Could this be the game changer for growing businesses?

Ever thought about the positive impact compassionate leadership could have on Web 3?

How  empathy, collaboration, and active listening could shape our team dynamics and create a nurturing environment for collective growth? 

As we navigate the complexities of the digital space, I recently facilitated a workshop on compassionate leadership for Web3 Leadership Day, aiming to help leaders foster a stress-free, productive environment for their teams.  I summarize and break it down here, just for you!

This episode explores the true essence of compassionate leadership. From delving into personality traits and using personality tests as a tool for promoting collaboration, to discussing the one personality we all know too well and how to understand different perspectives. I unravel the crucial elements needed in a leader today. I hone in on something so  important and so obvious that most of us forget to do it.  

So, if you're ready to be the mentor your team needs and inspire them to thrive in the Web 3 world, let's jump right in.

🪩 don't forget to subscribe for a bi-weekly break and pick-me up from the chaos of leading a team.

free resources for new leaders:

• 30 Days to Stress-Proof Your Work Life
• 7 Behaviors Sabotaging You & Your Team [ and what to do instead ]

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

So these are all the traits of a compassionate leader being empathetic, fostering collaboration, active listening, inspiring people by making a difference and putting your first foot forward. And being a compassionate leader is always being there as kind of the protective mechanism, forming this big umbrella around your team, this big bubble, to make sure that you can stay compassionate. They are there to do the work and they are having a great experience. Hi everyone, welcome to the Web3 Thrive podcast. I'm your host, emily Rose Delara. This podcast was designed to give you the confidence, knowledge and clarity needed to succeed and lead in Web3. I teach proven strategies and tactics you can apply immediately to become confident and successful working in Web3. So take 20, plug in and learn how to really thrive in Web3. And if you like what you hear, leave me five stars and subscribe and Spotify or follow on Apple podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up to my newsletter to get exclusive content, tips and strategies to help you thrive at work without the burnout and formal, direct to your inbox each week. Plus, you'll get full access to exclusive leadership and coaching Q&As, free workshops and all the Web3 Thrive podcast episodes in one place. So just head over to learnweb3thrivecom forward slash newsletter.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Let's get into today's show. Hello everyone, how are you all doing? I am in the middle of a batch recording, which is the thing now for me. You'll see me, I actually just changed my t-shirts. I'm not even joking, because I recently did an Amy Potterfield course. I don't know if you're into marketing, you'll love Amy Potterfield. Or if you've built like a side hustle, she's the person and she's like. You need to batch record and just change your t-shirts and your tops. So that's what I've done today. I hope it's going well and if you're watching all these videos back to back, you'll probably notice the hairstyle.

Speaker 1: 2:04

But yeah, the reason I do this is because I've started to get in the creativity on a morning. If I don't, if I start with, for example, lead gen or doing I don't know DMs or responding to emails, I feel stuck halfway through the morning, I feel like a bit more, a bit demotivated. So I always start with creativity and playfulness. Actually, honestly, every single morning is like fun. Like I know lots of people hate mornings. I used to. I make the mornings really fun. So I get up, I play with an e-con, my poodle, we have a laugh together. You know, we chat to each other because he's funny, as he like pulls all these crazy faces. Anyway, if you're not a dog person, you might not get this and then I go into my meditation room, which is just in this room, outside of my box, and I usually whatever I'm feeling like that day. So today, for example, I did a meditation on gratitude, compassion, manifestation and planning out the perfect day. I love doing that one.

Speaker 1: 3:06

And then I do a bit of a dance. This is my new thing, like getting the body moving and the reason I do the dance and I usually try called quest or it's like ecstatic dance playlist. The reason I do this is because it gets you into your body. When you start your day, usually you're like I've got so much to do, I'm late, I've got to make my breakfast, I've got to run, I've got to maybe got to work, all that kind of stuff. This like part of your meditation. It grounds you and it helps you get out of your head. First thing. This has really helped me. Actually, I've moved my body, I feel like a bit creative, gets the feminine energy flowing, because when you're in your head you have a lot of masculine energy, which is logistics, planning, structure, which I have a lot of, and I'm working on bringing more feminine energy and that's more being in the body, being playful, and after I've done all that, I'll take the dogs in a walk. I'll have a lovely chat with Entran. I have a chat with the homeless guy outside of Beocop, which is my local organic store. Give him a banana. He has a play with Nikon and it's just like the nicest start to the day. And so then if I do something creative, it like keeps this like creativity, feminine energy flowing, which is why I am recording this podcast today.

Speaker 1: 4:16

I'm interested to know what you do to start your day, so maybe drop that in my DMs or share this episode and comment about what you do in your morning to get it started. Maybe this is something new that you could try. But today I actually wanted to talk to you about compassionate leadership. We showed it in a previous episode, but I've been running a workshop recently with multiple different communities. I actually did it for Web3 Leadership Day last week and it was amazing. It went so well. I got loads of engagement and comments and all of the comments were. I agree. I understand this is something that I do. I never thought of this.

Speaker 1: 4:54

So the one part of this workshop that I wanted to focus on today is compassionate leadership. The rest of the workshop is very much focused on how to thrive as a leader in Web3. So I'm going to do this for free all the time. So I'm going to be hosting it maybe once a month. So when I have the details, I will give them to you first. If you're not in the newsletter, I'll probably send it to you guys there first. So sign up. I'll leave the link below.

Speaker 1: 5:18

But the one segment of this workshop I wanted to take out was how to be a compassionate leader. What does it even mean to be a compassionate leader and why do we need to be compassionate leaders? So my experience in this space is that, as a leader, is that there is not a lot of compassion involved in the companies, especially if you're working in the European regions or the Asian regions, it's very much focused on productivity and results, a bit like that masculine energy I was telling you about, and many people are very much focused and concerned that they will not meet their deadlines or their KPIs, versus focusing on the people who are actually working to meet those KPIs and deadlines. And so, as a leader. I always strive to be the best leader ever, of course, but always to get on the same level as the people that I'm leading, and to do this, you have to have compassion. You cannot run your team into the ground like robots and expect them to perform and stick around, which is what I've experienced. I've had founders and bosses as I was coming up in my career, who were expecting me to be online 24 seven, who were talking to me like shit, who were causing me a lot of anxiety, made me feel stupid and, yes, a lot of that is me projecting onto them and reacting. I've worked on that, and so the way to deflect this kind of behavior and this kind of culture is to build your own microculture, which is something that I teach in this workshop that I do, and creating a microculture like this bubble around your team is the first step to being a compassionate leader.

Speaker 1: 6:58

So what do I mean by compassionate? So compassion is basically getting on the level of people having sympathy, having empathy Okay, being empathetic. Some people don't really understand what being empathetic means. Imagine that you are staring down a well and there's someone at the bottom of it. Okay, the person at the bottom is like help. I'm having a shit time, I don't know how to get out of this. Well, and you're like, yeah, sorry, I'll go and get help. Don't really know what's going on, but maybe I can go and help you find some help, right, and then you wander off. A compassionate leader gets on the ground of this well, climbs down and sits to them, says hey, I'm going to sit with you while help comes. Okay, they are on the same level. They understand what that person's going through. They explain I've been here before, I know how you're feeling and I'm here with you. Okay, that's empathy and this is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. So, to give you an example another example actually, because empathy is a big one and being a compassionate leader is like empathy, is like top.

Speaker 1: 8:05

So I used to really struggle with a certain type of personality, and it was a personality that was like the know it all, know it all. Someone who hasn't been in, for example, said I'd come into a company and they were working with someone and they were more influential than me, but they didn't have the same experience or knowledge as me, but they would still tell me what to do and speak to me in a really bad way. This is something I experienced, and I know a lot of other people experienced this too, and so it would really drive me crazy. So I actually worked with a coach, and the exercise we did was this and I do this with my own coaches now, close your eyes and imagine that you are sat next to that person. Feel everything that you're going through. What are the emotions that come up? How does that feel? What do you believe about yourself from this situation? Why are you feeling so angry? What was the trigger? Ask yourself all these kinds of questions, and then look at the other person and imagine that you're in their body, in their shoes, and imagine what they're going through. Imagine their thoughts, imagine their experience in life, imagine how their parents were with them, imagine the conditioning that they had growing up. To give you an example, I used to be patronized quite often by this kind of personality, and I used to feel like shit.

Speaker 1: 9:17

I used to feel like I had to prove myself. I used to have to be louder than them. I used to have to kind of get other people on my side, which is a defense tactic, and so when I did this exercise, I realized that maybe this person hasn't had the best influence in life, they've been conditioned to think that they always have to be this kind of dominant personality because otherwise they won't succeed. Maybe they're not confident. Maybe they're putting on this kind of power stance and this patronizing personality or expression because they don't feel good enough either. And so once you do this exercise, it helps you realize and get on the same level as other people. And that is compassion. In the previous episode I did a compassion practice like a meditation. So go back I think it's the last five minutes or something how to develop compassion physically so you feel like you can deal with this kind of personality no matter what doesn't impact you. So that's empathy A compassionate leader.

Speaker 1: 10:12

The traits of a compassionate leader are one that foster collaboration and they recognize the individual expertise and strengths of their team. So the first thing I used to do when I came into a team so, for example, as a fractional semo, I used to get kind of dropped into different portfolio companies and I would look at what we had Okay, who's the person who's currently leading the marketing? Is there a community person? Who's a CEO? I used to audit everyone and I would understand what is their background and their strengths. I would actually I would literally interview them and say what is your strengths, what are your weaknesses, what do you need support with? What can you do with your eyes closed? Figure that out.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Then figure out what are they passionate about, what makes them tick? How do they work? How do they get feedback? What is their personality? How do they speak? How do they prefer to be spoken to? What is their communication channel of choice? Right, it's up to you, as a leader, to find all this out, and actually, it's up to you, as a leader, to find this out about yourself so you can communicate this. And so, by having this very much open book of yourself, you then can give this open book to other people and inspire them to be open with you and help you to create this collaboration. So, for example, a lot of you might be into like personality types and stuff, so you can even do personality tests with your team. Figure out how they like feedback, what kind of things trigger them, when are they energised, when are they demotivated. Find out all these things and use it as a collaboration tool. You could even create like cards and put them on people's desks Well, I mean, if you're not in a physical desk, but you could even create it like in a messaging tool that you use. I don't know if. Actually, if anyone does this, it would be amazing. Have it like in the profile part of like in your Slack, for example. This is what how you should communicate to me. This is when I work. It's basically like a profile of what helps you collaborate better and be the most productive. So that's collaboration.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Next, I want to talk about Active listening. I think I've touched on this before, but active listening is the act of being deeply immersed in what somebody else is saying. It is noticing where their eyes are moving. It's noticing their body language. It's even noticing, like, the vibrations of their voice and how their tone is changing. And when you look at like energy we're all made of energy and we're all like floating around. If you like, put a microscope over our finger it breaks down into different molecules and atoms and in the end, it's just energy. Don't quote me on that, by the way, but you can actually be impacted by the tone of someone else. It could like either irritate you or make you feel calm. So Sahara Rose actually just did a podcast on this and she was talking about. If she talks in a really high tone, it might make you bit irritated and like sketchy and like I don't know what's going on. If you talk slow and deep and really make sure your words hit, people are more likely to listen to you and that's to do with the vibrations of your voice.

Speaker 1: 13:25

So actively listening, not thinking about what you're going to say next, because the best way to notice if you're actively listening or not is when you forget what someone's saying. So someone's talking to you and you're like I fucking no clue what they just said. Right, and you have to ask them to repeat. If you have to ask someone to repeat what they just said, if it's not to do with that accent or the speed that they're speaking, that's because you have not been listening well. So to practice this when a thought comes up and someone's speaking, just say thinking, just label it thinking and get back to what they're saying and, even better, to help that what they're saying and thinking reflect it back to them. So, for example, if a client says to me you know I feel really anxious about this situation, I'm not sure what to do about it, but I think that I want to do this, you'd say, okay, so you're feeling really anxious about this, you've tried this, but you think you want to do this right. That is perfect example of active listening and mirroring. Okay.

Speaker 1: 14:23

So more traits of a compassionate leader Inspire people, do big things. I mean, you don't have to be an extrovert to be a great leader or a compassionate leader, but you do have to be the one who is constantly inspiring and the one who's learning. So, for example, I would always try different things. Hey, we're going into this team with a testing mindset. We're the first team who uses a testing mindset apart from, like, the product team and we're going to go in and we are going to just roll and see what happens. We're going to fail and we're going to learn from it and we're going to make sure that we communicate the failures and the learnings. This is a type of inspiration.

Speaker 1: 15:04

Also, somebody who is bold tries new things, like setting up a podcast. Maybe you're the one in the team who decides to do the podcast. Maybe you're the one to take a big risk and to inspire others. You don't actively do it to inspires, but you will inspire others. And that kind of takes me into like the putting your first foot forward. So you're the one who takes the first action, you're the one who says yes, you're the one who leads the team. When they're scared, you're the one to say come on, guys, I know the pool is cold, but we're all going to jump in together, right? That is inspiration and that's doing something.

Speaker 1: 15:39

First, and also part of this. By doing that, you're making a difference. You're standing by your values, you're working on a purpose. So to inspire, to put your first foot forward, you need to know your values. So in a previous episode I spoke about this. But knowing your values and setting values for the team is so important and this helps you to make a difference. Because the team know why they're working, they know what your values are, so they know what to say in terms of like, what to expect from you actually, when they know your values. And then they're more inspired because they can see you working towards your values.

Speaker 1: 16:12

And the most important thing I would say to be a compassionate leader is to protect your team in this bubble. So there is a really cool image that I've seen in the past when it comes to management. So great management is when you've got an umbrella, a huge umbrella, and all of your team are underneath it and imagine you've got the founding team maybe you've got the board members and investors like throwing shit at the umbrella and like they're angry and there's also pressure, but you are the leader who protects the team from that. You take the shit, and the reason you can take the shit is because you've worked on yourself. You are not reactive. You understand that this is part of the process. You understand how to communicate and how to alleviate any fear and then you make sure that what is communicated to the team is productive and solution oriented and you make sure that is transparent and they are working from their values.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Okay, your team don't need to know all this bullshit that goes on. All you need to do is make sure that you're being compassionate, you're listening to their fears and you're not feeding them anything that will demotivate them and make them be unproductive and fearful, because your goal really is to make sure that you retain your team, because bringing in teams are expensive and you want to make sure that people have a great experience with you. You want to make sure that if anybody leaves, it's because they're moving on to another opportunity or something that fits more of their values and that they can take your experience and grow, you need to be their mentor. So these are all the traits of a compassionate leader being empathetic, fostering collaboration, active listening, inspiring people by making a difference and putting your first foot forward. And being a compassionate leader is always being there as kind of the protective mechanism, forming this big umbrella around your team, this big bubble, to make sure that you can stay compassionate. They are there to do the work and they are having a great experience without having to deal with all the bullshit.

Speaker 1: 18:12

So do you have the traits of a compassionate leader? Let me know. Dm me, message me, email me, emily at web3andthrivecom. I want to know where you fit in here. Maybe you feel like you don't have traits of a compassionate leader, but you would like to Just reach out. We will work it out together. Okay, have a lovely week, guys. Speak soon. So that's all I've got for you today. As always, thank you for listening. Don't forget to drop me a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and head on over to Instagram and TikTok at emilyandweb3 for daily content to help you thrive in web3. Also, feel free to drop me a DM, a message or a question. I am here to serve you. See you next time.