134. The Empathy Revolution with Chris Meroff

💭 Do you feel that your emotional mess can be burdensome to someone else?

Chris Meroff is a CEO, Founder and serial entrepreneur of multiple businesses. He is also the best-selling author of “Align” and “Empathy Revolution”.
 
In this episode, Chris shares how it has become his lifelong goal to be “unnecessary” everyday so that everyone else in the team steps up into necessity. When a leader starts to let go of the need to control and solve all problems, that is when the spotlight is taken out of the leader and shared across everyone in the room as their individual greatness is revealed. 

🎧 Download this episode to discover how empathy, vulnerability, curiosity and co-creation can help re-frame your identity as a leader of high-performance teams.

🌐 Connect with Chris:

• Website: https://chrismeroff.com/  and https://dcxcommunity.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismeroff/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrismeroff/ and https://www.instagram.com/dcxcommunity/
• Empathy Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CG7DBYFJ/

Book References:

• Get his book The Empathy Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CG7DBYFJ/
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:30

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project with your host, Mick Spiers. We bring you thought provoking guests and topics every week to challenge your thinking about leadership. Our aim is to help you become the leader that you wish you always had, as we learn together, and lead together. Hey, it's Mick here breaking in with an exciting announcement. This episode is brought to you by our new business partner, The Lighthouse Group, we have joined forces with The Lighthouse Group to multiply the impact we're having on the world. The Lighthouse Group work with strategic business leaders who want to make change leaders who recognize that leadership is the key lever of organizational performance. The Lighthouse Group is the how to your why working with you to develop a leadership system that forges a high performance culture, across the breadth and depth of your organization, from the CEO and executive leadership team, through senior and middle management, and all the way to aspiring leaders, those with high potential that will form the next generation of leaders in your business, The Lighthouse Group, accelerating transformation through leadership. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm currently joined today to be joined by Chris Meroff. Chris is a CEO, a Founder and Serial Entrepreneur of multiple businesses. And he's also the Best Selling Author of a book called Align and an upcoming book, which is called The Empathy Revolution. And I'm interested in both of those, we're gonna unpack Chris' background and his journey and what led him to be so focused on leadership today. And he's got an interesting journey himself to share and some moments where I'm going to ask you to reflect on your own journey. And then we're going to talk a little bit about Align and then get into this concept called The Empathy Revolution, which is already got me intrigued. So without any further ado, Chris, please do say hello to our audience. I'd love to hear a bit of that journey. And what led you to your realization about what leadership is all about? So Chris, over to you.

Chris Meroff: 2:39

Well, thank you so much. Great to be here. Yeah, boy, it's a continuing journey. I mean, this journey of leadership is never ending. That's one of my favorite things about it is I worked in the same industry for 27 years. And man, after a while, you can become an expert in that field. And in fact, the learning process in that field, I hate to say it this way, but it kind of ended after about 20 years, I had been involved in it for so long that I could answer these questions in my sleep. But the leadership journey is so different, because it's about people, and people are going to continue to baffle me for the rest of my days. And so it's a continuing journey for me to really become an expert in people and every new person I meet creates a brand new experience. So I love being on a journey and excited to talk about it.

Mick Spiers: 3:24

So it is a journey of you know, lifelong leaders are lifelong learners, that's for sure. And you've hit on something really cool are two things. One is that you can become the expert in your field. And sometimes I'm gonna say that can become an anchor around your neck. And I'm going to come back to that in a second. And the second part is that human beings are far more complex than usually what our craft is, right? So you might be an amazing software engineer or amazing accountant, whatever the case may be. And in many circumstances, the laws of our craft are repeatable. And you can do the same thing and get similar results with people. That's not the case. So let's unpack both of those, like, tell me about did you have that experience, because I had that where the more you became the expert, the more it can actually impact your leadership. Any thoughts on that?

Chris Meroff: 4:13

Yeah, there's an excitement to learning. And so when you stop learning, I lost some enthusiasm. And it became a drudgery for me in the industry. And I'm so thankful that I had been dedicated for probably about three to four years by that point in the development of people. And so when I was needing to step away, because I had become again, really not depressed but really kind of sick of the industry emotionally over it. I had been working on replacing myself with some new fresh leadership who could reinvent the business reinvent what we've been doing. And so that was my journey is figuring out man, I gotta start raising up the next generation because I am going to be the thing that holds this thing back from real innovation real you know, leaps in for me taking leaps and bounds ahead of where we were, I needed to be removed from that equation. So it served me really well to move really into people development instead of business development.

Mick Spiers: 5:07

Yeah, it's interesting what you said there about you became the part that was holding it back and you don't necessarily notice that to begin with. This is what I want to share this with you and see what you think is when you become the answer to everyone's question, you think you're being helpful you think you're helping people progress they're coming to you with questions in the field and you go, Oh, I've got the answers. And then off they go. But in reality, you're robbing them from their opportunity to learn, grow and develop. Tell us your experience there.

Chris Meroff: 5:36

Yeah, it's my journey really of figuring out okay, I was the glass ceiling in my own organization. And really this idea of scaling. And if you're an entrepreneur at all, you recognize that your goal is to take this little thing and turn it into a big, let's say, a bigger thing. And so entrepreneurship is that kind of engine. But if you're the answer, if you're the problem solver, if you're like me, and grew up with leadership being modeled that you are the strongest, the most confident problem solver, you are fantastic in managing crisis, then you just don't let anyone else become the great problem solver or the great manager of crisis. And that's really what ended up happening with me as I was the thing that slowed down the growth of the business. And that was at 42 years old, realized, man, I gotta get out of the way of this thing. And for me, it started a journey over the over the next eight years of figuring out how to become unnecessary every single day. And when your job like your focus your determination, like my goal was to become unnecessary every day, well, then that means that my entire presence in the office has to be to build up those around me. And so that became, yeah, my next crusade was to figure out how do I pour into other people in a way that allows them to step up into necessity, so I can take a backseat.

Mick Spiers: 6:53

I love this question of how do I become a necessary and that can be a challenge to people's identity, by the way.

Chris Meroff: 7:01

Oh, it's a huge challenge.

Mick Spiers: 7:03

Yeah. But the sooner you realize that the sooner you can scale and you can sooner you can create the environment where people can grow. And the question two questions I want to pose here is the first one is Chris, as gifted as you are. And this is the realization for anyone listening to the show and looking in the mirror, as gifted as you are you only have 24 hours in the day. So do you want one of you? Or do you want 10? Christmas? Do you want 20? Christmas? Do you want 30 Christmas? And if you want to grow, you want to create the environment where you can cultivate more people like you're not clones, but more people that are gifted and can manage a crisis can do the things that you can do? Yeah. So the call to action I want to say to everyone right now is to think about that. Think about can you make yourself redundant in a way that allows others to grow? And if you are the question answer in your business or in your team next time someone comes to you with a question want to ask yourself, ask yourself this question, what is going to serve them best? Is it the quick answer? Or is it the coaching? Where they can find the answer themselves? How does that sit with you, Chris?

Chris Meroff: 8:13

Yeah, it's exactly the steps you need to start taking for real growth, not just for your company, not just for your people, but for yourself. I mean, that's what I experienced, I realized in this process that I had more to give more to offer, I just didn't know it, because I was so stuck in being the problem solver and the crisis manager. And so as I worked started to work my way out of a job, which is really the goal of a leader is I needed to show for people in just vastly different ways. So first, for me was to really understand that in any organization, there's a power dynamic that exists. And I think I spent a lot of years and here's what I'll say, when somebody says to me, Oh, well, so and so they're really intimidated by you, man. For years, I'd be offended by that. I'm like, What do you mean, I'm literally a goofball. I don't know what you're talking about. There's nothing here to be intimidated by? Well, there was there's power in ownership, there's power in leadership, and it creates this power dynamic that exists. And so you have to as a leader, first and foremost, just recognize, don't wish it away, don't hate it, just realize there is a power dynamic. And somebody might be at some way in front of you and act a different way when they're not in front of you. And so that can either discourage you set you or you can just recognize that's just part of our humanity, you're in a position of leadership, that means you're in a position of power. And so what I had to figure out is how am I going to overcome this power dynamic in a way that's not false or phony? And so what I really had to figure out was okay, there is greatness that exists in every single one of my employees. And so became a binary choice. When I enter a room, am I going to focus on my greatness, my problem solving my ability to manage crisis, or am I going to focus on their greatness, and so that became that very tangible power struggle that existed within me. And so what ended up happening was, as I would come into a room and trade my power for their greatness is when the ceiling was blown off of the organization of just my own personal journey and leadership, because all of a sudden, I became or we all may recognize, I was finally the dumbest person in the room, which is really the goal is to surround yourself with human beings that can unleash the greatness that exists in them in a way that just completely overwhelms your organization.

Mick Spiers: 10:22

Yeah, I love it, Chris. I'm hearing two things. And the first one is the power dynamic exists, whether you like it or not, we all like to think that we're approachable. But for the other person that can be certain or around you, because of your position because of it could be your experience, you could be like the 20 year industry veteran, and therefore you've got this aura around them from their perspective, you might feel like, you're gonna use your word, you're a goofball. And you think you're just fun and approachable, etc. But to them, they might be an aura that no puts a limiting belief in them about, oh, I could never ask Chris that question. Or I could never do this. So have some awareness that that exists. And then the second one is, what are you going to focus on, you're going to focus on your greatness, or you're going to focus on their greatness. And if you focus on their greatness, you're cultivating that environment where they can grow, and they can grow into their greatness, because everyone has those superpowers. And it's up to you to create the environment where they can recognize those superpowers themselves and to step into their own greatness. How does that sit with you, Chris?

Chris Meroff: 11:24

That's exactly it. And it's a journey of self discovery before you can start really discovering the greatness and others if you don't recognize what your identity really is. And this is where I struggled, I thought this brand of leadership that I was exercising was noble, like I was being responsible for these people. And as an owner, I think we do have or a leader, we have this feeling like we need to be responsible for these people. But I needed to change that dynamic a little bit, I wasn't responsible for them, I needed to be responsible to them, I needed to make sure that I was showing up for them in ways that allowed their greatness to shine through and be seen. And it was just the struggle, that took me a little bit because my identity was in the problem solving it was in the managing of crisis. And so all of a sudden, if I'm not doing those things, I'm useless. In fact, the way I cope with the world emotionally is I need to be doing something for you, in order for me to feel like I have any value. So my worth as a person was wrapped up in this doing well, now I'm having to take a step back and doing not only let you do and my excellent bar, unfortunately is through the roof, I had to take a step back, let you do not do exactly as well as I would do. But then also now I'm forfeiting my grasp on value or worth in the eyes of other humans. And so it was a struggle for me to figure out is this really the brand of leadership I want to pursue Is this the person I want to be, I would say took me 12 to 18 months to really wrestle this out in a way that became extremely tangible. And as soon as I started to take steps in this direction, I mean, I was paid back in waves of not only his gratitude, but greatness like people rose up in the absence of Chris. And that was really empowering for me to think, okay, these people are all in. And you know, the only thing that was really holding me back was me, I was taking up all the air in the room, I was the one taking up all the space. And if I can continue to kind of restrict how I showed up these people were filling in those gaps beautifully.

Mick Spiers: 13:16

So there's three really powerful reframes that are here there, Chris, when I listen to you that the first reframe is that I'm not responsible for them. I'm responsible to them. I thought that was a very powerful one for us to think about. The second one was reframing your identity from I'm Chris master Problem Solver to no I'm Chris, the person that creates this environment where others can solve their own problems is what I'm hearing there. And then then this final one, which is you were the thing that was holding them back. How did that feel? I'm gonna say in both ways, how did the challenge feel to realize that you were the one that was holding them back? And how did it feel when you unlocked that?

Chris Meroff: 13:54

It was for the first time the realization that I was more than what I was doing, it impacted not just my work life in my home life. And there was an exchange that took place there for me. So when identity is not in the right things, when identity is in the material aspects of life and not in the emotional connection that we create with other humans, everything feels fragile. And so those first few days as first few weeks and months, as I would like very carefully weighed into this, it felt like I was going to lose relationships, they felt like people would abandon or leave me because I didn't offer them anything in the form of what I thought it was security, which was me doing things for them. And what I didn't want is I didn't want to create scenarios by which people were overwhelmed or to burden I really wanted to come in and maybe have this savior complex. I know I have an overactive paternal instinct. And so when you combine that with this need to be loved, because of what I do, it creates a really hard environment from an identity perspective to think know, the things that make me significant in people's lives. You know, when they're done working for me, 30 years from now, they're never gonna remember one problem myself, but they will remember acts of kindness and acts of compassion, those will be forever. And so that's really where my identity needs to be is in those attributes, those things that bind humanity together, not that everyone can do. If everyone can do it easily, then it just doesn't create a superpower. But kindness through the lens of my worldview is an incredible gift to give to another human being. And so rewriting that identity script It's still something today I struggle with. It's not something I've overcome completely. One of the ways I had to do that was through this concept of empathy, which requires vulnerability. And that was probably the hardest thing for me to do is to walk into that at work, especially like, is there a place for this? How are they going to respond to this? What is appropriate vulnerability? What's inappropriate vulnerability? Like, how does this thing play out? Am I Am I tempting fate? Am I going to walk in there and people are gonna laugh at me? Are they gonna reject me? What's this going to look like? From the outside? What's it gonna look like from the inside? Those are all real big questions I had, in my mind, especially sitting on a company at the time had been around for four years, and we had created a great deal of success. So I don't want to tamper with that. I mean, how am I going to do this in a way that creates fulfillment not only for my employees, but for me as well, it was tough.

Mick Spiers: 16:14

So I'm hearing forgot to say the word fear, fear, Chris, I'm hearing a lot of fear, I'm hearing fear of loss of identity, fear of loss of relationships, fear of loss of the bits that have made you successful, because it wasn't like you were unsuccessful. At that point, you were just reaching a glass ceiling to use your word that you used before. So there had to be this element of, I'm gonna say letting it go to let it come. So letting go of things that you are quite attached to, to let a new reality come to the surface. And it's almost like a leap of faith to go, this is gonna work, I believe in my people. And this is gonna work, but it is a leap of faith. How does that sit with you?

Chris Meroff: 16:53

Yeah, it was, it was a moment in time that I'll never forget. So I had been wrestling with this concept of empathy, probably for about three, four years, and I'd meet with this guy every week, my poor wife, man, my experience with empathy was really through the lens of sympathy. And I'll kind of get into the difference here a little bit, but the reality of her emotion was always met with like, here's how I can fix that for you. Here's how you don't have to feel that way. And so that was a reflection on a lifetime of growing up in a home where empathy really wasn't modeled. And so I didn't understand it. And so this idea that somebody would like, put their masks on their emotional mess onto another human honestly, scares me, it grosses me I'm like, No, I'm not gonna go and vomit all my emotional mess onto another human being, like, I'm supposed to be strong and confident, have it all together. Like I'm supposed to have all the answers, I can't come to you with questions. Like that's not being a good leader, whether that's at the office or at home or friend group, it didn't matter. I didn't want to be the question asker, I didn't want to be the messy guy that people had to come in and help with these things. So for me, empathy was just really hard to wrap my mind around. In fact, I made fun of people who were overly emotional. And what I didn't realize is that I was overly emotional. But I learned how to stuff it in a way that fooled myself, I thought I was just tossing it off no such thing that's just cramming it down. And so spent a lifetime doing that. And so I just didn't understand this concept of empathy. So I was meeting with this guy, because marriage is struggling because of it, trying to figure out well, how do I show up for my wife really well. And through that process, I had quite a good relationship with this guy. Well, one of my best friends who had helped me start the business four years earlier, out of nowhere, after our company Christmas party, the next day resigned gave me two weeks notice. And it was devastating. One of my big fears, deep fears is betrayal. And so automatically went to the trail and was like, why would you never give me an indicator, learn that he had been looking for nine months, didn't tell me at all, I was really just blown away really hurt deeply that he wouldn't have have let me know. And then he was leaving at all. I just felt like a betrayal. So I met with this buddy of mine empathy. And he would always ask start off our meetings the same way. And that used to infuriate me. He's like, hey, Crystal, how you feeling? Like I don't, I try not to feel happy, sad, mad are the only things I really experienced. And I don't want to experience those. So the answer is always going to be the same. When I come in here. I'm fine. I'm good. Or I'm okay. That's it. That's the extent of what you're going to get for me from an emotional response. So after about an hour of time, at the end of the meeting, he just asked me, he says, Hey, Chris, is there anybody on the planet who would share your deepest fears or hurts with and of course, I lied, I said, he has my wife, I've got good friends. Of course, I would share those things well, on the way home that they just realized Absolutely not, I'm not going to share I'm not going to be a mess to another human being I'm gonna keep I'm gonna solve those problems on my own figure my way out of my own emotional mess, so that I'm not being a burden to anybody else. Well, I always convert all emotion to anger. And so got ripping Matt on the drive home mad at him for asking the question, of course, very, very angry, my best friend for leaving just angry at myself. And that was the moment that I realized that I was in a prison of my own making, because I refuse to be vulnerable to any other human being and that that nobody could give me empathy. And empathy is a mirroring of emotion in a way that allows another human being to not feel alone. And that's that moment for me that was like that's just not the person, leader, husband, father owner that I want to be. I want to be the guy that allows people in and gives them a chance to lift me up and to fill in like gasps in the weaknesses that I know that I have, but I don't want to face. So that was my low low point feeling so lonely, so isolated, very depressed, even in the midst of great success, that business that spurred me on to figure this out, not just for myself, but for my wife, for my family and for my employees.

Mick Spiers: 20:43

I'm hearing so many interesting things there, Chris. And let me start with this. I what I see now in front of me is someone with deep emotional self awareness. And I'm going to say that that wasn't always there listening to your story. But right now, even listening to you say that you now process most emotions as anger, that's the self awareness there is incredible, then if I come back, and I think about this word identity again, and your identity actually becoming the prison that you know, that's surrounding you, and the limiting belief that's holding you back. And the two things I heard with this, I'm Chris, the strong one, I don't share my emotions with people. I'm Chris, the strong one. And the second one is I'm Chris, the problem solver. And two things is one you like to solve your own problems, not letting other people inside the tent. And second, if people are coming to you with problems, they don't always need their problem solved. They just need empathy, they need a mirror of reflections to make them feel that they don't feel alone. As you said, they don't always need you to solve their problem. In fact, solving their problem may not serve them well, at that moment, may not serve them well at all. But if you're crystal strong one, if you're crystal problem solver, you're not going to let that emotion get in, you're not going to mirror the empathy back to them. And you're going to go into problem solving mode, and they're going to get frustrated with you because Chris, I don't need you to solve my problem. I just need to talk to you. How does that sit with you?

Chris Meroff: 22:08

Yeah, it's exactly the problems I was running into. In fact, you got to be so bad that the realization that you know, deep down what's funny is after exploring some of my deep fears really led me to kind of identify some deep needs emotional needs, which again, yeah, these words coming out of my mouth, and even in my mind was like deep emotional needs. Gross. What are you talking about man, but these I had a deep emotional need to be taken care of. And boy, I tell you that still when I struggle with today, if I'm so busy taking care of everyone around, I don't let anyone take care of me. Well, it's one of my greatest emotional needs to be felt like I'm taking care of. And so it just ended up pushing everyone away. And it really has this deflective effects on relationship. Because the thing I craved the most and needed the most was to be taken care of. I'm still the little boy, I'm still this chubby middle school kid looking in the mirror insecure when I show up at work. And so I just need someone to reach out and hold on to me emotionally and to say, It's okay, we got used today, but nobody could because I just would never let them in to understand my emotional needs, because I didn't take the time to understand them myself. And so it just took me a long time, probably one of a year and a half to even figure out the direction to take that said, okay, if I'm not the problem solver, what am I love replacement theory? So if I'm not that, what can I be in the development of my people and relationships. And so I replaced Problem Solver with solutions curator, like I'm going to be the solutions curator, I'm going to be the one that people can go to when they feel like they've got a solution, not just a problem. And so as leaders, I think we have to replace this thing, this identity that may be a little broken right now with an identity that gives us purpose because we need purpose. I needed to show up at work, not twiddle my thumbs and wonder, well, if I'm not solving problems, if I'm not managing crisis, what am I doing all day. And so that really became for me, a way to show up really well for my people was to replace those things that you know, I found so much identity and pride in before with now this idea of I want to be a solutions curator, I want to be a calm producer, I want to unleash people's greatness in every aspect of the business

Mick Spiers: 24:15

said two very powerful things there. I'm hearing there, Chris one about the self awareness of your fears. And you spoke about fear of betrayal before and I'll just throw this one out fear of abandonment, and then that realization you've made of your own emotional need, but the dichotomy there, your emotional need was the need to be cared for. And yet your identity was someone that's got this bubble around them that doesn't let other people in that must have been a huge realization for you. And then this reframing I'm not problem solver. I'm solution curator. So it's a very intentional act there to reframe what you're good at, but reframe it in a way that is a bit more inclusive. It's a little bit more I'm creating curating, I'm curating this environment around me as opposed to I am the problem solver. I'm now the curator, what I'd love to hear because there might be people listening to the show, by the way, Chris, that are identical to you. They might have the identical story. Or there might be people that have got other fears or other identities, etc. What advice can you give to people if someone is listening to this on the way to work, and they're going oh, yeah, there's something about this. How do I reframe how do other people address Working out their fears and working out their emotional needs and reframing who they are to be something that serves them better.

Chris Meroff: 25:34

So there were three things, the three statements, I started to make it work, these were my baby steps. Now they're a part of my daily discipline. But at the time, they felt like I was taking massive leaps of faith, the first statement I started to make as empathy really entered into my thinking, were the words I'm sorry, and I don't mean that in a lip service way. But we can be as leaders sorry, for people's circumstances, we can be sorry for the change that we have to make that they don't have to live with, we can be sorry, for course, our bad behavior, we need to be sorry for that. But just overall just taking account and making sure they understand that you are so for them, that you are aware, hyper aware of all these kind of negative aspects of what they're doing at work and how they're being affected by maybe things that you have no control over. But you're still sorry, like, I'm sorry, that we're having a, you know, a tough season of sales, you know, instead of talking always about aspects of productivity and production, maybe really enter into psychological aspects of sales and just say, Man, I'm so sorry, that it's been a down quarter, you know, what do you think we need to do together to solve this problem? Again, you're curating solutions, instead of beating people over the head, you still have to get sales and nobody in any organization is going to think okay, well, then, you know, empathy is going to always win the day. Well, it might unlock somebody and their ability to empower themselves to get those sales once they don't feel alone anymore. And so just saying, I'm sorry, unlock amazing things. And people when they no longer had the fear and uncertainty that Chris might be really upset, really angry, that we're not getting sales goals, it changed the game when they realized I was for them more than I was for sales. And so that's really what had to take place in that first little baby step was just saying, I'm sorry, I was always quick to defend my motives behind every decision, because as leaders, we can get our feelings hurt. I know, I got my feelings hurt a lot when I realized people just didn't understand all the different dynamics that went into making that decision, right? Chris, they don't. So you can be sorry, that they don't have all the information, you can step into empathy, because they don't have that bit of data that you have. And so that was one of the big ways I could show up well for my people, and earn trust in a way that really established a great working relationship. Two other ones that I added on in this like, again, baby steps, or I don't know, which for a lot of leaders is an impossible thing to spit out. But I don't know. And then the other one is, I need your help. And that was one that really unlock people's greatness. And I remember being in a time where we were going through a major transition. And of course, my mind works in a way where I've got all these different paths, all these different ways out of this mess, but I wasn't going to be the one to lead us through this, I already hit established from other leaders. And so I sat them down with and I said, Here's what we've got, you know, I've got all kinds of ideas that I don't mind, you know, spitballing with you on. But here's the deal, guys, I desperately need your help to solve this. And man, people just rose up in great plays and steered us through some difficult times. So those are just three simple things that were for me baby steps, but now are just part of the every day, this

Mick Spiers: 28:39

full words that are popping into my head, as I hear you talk, Chris, and empathy is the first one. And I think that's going to be relatively obvious. The next one is vulnerability, curiosity, and co creation. So if I go through that journey of the three baby steps that you've spoken about the I'm sorry, is creating an environment where you are genuinely sorry for the situation where not in a learned helplessness way, just in a human way, in a human way that allows others to be human, to allow others to feel what they're feeling. And for them to know, it's okay to feel like that. But then I'm hearing with your other baby steps with things like not being able to say, I don't know, and I need your help. There's a vulnerability to that, that not all leaders show, but there's also a curiosity in that. And there's creating an environment of co creation, where you're now going to be able to co create with these other human beings who are also gifted, that I don't need to know all the answers, because guess what, there's 10 of us. And amongst 10 of us, we can work out what is our best action from here? How does that sit with you?

Chris Meroff: 29:43

Yeah, that's exactly. And I love the idea of, you know, co creating, when you start co creating, it's typically because people are starting to bring you ideas and nothing talks for me. Nothing says you have a healthy organization than when you have idea creators not problem recognizers. And so problem recognizers are critical you need them, we need to be aware, absolutely. But if that's all they're talking about, then you're not in IDA thing. And if you're not in this process of creating, inventing, solving, if you're not in this mode, a lot of the time, that's where I was for a little bit before I got to this kind of new phase of leadership, man, everything becomes stagnant and all the energy just gets all the air gets taken out of the tire and what happens in an organization Initially, we had grown so quickly and had such success for the first four years when I started this business back in 2011. All the metrics I had set out for myself, and I'm a pretty optimistic guy, and very determined, we blew them all away. And so there wasn't any amount of imagination that I could really have that said, maybe we're just scratching the surface, I was just sitting in my throne thinking, look at what I did, I came into this with a chip on my shoulder proved everyone wrong, proved that I could do it. Then after this transformation that I had to go through and decided to go through three years later, we tripled in size. So there's no amount of metrics that could have started off in my mind to say that what we had accomplished in the fourth four years would pale in comparison. And so I think that's where a lot of leaders sit is that their perspective gives them maybe a false representation of success. And so the lens that we operate out of most of the time doesn't see reality, we just see what we allow ourselves to see. And so as I became ancillary, or just one of the CO creators will now the combination of these people together created a metric that just blew me out of the water. And that's the magic of leading this way is that I'm no longer the only one, like pulling people along, they're now pulling me toward where we need to go in. And what's happened, not just from a business standpoint is even personally, you know, a lot of these people have come and they've gone, but when they go, we call it graduation, they've just graduated to the next thing. And so part of what we do is we really celebrate those graduations, I just had four high level leaders in our organizations that I just exited that business in January. And so they stayed with me to help me run my venture capital firm to get me off the ground, but they just graduated on to their next adventure, it's probably the greatest celebration of the greatest graduation, and I love my kids, but those were kind of boring compared to these graduations, these graduations really were a lifetime of investment into these human beings and their investment into me. And so those are the fulfilling moments of leadership, when you can really let go and really rewrite your identity.

Mick Spiers: 32:30

Absolutely love it, Chris, and some different things that are building up. They're like, nothing is ever perfect. Nothing is ever perfect. And coming back to your empathy around the salespeople before go, Yeah, we don't have perfect information. But what can we do from where we are with what we have, and then creating that environment where you're in it together? And that force multiplication, that force multiplication, and then that stopping and reframing? How are we measuring success? And is the way that we're measuring success? The thing that's holding us back, right, so is really powerful. l love your attitude towards graduation like that, then they're not leaving us. Because remember, you've got a fear of betrayal. They're not leaving us. They're graduating, right. So yeah, absolutely love it. I'd like to now transition now to how this results in you becoming bestselling author. So your other best selling author of the book Align, and I want to unpack that in a second. But the one that's coming up, I think, is connected to our story today, and our conversation, The Empathy Revolution. Tell us about that. And then we'll move on to Align in a moment.

Chris Meroff: 33:31

Yeah, The Empathy Revolution is my leadership journey. So it's a kind of a memoir of the methods of leadership, you know, pre this moment that we talked about, and then what it looks like after and we dive, I dive into these very tangible things, you know, people in my circles will sometimes refer to me as a thought leader. It's not that I hate that term. But I dislike the term greatly. I'm an action leader. And so the book is about action. It's about what you can tangibly do. These aren't just ideas, or kind of ethereal thoughts around leadership. But it's literally the things that I had to put in place practical things that allowed me to take this leap, and to actually try to transform if somebody says to me, now, this is always a crazy thing in my mind, could you imagine? Or how do you get ready to transform? And I'm like, why don't think you ever get ready to transform it, the whole idea of of any kind of personal transformation will always feel hypocritical. Like there's that person that I was, that's still who sits here today. But what I think what I mean by transformation in this journey, and you'll read it in the book is it's more about awareness. And it's like, well, I'm aware now of the limitations that I had before. And so I'm just deciding not to limit myself in ways that I had in the past. And so this is about self discovery. And it's about being introspective. And for a forward thinker, I'm the only thing that matters to me is a future that's being in the present and nothing in the past. So to be introspective, or to sit in for a moment. And to like, reflect is physically painful, but it's the thing that I needed to do. And so even taking time to do that every day, these are things that all they do is shine the light on those hidden aspects of who we are. And that's why I say it's really about awareness, more than really transformation, transformation, really just a reflection of how aware you are or you're becoming and so this reality for me in this book is hopefully laid out in a way that can give leaders not only a view into them I journey but then maybe some very tangible ways that they can really start their own transformation.

Mick Spiers: 35:32

I can't wait to get a copy of it, Chris. But by the time this episode goes to air, it will be on the market. But I personally can't wait to read it, I feel blessed that I've had a front row seat with you today to hear your story firsthand, because I can't wait to read the book and do a little bit deeper and love this thought around the awareness, the awareness of the limiting beliefs that were holding you back, including limiting identities, I'm going to say. So limiting identities that were holding you back how you reframe them, and how through an action oriented approach, you are able to address them, and you're still the same person. But you've now got that awareness of those limiting beliefs and limiting identities and you can take action around it. So absolutely love it can't wait to read the book, by the time this episode goes down, it will be out. So we'll put a link in the show notes to help people find it as well tell us about a line because this is not your first book. Tell us about Align.

Chris Meroff: 36:24

Yeah, Align is really focused on employee fulfillment. And so when I first started my business back in 2011, there was a big a lot of conversation still is I think around culture and this idea of employee engagement, like how do we engage our employees. And after about three, four years, I'm like, I'm so sick of these terms. I don't even know what they mean, I tried all different ways to create culture in my company, none of it seemed to work couldn't really engage with my employees. But what Align is what I had learned in that fourth year, which is really this concept of employee filament, like how do I replace this idea of engagement and really focus on their fulfillment. And so the first thing that I did is I really had to move away from being a client centric business to being an employee centric business. So that was a big shift. And this book really helps I think, tangibly tactically, for any leader that wants to put everyone in their organization on the exact same page, how do you align every single task, every single project every single hire every single fire around the purpose of that organization. And so there are four easy steps in that first book align, that can help walk in any organization or family, for that matter, to be on the exact same page and to feel like for the first time, maybe they're not on an island, we're not in silos, but they are working together seamlessly.

Mick Spiers: 37:38

Yeah, I want to have a read of this as well, I haven't read it, Chris. But I will grab a copy and have a read this is really interesting. And some of the things I'm picking up there. And we can all fall into this trap. By the way, we hear the word engagement, you know, read things like Gallup research that tells us about the importance of engagement. But we can go down a path of I'm gonna call it buzzword bingo, where we read lots of different theories and all this kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna do that. And what we're doing is, is really where we're just experimenting a little bit with these different buzzwords, but we're not actually addressing the real core issue. And the two words that I heard from you that were very powerful was the word fulfillment, what does fulfillment look like? For me? What does it look like for others in the business and purpose alignment? Because then once you have tapped into what will fulfilment look like for my team, if that is then aligned to purpose, you will conquer any market in any industry that you're trying to address. If you've got fulfilled people who are loving their job, and they're all aligned to some kind of common purpose, you'll take on any industry, and you'll dominate,

Chris Meroff: 38:43

You will. And that's what we found is that the average productivity in the office is about 33%. And I know that's a staggering number, but it's true. And so what we decided to do, and this was back in 2014, is we really decided to see if we could double productivity. And so we were like, we're not going to go for 100% productivity, but we're going to go for 66%. And that's really where align came in. It was these steps that we took that said, Okay, we're going to focus on giving people a reason to show up in ways that they haven't yet. And so what align does is it removes all uncertainty, we've all been there, we've all worked hard on a project that when we delivered it, it maybe wasn't met with the same excitement, you know, from leadership that we thought should elicit. And so oftentimes, those moments are because we're not sure that we're working on the right things at the right time. And so align helps an organization understand exactly what we should be doing and when we should be doing it, and why we should be doing it. And that really, for me, helped our organizations rarely succeed.

Mick Spiers: 39:40

There's an interesting pitfall that I want to address. I'd love to run this past year, see what you think. But yeah, so you started to look at productivity measures. I think the pitfall could be that you start focusing on those measures, you start being KPI driven, but you didn't you were looking at will, what can we do to create an environment where people want to show up and they want to show up in a different way that's different to focusing on or what are our KPIs today? What are our KPIs this week? You're using the KPIs as a little bit of a measure as your win, but that's not what you're actioning.

Chris Meroff: 40:13

You got it. Yeah, the productivity became a byproduct and that was just eye opening. By year four. We had enough track record in our business to understand what each hire in each department would produce you And when those numbers didn't line up in year five or six, when we didn't have to keep hiring at the same rate, because productivity was rising again, not as the end. But as a product of focusing on our employees, it blew us away. We're like, Wow, all the metrics that we thought we were heading towards, aren't there. Why? Because these people that are here are getting engaged and fulfilled in a way that we never would have predicted. And so they were showing up just crushing it every single day, because they owned where we were going. And it wasn't just us, as leaders, cajoling and pushing and shoving toward this thing, but they man they own the purpose and shut up in amazing ways. And that's how we were able to create, it's really goes back to this idea that people are not a means to an end, the people are the end. And what happens is, if you focus on them that way, then productivity takes care of itself.

Mick Spiers: 41:16

Yeah, I love it. The questions are like, are you metric centric? Or are you people centric, because it's people that create the results, and the results will look after themselves. Love it. Alright Chris, this has been an amazing conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. I want to take us now to our rapid rounds. So these are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. First of all, Chris, what's the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you're 20?

Chris Meroff: 41:38

I wish that I knew that people were going to be the reason I'm successful in life. And not that I needed to be successful for the people in my life. That's what I wish I knew.

Mick Spiers: 41:48

That's absolutely beautiful. Well said, What's your favorite book?

Chris Meroff: 41:51

My favorite book is Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It spoke to me and it really helped me figure out how we're going to structure organization going forward. So it's a huge, huge book. I'm gonna throw one more in there, if I can. Bob Goff love does was another huge book that really reframed people in my life.

Mick Spiers: 42:11

Yeah, I love it. I saw that Patrick's a keynote at your upcoming conferences as well. So maybe we'll talk a little bit less about that as we sign off as well. What's your favorite quote?

Chris Meroff: 42:20

The one that I say a lot, I reward excellent failures and punish mediocre success. And that's Tom Peters, by the way.

Mick Spiers: 42:28

Oh, that's powerful. That's really powerful. I love it. Okay. Now finally, how do people get in contact with you? You've got your book align already. By the time this comes out. We'll also have The Empathy Revolution. But you're also got the DCX Community, how do people find you? How do people get involved?

Chris Meroff: 42:45

Yeah, that's why dcxcommunity.com they can get involved. We do a lot in the city of Austin to help support leaders all across the city, including our conferences coming up in October, which we're really excited about October 11, and 12th. So a big lineup of speakers there that we're really excited about, and any other way to get in contact is through chrismeroff.com.

Mick Spiers: 43:04

Alright, brilliant, Chris, I've absolutely adored our conversation today. It's been wonderful hearing your journey is interesting enough, but then the points of reflection throughout your journey to get us to stop and reflect and think about our own journeys has been really powerful. Thank you so much for your time today.

Chris Meroff: 43:22

Thank you for having me. It's been great.

Mick Spiers: 43:27

This episode was brought to you by our new business partner, The Lighthouse Group, we have joined forces with The Lighthouse Group to multiply the impact we're having on the world. The Lighthouse Group work with strategic business leaders who want to make change leaders who recognize that leadership is the key lever of organizational performance. The Lighthouse Group is the how to your why working with you to develop a leadership system that forges a high performance culture, across the breadth and depth of your organization, from the CEO and executive leadership team through senior and middle management and all the way to aspiring leaders, those with high potential that will form the next generation of leaders in your business. You can find more details about The Lighthouse Group in the show notes. And don't forget to tell them that I sent you, The Lighthouse Group, accelerating transformation through leadership. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project at mickspiers.com A huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content. And to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers. I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week. And you can follow us on social particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do take care. Look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.