Caring & Resilient Leadership: How to Build Trust, Navigate Complexity, and Empower Teams.

“You can’t split a person in half—what happens in their personal life affects their work. Truly caring leaders acknowledge this and create space for real conversations.” - Germain St-Denis

In this episode, I sit down with Germain St-Denis to explore caring leadership—what it truly means to lead with empathy, build trust, and create strong, people-first workplace cultures. Drawing from decades of leadership in tech consulting, Germaine shares powerful insights from his experience navigating industry upheavals, mergers, acquisitions, and even his personal battle with cancer.

We dive into how leaders can balance performance and well-being, manage tough conversations like layoffs and restructuring, and why emotional intelligence is essential—not just for leading others, but for leading ourselves. Germaine also shares practical strategies for fostering psychological safety, empowering employees, and making tough leadership decisions with compassion and integrity.

This episode is packed with real-world wisdom that any leader, manager, or coach can apply today.

Bio
Germain St-Denis is an advocate for Caring Leadership, a style that he embodies and promotes through his extensive experience as a middle manager and executive in Tech Consulting Services.

His professional journey, marked by resilience and adaptability, emphasizes the importance of nurturing and empowering individuals to build high-performing, cooperative, and loyal teams. Awarded for his outstanding achievements and having navigated significant industry challenges, including the aftermath of 9/11 and three acquisitions, Germain's leadership approach is deeply rooted in trust, empowerment and people-first strategies.

After overcoming cancer, he embraced a reflective sabbatical before returning to the consulting sphere, now focusing on fostering caring leadership and people-centered cultures, and sharing his insights through speaking, coaching and mentorship.

St-Denis is creator of Architect of People First™, a strategic approach to becoming a successful Caring Leader and achieving the right mindset that goes with it. In January 2024, Germain published a new book, Empowering People Through Caring Leadership: Strategies That Actually Work. He is on a mission to share proven principles of Caring Leadership mindset and People First culture and develop caring leaders and a better workplace for everyone.

Contact
LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/germain-st-denis 
Website:  https://germainstdenis.ca/    
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=572059489
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/germainstdenis/

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Contrarian Mindset
• 9:28 Understanding Negativity Bias
• 17:16 The Power of Neuroplasticity
• 26:00 Exploring Automatic Negative Thoughts

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:06] Welcome to It's an Inside Job, the podcast where we equip you with actual skills to build resilience, enhance communication, foster well-being,

[0:14] and lead and coach with impact. I'm your host, Jason Lim, and every Monday we bring you expert insights and real-world stories to help you thrive and succeed. And with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:34] Hey folks welcome back to the show i'm glad you could show up for another long-form monday discussion and your weekly dose of resilience and self-leadership and leading others so let's kick off this introduction by me asking you a question what does it take to be truly caring leader in today's complex and crazy fast-paced workplace? Well, in this episode, we're going to explore this question with Jermaine Saint-Denis. He is an advocate for something called caring leadership. Now, he has spent decades in middle management and executive roles in the tech consulting services. Now, Jermaine's sojourn, his journey has been shaped by resilience, adaptability, and a people-first mindset. Now, if you're a leader, a manager, project head, what have you, a coach, and you're looking to lead with more empathy and build stronger, more cooperative, cohesive teams, well, I think this episode is going to share a lot of powerful insight from Jermaine's long career. Now, he draws his experience and deep knowledge through decades of industrial upheavals, the aftermath of 9-11, the COVID pandemic, going through three major acquisitions and all the complexity and change and the challenge with that and the cultures.

[1:54] I mean, I could go on. Pretty much, Jermaine has seen it all. But along that long and winding road, he's learned the importance of building trust, empowerment, and putting people first. You know, after overcoming cancer himself, Jermaine took a reflective sabbatical and returned to consulting with a renewed focus. And that was to champion his philosophy of caring leadership and to foster healthier, more people-centered workplace cultures.

[2:23] And so with that said, let's slip into the stream with my brilliant and insightful conversation with Jermaine Sinton.

[2:29] Music.

[2:44] Thank you, Jason. Really excited to be here. Could we kick off by maybe you just briefly introducing who you are and what you do? Actually, I currently live in Ottawa, Canada. I've had a very, very good career in the tech space, tech consulting, and many years in leadership roles. And what I do today, no longer work full-time job in a corporate world, But what I do today is I want to help people through coaching, through these kinds of discussions, through blogging and through a book that I wrote a year ago. And I want to help people be more successful in their jobs and kind of passionate about that. I kind of made it a mission to spread the message that caring leaders can really empower people and everyone wins. Last year, you did launch a book in 2024, Empowering People Through Caring Leadership, Strategies That Actually Work.

[3:47] For me, it was an intriguing title. I was wondering, could you expand and elaborate sort of operationally what you mean by a caring or a caring leadership?

[4:00] Yeah, thank you. That's a good question. So it is similar to what people may have heard called servant leadership, where basically your role is to help people be successful. Therefore, you have to serve them. And I've adopted that philosophy well before I knew that it was helping me all along. Now, caring leadership takes it a bit further, and it goes to the point where when you are about to make decisions impacting your staff, for example, or things happen that will impact your staff, your organization, it's always good to keep your people in mind. How will they be impacted? So if you decide to change your business model, if you decide to introduce new technology, what will be the impact on people? And if you take the time to get to know them individually, which you should, then you get to understand how they may or may not be ready for those changes.

[5:01] And it's the only way that I can really say it's my journey. My book is really my journey. And when I care, I get to know the person as an individual and I want to make sure that they succeed. And that includes two key aspects. It's not just a success, which every business leader has a goal to get things done. But you also have to look at the person's well-being. And that side of the coin is often neglected, right? And your people can't really be 100% themselves if they're not well or if they have a family member that's not well. There are a lot of things that impact us, right? So to care means that you really take the person into consideration.

[5:47] All the time you know my background is in clinical psychology and you know to be able to move into that profession or to be a caring leadership um for me that would also require a certain level from the individual to have a level of psycho social emotional intelligence and some people have shorter social emotional antennas than others and they tend to default naturally to sort of a transactional type of leadership or communication. I mean, can caring leadership, and forgive the ignorance of this question, but can caring leadership be used across the spectrum, even with someone who is not very adept with psychosocial emotional intelligence?

[6:37] I believe you can, yes. I haven't studied psychology like you have or anything like that. I mean, more from your experience doing what you've done for so many years. Yeah, I think they can if they're willing to put in the effort. It's pretty simple.

[6:55] I always say, care and equip your people and then trust and empower them to get the job done. And a lot of companies will maybe train and equip their people, but they won't necessarily trust and empower them. So if you want to be purely transactional and say, OK, here's your project. Go ahead and do it and report every week or every month, whatever the case is. That's one way to approach things. The way I do it is I will talk to the person about the project, for example. And understand how they feel about it. Do they have the knowledge? Do they have the tools? Are they excited? And if they are, and we agree that it's not that they decide really, but as a leader you still decide, but they agree that this is something they can do, not only do you get a commitment from them, but you make them accountable, right? So you get extremely good cooperation because they say, yes, okay, I will do this, you know they're gonna do their best. You get the commitment that they will do 100% their best. At the same time, they know they're accountable. And if it includes other members of a team, they know their role in the team. So it's very, very successful.

[8:16] Perhaps I'm fortunate, To have more of the emotional intelligence come to me naturally from that point of view. I relate well to people generally, right? And I'm not bossy. I'm not a micromanager. I'm more of a coach style of leader, which works very well.

[8:38] And formulas work for me really, really well, really beautifully. Maybe we could elaborate a little more on sort of the nuts and bolts. So you mentioned leader as a coach or you work, your leadership is more of a

[8:52] sort of a coaching style. I mean, if someone's trying to picture in their mind, OK, so how does this look from day to day, week to week when I'm around my team on the floor? So what are some of the specific skills or what are the specific arenas in which leader is as a coach? I think the most important thing is first to establish a relationship with your staff. And that's why I always say that success requires effort because you have to get to know your people. And you establish a relationship. You establish a trust.

[9:29] And even though you may not touch base with them every day, the relationship has to be such that they feel open. And they feel like that you're open as well to discussion if something goes wrong. They're not afraid to come to you so they have that psychological safety if you will and you make sure that, It's a mindset, I think, Jason, maybe that's the best way to describe it. It's a mindset that every day, let's say you go to work and you run into someone, you chit-chat a little bit, you go on a Zoom call. Before you start with the first agenda item, I always do a check-in. How are you? Did you watch the hockey game last night? Or how did your daughter do in soccer? Those kinds of things. So from a day-to-day point of view, if your people are accountable and they know they're committed, you don't have to try and micromanage the project. What you have to do is stay in touch with the person.

[10:41] And then the person will give you all the information they need and will also give you a heads up and something's going to go wrong. I can give you examples. For example, back in 2020, I worked for a tech firm, a significant tech firm, for a while. They had changed their business model. One of their previous problems was attrition. People left. A lot of people left. And a large reason for that is because of the workload. The workload was just crazy. So when I went there and helped them with the new business model, and I understood how they were assigning work to people. So, a project would come in, someone would decide, okay, well, this person here, Joe is a good person to do this work, let's give it to him or her, right? And there wasn't enough consultation or discussion about.

[11:39] Does the person have enough, do they have the capacity to take that on? And how might it impact other things that they're doing? And I have found through discussion with some of the team members, many of them were overextended. And one in particular was saying, I have to work weekends. I'm still not sure I'm going to be able to make my deadlines. And working with three clients at the same time. So I said, okay, this is not what the new business model is supposed to reflect, right? So I went to, and I was reported to it as VP. I went to the other leaders and I said, we've got to change this around. So we took this person as an example, rearranged his workload, only left him the one most critical project. And he delivered 100%, had accolades from the client afterwards.

[12:33] And it made such a difference, right? And then he turned around, he thanked me for making it happen. I said, well, it's not me. You did the work. I just gave you the capacity to do it. And that's kind of how it works on a daily basis. I guess that's when you have a little more space or you have the resources, human-wise or money-wise or effort-wise, to be able to distribute the weight of work. What happens if it's an organization, a team that is sort of cash-strapped? They they're not allowed to hire more people but people are burdened down with the work i mean there's just no more delegating there's just there's just they've done all the time management techniques possible they're all gurus at time management and self-management but at the end of the day the workload is just creating there's just not enough time to do it i mean how do we take caring leadership into that when you, the leader, and your team are just overburdened, overstretched? Yeah. And that happens, still happens a lot, Jason, unfortunately.

[13:44] In the situation, as you described, I think the only real solution might be that you have to start saying no to certain things. You might have to take some things off the table. Because everybody realizes that if you push your people enough,

[14:00] They won't perform as well. They risk burnout and they risk leaving. You risk losing them, right? So you have to make a choice now as a leadership team to say, okay, we have this problem and they know it's a problem. Like even today, engagement is at an all-time low. That's a leadership issue, right? So we have this problem. In the example you gave, there's too much work. Our people can't do it, simply can't do it. So what can we do to alleviate that? Can we postpone some of that? Sometimes you can talk to clients and say, hey, we're just not going to be able to make that date. Can we push it out a bit? Can certain things be passed on to another group, another organization, or not done at all sometimes, right?

[14:45] There may be things that, especially if you work for a large corporation, I can tell you there is a lot of internal stuff, administrative reporting, that kind of things, that can be postponed. I'm not saying that they're not necessary or important, but they can be postponed. And, you know, if a leader, and I've seen that, a leader wants an update every day on what's happening, that's a waste of resources unless, you know, it's something so critical that largest client or, you know, something really, really. But otherwise, I think you have to start saying, no, you have to start making choices.

[15:22] People versus profit, as we hear said often, right? And you have to be willing to sacrifice a little bit, I think, to keep your people healthy.

[15:32] Because in the long run, it is the only way that you will be able to maintain a strong workforce and have loyal people. I think that's such an astute point. It's very salient. And I concur with what you're saying. Because a leader, he or she, they have to be at peace with making tradeoffs. Because as you said, there's only so much you can put on a plate. And if at some point there is a chance of burnout or people having sick leave or people just, you know what, I just can't, I need to take a week off. And what does that leave for the rest of the team? And what I hear, and I see this from my own experience coaching across the board, is that those leaders who are able to have that hard conversation with the other leaders and to make those tradeoffs, to understand what is most important. Everything is important on the plate, but there's always going to be some things more important than others. But that speaks volumes to their credibility, to their reputation,

[16:31] that their employees, there's this great respect for them. It's like he or she really does care. They're willing to put their neck on the line a little, their head on the line above the parapet to have that hard conversation with the other leaders or maybe his or her own leader in order to make these tradeoffs.

[16:53] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And people really appreciate it and recognize it, as you say, right? They know, and they know that if you care, they will do their absolute best to do what needs to be done and support you as their leader. But there is a limit, right? Everybody has a limit. And, you know, well-being came, it kind of maybe became more mainstream during the pandemic. Everybody was concerned about how is everybody, blah, blah, blah. But it's not been in the past. And it may or may not be as much today as it should be. But there are a lot of examples where people cannot perform 100% because there's something impacting their lives as an individual. You can't really separate people in two. Half of you is a worker and half of you is a person at home. You can't cut people in half. It doesn't work. I go to work and you go to work as a full person. And some of that includes some background noise. You have no choice. I'll give you another example, Jason. I was asked one time to talk and see what I could do with a supposedly very difficult employee, very senior person, difficult employee. And former managers, both of them, gave me a whole review of the case and everything else, sent me all kinds of documentation.

[18:19] And I said, OK, well, let me see what I can do. So I talked to the person and I didn't bring up any of the history, not one bit of the history, nothing. I just had a call and started to talk. How are you? What's going on? How's your work? How's everything in life for you? Just a normal discussion. Went well. The following week, another discussion, follow-up, a few more questions. And I can't remember if it was the second week or the third week, but certainly no more than the third week. The person told me that her happens to be a woman, but that's not really a factor. It could have been a man. and her mom had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

[19:11] And they lived in a different city. It was difficult for her to go and see your mom and to be there for her. So immediately, and you can see, you can picture that yourself, right? Immediately, I could see, okay, well, obviously, the person is struggling, right? The person has got this worry in her head that clearly is going to impact how she can do at work. And maybe not in a very pleasant mood all the time or maybe not as effective. serve, you know. So, and the thing with that that really, really bugged me, when I went back to the SVP, she didn't know about the situation, and the two former managers didn't know about the situation, and it wasn't just recent, right? So, why is that? And yet, that was a caring organization, a very good people-oriented company, but yet, in that case, that was missed entirely. So we started to give the person some slack, obviously. And the attitude changed. And again, it's a mindset. You have to be able to kind of relate. And why she decided to share that with me, probably because she knew that I cared about her as a person. And I wanted to understand what was going on, right?

[20:29] But it was still, in a way, a very sad situation. I don't know what's happened since. I can't say, but it helped a lot. That I was able to get to that point and to get that information because it was vital information.

[20:45] Again, I concur. I mean, you can't split a person. A person's private challenges will affect their professional challenges at work. And it's only through having the conversations, as you've articulated, that we can uncover some of these things. And we may not want to do a deep dive, nor will that employee want to share. But to have some of the governing details, to understand why maybe their attitude's a little off, why they may be a little more short-tempered, while the quality of work is not usually what it is, right? There's some sort of hint. And I think that's a very valuable insight for managers or leaders or even colleagues to sometimes pick up on some of these behavioral quirks that are not generally consistent with a person's behavior or their attitude or their opinions or what have you, right? Is there something off kilter? Because maybe that becomes the window to have a conversation, to explore a little more, to figure out, as you've said so well, their well-being.

[21:52] And not many leaders or not every leader can do that. But I think every leader should somehow learn how to do that.

[22:01] But it's a bit of a tricky balance because you don't want to pry in someone's private life. Right so i never really asked a lot of private questions uh but i can tell you for example um a member of my team had problems with a teenager at home another one had um you know needed to have eye surgery and needed all of these special arrangements we worked with that.

[22:31] Two employees in my career had brain surgery. Not at the same time, not the same group, but that is, to me, that is so important, uncanny two of them had brain surgery in both cases when they were undergoing their treatment and operation I connected with the spouse in both cases I connected with the spouse to get updates how is a person feeling not that I was prying in their private business but how is the person now is the person recovering and I can tell you they value that and I value it because to me that It's rewarding to know that I can kind of help a person know that we're there, right? And we're not just there with the whip to say, you better get this work done or you're going to be out the door kind of thing. So it really makes a big difference when you look at things that way. And I'm glad I was able to. And they both told me in those cases how they really appreciated the support.

[23:33] And in both cases, at some point, I was able to meet with their spouse as well, because we happened to be in the same city. I had staff across Canada and the U.S. at times, but we were able to meet in the same city. So it's really important to relate to the person without really prying for private information. You can find out a lot. I mean, for example, I can tell you today, Jason, that after I had my cancer, my wife and I both left our corporate jobs. We wanted to enjoy life, and we did, but I missed work and I missed the people. So that's why we decided to come back and consulting, and I do coaching for clients, and I find that rewarding. I help University of Toronto students. I mentor them at times when they take management consulting courses. So it's always the idea of you want to help, and that is the whole umbrella of servant leadership and caring leadership. You do things because you want to help, not because you have to. You don't have to, but I'd like to.

[24:37] In the first half of my conversation with Germain, we dove into the philosophy of caring leadership. Now, he transitioned from being a tech consultant to a coach, believing that leadership is about truly understanding and caring for the individuals we work with, not just the roles they play. He talked about how this approach creates better cooperation, collaboration, communication, and leads to greater success. It was insightful to hear his perspective on the importance of building trust and relationships with employees because it creates a safe space for open and honest conversations, not just nice conversations, but also tough, challenging, and difficult conversations. I shared my thoughts on how caring leadership ties closely to emotional intelligence, especially psychosocial emotional intelligence. Now, we both agreed that EQ can enhance this style of leadership And anyone can embrace it if they're willing to put in the time, if they're willing to invest the effort and to prioritize connection with other people.

[25:34] Because ultimately, caring leadership isn't limited to personality types or natural abilities. It's something that we can all strive for. It's like a life skill, like swimming. We can all learn it if we're willing to put in the effort. We also touched on managing workload and burnout. Now, Germain shared a great example from his experience with tech firm. By restructuring their business model, he was able to help alleviate the team's workload, which not only boosted performance, but it also proved their satisfaction, both internally and externally. He also made the salient point that leaders sometimes have to make tough decisions to protect their teams. And that could be saying no to additional projects, or it could be setting priorities to avoid overwhelming their teams.

[26:21] Jermaine also talked about supporting employees through personal challenges. You know, he shared some heartfelt stories, and this include employees dealing with cancer, some with brain surgery, some with family issues. But his point was clear. When leaders show empathy and care, well, they create an environment where people can thrive, even in the hardest, most challenging of times. For me, caring leadership, it's the heart of trust, transparency,

[26:46] empathy, empowerment, caring for your people. And that's the heart of resilience. So let's now slip back into the stream with part two with my conversation with Jemaine Saint-Denis.

[26:56] Music.

[27:04] Being a caring leader can be relatively easier when times are flowing and everything seems to be working well and there's small minor problems. But in your in your book there's a chapter called dealing with tough stuff and i'm i'm working with two or three companies three companies right now that have just gone through a merger and it is really difficult i mean the cultures of these companies are quite different and there's a lot of sort of negativity bias going on a lot of sense of survival and threats and everyone's scrambling for their positions because they don't know because there's going to be a lot of redundancy and such i mean can you share someone share some of your insights i'm sorry um how leaders can use the philosophy of caring leadership in such tough and difficult times or maybe it's layoffs too right it's it's all part of the same package.

[28:08] Yeah i i i've had to lay people off i've been through mergers and equities position. That chapter in my book, I didn't know really what to call it initially, because it's kind of a collection of all those things that I had to struggle with during my career. And so my wife was my book editor. So we decided, well, why don't we put it all together and just call it tough stuff? Because as you say, it's a lot easier to lead when everything is going well, Much easier to lead. Mind you, just as a sidebar, being a caring leader doesn't mean that you're soft and people can get away with doing less or slacking off on the job. Not at all. My standards remain very high, and people knew that. So it's a bit of a myth to say, oh, well, if your leader is a nice person, you don't have to push too much. No, no, no, that's not it.

[29:04] But mergers and acquisition actually is quite interesting. And I can relate to what you're talking about. I've been through it three times. Each time it was a real culture shock. But the worst time was in mid-2000. I worked for a smaller tech company based in California. But we were bought in 2008 by a very, very large tech company, one of the largest. And so we went from being team-oriented culture to dog-eat-dog culture, if you will.

[29:41] And when I worked for that company, the management team, the head office was in Toronto, and the management team and all the salespeople that were local all came in in the morning in the office. So I did too. It was nice. You could touch base, get to know them, what's happening with your client. It was easy. Once we were acquired, we had us move to a different building. They gave me a nice office with the window. Okay, nice. But everybody that I dealt with was somewhere else. There was no one else around. Nobody came into the office to touch base. So they were geographically located at different locations? Yes, there were different locations. Yeah, and there was no touch point, basically. My boss was in the U.S. That doesn't matter because it's always worked well. But the culture change initially was such that when we first arrived, the actual legal, what is it called? The legal date, I forget the right term, but anyway. Okay.

[30:46] As soon as you're officially part of the new company, we were moved to different groups. And I was one of the few leaders who kept my role as a leader, but most of my team came over. That was good. But then immediately they asked me to take on a different role. And I said, well, okay, what about my teams? I had two teams at the time. What about my teams? Oh, they'd be assigned somewhere else. Well, I'm not sure about that. I'd like to understand better what's going to happen to them. And so in the end, I declined to take that other role. I said, I'm going to stay and help my team instead.

[31:24] And I started to participate in management meetings. And one of the first leadership calls we had, the vice president would go around the table. I was a director of a practice and asked for people updates and everything else. And when my turn came, he says, where are your updates? Well, I said, they're not in the system. And he gave it some names. What system are you talking about? I've never heard of it. Nobody had told me that I was supposed to do that ahead of time. He was angry. He was angry at me for not having that ready. So he skipped over my updates. That was just the culture. That's what it was. He skipped over. Okay. Oh, well. All right. And then a few weeks later, I forget what it was, but there was something that came up and I had to go to him and a few other executives for support. Initially, I didn't get it, but I went back. And it came up often because there was a big demand for people on my team. They were really, really top experts in the area that we were acquired for. So we were acquired because our company had certain expertise and products. And I had the experts.

[32:37] So there was a lot of demand. And so I kind of had some influence over where a certain person would go, where they would be a best fit for that client. I always tried to do that in the past. Who can work best with that client? They're a bank. The other one, they're a telecom company. And so I had often to kind of push back and often had battles with some of the executives. But that particular one who was difficult with me at first, he became an ally. He became a real ally. and it's just because I was consistent I think in demonstrating that there's some things that we can do better by using these people in a certain way rather than throwing them anywhere right and they started to understand that to say oh okay that makes a big difference but the initial challenges of not being a team-oriented culture was so difficult for me I tried to isolate the teams as much as possible. But it was a real challenge that I could no longer go and ask somebody for assistance because they would say, I'll figure it out. I don't have time to help you figure it out. Luckily, we were assigned a buddy, a guy named Steve, a really great guy.

[33:53] He helped us a lot. Once he came on board, it made a big, big difference. Yeah. But this is a bit long sorry maybe i'll stop here and then i'll resume on on merger and acquisition one of the companies has been acquired by another and another company i'm working with has acquired another company which is much larger and as i said the cultures are clashing um the redundancy because not everyone's going to have a place some people are going to have to be cut loose unfortunately but that's just the way it is but the question is how how do leaders deal with these stressful difficult conversations because it gets a really messy when it's you know talking about someone losing their job or getting demoted or shifted from what they thought they were going to have, yeah it is very very difficult i mean every time i've had to let people go i i found it extremely Probably the most difficult job of a leader, I think, is to let people go or close an office. I've had to close an office one time, so I had people around the table and I had to tell them all.

[35:03] Face to face, you know, you don't have a job after today. That is tough. My advice to maybe to your clients, and you can help them with that, is help them understand the landscape, the people who are being acquired. Understand the landscape of the acquiring company and maybe who the decision makers are, and work on establishing relationships. Because if you can establish some relationships in key roles, It might help impact some of the decisions that are being made as to who's let go, who's kept, for example. In the acquisition that I mentioned before, there were technical people who were let go. None of mine were ever let go because they could see that they really needed them.

[35:50] None of mine were really let go. But it does happen. And as a leader,

[35:56] it's very, very challenging that you as a caring leader, you care for the person. But then you have to be there's got to be a limit there where if you if you get too emotionally involved, you will also get impacted as a leader. Right. So you've got to also self-preserve or, you know, help yourself at the same time. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to help anybody else. So you have to be able to make that clear distinction between I'm sorry I have to do this and I get to call people and say I'm sorry I have to do this, but this is the situation. I think you have to be empathetic, number one. When you talk to the person and you say that or talk to a group, at least relate to them as a person. Be respectful as a person. It's not because they're bad, they've done anything wrong. It's just the nature of the business. There's always downsizing when there's an acquisition. That's often part of the reason why they do it, because they want to cut costs and consolidate. But if you relate to them as a person, as an individual.

[37:05] It doesn't mean that it's going to wreck your relationship, and it helps them to maintain their own self-worth, if you will, right? And it's really important for their well-being. You don't want them to go home totally depressed saying, oh, I'm awful, I was kicked out because blah, blah, blah.

[37:23] Not the case. In mergers and acquisitions, it's not the case. So you really have to help them that way. And it is really demanding emotionally on a leader to deal with all. I know it's more demanding on the people affected, obviously, but it is emotionally demanding on the leader. And you have to do that, you know, self-protection, if you will, because you're yourself. You have to manage yourself, too. And you have to be careful when we talk about emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is also critical so that you know, is this impacting you in such a way that you become difficult? You have to be careful with that, right? if all the stress is making you difficult to work with that's not going to help either it's going to be more difficult for people i think i just want to riff on something you're saying about empathy and emotional intelligence i agree we need to sometimes stand at the vanguard of the entrance of our mind and we need to be able to distinguish between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy because emotional empathy is great for family and friends because you want to feel what they're feeling. But in these type of merger acquisitions or layoffs and such, we don't want to turn off our emotions, but we don't need to feel what they are feeling. We want to be present. We want to listen to their opinions and their thoughts, their insights, their ideas, their meanings about something.

[38:48] Because then we're still present, but we are, as you said, self-aware. We're cognizant to not...

[38:55] Completely feel everything we're feeling because then we get sucked into an emotional storm and what happens is we get i've always experienced this with coaching people that they get lost in the subjective storm and that means they lose that sense of objectivity yes it's going to be more painful for the people who are going to be let go or made redundant or what have you, that there's no doubt but the managers themselves i've worked with many managers that have had to lay off good colleagues just because of cutbacks because they can't afford them because of redundancies because of a merger of some sort and the the heaviness irregardless if they move to cognitive empathy or cold empathy is that that burden they have and sometimes sitting in sparring sessions with them they're not crying but i can see the stress and the tension and and the load just it could just be a slight tear or their eyes well up a little and it's just that And I think it's so important, as you said, that self-awareness to be able to kind of check in with yourself and try to process the emotions that you're going through. Because I think for most people, most human beings, that is a heavy load and psychological burden to carry. And it would because we see the other people in pain and that does affect us to a certain extent.

[40:17] If I may just sort of take that and ask you a question. We've been talking about how we use caring leadership for others, leading people through difficult times or what have you. But how can a leader, how can he or she turn those same philosophy of caring leadership upon themselves when they are going through change or complexity or challenge? Ishamane, what is your advice from your experience? Yeah, I...

[40:46] I think that that's also a very, very trick aspect to it, because it is a very heavy burden. The way I've always done it, and maybe it's because of my upbringing, when I grew up, I grew up, we were poor, my parents had challenges and everything else, but I always saw them as being resilient. I always saw them as being strong and resilient. And I learned that at a very young age by observing that I should also be resilient, regardless of the challenges that I come up with. And I've had health challenges, as you have. And when I'm faced with those situations in a business environment, I always tell myself, am I doing the best I can as a human being, as opposed to not just as a boss towards the others? Am I doing the best I can as a human being towards myself? And is there a limit to how much I can do anyway, right?

[41:46] And no matter how bad the situation is, and I've applied this consistently, no matter how bad the situation is, I always say it will pass. We will get through it. So if you're going through some downsizing because of a layoff, it's a very ugly period in a career maybe, but you know you're going to get through it. Mm-hmm. Having a mindset, a growth-oriented mindset to say, but okay, after that will come better times. And it's always worked for me. I mean, it's not bad all the time, right? Nobody has a light, hopefully anyway. People don't have bad time all the time. But you also know that, you know, just like the weather, there are storms in life. And you have to learn to get through them. And I learned years ago, even though we go through a lot of adversity, adversity helps build resilience. And the more resilient we are and we become and maybe that, you know, developing a tough skin, as we used to say, people have a tough skin.

[42:55] You build resilience maybe over time. And with experience, you are better at going through those things. But the emotional impact, and I like the words you use, cognitive empathy, the emotional impact can be very, very challenging. So we always have to look back at ourselves and say, okay, well, I've got to be careful. And I'm pretty disciplined about, you know, taking time to clear my brain. I'm disciplined about taking a break, going out in nature. I love to walk among trees and that kind of stuff. If you take care of yourself, even though you go through all of these challenges, you can remain pretty sharp, pretty strong, and you can also help the people more because if you end up in bad shape yourself, it will reflect badly on your team and it will impact your team probably more.

[43:49] I'd just like to rewind because I think you've talked about, you know, techniques that have helped you build resilience. And just to sort of tease apart these strings, what I hear is that you ask yourself, as a human being, have I done what I could reasonably and, you know.

[44:08] To help the situation, myself or the other person? And the other one I hear is sort of almost a mantra in the sense, this too shall pass, where day will follow night, that things are temporary. The other one is to find, you know, go for a walk in nature, kind of just let go, find that, those oasis or refuge just for a while before you move back into the storm. Maybe it's to retract into the eye of the storm because you can't escape it. And within that eye of the storm, there's a sense of peace. The fourth one i picked up was you said you know adversity or experience it's the best teacher and i think with a lot of clients i asked them you know look over your shoulder from the trail head where you've began this trip to where you are now whether it's five years 10 15 50 years.

[45:00] Because that is fact all the obstacles all the pitfalls that you've overcome and dodged no one can take away that from you and we can sometimes go back into our archive of experience and pull techniques or mindsets or mind talk or our self-concept at some point and we can use that so we don't have to relearn anything but we can learn we can learn from our past experience of how we overcame some sort of adversity or obstacle to strengthen us to you know strengthen our metal per se, you know, steal our metal in the particular conundrum we're facing right now. So I just wanted to break down that because I thought those four skills are really good for self-leadership or self-resilience.

[45:47] Yeah, thank you. And I think as a coach, you and I are both coached clients, as a coach, you can help your people with that, I think, because a leader who's struggling maybe internally may not feel as comfortable explaining some of these challenges or distress on them to their colleagues or to their boss, but they will maybe explain and discuss it more with you as a coach. And it really helps them right it's in a way like a maybe a leader is a therapist a coach is in a way you're a therapist you're a teacher you're you know you're all kinds of different things.

[46:25] And having the discussion being able to have the discussion and for you as a coach to be able to say that maybe you've gone through that because I there was a younger guy that I was coaching for a big promotion and I often told him when he was bringing something up I always said okay well I've dealt with that and this is how I dealt with it now let's see if it works for you because it may not always apply your experience may not really apply but it certainly helps you ask the right questions or maybe try and identify some of the key factors that are the problem or that are causing you stress and maybe you're taking on too much of the stress or you may maybe you're trying to do just too much so as a coach i think you can really help and it's really good but those are really difficult challenges of leadership and i think many people don't want to be in leadership roles because um because of it right yeah and i think that's why sometimes hiring a coach or sparring partner that sits outside the organization who is not part of that culture, who is a third road, as I sometimes call it, can really help to process, you know, the emotions and the thoughts that come with complexity or challenge or adversity or obstacles.

[47:44] Because that at the end of the day is what we need to do to be able to stay resilient. So we don't burn out, go over the edge or hit the wall, whatever the term we want to use. Because sometimes it's just talking it through. Because what I found time and time again, Jermaine, and it sounds like this resonates with you, is that sometimes we don't have the power to change the situation, but we have the power and the ability and capability to change our perception of the situation, right? And that sometimes comes from just articulating our abstract thoughts and emotions into concrete words. And all of a sudden, having a sparring partner or bouncing ideas of someone, that can guess, okay, I just needed to get that off my chest. And that's all it is. And then they can move through their day and they become more resilient and they've learned from that experience.

[48:38] Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, we go through many of these cases. One of the difficult, if I can use another example, after the World Trade Center bombing in 9-11, I was the vice president for a consulting firm which was operating across Canada and the U.S., a pretty big, strong organization. We were doing really, really well. But a large, large number of our clients were Americans. And after that event, a lot of business just stopped. And all of a sudden, our business dropped like crazy. It was unbelievable. I've never seen, I've actually never experienced something so strong and direct since. Even with COVID, even with the 2008 and the 2009 recession, it wasn't as bad. But that particular one hit us so bad. And I had to then rethink. We had three offices in Canada, a bunch of people in each one with a manager in each one. I had to talk to each manager. I had to evaluate everything. And in the end, we had to make the decision. And that's what I referenced earlier, that I had to close offices and let people go, entire teams. That was so difficult for me.

[49:56] And I struggled. and as you said I have to think okay well how do I how do I now keep moving how do I carry on after that right and I always go back to mindset and I go back to my parents and they say well well my dad went through not the same kinds of things obviously but a lot of challenges excuse me challenges.

[50:20] And it never really impacted how he dealt with us as a family and his work. He somehow was able to handle it. And I say, well, I've got to also look at it that way. And, you know, my dad would talk about, okay, well, we've got to deal with next year's harvest or something about the animals. And in business, it's the same thing. Okay, so we have to do this. We have to downsize. We have to cut staff. Let's focus on what we can do better next, right? Let's look at what is coming up. What are the opportunities that we can address? And there were opportunities afterwards, always are. Even the people who have to be let go, for example, it might open new doors. So it's how you view it, and it's always your mindset. I always say maintain a positive attitude. It just helps so much, regardless of all the challenges. There's always a bright little star somewhere. Jermaine, I want to thank you very much today for sharing your knowledge and experience.

[51:27] Your book, it was launched just last year, 2024, Empowering People Through Caring Leadership, Strategies That Actually Work. As one last question, are there any tips or suggestions you would like to leave with our listeners to kind of as food for thought?

[51:45] I think the best thing that they can do, I think, is try to be a, number one, try to be a good person. And if you're a leader, try to be a good leader. And if you're a leader as a good person, I think you will succeed. But always, always remember the person you're working with is not just a co-worker. They're also another human being. So there's a human being across the table or across the screen. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. If you have staff around the world, I dealt with in international development for a while. It didn't matter. You're always dealing with another human being. So whatever your decisions you make, think of how it impacts other people as a leader. And that's why I used the tag architect of people first, because my leadership principles and people will see in my book. That's why I say empowering leaders, empowering people through caring leadership. And then I say strategies that actually work because I've proven them. I've used them. Other people have used them. They work. And hopefully, if people want to get the book, hopefully it will help them. And I'm available. People can reach me on LinkedIn. I have my own website, germainsaytheneed.ca.

[53:01] Architects of peoplefirst.ca or .com. It'll be redirected. But if people want to reach out, I'd love to hear from people. I'd love to get their feedback. or if they have a question they need help, please reach out. It would be a pleasure. Germaine, this conversation has been a blast. Very insightful. And thank you for sharing humanity. I think we need the world needs it more than ever right now in 2020. Thank you very much, Jason. Thank you. I always say the heart of leadership is human connection. And if everybody adopted that, I think the world would be better.

[53:35] I agree. I agree. So thank you again very much for your.

[53:38] Music.

[53:44] There is no doubt that managing people and leading teams becomes the most difficult, the most challenging, when we're faced with uncertainty and complexity and change. As Jermaine shared with us his experience of culture shock when his tech company was acquired by a larger organization. And he described the shift in the culture from one that was collaborative and cooperative to one that was competitive. And I think many of you who've gone through some sort of merger or acquisition can understand this. This actually becomes the natural ecosystem as the two companies try to find some sort of unified culture. People are scrambling for their positions. They're scrambling for sometimes their sense of survival. They're worried about redundancies and layoffs or being demoted or losing their status and their significance within the organization. And all of these are legitimate concerns. And then this also emphasizes why having caring leadership, the philosophy of caring leadership, becomes even more important in these turbulent, tumultuous situations.

[54:54] And as Germain talked about, he highlighted that the emotional toll on these kind of moments, well, it can take on the stress and the anxiety. And there's even a greater need for empathy and emotional intelligence. Also balanced with self-awareness and objectivity. And it becomes a salient reminder that we, or you, as a leader, as a manager, and a colleague, the same care that we show to others, well, sometimes we need to reflect that back on ourselves in times of upheaval. And on the topic of resilience, Jermaine shared how he stays grounded through self-reflection, meaningful breaks, and the more powerful technique, reframing challenges as opportunities. And both of us being coaches in two different parts of the world, and from our experiences, we agree on the importance of having a coach or a sparring partner outside the organization, because it helps with fresh perspective during difficult times. And as we've talked about time and time again on this show, sometimes we can't change the situation. But through articulating our thoughts, our concerns, our anxieties, our uncertainties, but we can shift our perspective from one that's objective to more objective, from more problem oriented to more possibility oriented.

[56:12] Germain is a leader, a human being with so much humanity. And I highly recommend picking up his book, Empowering People Through Caring Leadership, Strategies That Actually Work.

[56:26] I will be sure to leave all of Jermaine's links in the show notes if you want to reach out to him or grab his book, which I highly, highly recommend again. Jermaine, I just want to send you a personal thank you for sharing your humanity, your time, your knowledge, your experience, and your wisdom with us. Because I think right now in the tumultuous world we find ourselves, caring leadership is a skill that is required more than ever. So thank you. Well folks, that leads us to the end, the finishing line of yet another episode. I will see you Friday for Bite Size Fridays.

[57:02] Music.