To See It, Be It: an interview with Max Yoder
/
Leading with empathy and compassion takes intention…and Max Yoder, CEO of Lessonly, has put in the work.
He shares how leaders can increase their human skills. Max talks about the work of self-acceptance (and how it differs from approval), why reciprocal thinking is a race to the bottom, how unrelenting expectations-of-self keep him from connecting, and why emotional liberation was the most important lesson that he learned while leading at Lessonly.
You can find the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play.
Max and Marnie
Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Max and I have to confess, there were definitely more than three valuable takeaways, but I have narrowed it down to these three…
Where are you in the spectrum of people pleasing? Max talked about emotional slavery (feeling responsible for the emotions of others), and emotional disavowal (rejecting the emotions of others), and the third path of emotional liberation: being able to acknowledge the emotions of others without being ruled by them. Where are you find yourself most often ending up?
Remember, there is always a third person or situation in each interaction: a relational triangle. People bring their previous experiences, their wounding, their successes, and their home life to a given situation. It is important to acknowledge this reality because it helps us to contextualize situations.
Max encouraged listeners to ask the question, “What are my values?” and then to take a good look at the organization that they are a part of. If you organization is acting, consistently, against your values, there is a cost. And maybe it is time to leave.