030: Empathy in Leadership for a Balanced Workplace

In this episode, Marc Thomas and Ivan Fernandez explore the transformative role of empathy in leadership and how it can create a balanced, thriving workplace. They dive into the power of emotional intelligence to turn traditional office dynamics into supportive, collaborative environments. Discover practical strategies for building genuine connections with your team, setting boundaries, and fostering a culture where everyone feels valued.

Marc and Ivan share real-life stories and actionable insights, discussing everything from starting meetings with personal highlights to using social gatherings to strengthen bonds. Learn how empathy not only improves work-life balance but also enhances productivity and motivation. By embracing emotional intelligence, leaders can cultivate a work environment that feels more like a family than a corporate machine.

If you're ready to lead with empathy and make your workplace a place where everyone can bring their best selves, this episode is for you.

Ivan Fernandez on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-fernandez-9a41958

spn networks:
https://spnnetworks.com

===================================
📒 Resources Referenced in this Episode: 📒
===================================

Simple Truths of Service Paperback – March 1, 2019
by Ken Blanchard (Author), Barbara Glanz (Author)
https://amzn.to/3zX2kCw

The Motive: Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities
by Patrick M. Lencioni (Author)
https://amzn.to/3A55gx9

Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire  – January 17, 2023
by Dan Martell (Author)
https://amzn.to/3Yk3hz2

Chapters

• 0:07 Building Emotional Intelligence Within Teams
• 13:07 Fostering Emotional Intelligence in Teams
• 17:01 Supporting Employee Work-Life Balance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

we talked about a little bit about how you don't manage your team right. You don't micromanage your team. Talk about the coaching being a huge part of your organization. Um, my question a little bit where I want to go with this is when it comes to your team, do you get to know them on a personal level? Are you checking in with them on more of a personal level, outside of just your traditional meetings?

Speaker 2: 0:43

As I've gotten older and more experience, I I do keep how do I say it? Like when I first started SPN Networks. I was partying really hard with my employees.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Well, you were young and small, right as a company.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Young and small right, and it's just doing things I shouldn't have been doing and that really didn't really work out for me. And so I quickly realized that I can't really have that relationship outside of work with my employees if I want to be able to be seen as their manager and their boss. But at the same time, I'm very passionate, I am invested in their growth, I care about them as individuals. I am fortunate that they come to work every day and do their best work for SPN and our clients, and I will do anything I can for them. How I can for them Now, I don't you know, go out on weekends with them and go to the bar, or, you know, sometimes I have been invited to like quinceaneras or a wedding those I attend but I'm always in my best behavior, right Like, I think, as an owner, you always have to, you know, set yourself apart, you know, so that you're always seen that way.

Speaker 2: 2:07

And what I mean by that is we do have happy hour, we do have corporate events. I'll have one or two drinks, and that's kind of it. That's my limit, and I'm not there to make a fool of myself or um or um. Just, you know, keep, keep, keep the relationship how it should be, and so that's that's really worked for me, and I also see that from other people as well, like even other managers that I spoke into. Um, they would share the same thing with me, like even when they're, you know, sponsoring happy hour, they go there by the first round of drinks and then they take off early, let the team do their thing, but I'm still very connected with every one of them. I still know about their children, I still know about their goals. I like to know about something that they're doing well in their life.

Speaker 2: 3:01

One thing that we do with a lot of our meetings is when we start them, just to transition from the busyness of the day into our meeting, we have a personal, positive and business best question that we ask and so say we were going to start our leadership meeting.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I would go and talk about my personal best and I can say, hey, my son just had his birthday last weekend. It was great, we did XYZ, all his friends came over, it was awesome, and personal and business best could be. We just landed a new customer and I'm really excited for the team because it's going to increase our revenue and create new opportunities for us, and so that kind of allows people to share what they want to share about their lives, because not everyone wants to share things with their coworkers, but having a relationship is important with your team. I always love breaking bread as well, so anytime we can do anything with food restaurants, I always feel that's always special to share a meal with your team and um and just have a great conversation and see what comes from it wonderful, wonderful, all things.

Speaker 1: 4:13

I can appreciate that you do. And you said you learned from, I guess, maturing, what didn't work. Yeah, right, exactly, and uh, in in part of this, as we, as we talk about this is, you know, as we both grow older and wiser, we might want to say right, um, and we start learning more and more not only about ourselves but other people and in and not just learning um about them. But you know, I guess we're really kind of the concept of emotional intelligence, right and with, and I've been reading quite a bit recently on emotional intelligence and it was going to ties into kind of myself, uh, myself journey when it comes to growth and understanding myself, right, to better help understand myself and others. But when we start touching on self-awareness and self-regulation and you know motivation, motivation and empathy and social skills, you know, and, and you know if you have that upside employee understanding, you know why. You know this is what's on the surface, but really what's underneath the water. Right, we talk about the iceberg effect. Right, they go on okay they react in this way?

Speaker 1: 5:21

but really, what's the what's the root cause of that, what's really going on? Um, how much effort, I guess, do you make? Once again, by instance, you touched, you talked about, you'd like to know your employees personally at a level, right, yes, which I'm sure has to help with emotional intelligence. Yes, um, walk me through some of that and once again, getting older and wiser and learning about others. And I know that you've touched on emotion. You touched on emotion with coaching, with the team members. You touched on coaching with the emotion with the parents, right, because we know that nothing's worse than a bunch of parents who are doing school sports, and you know the emotions get pretty high, right, like going, um, you're not keeping score, but they are. You're not keeping score, but they are yes, exactly yes.

Speaker 2: 6:08

So you know, for me it's really you know. When I see my team and each and every one of them, you know, no one's perfect right, Certainly, just like marriage right. It's a team effort, it's a give and take. It's a highway with two roads on it and that's the same way I see employees. And when there's something that's really not driving what our core values are with their performance, we'll break it down and we'll have a meeting with that individual and say look, what you did here isn't working out. This is why and those conversations go different ways A lot of times what happens is the first are very protective about how they feel and why they feel.

Speaker 2: 6:58

It's just more about listening to them. And then, once the employee sees that you do care because I do actually care about their success here in the company, one thing I always tell them is I'm rooting for you, I want you to win here and I want you to thrive here at SBN Networks. Both parties put their guard down and then you can really figure out what's the underlining issue that that person may be experiencing or going through. One time I had someone share with me that they're just not likable and they know that about themselves and that's why they're probably always going to be lonely in their life. And that brought tears to my eyes because I'm just like no one should be lonely in their life. And that brought tears to my eyes because I'm just like no one should be lonely in their life. Right, and that's when you really are allowed. You can make a really good connection with someone and then from there, I'm just a natural giver. I want to help them see the best version of themselves. But that's also, I think, another key point that I always let my team know is I always hold the bar really high for everyone and I see you at what you can be at someday.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Another parallel to leadership and all this stuff is raising children. It's the same thing, right? You see your children and you're just like okay, like you have it in you to do all these great things. I just need to show you how to get there. But that's what I do.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I have these conversations with them. I'm not just there writing them up saying you did this, this and this. I need to improve this by 30 days. I'm going to send you to training, sign here and keep it to a five minute conversation. I'm really in there saying, look, let's figure this out. Obviously there's something that made you upset. What is it? Can we work on it? And at least at the end of the day, if this relationship doesn't work out, at least that I know that I gave it all my best, that I really invested in them, because that's another thing too. It takes time away from me, from my team, courses, trainings, that we have to put them through to really help them set a new course, and that's what I've been doing to really handle that emotional piece of management with the team.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Wonderful. And how are you? I guess, how do you foster that emotional intelligence with your team outside of you? If obviously you, being the CEO, the management team is supporting you and supporting the team members, I guess how are you influencing that emotional intelligence piece with them?

Speaker 2: 9:51

I think it's just building a family, building a team, building a community, winning as a team.

Speaker 2: 9:59

I'm going to give you another soccer analogy here. I have sometimes employees that have worked for me that they really just care about doing the best work for me individually, as Ivan Fernandez, but not as part of SP Networks or part of a team. I've had people in the past share with me that hey well, you're the one that signs my check, I just want to make sure you're happy with the performance. Share with me that hey, well, you're the one that signs my check, I just want to make sure you're happy with the performance. And when you look at that and you take that example and put it out on the soccer field, it's like having an A-star soccer player that is really good at making goals, really good at passing the ball, really good at just dribbling, but doesn't want to be part of a team. And in soccer you can't win as an individual, you have to win as a team. And everyone has their roles, everyone has their responsibilities and that's kind of what I've been sharing with my team when it comes to this emotional piece is that we're a family, we're a unit and we have to basically look out for each other. We have to encourage each other. We have to provide constructive feedback. The same thing happens out in the field. The best teams are giving each other feedback on the team. It's amazing to see eight-year-old girls running out in the field and they're yelling at each other Like hey, get over there, why didn't you do this? You need to blah, blah, blah. Or they come off the field and they're still talking about. Maybe they're upset about it, but in their own way they're giving each other feedback and it's just a beautiful thing to see that.

Speaker 2: 11:46

And that's, I think, the whole emotional part of a team is they have to see employees have to see that they are part of something bigger, not just their one job. And as a company we also provide opportunities in our own community. Everyone takes money home for their families, so if we win as a team, their families at home win as well. And so just tying all this together it's a lot, but just having them see that this isn't just a job, you come in eight to five, you're part of something bigger.

Speaker 2: 12:18

And also, I think not everyone wants to bring up their issues to me Because Ivan's too busy, he's the owner, even though I always tell everyone I have an open door policy, but then allowing your teammates or your employees to have their own relationships with each other To help each other out. The other day I was hearing how they were talking about advice about life and things that they should do, shouldn't do. I don't want to go into details, but it was interesting just to see how they actually care for each other and giving each other advice on what they would have done in that situation. And that's, I think, the emotional piece of building a great team is allowing them to kind of act like a good family, good team.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Yeah, love it. And thinking back to I don't know about you, ivan, but I look back to my own past and go hey, I think I was raised, or you know my introduction to the workforce. It was always there's the door and you leave your emotions there, you leave your problems that are outside of work at that door. You're here to do a job and everything else goes away magically when you walk to that door, which really isn't the case, right, there's a lot of influences in our lives that are impacting us and we never know truly what's going on with that team member. And you know, knowing that, hey, you're here now, I get, we still have a job to do, right.

Speaker 1: 13:45

But I guess I kind of look at it with the mentality of, like, is your problems are my problems as well? There are clients problems, right, and then we work through them together and maybe, maybe it's through understanding, maybe it's through hey, maybe some time just to talk about it, right, because they don't have that resource to to offload. Um, maybe it's just coming. Hey, whatever, get, just, you know, take a few minutes extra, or let's work through this thing. Or hey, let's get you signed up, or maybe here's a good book, right, you know how many times. You're a gentleman like me. You like to learn, you like to grow and we like to read some books, and so I don't know. You tell me it sounds like you're doing some of that yourself, but you know, in today's workforce, um, and when we talk about that emotional, intelligent piece, how much, how important do you think that is in your organization.

Speaker 2: 14:41

How important should it be for others in their organizations? No, I think it's critical. I mean, I think is, we're not robots, we're all humans. We all have emotional things going on in life, we all have baggage, we all have our issues and we all deal with it differently, right? Um, some people, you know, love to come to work because they get to purposely forget about the stuff at home, right, like this is all. This is my zone, I love what I do and this is what I enjoy doing, and they might be dreading going home, but honestly, I think the communication piece is just what it is, and this is why I even tell my customers too. When projects aren't going right or there's an issue with a client, it's because there's a communication problem.

Speaker 2: 15:26

And I think being able to be open and transparent with your team or teammates is critical for any team to work, and this is something I was kind of reflecting on the last couple of days. I always know that it's important to have an amazing team, but I just thought about it and said, okay, it's really really important to have an amazing team. But I just thought about it and said, okay, it's really really important to have a great team and what a great team looks like and what constructive feedback looks like, and meeting people where they're at and understanding that we're not always going to be positive and happy. It's a lot like marriage, you know, and you know marriage takes work but, um, you put in the work and you have a beautiful marriage. It's like raising teenagers, right, I have two teenagers now. My oldest is 16. And, um, you know, some days she's like don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't and other-da, and other days she's just clinging on me like she was eight years old again and it's just understanding that she's on her own journey right now, developing her mind and herself. And I get to be that strong father figure for her and show up every day and see her as the daughter that she's going to be as she grows up.

Speaker 2: 16:52

And I think that's the thing with communication and employees is just understanding that we all have stuff going on. I had another employee reach out to me about changing his schedule and I think he was surprised that I was so open to it. I said life changes. I understand you've got to do this. Wife got this new job. You've got to make some changes or a new position. I said you've been amazing here at SPN Networks. You provided us with great service to our clients. To me, the least thing I can do is also be flexible with your work schedule so that you can also do what you have to do at home and keep your family home positive and working. It's just a thing of giving and taking and being flexible, being open, communication, all those things. It's just the way I think the universe is supposed to work.

Speaker 1: 17:53

Hi, I'm Mark Thomas, founder and CEO of Current Tech Solutions and CyberGuardians. If you, or so many know, could benefit from our cutting-edge IT and cybersecurity services, we'd love to help. Our expertise in securing your business with AI precision ensures that you're protected and empowered to thrive. Reach out to us today to learn how we can secure and elevate your business. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.