Episode 83: Lead with Empathy, Not Fear

In this episode of The Soulfully You Podcast, Coach Chris Rodriguez explores how “respect” is often confused with fear in leadership, parenting, and relationships. 

Chris challenges authoritarian models of power and shares how true respect is built through empathy, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety.

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Transcript

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This episode is brought to you by the Soulfully You Community membership. What started off as just a podcast has become so much more with live group coaching, a resource library of online courses, guided movement practices, and meditations designed to help you come back to your body. Calm your nerves and show up in every area of your life. More fully growth and change don't happen in a vacuum. It happens in relationship with other people. So if you're looking for a like-minded community, the soul fully you community membership is the space for you to join. Click the link below or visit coach chris rodriguez.com/membership. Hey friend. Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. I'm a movement and mindset coach, and I believe in a deeper way of living, a more soulful way of being. Join me each week for conversations about how to put a little more soul. Into our work, our relationships in our everyday lives. There's some phrases I hear passed around all the time that I have a problem with. Usually it's in the context of leadership and it goes like this. I don't need you to like me. I just need you to respect me. Or something along the lines of, you might not like me, but respect my authority. Or the authority of this position. Usually we see this with bosses, parents, spiritual leaders. Law enforcement people with any kind of authority or power over you. And the idea kind of makes sense. You hear something in your language that kind of sounds true, but then you break down what they actually mean by that. And really what they're saying is, you ain't gotta like me, but you better fear me. Let's break down where we get that language from. You think of something like the ocean or something like a firearm, right? We say you need to respect the ocean. You need to know that the ocean is bigger than you, that you can't just be careless in the water. You gotta watch the waves because it might crash down. That tidal wave can pull you in. Or you might think you know how to use a gun, but don't point it somewhere unless you're ready to shoot it, because this gun, you should have a healthy fear of this gun, even if you're a seasoned vet with it. Right? When we take that language and we put it on our relationships and our positions of power, it sets up a really weird dynamic in a way that I don't wanna move to the world and you shouldn't either. I don't want my employees or my children or the community I serve to walk on eggshells and think, well, maybe this guy might make it psychologically unsafe for me, or even physically unsafe for me. I remember back when I was working for a really big tech company, one of the biggest ones in the world. We ain't gonna name no names, but one of the things that they're known for and how they make money is acquiring other successful, smaller companies, getting the intellectual property for the things that they've created, And they did that with this one company that specializes in security hardware, right? So sometimes you can take all the staff, take all the team, take the CEO, and other times you'll pull a CEO. It's kind of like a draft pick, right? You're looking for a CEO who did something somewhere else, right? So they found the CEO from another very big tech company that we are not gonna name, but this guy was the VP known for being the designer of one of their products that revolutionized the world. So they thought like, okay, we, we acquired this great company. We got it under our umbrella. We got their team. We're gonna bring in a rockstar CEO, who's gonna come? He knows products. He knows how to do all this stuff, and it's gonna knock out the park. Well, there were these internal messages and memes that were being sent around, and finally, at one of the all hands, one of the employees from another part of the company said, Hey, does anybody know what's going on? At X, Y, Z company because have you seen what's been going on, on the message boards? It was kind of like these veiled memes that were like these inside jokes about, how they're slaving and working all these hours and how the CEO was like a dictator and all this stuff and nobody was keeping him accountable and. Eventually they had to let him go because the morale was so bad in that org. Sometimes what we think is we think because somebody has built something important or has done something and was excellent or has a level of expertise in one area, that is gonna translate to the way that they show up and lead in these other areas, and that's not always the case. Sometimes there's a type of leadership that is very, and I say this all the time, it's not childlike leadership, it's childish leadership, right? There's a level of expertise that they have in one area, but the people management and the emotional intelligence side of their life is underdeveloped. That's an example in a company, but sometimes in our own lives we think that I have. So much experience in life, and I've been doing all this stuff in my work and I've been leading all of these things and I'm a professional and I've built these skills and I've built these muscles and I'm a mature person and all these other areas. But then we get into scenarios with our family, and the people in our lives, and we haven't quite built the muscle of dealing with our own wounds. Responding when things don't go the way we planned, responding when we get disappointed by other people and. We don't take the time to develop this part of ourselves in the way we show up because we rely too heavily on all the skills that we learned and the age that we are and all the things that we take for granted that we think we should know. A soulful way of thinking about how you wanna show up and how you wanna lead in your community. It is to understand that though one area of expertise and one area of knowledge can translate over to another, we gotta develop all of the muscles of our whole self. In my world, in the coaching world, I see this all the time where you have these people who have incredible discipline in their own personal life. They can make a lot of money. They can. Have the strongest, fastest, most flexible, most durable body, but they're selfish and they don't have empathy, and they just expect people to do what they did and do it the way they did and develop in the way they are. I hear this thrown around all the time. if I could do it. Then anybody can do it. And kind of like this gaslighting, like, look man, why didn't you, I was, I was fat and now I'm not. And so you, you don't have any excuse. Or I came from nothing and now I'm a millionaire. And so anybody can do it. The lack of empathy, the lack of. Compassion. The blindness of not seeing like, well, you didn't just learn everything on your own. Somebody gave you a hand up, somebody taught you something, somebody showed you something. Everybody doesn't have the same circumstances. It takes being humble to, to recognize that you got some things to learn, and the more you grade up against the people in your life, the more you're gonna feel like, oh, if I'm aware, if I'm conscious, I got some things to learn. I gotta pay attention to this reaction. So changing our language from, I don't care if they like me. As long as they respect me too. How can I have people respect me and feel like I honor their person and their psychological safety? How can I show up in a way where I can get what I want, communicate what I need, and still show people that they are valued? It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of practice, and there's never a point where you're like, okay, I've arrived here. Because you're gonna encounter somebody different, a different type of scenario. Somebody's gonna put you in a different position where. It's gonna gr on you and touch you in a way like, oh, ouch. I didn't know that that was a thing. I didn't know that that was a wound. I didn't know that that was a sore spot. And even in my position of authority, even in my position of expertise and knowledge, and I've done the work and I've gone to therapy and I've got the training and I've been through all the classes, got all the certifications, something is gonna come up to remind you. That you still got something to learn? Bring it, embrace it, honor it, learn, grow, develop compassion and sturdiness. Develop empathy, but also clarity in communication and welcome whatever responses come up out of you with judgment, but with curiosity in a way that makes you actually show up better. For yourself. For them. And someone who can cultivate an atmosphere that isn't of fear, but belonging and in an environment, whether it's in your house. Whether it's out in the world, whether it's in your work, in the community, an atmosphere where people can feel that they can grow, that they can be, and that they can contribute in a meaningful way. Thank you for listening to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. If you like the show, help others find me by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at Coach underscore Chris Rodriguez. For more episodes along with all of my coaching programs, visit me@www.coach chris rodriguez.com. Special thanks to my team behind the scenes music by Dan Smith. And remember, whatever you do, wherever you find yourself today, make sure you put some soul in it.