Lori Bradley of Chewy
How many ways are you looking at the future?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 194: Lori Bradley
Here’s a question. How many ways are you looking at the future?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach their leaders to help them succeed where leadership has its greatest impact. The intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Lori Bradley. She’s the Vice President for Talent at Chewy. Lori sees the management and development of talent through multiple lenses. Academic. Strategic. Intellectual. For sure. But the perspective she brings that sits on top of all of these is the most important of all. The human one.
“At Chewy, we're experimenting with a couple of different work arrangements, everything from fully virtual to in the office two or three days a week. And, I mean, I'm lucky because I'm in a company right now that really likes to experiment and likes to research. And so, we're experimenting. We're conducting some different pilots.”
Here’s something you already know if you listen to this podcast. People that choose to work in creative business are complicated and unpredictable.
Despite which, so many business try so very hard to build single model operations that view all members of a group or a department or a discipline as being the same.
No wonder that most businesses leave millions of dollars of untapped creativity and innovation on the table every night.
Lori used the word experiment three times in about ten seconds.
Can you remember the last time that word was used in any leadership team meeting you’ve been part of in the last few months?
There’s no way back. There’s no one way forward. And no way of knowing which way is going to work.
The future is waiting to be invented - by those who are brave enough to experiment.
Here’s Lori Bradley.
Charles: (02:05)
Lori, welcome back to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Lori Bradley: (02:09)
Thank you for having me.
Charles: (02:11)
I was looking the other day and I realized it's three years, almost to the day, since we last sat down and did this. And not much has changed during those three years, right? The world is almost exactly the same as it was back then. So we probably don't even need to have this conversation.
Lori Bradley: (02:24)
No, I don't even know what we'll talk about. It's been so boring.
Charles: (02:28)
How do you think we've been changed by the last two years, specifically by the pandemic?
Lori Bradley: (02:32)
I mean, just dramatically and in almost every facet of work. And it's funny I was talking to my team… I have a personal pet peeve of people who like to cite how many years of experience they have, so, "I've been doing this for 20 years," "I've been doing this for 30 years."
And, I was just sharing with my team that I feel like no one's been doing this for more than two years at this point. Things have changed so much. We've had to shift. The 20 years or 30 years are really more... you may have a broader portfolio of things that may or may not work anymore, but, basically, we've got two years experience in a lot of our fields, especially in HR.
Charles: (03:15)
And what do you think the differences are now? What's changed as a result of what we've all lived through and are living through?
Lori Bradley: (03:21)
Where to start? I mean, I guess the most obvious one is just how we work and where we work. I actually have been a proponent of virtual teams and virtual collaboration for a long time. I studied it in grad school and have done some research there. And so, in some ways, it changed overnight. We went to become virtual organizations, you know, suddenly and not by choice.
Luckily there is some good research around collaborating virtually that, over the last several years, people who have been playing with different arrangements of work have built some knowledge and some best practices around. I think the more difficult thing was not how to figure out exactly how to work virtually, because we'd really already... we didn't realize it, but, for the last several years, it's not uncommon for at least a couple people to be dialing into a meeting. We were using video conferencing pretty efficiently.
But it was literally the fact that you're working from home and so are your kids and so is your spouse, and I think that was the biggest change, is helping our employees understand, or helping them make the shift to, "Yes, I have all these tools and some of them I'm familiar with, some I'm not." But doing it from home and managing work and life in a whole different way, I think, was most impactful for a lot of people.
Charles: (04:49)
What did you know about working virtually before this started, and how has that changed? How has your perception or your experience of that changed over the last two years?
Lori Bradley: (04:59)
Oh, it's such a good question. I think what I knew was about 80% research and about 20% practice. And so I knew that we had successfully had remote team members, you know, where there was someone and they had a restriction or we made a special exception because of the talent that we allowed this person to work remotely. I knew what we had learned through that. And I knew that we could make it successful.
The research told me that virtual teams can be just as successful as co-located teams, but there are certain structures and there are certain things that you have to put in place around them to compensate for not being in-person. But the research told me that virtual collaboration, in some ways, was just as effective as in-person.
Charles: (05:53)
And what are those practices? What are the things you have to do to make this work? Because, obviously, we're not going all the way back into the office. I think most businesses are not going to head all the way back. This is going to become part of the working experience for almost everybody in some fashion or another.
Lori Bradley: (06:07)
Yes, I completely agree. So in virtual teams, you really have to compensate for the things that happen naturally if you're co-located. So an example of that would be, you're in a team meeting and you realize, in the team meeting, that you and a co- worker need to connect on something.
And so in a co-located situation in the office, it can be as easy as, after the meeting, having quick conversations, grabbing that person and going, "Hey, I didn't know you were working on this, but we should probably connect because I'm working on this piece of it." And that could happen while walking to your next meeting, while walking back to your offices, or if you go, "Okay, this is a longer conversation, let's schedule a meeting."
So in virtual teams, it's just harder. Like you can use Slack, or you can use an Instant messaging and say, "Hey, let's connect," but what happens is, in virtual situations right now, what I'm noticing is people are scheduled back-to-back-to-back-to-back, right? And so they don't have a walk time, they don't have the bio break time. They tend to schedule themselves back-to-back. And so you can lose those things. It can be wishful thinking, "Hey, we should connect on this," and then it just never happens.
And so one of the things that virtual teams can do is really look at the length of their meetings and say, "Okay, instead of an hour meeting, let's book this for a 45-minute meeting, and let's be very focused and very diligent, let's get to our agenda, but let's do it in 45 minutes."
So that in that 15 minutes, God forbid, we could have a bio break, we can just digest the meeting, we can clean up notes and, and try to crystallize the decisions that were made, but we also can have that quick off-the-cuff catch up time with each other, to have those quick follow up meetings. And so it's just one example of how you compensate for what you lose by virtue of not being on-site.
Charles: (08:08)
You know, in the virtual world, there are always people that were late to every meeting, weren't there?
Lori Bradley: (08:13)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charles: (08:14)
Do you think that behavior has changed? Are people generally better about recognizing, "The meeting starts at 11:00, I'm going to show up at 11:00," or do you think people's character overrides even that.
Lori Bradley: (08:24)
(laughs) My observation and my experience is it's worse-
Charles: (08:27)
Oh, really?
Lori Bradley: (08:28)
... than virtual.
Charles: (08:29)
Really?
Lori Bradley: (08:29)
Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's back to... we've got to think about scheduling in the virtual world and putting meetings back-to-back. I mean, there are days that I literally have a meeting at 8:00, at 9:00, at 10:00, 11:00, and 12:00. My meetings don't tend to end early. And so if there's something that came out of that meeting like an email I need to quickly send, or I haven't eaten all day, I've got to go grab something to drink or something, then it eats into the next time.
And it's almost like it's becoming a norm that if people aren't there, like, in the first five minutes, people just know they're shuffling, doing whatever, you know, coming from their last meeting. And so it may be different at other companies, but for me personally, and at my company, I think it's common for a nine o'clock meeting, you pretty much get started at 9:05 when everybody finally logs in to the Zoom.
Charles: (09:28)
How have you been changed over and by the last couple of years? I mean, you've had a couple of different positions. You've moved—
Lori Bradley: (09:33)
Yeah.
Charles: (09:33)
... companies twice. How are you different?
Lori Bradley: (09:37)
It's a good question. So some just work practices have changed. I have kind of organically started taking lots of notes. And so where in face to face meetings on-site, I might have a notebook but I was never one to bring my laptop and take a lot of notes, because I just didn't like the laptop screen being between me and the room. But I just wasn't that person who was comfortable typing away on my laptop while taking notes.
I do that a lot now. For one, it's not... you're on the computer already, and so it's very easy to have a Word Doc open and just be taking some notes from the meeting. But the other thing is, going back to that, swinging from meeting, to meeting, to meeting, I'm finding that if I don't do that, at the end of the day, when I think back to the meeting I had at 7:30 in the morning, I'm like, "What did we even decide?"
And so note taking, in that kind of crunched schedule, becomes very, very important. And so just like a personal practice, that's the case, or professional practice. From a personal standpoint, eliminating a commute. And I've had some doozies of a commute. I don't know if you remember, but, not only did I commute like from my home to my office, but I've lived in San Diego for the last nine years and commuted to New York and then to Chicago on a either weekly or biweekly basis.
So personally, how I've been changed is, I feel like I'm in much better health. And so because I've eliminated just a day out of my life a week commuting to my city, where I was working, and then in the morning commuting to my office, I'm just healthier. I have a morning routine now which I would completely blow off, before working remotely. I do journaling and I meditate in the morning, and I spend time with my husband and my dog in the morning. And so, having the commute, basically, across the hallway from the bedroom to my office, has freed up a lot of time to do some things that just health-wise, I hadn't been paying enough attention to.
Charles: (11:55)
And how has that changed your perception about what you'd be willing to do for a job?
Lori Bradley: (12:00)
So it was interesting, because I changed jobs right at the beginning of COVID, and basically worked remotely due to COVID. And so then later on in COVID, just a couple months ago, I joined another company. And it was one of my non-negotiables that I would continue to work remotely from my home in San Diego. I'll travel as much as I need to, I'll be in the office whenever I need to, but that home base would be San Diego. I wouldn't even take a call if it required a re-lo or 100% in-office presence.
Charles: (12:41)
I'm assuming you're seeing that, as well, with people that your company's trying to recruit across the board?
Lori Bradley: (12:46)
Absolutely. It's a real differentiator. Companies are still figuring out. At Chewy, we're experimenting with a couple of different work arrangements, everything from fully virtual to in the office two or three days a week. And, I mean, I'm lucky because I'm in a company right now that really likes to experiment and likes to research. And so, we're experimenting. We're conducting some different pilots.
But when you notice on LinkedIn that you can now filter by remote when you're a job seeker, it lets you know, as an employer, that if you're not open to that, at least being clear on what roles it could be a possibility for, you're getting screened out of job searches by people on LinkedIn.
Charles: (13:34)
Yeah. The notion that you're experimenting fascinates me. I haven't heard anybody else who's described it that way or approached it that way. How do you measure the results of an experiment in these kinds of things? What are you looking at and for?
Lori Bradley: (13:47)
Yeah, it's a good question. Chewy is a young, vibrant company. We're only 10 years old, and our culture is amazing. And so it's so important to us that we offer flexibility, but we make sure that our team members are able to stay connected to each other, and to Chewy, and to the culture, and they know what it's like to be a Chewtopian as we call them. So we look at employee engagement scores, we look at performance. We do something really radical, which is just ask our employee, "What is your preference? What's working? What's not?"
And so those in the pilot group, we’re staying very, very close to. And then at the same time, we're looking for best practices and we're learning and we're kind of crowdsourcing ideas for, as... especially for virtual leaders, what needs to shift for a virtual leader,. versus just traditional in-person leadership. And so, the main thing is of course productivity, but employee job satisfaction.
Charles: (14:53)
And how does virtual leadership differ? What are you discovering about how you show up differently from a leadership standpoint?
Lori Bradley: (15:00)
Yeah, there's a lot that... it's a lot around intentionality, and it's around finding new ways to build a sense of teamliness. And so, one of the things I'm finding is if it's completely virtual all the time, it's a lot harder as a leader. It's nice that some of the COVID restrictions have lifted and even if we have to social distance and change our workspace to be in a very large place where we can all be together, it's at least once a quarter, if you can bring your team together in person for strategic planning or for quarterly business reviews or something and actually get them in-person and maybe go have a meal together, then people love it.
But in the absence of that, as a leader, it's staying connected, so making sure that you're having regular one-on-ones, regular face time with each of your employees, and with them as a team, making sure you're creating mechanisms where the team is still coming together as a team on a regular basis. And so I do that through business reviews, through strategic planning, through goal reviews, staff meetings, and then also building in some social time into the staff meetings.
And I'll tell you, I think, it was popular early in COVID to get together and do a virtual wine tasting. And you'd send wine around and there would be somebody there. We're finding that virtual things that are just trying to mimic in-person things tend to be really awkward. It's like, the last thing that anyone wants to do at the end of the day where you've had back-to-back-to-back meetings was join another Zoom call.
And so I've shifted away from doing a lot of that, because people are tired and it feels too much like work. It's on Zoom, it's exactly what I've been doing all day. And so instead, we're looking at ways to build in, in the course of staff meetings, making sure that we're acknowledging birthdays, that we're thanking each other, that we're looking for things to give each other kudos for. But then also I'm thinking about things that teams can do to be more teamly. Like a Halloween costume contest, hilarious. It lends itself very well virtual, because everybody sends pictures and we're all there. And it's hilarious.
At Chewy, we have dogs in our offices, which [inaudible]? So if, how many calls have you been on when you're like, "Sorry about my dog. Sorry about my dog."? We do not apologize for our dogs. We know our dogs... each other's dogs names. We're like, "Oh, hi, Iris." And we want the dogs, and the cats, and the hamsters, to be on-screen. Or, you know, if someone's sitting there petting their dogs, it's like that's what we do. We're all dog lovers.
But the other thing I've been thinking about is ways to distinguish... so picture you're on this huge Zoom meeting and your team is presenting your quarterly business results or your team is presenting a new idea. Having your team... creating custom team backgrounds, like, ‘Talent Team Whatever’, and during your presentation, having everybody that's on your team use that background on Zoom so it's clear on the screen of 64 tiles, who's on the team. And it also gives the team a sense of teamliness.
But really looking for things like that that are engaging and remind us that we're a unit and we're a team. And it's tough in virtual, but it also... you can have a lot of fun with it.
Charles: (18:51)
How are you guys thinking about the office? What's the definition of the office these days from... for you guys, from your perspective?
Lori Bradley: (18:59)
Yeah. I think for a lot of companies, that's something that's just being redefined right now. But what is shifting for a lot of companies is, you know how when we were an office-based culture and we needed some times to get together and connect and think, we would go on off-sites. So we'd go to some hotel or somebody's house, and we had an off-site, so the team could just think.
Basically, on-sites are becoming the new off-sites. And so with buildings pretty vacant and, and very underused, while everybody's still working from home, what we're finding is, looking at our space, a lot of companies have brilliant, beautiful facilities that were designed for collaboration and for community. And so they lend themselves well to a place to go on-site and for teams to come together.
And so I think a lot of companies are looking at repurposing their space. For some companies, going to a smaller real estate footprint has advantages. And then some companies are really thinking about, "How do we reconfigure the space, so instead of a lot of offices and individual workspaces, we create big spaces for larger gatherings, for team meetings that'll allow social distancing, and then let people safely come on-site?" And I think it's really good, because that way, you still have a sense of place. There's something about just being in a company's facility where the logo's there and products are around, that bonds you. And so I just think using the physical space a bit differently has some advantages.
Charles: (20:46)
You know, I've been really struck, I think a lot of us have over the last two years, by how incredibly adaptable the human species is. I mean, we were-
Lori Bradley: (20:53)
(laughs) Yes.
Charles: (20:53)
I was looking at my calendar actually, and realizing it was almost exactly two years ago to the day that we consciously understood that life had just changed, and New York State was shutting down, and we were canceling trips and starting to keep our distance from people. I'm also conscious, over the last couple of weeks especially, how fast it feels like it's shifting–
Lori Bradley: (21:12)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charles: (21:12)
... to some semblance of just… we had friends in our house for dinner the other day and we didn't all get tested before we did it. And that was a remarkable experience. Like, "Oh, my Gosh–”
Lori Bradley: (21:19)
Right.
Charles: (21:19)
"... How do we do that?"
I see a lot of businesses trying to put together a construct where they work the way that they did in the early part of 2020, but with fewer days in the office. So there's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the office, Monday and Friday at home. To me, it feels like that's not really fully embracing or understanding the massive shift from a mindset, from an emotional mindset standpoint, that employees are going through. That feels a bit like a short-term stop gap attempt to kind of normalize and get back to something. Whenever I hear somebody talking about, "Let's get back to..." I think, "No, I don't think that's going to work." Does that resonate with you? Do you agree with that perspective, or do you think that, for some businesses, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the office, Monday and Friday at home, some version of where we were before, is going to work?
Lori Bradley: (22:10)
I agree with everything you said, and your observations are astute. I read something by Jacob Morgan who does a lot of work in employee engagement and has a lot of interest in how we use our environment to drive certain behaviors, and basically Jacob said, “We need to stop asking how we get back to normal or, ‘What will it look like when we're back?’”
“We're asking the wrong question. We need to ask, ‘What should the future look like?’ And then we need to go and make that future happen.” And so I think there is a mixture of fear, so a lot of leaders are afraid that they'll lose their culture, with the more distributed workforce. I think there's nostalgia. Some people absolutely love working in the office. And if I'm the leader who has invested millions of dollars to create the most amazing facility for my employees and it's got a gym and a coffee lounge and it was fun. I mean, it was fun to hang out there.
So for the companies that were lucky enough to have that kind of space, there's a bit of nostalgia and kind of grieving that, they remember back to when there were happy hours and there were coffee chats and everybody was around and it felt kind of like a college student union building. But I think that there are going to be some people who will just… they like working from home, it's productive, they've made life choices during COVID. So a lot of people have relocated to be near aging parents or their family, they've realized, you know, in a time of crisis, that being near family is something that they regretted not doing for the last 20 years.
And so I think it's going to have to be very individualized. I think there are some people who will want to live near a facility and will enjoy going into the office a day or two a week. There are other people who will want fully remote. I know some people who... my husband included, who have gone into the office every single day. He has a very short commute, but that's where he does work. And he doesn't like to work from home because he likes home to be home and work to be work. And so he does his best work in his office. I think that flexibility is going to be the key. I think it's when we look at the talent that we want to attract, we're going to have to be flexible and pay some attention to how people prefer to work and give them acceptable choices the company is comfortable with.
But I think flexibility is going to be key, and I think holding rigidly to some of the work arrangements is… the trade-off is that you're going to miss out on some talented people who just have decided that's not the way they do their best work, then they just won't join.
Charles: (25:06)
Picking up on your culture point, how did companies go about creating culture these days? I mean, when you've got all of these different versions of employee engagement and employee connection and physical distance and offices, how do you actually go about building a culture anymore?
Lori Bradley: (25:19)
You know, in some ways, I think that COVID has been good for engagement work and for culture work because it's caused us to, you know, as soon as we say, "Wait, we're afraid we're going to lose our culture," it begs the question, "Okay, what is our culture? And what is it that we like about our culture? And are there some things about our culture that maybe we should lose? But what are the things that we really hold sacred that we want to make sure we don't lose sight of?"
So right now, I'll tell you, talent who are skilled in employee experience, employee engagement, they're a hot market right now. And that tells me that companies are really having those conversations. Companies create culture in lots of different ways. They do it through policies, they do it through their physical presence, they do it through their human resource practices.
But I think what this renewed focus on really building an intentional organizational culture is doing, is asking us to look at it from a more structured way. And so, for instance, we know that leadership is a big culture driver. And so we should be looking at, what is the leadership brand that we're trying to create, that's resonant with the culture that we want to create? We know that the work itself is a big culture driver. So we want to look at, how are we collaborating? How are we empowering people? Where do we give autonomy and where do we not? How do people engage? Do they have the tools they need to do their jobs?
There's also just the brand. So what is the reputation? I'm so fortunate to be at Chewy, because our customer service brand is inspiring. It's just amazing. It was one of the things that actually drew me to want to come and work at Chewy. So for me as Head of Talent, I want to look at, how do we take that amazing knowledge that we have around customer service and the personalization of that, and we use it to treat our employees, help them have the same wow experiences that we are so known for, for our customers? And so I think all of these things combine to make a culture.
I'm literally right now looking at frameworks, employee engagement frameworks, and saying, "How are we doing here? How are we doing there?” You know, in our company practices, how are we doing in communicating? Have we shifted to knowing we're communicating to more of a virtual audience so that those great slideshows that you put up in the break room, aren't exactly going to reach very many people?
Diversity and inclusion, what are we leaning into? What are we taking a stand on? And then just being very intentional about talent and staffing and who are we hiring, and making sure that we're looking beyond just, does someone have their credentials or the right degree, the right work experience? But are they resonant with the values of the company, the operating principles?" Paying close attention to what we want, and to who we hire. And it really goes across the employee talent life cycle. And it all combines. There are different levers you can pull to build a culture, and some have more of an influence than others.
Charles: (28:49)
I think your reference that people need to be, and leaders especially, have to be much more intentional about the culture they're bringing, is absolutely right and so insightful and so perceptive. It's remarkable as I look back and think about how many times I would walk into a new company… I walk into lots and lots of companies in my work, and how many times I'd walk in and within the first minute, somebody was talking to me about the culture. And looking back, what they were really talking about was the experience of being in the space, in the vibe, in the feeling, and they really didn't know, fundamentally, I think, in many, many cases, what that was the result of, specifically. And now that we are seeing companies being physically pulled apart while trying to remain connected–
Lori Bradley: (29:29)
Yes.
Charles: (29:29)
... the need for leaders to sit down and say exactly that. What are the values? What are the behaviors that matter?
I think you and I agree that culture is the consequence of values and behaviors. You put those two things together and that's the culture that happens. Culture is the consequence, not an input. And people are not thinking about that yet, I think. I mean, they're being forced to confront it more now, but still, I think that people are being too slow to really articulate what that is.
Lori Bradley: (29:53)
Absolutely. Well, and when you really lead with a company's values, it also helps people self-select out.
Charles: (30:02)
Yeah.
Lori Bradley: (30:02)
And so, I think in companies like Chewy, we're a very values-driven company, and we're all about pets and pet parents. And it's interesting because I think that it attracts a certain kind of people. Animal lovers are a certain kind of people.
So I think it's in companies' best interest to be very open and public and explicit about their values and about their operating principles. There are some companies now who are very good at that. It's like, "These are our operating principles."
And so I think not only does that help attract people who resonate with your company and your mission, but it also helps people self-select out, if they don't resonate with those operating principles.
Charles: (30:52)
Which is a good thing. I think companies are often too anxious about creating the possibility of people to self-select like that. But, ultimately, it's one of the great attributes of a business that is completely confident about, "We look for these people and not this." I was–
Lori Bradley: (31:05)
Definitely.
Charles: (31:05)
... talking to Nils Leonard the other day, who has built an agency with two partners, um, that within four years has been named agency of the year in the UK. And one of the things he was clear about when we first spoke five years ago, and is still true, which is, "We know the kind of people that do well here and that we do well with. And if you're not that, this is not the right place for you." And I think that confidence breeds success. We're obviously living in traumatic times, where, apparently, a global pandemic has been replaced by the potential threat of World War III. So, in the context of all of that, people are searching for emotional safety like never before, I think, in our professional lives.
How do leaders give them that with... in the context of what we're living in and in... and with everything that we've just talked about? How do you go about giving the people that work for you emotional safety, when you probably aren't feeling emotionally secure yourself?
Lori Bradley: (31:53)
Right. Oh, it's such an important topic. So, and you've touched on it. One of the best things leaders can do is take care of their own emotional comfort and their own emotional safety. And being open about that. I think it's okay for leaders to say, "You know, I'm going to take a day off because I just need to unplug from the news and I just need a day to decompress." And so I think leaders can really help by first acknowledging that they don't expect everybody to be heroes.
One of the things that a lot of companies have noticed during the pandemic is that people are taking less vacation. And so, part of it is, I think, because, in a lot of companies, the work has just ramped up so much and it's been a very, very busy time. But then I think also that blurring of work and home, and when you're in a situation where you can't travel, even if you wanted to take a vacation, people's vacation plans have been canceled. And so I think really encouraging people to take vacations, to take some time off, to unplug.
The work will still be here when you get back. That is super important. And then I've been doing a lot of reading and research on empathy. I really love Jamil Zaki at Stanford's work on empathy. And I think it's a required leadership skill that we probably should add to leadership competency models everywhere, because sometimes, someone's struggling, just that little moment, that moment of grace, that moment of empathy, of going, "I know how you feel. Can I help you with anything? What do you need to do to nurture yourself right now?" It can be incredibly refilling and refinishing the people just to connect on that level.
What I like about Jamil Zaki’s work is, in his lab, they've studied empathy and empathy has traditionally… psychology has been seen as a trait, like a personal attribute or a trait that someone has, but all of Jamil’s work is showing that it's actually a skill and it can be learned and it can be taught. And so I really feel like when we're designing leadership development programs, when we're coaching people, teaching leaders how to display empathy, and at the right time, would be really good in general, during this time.
Charles: (34:36)
And also making sure that comes from an authentic place, because there's–
Lori Bradley: (34:38)
That's right.
Charles: (34:39)
... there's nothing worse than somebody trying to fake their way to empathy. And you peel the first skin back and you're like, "This is bullshit." Right?
Lori Bradley: (34:46)
(laughs) Exactly. Yes. Yes.
Charles: (34:48)
"You are, in fact, lying to me about this and I don't trust you at all now."
Lori Bradley: (34:53)
No, it's such an important point. Well, and I think that... and that's where when you view empathy as a trait, you get there.
Charles: (35:04)
Yeah.
Lori Bradley: (35:04)
But it can be empty words, and as soon as someone... sometimes when you show empathy, you open up a torrent of feelings, right? And so it goes back to really understanding what empathy is. And it's not saying, "Let me go fix this for you." And it's not saying, "I completely, completely understand everything you feel," because everyone's on such an individual journey right now. We can relate and we can care how someone feels. But to say, "I know exactly how you feel," and then start talking about yourself, it's probably not the most effective display of empathy.
Charles: (35:42)
Oh, yeah. I see you've worked for the same people I have. Yeah, exactly that.
Lori Bradley: (35:46)
(laughs) Exactly. It seems like, "Oh, thank you for understanding me. Yeah, I hear you. Now, let tell you how I have it so much worse."
Charles: (35:52)
Right. "You think you've got it bad? You just wait."
Lori Bradley: (35:57)
(laughs). Exactly. That's not empathy.
Charles: (36:01)
No, it's definitely not. Last question for you today. How has your leadership been changed as a result of the last couple of years? How are you showing up differently? And, built into that, what are you afraid of these days?
Lori Bradley: (36:11)
(laughs) Because in the last... in our last, when we talked about what I was afraid of and I think it was vacation Bible school teachers (laughs) when we talked last time.
Charles: (36:22)
(laughs) I think that’s right.
Lori Bradley: (36:23)
I'll be very vulnerable and transparent. When I changed jobs in the middle of COVID, I felt like I was at such a fried place. And it wasn't from my last job, it was from my career for the last 20 years. I had been... barely pulled my head up for air and it had been grind, grind, grind. And you know what Corporate America can do to you.
And so, as I decided right in the middle of COVID that I was going to go to a new company, I said, "But something's got to change. I can't just keep grinding and pushing and I'm exhausting myself." And so I decided to take a week and go on a retreat. And so in between jobs, I went on a retreat and it was like exercise, it was meditation, it was classes on things I’m interested in, it was just great.
But I spent a ton of time just saying, "I'm probably... I'm not going to be new at very many more companies at this stage of my career. How do I really want to go in to my new job? And how do I want to approach it? And are there things in my leadership style that just get in my way, and how can I lose that?"
And so, one of the things I did was I realized that, as a leader, I put a lot of pressure on myself, historically, to have the strategy, have the vision, and know all the answers, really, really, really dive deep into all the details. And that's great if you can do it, but it's also hard and it's very time consuming.
I think what the retreat did for me is, it renewed my perspective on the importance of work in my life, in my career, on the importance of my family, and on the importance of my health. And so I feel like, as a leader right now, I'm so much more balanced, and there are things that I know at any company in the past, would have just set me off and I would have ruminated on it, or been flailing around going, "No, this isn't right. This isn't right." I'm such a more laid back leader now. My team might disagree with that, but when you have things going on like Ukraine and you have a pandemic and people don't feel safe, it puts life in perspective.
And so, I find that I lean on my team more now than I did before, as a leader. I'm more open and I'm like, “I'm just flat, tapped out. I've got to step away for an hour.” And it's amazing how the team rallies in, because they know that they have the right to do that, too. So they'll rally together. And so I think I've become much less of a micromanager. You know, you feel really vulnerable as a leader when you're sitting alone in your home office and your team’s everywhere. You can't micromanage anymore. And it's amazing how when I stopped putting that urgency and that pressure on myself, that the team just delivers beautifully. And it's just a more fun experience for all of us.
So I think that's how I've changed. I think COVID has rebalanced me as a leader, to remember humans first, family first, do great work, do exceptional work, but the work will be there and sometimes the work has to take a backseat, when our families need us or more important things happen in the world.
Charles: (40:03)
Yeah, I think it's such a brilliant perspective. And I am always struck by what happens when leaders, willing to take the risk and let go and create safe places for other people to be successful, how that works across the board for the team and for the leader and, therefore, for the business.
Thank you so much for joining me again today, and thank you for sharing so openly and insightfully and brilliantly. We love Chewy, our dogs love Chewy–
Lori Bradley: (40:29)
(laughs)
Charles: (40:30)
... and I think Chewy are very lucky to have you in such extraordinary times that we're living through. Thank you, Lori.
Lori Bradley: (40:35)
Oh, thank you, Charles. Always a pleasure.
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