a meeting that was going into the weeds. I thought, wow, wow, she should just come to every meeting I ever go to I love someone who really just and actually, you know, that's a role that I talked about, you know, and so you have sort of a chairperson, you might have a note taker, you might have some other like, different functional roles. But in some companies, you really need to shut it down person who says we're getting off topic or like we're done with the agenda meetings over guys. Or girls, women people don't want to be gendered in that. So yeah, so i Let's go through them again, the purpose of the meeting, the agenda, huge, and the agenda is assigned in advance the roles well, the last one I just said yeah, anyways, attendees, attendees are the attendees at these meetings. Thank you. So I think those are, I don't remember what your question was. So excited about meetings.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, just the examples and you nailed it. Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, looking at the workplace as I hear you explain just meetings, my brain is flooded with all the all the nuances that we kind of, I guess, was it take for granted, but I guess we don't always think about all the moving pieces in a given hour of, of work. So it's very, very interesting to think about how we might kind of upskill or upgrade our ability to maximize those times. I'm curious your thoughts, as we've spent so many years now here in this kind of remote world that we were thrust into. There's a lot of debate around meetings themselves, like just how much we should be having them what remote and asynchronous work looks like. There's different schools of thought around how to approach that. Do you have any opinions views or examples on that?

McKenna Sweazey
Do I have opinions on asynchronous work, you are gonna regret asking that? I have a lot of opinions. So I think there are a couple of issues, not issues, things to keep in mind. One for some people, the idea of like output oriented, get it done, let's all work off a Trello board asynchronously, is a really pleasing way of getting their work done. And they think, yes, I just want to get things done. I had someone just comment on my blog about team building. And he was like, I would hate doing that. And I thought how interesting because you not to say you are alone in that feeling person. But you're you not everyone feels that way. Some people like the theater of work the meeting element. And so I think we will see roles and companies begin to diverge and be very transparent, in what kind of organization they are. To be able to say you want to do asynchronous work, and you want to do synchronous work. Everything is about sort of like communication biases, and maybe even brain biases in that asynchronous work is easier, the better your written communication skills are. And that I have seen this, I'm sure you've seen this, you have some people who write very clear directions, they explain what's going on, they're very able to tag the right people. And you have people who I mean, you said all the time, people who are not necessarily super empathetically minded, whose comments completely unintentionally come off as passive aggressive, or, frankly, just aggressive, because they're not necessarily a person who's used to communicating feelings in writing. So I think that bias can be unfortunate. I, I, I have neither a good opinion or a bad opinion on either of these things. I think the more transparent we are about what makes good asynchronous work, what kinds of projects work best in this, what kinds of people work best in this and who enjoy it the most, the easier it will be for people to select a way of working that works for them. I think it can be great, but it takes more work, to be very documented to not have meetings to spell things out in whatever whatever tool you're using. And meeting can often be a lot faster. Not always, obviously, sometimes they go completely in the weeds and are a total waste of time. So think again, and I probably said this word 15 times already, but that transparency, and being really thoughtful about what makes synchronous or asynchronous remote work is necessary so that we get ourselves into the right piece corporation that works for us.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, and it feels like much of the world in many different workplaces is is currently still trying to figure that out right or experimenting one way or the other. Do you have any advice, I guess like in an angle for these folks to be taking or trying next, in order to find what works for them? How do they unlock their kind of digital empathy here?

McKenna Sweazey
So one thing just as you said, this, I was thinking about, if you have a, I think about tech companies, because I've worked in a lot of tech companies, and maybe a product and engineering teams who in my experience had been more comfortable with this asynchronous work. And particularly because it's sort of output focused, right, they're trying to like turn over a new design for the web page or a new flow for the user experience. And that flows to a sales team that does not maybe function in that way. They're on the road, they're on calls with their clients. They just are not sitting there using Trello as their like, way of making information pass from person to person. And frankly, in my experience with sales teams, like they have to be like really held to a standard of using Salesforce to even get that information and and that's a far lower boundary, that barrier than actually writing out everything that happened. And so as I think about organizations and sort of changing, who does it I do think it points to that middleman that we're going to need between pieces of the organization that are maybe never going to go in that direction, have trouble seeing sales teams, which should be focused on client communication first and sort of like knowledge retention. Second, though important, but it's not as important as closing deals, and maybe a product team, which would be knowledge, communication, first, closing deals, not relevant to the conversation. So how do you get those two sides to speak to each other. And I think maybe that role types of roles will be the most important in the next five years to sort of like referee this, and, and make sure that we we have places where those two ideas can meet in the middle, because one team is going to be meeting heavy, one team is going to be not somehow they're going to get there and have to get their information from one party to another.

Jeff Ma
So I guess, to challenge that thought, a little bit, yeah, do you from my, from my kind of perspective, and my school of thought I would I lean away from the the referee role, and I'm looking, I'm looking, looking at the actual empathy that each of those teams has for the other team. So I know, the empathy, I just use, not necessarily the same as digital empathy. But my point being is that, in my practice, a lot of what I'm hoping to achieve in these types of teams that struggle with that, let's say, one, let's say we're just talking about asynchronous work, but surely, those two teams would have bigger problems and just how they want to communicate. I think, you know, the missing piece is that you know, love and care, if you will, for what the others have to go through when we make a decision on this team. And it impacts them. There's either a lack of, like you said, transparency, or a lack of kind of understanding, sharing and empathy around what these how these ultimately all swirl together to lead to our business outcomes. Right. And so, again, just not, I guess, not really a challenge, but more of a question around, you know, what are your thoughts on, on the amount of empty that teams have to build for each other in this digital space as we grow further and further apart? And because, again, throwing my opinion in there, I haven't considered a role. So I'm actually just very curious around like, how do you envision that role? Or, you know, how does that does that help enough to have a role? where two teams can still kind of live in their silos? And the role bridges them? Or is it more important to bring those teams kind of to the same table?

McKenna Sweazey
So I think, you know, referee is interesting, it's an interesting word choice that spit out of my mouth, let me think that I can actually go two ways. And I think one is more. And I think what you just said, really sparked this in me, and then a different idea. So one is like, Should every business just have something between a therapist and a meeting facilitator? And because those teams need to have team building together, they need to have opportunities to reveal more of themselves, they need to have someone who says, are you really thinking through what they're asking for you there? Why are they asking for it? Can you be more, can you explain more like your rationale rather than the output you're looking for. And that let's call that a therapist, you could also call it a referee. It's sort of different ways of cutting up the same person who's trying to say, let's be fair to both sides. And then I think also, I've had product marketing roles in the past. And that person is really kind of a translator, in many organizations and saying, This is what they're saying, and this is what they're saying. And now let's find a way to make them meet or talk to each other. So I think in some ways, that role is already built in, in some ways, and in others. I think it is the role of let's call it a part of whether it's learning and development but whoever is facilitating team building and saying as small organizations, this may just be a manager saying this is important to me that these teams connect because we have a shared work goal together. And we need to again, it is empathy, it is love, we need to understand what the other person is thinking as a human so that when we can get to a thorny work situation, we are more generous because it is human first work product second

Jeff Ma
as you're talking just now I think you had me realize that whether it's intentional or not that role already exists in every in every situation right? It just could be either be it could be someone on the team who's the translator, a lot of what you said to me sound like coaching, but it could just be so it's like you're talking like a two way coach or someone like a leader like you said, who could be guiding this team through those communications or miscommunications and stuff like that. So it makes a lot more sense to me that was a great kind of real time talk through that because yeah, as imagining like a role dedicated to this and created for it, but I think the reality is that this role, whether we want it or not just already exists, like somebody's playing that role. There can just be more intentionality around how we actually kind of help that roll and for people around it, that makes perfect sense to me. A lot more I want to hit. But I also want to make sure I have enough time to kind of talk about what's going on with you. I feel like you got a lot of changes, you got lots of going on in life. I know you're coming out with a book. So can you tell us about all these exciting things? Anything's everyone can how they can follow you and find out about you. Yes. So

McKenna Sweazey
my book is called How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely, it will be out in September, but it is obviously available for preorder now. And, you know, I think you really just got the the 30,000 foot view of the book, it is a lot of those topics, my favorite topics, how to manage yourself, how to manage others, and kind of how to network is too specific a term but you know how to work with people you're not managing, in a digitally empathetic way. And it's very, like practical. And you know, how should you think about team building as a framework so that as ideas come up, you can think about how they apply and meet the needs of the team, because things are always changing. Companies are coming up with really neat ideas for how to get teams to enjoy each other's company, but I couldn't possibly stay abreast of those in the printed form. It's changing too quickly. So that's my bulk. I'm super excited about it. It's obviously something that I've thought a ton about, I think there's so much room for myself, but for everyone to you know, get better just be more thoughtful about some of these things. So, yeah, I'm really delighted when you can. Yeah, you can find on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, I'm excited. I definitely gonna check it out. And then, you know, writing a book is no small feat, for sure. Especially kind of the story you painted, the place you're at is like the exact place where like real gold comes out of these kind of like, like deep dives into something that we've been experiencing our whole life. So I'm really looking forward to, to what you put in there. And I hope the listeners get a chance to check that out as well.

McKenna Sweazey
Absolutely, yeah.

Jeff Ma
McKenna, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for the wisdom and sharing openly with me today. Thanks for having this discussion. And thank you to the listeners of course, check out our book as well Love as Business Strategy also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And if you enjoyed the podcast, as always, rate subscribe, leave a comment and tell a friend. So with that, we will be signing off. We'll see you next week.