Esther Perel on the power of relationally intelligent leaders

Esther Perel:  The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. And I don't think that this is any different at work.

We don't have enough contact with the people that we are working with.

Didier Elzinga: Actually as a leader, you need to think about in person contact as one of the most valuable. and finite resources that you have.

Esther Perel:  We are talking about burnout here. We're talking about loneliness here. And we're talking about the workplace here without understanding that they are interconnected.

Damon:  Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Culture First podcast. I am your host, Damon Klotz. Did you know that this is a special episode for several reasons? Reason number one, this is actually the fifth anniversary of Culture First. That's right. In December 2019, we released our first ever episode, which was with today's guest, Esther Perel. Since then, we have published over 80 episodes, which actually means, through your support, through your downloads, through your shares, from making training sessions about these episodes internally at your company, or just sharing them with a colleague, Culture First is actually in the most awesome way Top 1 percent most downloaded and listened to podcasts in the world. Considering that this is not a true crime podcast, I find that stat remarkable. So if you have listening to every single episode, which was a, I met someone at an event recently. He said, she's listened to every single episode of Culture First. So if that is you, thank you. Or if you've just found this show, thank you so much for tuning in and listening. The reason why I'm so excited to share some of those stats and say that it's our 5th anniversary is because, like I said, Episode 1 was with Esther Perel, and it's the most downloaded episode that we've ever had, which is why I'm so excited to be welcoming her back to the Culture First stage today. This is actually going to be the, uh, 3rd time that we've had a episode with Esther. Our 2nd episode was actually when, uh, I had my little Taylor Swift moment. And I wanted to release Daymond's version of the conversation with Esther. Now, what Daymond's version was, was actually the end to end conversation, not edited, from start to finish, the raw episode. And the reason I wanted to share that episode was, I think it actually showcased a lot of Esther's sort of, You know, uh, superpowers, which is her ability to get to know people, her master of sort of work as a relationship therapist. And the fact that it was that conversation where I got to sit down with her in person that really sparked a friendship. And that friendship is something that I'm, I really cherish and something that is still true to this day. So much so that I actually wanted to take that friendship to another level, which sounds quite meta when you're talking about a relationships expert. And no, I did not propose to Esther, but what I did propose to her was, you know, That, I thought it'd be really cool if she came on as a proper advisor to the company rather than someone who I had the ability to, you know, talk to or share conversations, you know, share conversations with or share ideas with. So earlier this year, Esther actually became Culture Amp's first ever external advisor. We're working on several really cool projects together. So yeah, watch this space. Plenty more to come from, um, you know, on that topic next year. So yes, this is the fifth anniversary. We're doing this at the end of 2024. So why this episode? Why now? What are we going to be talking about? Well, for this episode, I actually have brought in a special guest host, which is Culture Amp CEO Didier Elzinga, and he sat down with Esther to discuss Um, why she's more passionate than ever about trying to improve our workplaces. So you're going to hear them talk about subjects like polarization, why unsaid expectations are future resentments waiting to happen, and what can we learn from a couples therapist when it comes to conflict in the workplace. So it felt really fitting that this was the episode that was going to come out in December of this year, the five year anniversary of Culture First and the five year anniversary since episode one  with Esther. Like I said, this is a very meta episode. So yes, please enjoy. Thank you. This conversation with Culture Amp CEO, Didier Elzinga, and Culture Amp advisor, Esther Perel.

Didier Elzinga: Esther, I'm delighted to be here with you again. Different country, but we're together in recording.

Esther Perel: Different country, same accents.

Didier Elzinga: Same accents. I imagine many of the people that are listening to us today and listening to this recording, watching us, know you. Love your work and, you know, just waiting to hear what you have to say, but then there's going to be a group of people that maybe haven't. And so maybe let's start right back at the beginning for those people to help them understand why there's this connection between someone who's specializes in couple therapy, brings so much about the personal world with a organizational development company, somebody that's in the world of work. What's your interest in the world of work? And then I can talk a little bit about why we're so excited to learn from you.

Esther Perel: I was sitting here thinking just a moment ago.A few years back, I would not have been invited. I am a relationship therapist. Relationships in the workplace and in the corporate world are seen as soft skills. Soft skills are basically, feminine skills. You can hold them in high regard, but then when you have to put them into practice, the idealism wanes. And, and so, what has changed is not my interest or my work, it's that the work world has as technology and AI is entering and taking over many of the jobs that people have. We are asking what is uniquely human, and what is uniquely human are our relationship skills. And it is those aspects of our work that are now suddenly becoming essential leadership qualities.so, Relationship skills are no longer seen as soft. They are actually seen as the essence, the most important ones, the ones that are going to differentiate us from technology. And, and that's where a relationship therapist comes in with a lot of experience and we have a common language that we did not necessarily have before.

Didier Elzinga: think you've somewhat answered my question or my framing in terms of why we were interested in you. And I, I reflect on And

Esther Perel: why am I interested in you?

Didier Elzinga: Hmm.

Esther Perel: Huh. I'm interested in work. So this is why the workplace is interested in Estelle Perel. Why is Estelle Perel interested in the workplace? Because With the waning of religion and the lessening of all the social structures, there are two places today where people turn for their basic human needs of belonging, meaning, and identity, and that is their relationships, And their workplace. Never has the workplace come to mean so much where every second manager or leader says to me, why is that my problem? Why do I have to deal with these issues? I mean, what is it? This is not a work issue. And yes, it is a work issue. And so work and love are the two places where people have always turned, but are even turning more today with their major existential needs. And I am in dialogue with the workplace, with every person who sits in my office or in my podcast. I know the first question that many times we ask today is no longer, you are the son or the daughter of, or the child of, but it is, what do you do?Because what do you do has come to be a major part of who you are.

Didier Elzinga: And there's something you actually just said in there, which is actually a bit of a lightning rod in The world of work at the moment, which is every once in a while, somebody will come out and say, work should just be about work. And there's this desire to say, we're a, I think what they call, it's a purpose, a purpose led company. It's a bit of a misnomer. And what they mean by that is our company is set up to do this. So this is all we will talk about. And we're not going to talk about politics and we're not going to engage in any of these conversations. And I've always felt that Whilst that's seductive, because it's a nice idea, it also denies a lot of what people have to bring to work. And I guess that's a little bit of what you're tapping into too, which is we can pretend that it's not true, but work is about relationships and relationships are about whole humans.

Esther Perel: Yes, but I would start even a step before. If you want to say that this is just about work and it's about the mission of the company, et cetera, you are not really paying attention to the fact that the large companies of today are more powerful than governments. mean, the workplace. is at the center of our societies, economically, politically, socially, and culturally. And to deny that and to just try to close it off is, basically not reality. Then there is the fact that when the workplace says relationships are not important, what it wants to say is you leave your life behind when you come to work. And here we work and you leave your life behind is a strange thing because by definition we take our whole self to work. By definition, we take the conditions of our life, whatever is happening at home, whoever is sick, whatever struggles we have. comes with us to work. This notion that you bring your authentic self, we always have. We just don't always are conscious about it. But work has had this fantasy that you leave your problems at the door and you come to work to do your job. And today it realizes that in order to do your job with the kind of creativity, initiative, and accountability that we also want you to have, that actually means you have to bring your authentic self. The rest of you as well, that people in this kind of fantasy always said, you leave that, you leave your problems at home. And that has never been the case. It, you know, sometimes things change because they really are different. Sometimes things change because we finally put them together. Perceive that which has always been. And I think that's work has always been about relationships. Work has always been about relationships.And you know, work who until not too long ago was all family based. could you take relationships out of it? And still in the majority of the world, work is family based. It's not just large companies. So when it's family based. Everybody understands that it's about relationships. Everybody understands that it's about legacy and about intergenerational transmission and the role of the son versus the daughter, et cetera, et cetera. There's never been a separation. Then the corporate world created this artificial distinction, and now it is putting the pieces together.

Didier Elzinga: So one of the things that I've loved in, in talking to you and hearing you talk and listening to your podcasts is that when we're talking about work, what you're bringing is not the solution. So so much in, in, in the work world and the management science world is somebody going, I've studied a hundred of the best companies and I've distilled their way of doing innovation or the way they run. And so people want these panaceas, they want these answers to everything. And what I love about what you bring and what you've wrestled with is. Not the answers, but the questions and how to navigate all the complexity and that, you know, the first time we spoke, that was what spoke to me was like, ah, here's somebody who has wisdom. Here's somebody who has really insightful and powerful questions that can unlock things in organizations. And the conversation we had around polarization in London, for me, was just. You know, eye opening. So I want to talk in a moment about the dinner that we had in London, and questions that you used to open up that. But maybe we should just pause before we go in further and just kind of set the scene for anyone that doesn't know you, just to remind people who you are and then to talk Sort of set the scene for what we're going to go through. So, how would you describe yourself to someone who's never met you before?

Esther Perel: I'm a psychotherapist, first and foremost, which means I bring a certain discipline and a certain lens to the questions of health, mental health, and particularly relationships. I work with couples, families, individuals, and organizations, but I particularly focus on the relationships in those organizations and in couples. Couples is my preferred unit But that can be co partners, creative partners, romantic partners, because it is a unit that gleans a tremendous amount of information about how we go about being in relationship. Couples is the system that can bring bliss and the most extreme polarization. And so you learn a lot. A lot of the form. In relationship language, the content is less important than the form. The form drives the issues. How the system organizes itself around its relational impasses.And I've done that for 40 years. I have a podcast called Where Should We Begin and how his work that has now morphed into Where Should We Begin that basically is live sessions where you hear people, couples, individuals, families deal with their relationship stalemates and how they find openings in conflict, in disillusions, in their expectations, et cetera. And you listen, you basically learn to listen, and then as you listen, you learn to see yourself. Because we all do this. This is not just these people. And so it's one way to teach by telling you stories of others to which you say, Oh, I've been there too. then you listen to this with your team or you listen to this with your partner and you realize that, these people took that chance. Maybe I could do this too, or I would like to try something else. But you're doing it without being in a didactic format. You're in the format of storytelling.And that's it. How I would describe myself is as a cross cultural psychologist. I'm an author. I've wrote a few books, but the two main ones are Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs. and I'm a speaker.all in all, all of this comes together under one line. The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. And I don't think that this is any different at work. You can be doing a great job, be in a good company, but if you are working with people that keep you up at night and you are miserable and fretting, no amount of paycheck, no amount of free food and no amount of gyms, none of this will actually make up for it. But in the end, you love your job. In part, in large part, because you love the people that you're working with and how you feel loved by them.

Didier Elzinga: And I think what connects That's a long intro, right? But it's wonderful and it adds all that depth that you bring. And I think what connected me and connected Coltrane with you when we met is, you know, as a couples therapist, people are often coming to you because they have challenges and they have problems and they're seeking your help. But as you just said, when we get to hear that, and that's the beauty of where, where do we begin is you get to. Watch somebody else go through this and hear it. And then you reflect on it and you go, I do that too. Yeah. And so the universality of these lessons, that it's not just about trying to fix something that might be struggling. That's also how we get better. That's also how we create great relationships.

Esther Perel: So there's two things that makes me think of it. So one is, yes, I study relationships across culture. I think that that's a very important part of me. I speak nine languages. This is a major. Part of how I look at things. But the other thing is, relationship problems are different from technical problems. Technical problems, like Ron Heifetz says, have immediate solutions. Two plus two is four. There's no, you don't need two. Relationship problems often is about how you hold paradoxes, ambiguities, nuances. They don't have an immediate answer. They sometimes just are a solution that is not right or wrong, but better or worse. It is, it is about holding polarities. And that is a kind of problem that is actually the most challenging for most companies. It is also the most challenging in relationships. How can I listen to you? describe what happened last night if it's, if I was there and my story is completely different, how can these two stories coexist? One must be right, one must be wrong. And in the world of relationships, the degree of subjectivity that you grapple with is a whole different, you know, what is truth? What really happened? And all of that, it takes on a whole different meaning. Companies struggle with that because they are very good at technical problems. We need to hire, we need to agree, bring more people. We put more resources there. All of this is, doesn't create much emotion, but relationships brings a whole, you know, and the emotions is the ones you see and all the ones who are underneath who are driving this that are invisible, but that are actually. Driving it.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah. And that concept of holding a paradox, I think is what I want to explore with you today. We're going to talk a little bit about the paradoxes that managers and leaders have to hold and any advice you have for them.

Esther Perel: Okay. I'll do my best.

Didier Elzinga: just to close the loop on this and then let's go back to that night in, in London. How would you

Esther Perel: introduce me?

Didier Elzinga: I think I'll probably say many of the same sorts of things, but for me, the thread and I'll, share the thing that made me know that this was going to work. And it was, so I got introduced to my team and they're like, We should have Esther Perel on stage. she's a psychotherapist, she's a couples therapist, incredible. And I looked at her, that's really, really interesting. And I could kind of see it, but it was the, how is work? that's when the penny dropped because I saw the work you're doing with couples and I went, that's incredible. Personally, I found that fascinating.But then I saw you do it with, with founders, and that's where the penny dropped. And I realized, ah, this is exactly what work is about. And I remember interviewing a chief people officer and she said something to me where she said, look, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters, my whole job is, can I get, particularly senior people, but can I get people to have important conversations? Like that's the crux. And so when I think about what CultureAmp does, yes, we're a software platform, but ultimately what we're trying to do is make sure that the right conversations are happening throughout the organization. And so that's where all the pieces came together. And I'm like, we need to learn, we need to learn from this there. And so when I introduce you to somebody, or when I'm talking about why we're working with you, that's what I say is, you may not understand why We wanted to bring this person in from the outside, but as soon as you hear her speak, you will see that what she's talking about is the stuff we grapple with every day. And there's wisdom there that we can learn from. So let's go back to, I think it was last year, London. We had that dinner, and I think we had about 20 people in the room, and we were incredibly blessed to have you with us. And you brought out a pack of cards. Can you just briefly, for people that don't know what these pack of cards are, Say where they came from. And then I believe you've actually changed some questions. So, we asked a bunch of questions in the room that unlocked incredible experience.

Esther Perel: And now I have even better questions. Yeah,

Didier Elzinga: so maybe we can, play with those in a sec.

Esther Perel: So where should we begin is a storytelling game of cards. It's a social game. In which people come together to tell stories. I created it during the pandemic because I thought, wow, the social atrophy that is creeping up on us, what can I do besides therapy that makes people be together and have interesting conversations that are fun, that are meaningful, and that breed connection? I mean, that is, you know, a good conversation. also hopefully creates a connection. And what's a better way of doing it than asking good questions and questions that invite stories, not answers. So I created it, but never saw anybody play because it was the pandemic. but I knew that, This thing is going out in the world, and that people are using it on a first date with their family, with their partners, and with their teams, because it creates good conversations. And because when you are in a team meeting, you may not always remember the name of every person, but you will remember the stories that were told. And that will be the bridges. Stories are bridges for connection. Then I created V2 because the first version was when we were all at home. So I'd had a big box and it needed to sit on the table. The second version was after three years of traveling around the world and actually hearing better questions and hearing the ones that didn't resonate in the same way. So I replaced half of them. I simplified the game. I made the box smaller so that it's for us today as we are traveling again. You can just take a few cards and put in your pocket. And literally, It changes the meeting, it changes the evening, it changes the dinner in the company. And this is what we had. We had a conversation with 20 people who didn't know each other.All heads of

Didier Elzinga: Heads of people, big businesses, little businesses, all over the place.

Esther Perel: Right. And I myself remember at least four of the stories that were told that year, and I've had other dinners because they were so interesting, because they were a way of answering the question that you could not have anticipated, right? The last time I was really generous.

Didier Elzinga: Mm.

Esther Perel: That the last time I did something that was very generous and the person described it in this counterintuitive way where they were saving their child by not letting them eat the sweets that they wanted to eat and on the one hand it felt so depriving, and on the other hand, it was the most generous loving thing they could do, or the person who wasn't going to give money again to their sibling, because the sibling hadn't been responsible with the money, and the loving thing was actually to say no rather than to say yes. And I Everybody could relate to the universality of when no is more loving than yes.

Didier Elzinga: And the power in that room, I remember when people were leaving, the way people were interacting as they were leaving, as if they were leaving somebody that hadn't seen, was a long, lifelong friend that hadn't seen for 10 years. There was a depth of, connection. And I think that's the power. And for those that don't know who are watching, my background is in film. So storytelling is just at the heart, but these questions are such a powerful thing. So

Esther Perel: they're good. Questions. They invite serendipity. Should we just try one?

Didier Elzinga: Let's try one. Get us started. And then we'll get, to the terms of what we can do for managers and leaders.

Esther Perel: Why am I saying they're good questions? Let's let's,

Didier Elzinga: yeah. So we were, we were talking about them before and I was looking through the list and I saw one that I'd like to ask you. So can I go first? And then you can ask me. What?

Esther Perel: That's not really a question.

Didier Elzinga: No, you're right. That's a statement. What is the craziest thing that you did for money? The craziest?

Esther Perel: things, but one that.What jumped at, immediately at me when you asked the question was, Way back when, it was very expensive to, for me, to fly from Belgium to anywhere, but especially to New York, or from New York to Belgium. And I found out that you could fly for free or very, very cheap if you were a courier. And the condition was that you took no luggage. Just a little bag that you could take on the plane, but you could take two suitcases of mail. This is pre DHL and you were basically a human courier, and I did this quite a few times because it was the best and cheapest way to travel.

Didier Elzinga: I have this image of you getting on with this clear suitcases full of post. Huge mail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Esther Perel: And then somebody waited for you upon arrival from the courier company. You delivered your suitcase. It was like a mule for mail.And I wasn't the only one. A few of my friends, , we discovered that thing. And man, for quite a few years, this was, this is

Didier Elzinga: how you paid to get to the US. This is how you paid.

Esther Perel: Yes.

Didier Elzinga: Oh, wow. That's incredible. I haven't thought about

Esther Perel: that in a long time.

Didier Elzinga: And it's, yeah, that connection. So what, question would you ask me?

Esther Perel: What would you say is a risk that you took that changed your life?

Didier Elzinga: I think, when I think about my life, I mentioned just before that I worked in film, so that I've kind of got two chapters. I spent 13 years working for Hollywood, and then I left to start CultureAm.And so when I think back on why, it's probably the question I get asked more than anything. Why did you leave Hollywood to start CultureAm? And there's lots of reasons why. at the end of the day, that's a brutal industry. I got to the point where I was starting to feel like I needed or wanted to do more than I was able to do in that environment. But it was not an easy choice. And so I was walking away, I was a CEO at 26, I was working for Hollywood. Like I had, you know, many of the things that I would have dreamed of having, but I felt like I needed to do more. And as I was wrestling with this choice, something that my wife said to me really resonated and gave me the confidence and actually enabled me to take that risk. And so the risk I took was to leave. Rising Sun. What did she say? What she said was, you're young enough to fail. Like, yes, you've got all of this, but if you want something different, try and if it doesn't work out, we'll be okay. And that was actually the thing that allowed me to do it. And the little mental arithmetic was, do I ever want to do this? Yes. Okay, well, why not now? And that was the unlock. And then I walked away and it was several years before I had any validation I was doing the right thing. But if she hadn't said that to me in that moment, I'm not sure I would've had the courage to do it.

Esther Perel: Did you ever look back?

Didier Elzinga: Yes. Yeah. about two years in when things weren't working, well, and it wasn't, wasn't that they weren't working, but I didn't have anything to show for it. And I wondered whether that whole decision was a very selfish decision. And yes, that was a, that was a challenging time.

Esther Perel: I could ask a lot of questions, but

Didier Elzinga: this is the power. This is the power of those questions. They unlock deeper conversations. So,

Esther Perel: yes, but also imagine that you tell that story with your team or with a group of clients and basically how much instantly. If I have questions for you, so do the others. And that makes you a whole different person than this tech entrepreneur that I know nothing about. And it elicits curiosity and it elicits probing and different kinds of questions. And it creates the kind of interesting, meaningful relationships that people want to have at work. And, you know, the majority of young people today delay making family if they do for a good 10 years from where we were just 50 years ago, which means that work is the hub for a lot of their basic human needs. And that includes, you know, feeling a sense of self worth, a sense of being connected to others and all of that. And stories. Make that possible.

Didier Elzinga: So let's take this and let's go to heart of the matter. One of the things that we're seeing a lot of today, when we talk to leaders, we talk to people inside organizations, we see what the data says, iswhat we call a culture gap. And on the one hand, and some of this is driven by economics and some of this is everything that's going on in the world around us. On the one hand, a lot of leaders are looking at their organizations and seeing what they think of as a sense of entitlement. They're like, we need to drive productivity. We need to drive output. We need to have more of a performance culture. I'm hearing a lot of leaders talk about wanting to shift to a more performance orientated or outcome orientated culture. at the same time, in

Esther Perel: outcome oriented versus what, versus what was, what was it that they did before that they think wasn't outcome oriented. Well, I think it goes back to that use of the word entitlement. So that's not my word. That's the word that they're using where they're looking at it going, well, you know, there was a lot of free money before, you know, we were able to get away with a lot of things. Now you can't, we've got to run the business harder. We have to do more with less. And there's an economic reality that's true. So on the one hand, you have this sense of, we believe that our people are more entitled than maybe they should be. And there's probably some truth to that. On the other side, when you listen to what people inside organizations are saying, they've never felt more alone. the word that comes up is betrayal. So multiple rounds of layoffs, feeling like their development is no longer front and center. It's, you know, you should be lucky to have a job, let alone will you get promoted. And what's interesting to me is both of these things are in the same companies at the same time. And is one right? Is one wrong? Probably not. It's more complex than that. what are you seeing? How do you think about navigating this, complexity of the culture gap? Like if you're going to bring everyone together to move forward, presumably you have to have some alignment on what the world is like in these organizations. Yet I see a lot of polarization. I It is probably first and the leadership that needs to recognize the reality of the workforce, which is to actually acknowledge that. It's not just you should be happy you still have a job because that denies and we need you to do this job in order to satisfy our stakeholders. I mean, everybody's interdependent here. It's not, you know, you have

Didier Elzinga: to have a chicken or an egg first,

Esther Perel: but in relational language, you don't. Think like that. It's not the chicken or the egg first, because it's circular. Where does the problem start is not, it began here, which leads to that, which leads to that, is that you can start at any point along the circle you will see the loop. So what is the loop? it is indeed the case that a lot of people have been laid off and that other people are being asked to do the job for those who have been laid off because the expectations have not gone down and the desire for the kind of outcome is Not lessening because of that, which does put a lot of pressure on the people that are there. But the people that are there are not, you know, on the one hand, they have to say thank you. But on the other end, they're probably there because they are the better ones or the more needed ones. It's like, what is the part of the story that the other side doesn't want to acknowledge?is what you start with in relationship language. This notion that you have performance here and trust there, as if these are contradictory forces, is a false dichotomy. if you keep it as an either or, what do you focus on, you really will not move much. You need people who feel valued, to do the job. You can't just tell them that you should be afraid that they're going to be let go and that's going to motivate them. It will motivate them to do the minimum, but that doesn't, that's not the workforce you want. You want a workforce that takes initiative, that is creative, that collaborates, that, is a high performer, so to speak. sowhat creates the combination is, you want people to know that There is loyalty of some sort, some sort, you know, everybody understands a certain reality and you want people to acknowledge what we are creating if it has pressure with it. We understand that there is a change that is taking place. It is a change thatsome of it we control and some of it we don't control. It's not just the stakeholders, it's the global economy at large. And To acknowledge that. If you pretend that it's not happening, people are continuously thinking they think we're idiots. They think we don't get it. We get it very well. So it's a certain way of talking to each other with maturity, which actually the best leaders did during the pandemic. And they got their workforce to stay and to work hard from home. And you know, they basically didn't pretend nothing was going on and we're going to just march on. You know, they acknowledged it and they showed. a certain kind of vulnerability, meaning this is, you know, no leader had ever had to deal with this before, this kind of massive pivot and all of that. And they presented themselves and they said, I need you to do what we need to do. I rely on you for this. And wherever it sounded real, People went, people respected it, people understood they may get pay cuts for a while, et cetera, et cetera. They understood leadership in a time of crisis. So, that's the, first thing. And not to think, you know, there is performance and outcome is here, and then meaning and identity and belonging is there. It, these things, they're not there. Go together, and especially for the younger people, there's a generation before thatit was raised exactly what you talk about. You work and you don't, you know, but the people who go to work today for whom work has taken on a whole other meaning, won't give that up for performance. It's not a matter of entitlement. It's a matter of a shift in values. And if you are shocked, don't be so shocked because the majority of these people are your children. You raised them like this. They didn't come out of nowhere.

Didier Elzinga: Oh, we could spend the whole time talking about that.

Esther Perel: You understand? We talk about the young as if, but many of the leaders who are boomers, the people they're talking about are the age of their own children. It's not like they're this foreign creature that thinks differently. There's a different set of values, different set of priorities.

Didier Elzinga: And so how How would you advise or, guide a leader to think about this? Cause I think as you, you said, you've got to see the whole, but as leaders, you have to step into this. And you said something about being able to acknowledge and understand what people need to have recognized before you can see the whole, so how do you do that in this environment?

Esther Perel: I think you do it the way that people did it in the pandemic. times have changed, you know, we are facing different pressures. there's some things we cannot continue to do, there's some units we maybe need to close. and we will do the best we can, to ensure that people have job stability, that people continue to have career advancement, that people continue to feel that what they do is relevant. I think that one of the biggest challenges that we don't like to talk about, we talk about it, but around about, is the fact that We don't have enough contact with the people that we are working with. You know,what stands in the way of a lot of this is the fact that the majority of the people these days don't meet. Don't see each other, don't have proximity with each other.

Didier Elzinga: So the quality of our relationships is diminished. I

Esther Perel: mean, imagine raising a child, I mean, everybody knows the difference between raising a child that you see once a week, versus raising a child you see every day. it's the same with your workers. If you don't see them, if you see them in tiny boxes, if you see them when half their attention I mean, on what basis do you want to create the kind of engagement, loyalty, accountability, trust that are the major relational dimensions that are going to connect with performance?

Didier Elzinga: So I want to come back to trust and performance because there's a big piece there, but I want to chase this thread right now. Obviously, everybody is wrestling with the issue of in office, out of office, on Zoom, not on Zoom. I think what you said, I think everyone would agree with, that all things being equal, being in person is better, but that's not always available or possible. A lot of companies have now got people all over the place. So, once again, what, guidance might you have if I'm a leader or a manager, Trying to think about how I build stronger relationships when I can't rely on having everyone in the same place all the time.

Esther Perel: I mean, honestly, a piece of this is about creativity and a piece of this is about the fact that the leadership themselves find it, we all find it very comfortable. to work from home and for many of the things it is. So it's not a just get back into the office to sit there for 45 hours a week. But there are certain things that you really need to know. These need to be done in person. So if it's a small group of four people that need to meet or two people, you know, I think that the one time, once a week, 45 minutes, even a good checking, which is more than some people get, is not enough to create engagement and everybody knows it, but we are confronted between what we know would work better and the convenience that we have come to sit in. The other thing is that. You know, it's the same for therapists. I mean, we are working and more and more we do online work and we know that it's not the same because there's something about us sitting here physically. There's two bodies. They're breathing the same air. We're talking, we're looking at each other. We actually have real eye contact, which you never get on a screen. So mirror neurons can really fire. Connection can really made. And What do you do? You see what needs to be done and you do it on a per needs basis. You don't just do it on a per hour basis, but you make sure that people meet. and it's not just they meet off site and things like that. If you want them to come in once or twice a week, don't just say, we want you one day a week in the office. You want to say for these particular tasks or these meetings or these collaborations, we need to be in person and we're going to do that for the duration of this task, we will meet three times a week or two times. So it's specific to the project. And people know why they're coming rather than just, I need to show up once a week.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah, you and I were talking about this because I know this is this whole question of in person is something that's really strong for you as well. And where my brain went when you were saying it was thinking about in person as a finite and valuable resource. Because I think pre COVID For many people, you didn't have to worry about people being person because they were. And so it

Esther Perel: was the reverse. Yeah. Working from home and being remote and being on, a particular kind of leave was the, the exception that you had to justify that you could do as much work when you were not in the office. Now you have to do it in reverse.

Didier Elzinga: and I think that's the thing that is really powerful for me in this is I think a lot of leadership conversations are still about should we or shouldn't we, you know, there's value in having people in the office. What I love about this concept is actually as a leader, you need to think about in person contact as one of the most valuable. and finite resources that you have. Correct. And to your point, when do you use it? How do you use it? How do you be intentional? And that's part of your job as a manager is to optimize how resources are used.

Esther Perel: Correct.

Didier Elzinga: And that's not a conversation we're having. So is that

Esther Perel: so? Yeah, it's not. It's so obvious to me.

I

Didier Elzinga: mean, no, because most of it just goes back to It's not a

Esther Perel: principle. It's not a principle. It's part of leadership. Anything having to do with creativity, collaboration, mentorship, learning, social relations, watching your manager handle other people. You cannot learn it, but by being in the situation.

Didier Elzinga: And what you said before resonated with me too. It's not just saying, hey, whenever we're doing creativity, let's make sure we're in the office. It's you as a leader saying, I need the two of you to be together on this. That's correct. And I'm using my, position to make that work. So I think that's a super important part of it. What about when you can't? So, let's say you're working with a team and everyone's distributed around the world, so the company can't afford to bring everyone together. What advice or tips do you have to make the best with what you have from a relationship perspective? What should you do or what shouldn't you do that might be better? We spent

Esther Perel: a few months in my own company our entire meeting. weekly during the pandemic when we knew we were not going to be able to meet but I'm saying the pandemic because it's when we learn to, we put these things in practice and then we decided why do we just do this in the pandemic? we can do this when we're not in lockdown and we actually began doing the card game. Every meeting, we would take one or two questions and just ask each other. because what happens on the Zoom meeting is that everything that is around, you know, a meeting is gone. You turn on, you do your 30 minutes, you turn off and half the time, you know exactly from the eye level of the people that are doing other things. I mean, the level of attention, but once you start to ask this more personal question, you know, of the beautiful questions that we asked in the pandemic is that I asked my team and we said, what was one of the questions that stayed with you? Something that brought me joy this week in the midst of, you know, at that time, that was a very important question. Something that actually animated you when you're like just on vigilant mode. But you can ask questions, you know. Any, there's 200 questions in the deck on a Friday, on whatever meeting you have, because it basically says, I'm listening to you with a different quality of attention. I'm paying attention to who you are, and then we are going to talk about what you do, and then I'm going to understand who I'm trying to collaborate with. You create circumstances for people. to tell you where they're sitting, why they're there. The majority of the younger people are not in their own office. They're in their bedroom next to, you know, this is something I was trying to highlight as well. We are talking about burnout here. We're talking about loneliness here. And we're talking about the workplace here without understanding that they are interconnected. If I'm sitting the whole day alone, Trying to do a job, motivate myself without seeing other people working. There was a time we used to go to the library to study for a reason. And that connection to the burnout where I'm wondering, why am I doing this? It feels so completely disconnected from everything. You have to put the pieces together and they come together by, if you can't do it in person, you create as much of a experience that is in person. You know, one of the things that, for example, I know that is used in, Long distance couples is we tell them, don't just call each other, you know, to tell about the day when you're busy cooking, when you're busy working, just leave the screen on. So you're doing what children call parallel play. You know,

Didier Elzinga: tell me more.

Esther Perel: Parallel plays what little children do before you learn to play together. You play each next to each other and you do your blocks, which you did with each other, and you are in per like fishers. Mm-Hmm. fishermen. Mm-Hmm. . You're a fisher woman. You know, you, when you're fishing, you're doing parallel. Each one is,

Didier Elzinga: yeah.

Esther Perel: You know.So it's, you have face to face and you have side by side, parallel place, side by side. But from side by side, you want to create face to face. So instead of just meeting to report, you leave it on as if we're working. and then you can tell, Oh shit, I can't get this thing done. I can't figure this out. And then the other person can come back in. So you're, creating, you're lowering the walls actually that exist, you know, in that are part of your reality. So it's, it's simulations like that. It's interactions, small micro interactions that you would have in normal life. and it's, Conversations that are not part of the typical online conversation that bring back the connection between people.

Didier Elzinga: Less transactional, more relationship.

Esther Perel: And

Didier Elzinga: something you said yesterday, when you were talking to Trevor Noah, really stuck with me. We

Esther Perel: can't think, we can say one name and everybody knows.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah. Most of the people watching this probably will. but you were saying something really beautiful that really stuck, with me in the context of being on Zoom calls. Yeah. And it was about listening and that listening is a whole of body experience and that when you listen truly you actually shape or, support the person that's speaking and you, you hear more not just because you're actually listening but because you enable them to say more. And it made me reflect that it's so easy on Zoom to They're not going to notice if I respond to this email or they're not like, and to disengage. And you're like, at the superficial level, I'm here, I'm listening. And I think we forget about the cost of that. Could you just explore that a little bit? So

Esther Perel: there are two parts to this. When I was telling to Trevor Noah asked me about listening and I said, there are two parts to listening that I would highlight right away. The first one is indeed that we don't just listen with our ears. I listen to you with my eyes, I listen to you with my smile, I lean in, I breathe differently. If you tell me something scary, you notice my breath, move back, my whole body is involved. We are embodied creatures so far. And that's the first thing, you don't get any of that. I mean, I mean, You just see this, if, if, and then the second part of the listening is that therefore the quality of my listening, how I listen to you is actually what is going to shape how you talk to me. This is true for any conversation, manager, feedback sessions, you name it. How I listen. Creates how you talk. It's that kind of co creation. The depth you will go, the openness you will have, the vulnerability, the honesty, all of it. So the listener is not just the recipient. The listener is a co creation of the speaking. And the speaking will also create the listener. How you speak will influence how I listen. If you start yelling at me, if you start leaning in, if you, that whole thing. Now, the second part was on Zoom, you have a thing that we have begun to use a term for that doesn't come from this area. It's called ambiguous loss. Ambiguous loss is a term of grief. And I think it's extremely important to apply it here because there is an experience of grief. That experience of grief is one of the most important features of the burnout. And the grief is we are here together. We are talking, I'm seeing you, and yet you're there, but you're not present. Or I'm there and I'm not present. And that means that ambiguous loss is,it's usually very quickly described as if somebody has Alzheimer's. They are physically present, but they are emotionally or psychologically gone. And if somebody is deployed or disappeared, they are physically absent. miscarriage, but they are psychologically and emotionally very present. And in both cases, you don't know if it's this or that. You can't really resolve it. Am I with you or am I actually not with you? That ambiguous loss has become an essential feature of loneliness. Modern loneliness experiences ambiguous loss. I'm sitting next to you and I'm doing this or you're doing that. And you're talking about something really important about your project. And I go, uh huh. I mean, the amount of time I see faces and nobody says anything, and one person is talking and there is no response. That is ambiguous loss. That connects to loneliness. That connects to burnout.

And that's why we're in the mess we're in, you know. So

Esther Perel: the leader, be creative, be flexible, be relevant. Don't just do it arbitrarily. Come in. Have good reasons. If you can, fly them to whatever places. If you can't, make sure that they have not a 30 minute, but a good two hour session and they can have lunch together in the middle and make a cup of tea as they talk so that they are really in a relationship and encourage them to do so because a lot of people don't know they can.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah, what you just said there really sticks with me, particularly with people we work with ongoing, like our peers and our teams and so on. That idea of, let's have lunch together, go stick the laptop in the kitchen while we're making lunch and talking. We don't always have to have meetings in a transactional way, we have them in a relationship way. It's

Esther Perel: incredible what changes when people, you know, go into the kitchen and, what are you having for lunch? And suddenly there is a relationship, you know, that, that relationship will support the task. The task cannot fill the gaps of the relationship, but the relationship will enrich the way you do the task.

Didier Elzinga: Say that again.

Esther Perel: The task cannot fill the gaps of the relationship. We can talk 10 times about this report that we have to make, but that doesn't Yes, yes. But if we actually have had a moment where we, what music are you listening to right now? And you know what music are you listening to? What are you eating for lunch right now? The stuff that is normal if we were together physically, that is what we would be asking. You know, what do you do after work this evening? That will reinforce, okay, let's go back to the report. We've recharged, we all know that we work much better when we are trying to please the people we're working with. And we know that we were better when we're trying to please them, not out of fear, but out of liking.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah.

Esther Perel: Real liking.

Didier Elzinga: So zooming out. Back to this conversation around performance and trust.I remember you had a conversation with me and you were talking about a company that you worked with and you made a comment that really resonated. Well, I don't know if it resonated. It just struck me when you said it, which was, and you, you rephrase it cause I'll probably get it wrong, was something like a lot of the leaders in their forties struggled with authority. And was that that they didn't have it or they didn't know how to use it?

Esther Perel: You know, What's interesting is And this goes back to your question about why a relationship person in a company like this is that you start to see trends, then you see them across the board. What you see in a company is what we see in families, is what we see between parents and children, is what we see between teachers and students. You know, this debate between compassion and accountability. debate or what we call between attachment and responsibility or between empathy and responsibility. It's probably a better way of saying the, the distinction between empathy and responsibility, the, you know, as if these things are Mutually exclusive, first of all. I mean, a parent that is only empathic is not effective.

Didier Elzinga: And

Esther Perel: a parent who is only about accountability is not effective.

Didier Elzinga: And same for leader.

Esther Perel: And same for leader. You know, there was a generation of parents before that were often very disciplinarian. And we taught them to become more related and more empathic. Now we have a generation of people that have been raised with a lot of this empathy and a lot of what you call compassion versus accountability in your work. And what we realize is that they have a hard time. They are in a position of authority, but they have a hard time embodying it, living it, saying to people, I expect you to do this, and this needs to be done when, and this is how I would like this to, you go and do this, because there is this notion that, you know, authority takes away from the other person's sense of agency, sense of autonomy, sense of authenticity, I mean, all of that.

Didier Elzinga: people might be surprised to hear you say that. They might think, well, you're here to talk about relationships and you're teaching me to be more empathic.

Esther Perel: No,

people do not understand that is such an interesting,

Assumption. Yes. About, the person who is interested in relationships is all about empathy. Relationships are systems. These systems are made up of interdependent parts. What one part does will affect the other. So responsibility or accountability. Which is not the same as blame, which is not the same as shame, are essential, are essential because it creates the levels of differentiation in a system where this person did not do something that led to the other person to then do something else and that's why this thing is not finished. You need to be able to track that thing. If you don't have individual responsibility, you actually are compromising the sense of agency. And the system, not just of the individual, of the system. If I cannot come to you and say, I'm struggling with this, I'm having a problem there. This is not happening because I'm late here. I know this is going to influence those. And you don't see yourself as part of a larger entity. Then you begin to hide, or you begin to manipulate, or you begin to blame, or you begin to deflect the responsibility. You do all the things that people do in a system that doesn't have accountability.

Didier Elzinga: And so If we stay at the leader level. You made a real interesting comment kick, this whole thing off, which was that you see people that don't know how to use or hold or embody, which was the word you used, embody, accountability or responsibility?

Esther Perel: No, because they see it as violence. They see it as cruelty. They see it as compromising the individual. there is a whole culture that has lodged itself around what does it mean to be in an authority and often they confuse authoritative with authoritarian.

you may find yourself more on the empathy side, but you may have surrounded yourself with other people who compensate for you and who make sure that the other aspect, a relationship needs both. But even A system, a company needs both.

Didier Elzinga: But I, what I hear in you, the challenge, which I think is the right challenge, is yes, you find people that complement you out of the leadership team and other things, but also as a leader, that is part of your job. So if it's not natural, then you practice. Then you practice. And you learn.

Esther Perel: Like, listen, this is, anybody on the parent relationship may find that analogy useful. We are teaching today a lot of parents to be able to say no.

Didier Elzinga: Mm hmm.

Esther Perel: I'm using the family because it's another, it's useful sometimes to go think, how does this apply elsewhere? And what can I take from that back into the workplace? Many parents, many teachers today, many leaders today, have a struggle saying no because they don't want you to feel bad about the no. When in fact, my job is to say no when it's needed, and your experience is to feel bad about it when that's what you feel. And those two should co exist. Yes.

Didier Elzinga: Yes.

Esther Perel: My job is not to make sure that you understand why I had to say no. A parent cannot ask a child to validate them or legitimize their authority, and neither do we need to put this on our employees. We have to carry that, and if that's a challenge for us, we need peer groups of other leaders where we discuss the challenges that we face with being able to say, ah, then people come back and they say, but if somebody starts to cry, if somebody starts to cry, then you tell them this seems to affect you a great deal. I understand that. How can we help you with that? But not justify yourself, not hope that the other person will not feel bad about something that probably is going to somewhat make them feel bad because you told them they had three days and now you tell them they have three hours. I would be upset.I'm allowed to be upset and do it. And we say that to the children too, you're allowed to be frustrated that you won't get an ice cream and you won't get an ice cream.That's leadership. That's authority. The authority knows something because the authority is accountable to other things. The parent knows a reality that the child doesn't know. And we can't ask the child to know that reality. But it is the role of the parent to hold that reality. Next level is, now I'm teaching you accountability. I'm teaching you that if you need to go to your class, you need to do your gym class, your baseball, whatever, you need to know when to leave in order to get there on time. That is accountability, right? I teach you that. If I go with you all the time, you don't learn the accountability. If I make sure that you're getting out the door, you don't learn the accountability. Not only don't you learn the accountability, but you don't learn the responsibility because I feel the fear more than you and it's your And this is what has happened in parenting. And this is a part of what is happening sometimes in leadership. So this dichotomy is this. You don't have a thriving relational system, neither do you have a thriving individual if you don't have the integration of responsibility and empathy of individual and collective of agency and compassion. These things go together. Traditionally, they are divided in gender. They are genderized. They are divided in parents, and they are divided in types of leaders. I think that this is a time when they can become a little bit more androgynous on all front. These are qualities, and these qualities are essential to any healthy relational system, which means to any company.

Didier Elzinga: And I think no matter where you feel you're naturally inclined, we probably all need to be better at both. we need to be better at holding that accountability, embodying it, and practicing. And, and I love what you said about, you know, it's my job. To say no, it's my job to make the call, and it's their job to be upset about the decision, but the decision doesn't change. And you also said something else really beautiful in that, which I think where a lot of leaders and managers struggle, and where I think therapists have the upper hand, was that, oh, this seems to have affected you, and you're upset. Can I help you with that? I'm not going back to the thing that kicked it off. I'm not trying to change the fact that this thing I've said to you is you cried in response to something I said. I can help you with your emotion, but I can't change that. Can you unpack that a little bit more?

Esther Perel: It's that once you've said, my role is to say no, and part of your role is if you are upset about it, you're entitled to be upset about it. It's, it's part of your experience. Then you basically say,It's not just how I help you with the emotion, it's how I help you, you know, with the challenge that you are facing.

Didier Elzinga: And

Esther Perel: by the way,this is to do what you said before, what's very interesting in companies is that if they have a leader. A CEO, schools do this too. If a school has had a principal that was very good at fundraising, the next time they bring in a principal who's very good at pedagogy and education. If they've had someone who's good at pedagogy and education, but you know, same with leadership in a company. They, you know, if you had a manager who was very strong on the empathy front, but didn't get enough things done. you be sure that the next manager who is brought in is usually brought in on the basis of the deficiencies that were identified in the previous one.

Didier Elzinga: Yep, it's interesting you say that. When I was at Rising Sun, I was there for 13 years, I was the CEO for 5. And when I chose to leave, it was The founders who had taken me from employee number five and made me the CEO, were upset. Like for them, it was a betrayal that I chose to leave. And so they accepted it and so on, but it was a little difficult. And so one of the things that they did is when they hired the next CEO, I had no hand in that. They just sort of said, okay, fine. You know, we'll go get another CEO. And to your point, the person that they hired was the exact opposite of me. He only lasted a year. So I think they overplayed that. but it was amazing that you're right.

Esther Perel: you look for the proclivities in the next person that are the deficiencies of the previous person. And it usually is the yin yang between, you know, responsibility, accountability, performance, money, you know, you could put it yin yang, you can put it male, female, you can put it in characteristic terms, but it is. Always the case. that, I don't know if there's ever been a study on this, an empirical study, but ethnographic study from my end is like, this is, what people do when they mate for the next time and they remarry. They also do the same thing.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah.So we've, we talked a little bit now about, leaders being more able and more capable to take the responsibility side. When we were having a conversation yesterday and we were talking about compassion and was talking about, trying to balance those two. And so often where it comes in is, you know, somebody striving to hit their number and something's going on in their life or, you know, something needs to be done, but the person can't get it done by the time. And, you know, So, as a leader, you get confronted with the situation where the outcome that the business needs and what the person perceives that they need in that moment are in conflict. And you said something really interesting to me that if a person comes to you as your direct report and says,I'm struggling with this thing that you've asked me to do for these reasons, that that itself is an act of accountability.

Esther Perel: Correct.

Didier Elzinga: That's a very

Esther Perel: important thing is to, if I come to tell you I'm late, I'm delayed, I can't get this in, I'm missing some pieces, I don't know where to find them, that that in itself, if you listen at the first level, what you're hearing is I cannot. but if you watch what the action just said, it said, I'm part of a system. That system makes me have a manager. I am coming to this manager to tell themin an interdependent fashion that I cannot, that is an act of accountability.If you don't listen to the words, that's, but you look at the action and the meaning of the action, it is accountability. And so the first thing is basically, if you want to create psychological safety in a company is to say, I appreciate that. You know, and to make this also part of the culture so that people don't come at the last minute because tomorrow morning is due, but that they actually really come early on when they say, this doesn't seem to work. And that is what is so hard to do for a young person because they think they should be able to do it all themselves because they were told you need to do this. And so that's where the in person makes such a huge difference. Again, you can see,

Didier Elzinga: I think you're, are you struggling? You seem stressed. Can I help? Yes. Yes.

Esther Perel: Yes, or, or how's it going as I'm walking past you and you say, say it's going okay, but your eyes are saying something else and I say, come inside the office for a second. And I ask you two, three questions and then I suddenly realize there's a huge part of this information that you didn't get. Of course you can't get this thing done.

Didier Elzinga: And so what, as a leader, what do you do in that moment? So first of all, that's an unlock for me, realizing that this person's not shirking their responsibility, they're seeking to lean into it, but I still have a decision to make. What do I do in this moment? Do I enforce the responsibility and say, well, this is your task and you just need to get it done? Do I take it on?

Esther Perel: No, because if you take it on, then you no longer have a problem to solve in the other person. That's something you said to me yesterday that I thought was very clever. If it becomes my problem, then I can't help you. So it's really, the issue is this, it's not personalized, this is the project that needs to be done. what do you need? You know, you seem to have a good understanding of what is missing. Do you have a sense of what could help? Have

you thought that through? What are the pieces you miss or who needed, who you need to be in conversation with It would be amazed how often people have actually good ideas about that or how often they've never actually asked the second question. They know what's not working, but they haven't asked themselves what would actually make it work. So that's this next question is, what do you need? What does the project need for these problems not to exist? Who is involved? Who is needed? And what is needed from them? How long does it take? Have you already gone and approached them? Because they may have gone and approached them. What response did you get? Did you go again? Mm-Hmm. . You know, if you have a younger generation who has been writing on text and when the per there is no answer coming, they don't text you again.

Didier Elzinga: Mm-Hmm.

Esther Perel: So what you find yourself telling you often is, have you asked again, have you found out why they couldn't deliver this to you? And now sometimes you may actually identify a whole systemic leak So It's very short, this is three, four minutes of asking questions to figure out what is going on. And then, is there anything specific that I can help you with? Or is there anything that I need to ask this? It's a chess game. And because it's not visual, because it's not happening in front of you, you have to ask a few more questions in order to be able to create the scaffolding in your head.

Didier Elzinga: And for me, this ties to some of my own personal work, and we were talking about this before as well, on the concept of compassion. And so we talk about empathy or compassion, and one of my realizations was thatI've thought about compassion to begin with as very much being, you know, the ability to perceive someone else's suffering and to, you know, to see it and to hold it. But that last bit of the holding it was, I would need to resolve it. And so I felt like I was being compassionate because I saw the suffering but then to resolve it I either had to ignore it or somehow compartmentalize it or I had to try and do something that if I wasn't seeking to solve it I wasn't being compassionate and one of my own personal learning journeys has been trying to appreciate that the true difficulty in compassion is being able to see it and to feel it and to not be able to solve it and to be a witness to it.

Esther Perel: The interesting thing is that if you, you know, we always talk about fight and flight and freeze, but the next one is fix.

Didier Elzinga: Yes.

Esther Perel: You know, there's a few different responses we have to the anxiety of others. The issue is the, our ability to be able to sit with somebody else who may be upset, anxious, dysregulated, without taking it on fix is another form of,

Didier Elzinga: I'm just taking it

Esther Perel: Reptilian brain. I'm going to fix it to make it go away so that you don't, you know, because I can't stand your being in this shaky place.The interesting thing is, I'm very interested in, first of all, the word compassion being used in the workplace like that. I think

Didier Elzinga: Well, for me, that was a personal thing. So that was me in the world.

Esther Perel: In the world. But I think there's a commonality. Term that I like a lot. In my field, we call it fierce intimacy.In the business world, it's often called radical candor. It's the combination between I'm direct and I care.Today there's this notion sometimes that if you are direct, you don't care because social media has kind of distorted this notion so that it becomes, you know, insensitive directness, you know, or sensitive indirectness.

Didier Elzinga: Yes. Those are my terms. It's not the language that those sensitive

radical candor is very popular in the business world. And I heard somebody say something which really resonated with me where they said, when people are thinking about, radical candor, they often talk about brutal honesty. Yes. But the challenge in a lot of workplaces is it's too much brutal and not enough honesty. Because I think the power is in the honesty.

Esther Perel: Yes, and I would say that real honesty involves care.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah.

Esther Perel: In relationships. Real honesty involves, involves care. It's like I'm saying this to you. Now there's a way in which if I don't say this, there's a kind of conflict avoidance that is taking place at this moment where I don't want to bother. I don't want to get in the mess with you. And so I avoid anybody who disagrees with me. This is on a larger cultural level. This is entering companies as well. If I sit with you and I tell you something. And I take the time to sit and to look at you and to organize myself. I've thought about this. This is not just coming out of my impulsive self, you know, I care. And it means I believe in you. It means I have expectations. It means that I think you can do better.If I, you know, the dismissal, the kind of disregard, the kind of, why bother that is happening on society that is creating more divisions is,

It's a lack of care and it does, it's, it's not good for democracy altogether. So it's not good for companies either. It's likeyou sit, you do a real evaluation, you do a real feedback, you do, you know, and that means that you need time. You can't just beat a 45 minute transaction. You need to check how is your brother doing, how's your mother, I heard your father was ill. As you said

Didier Elzinga: earlier, the task doesn't fill the gap in the relationship. We need

Esther Perel: the relationship and it's terribly misnomed as small talk. It's terrible. It's everything that creates care, compassion, warmth, liking, kindness. It's the cushioning that then you can say, you know, how much I care about you. I really, you know, we've worked now together for a year and a half. And, uh would you like me to, you know, how direct you can even say, how direct would you like me to be with you? They have a lot of things I would love to say. And I want you to know something. If I do this, it's because I really believe in you. I think that there are places where you cut yourself short. And I want to give you a few situations that we have discussed together. And You lay it out, you don't mince your words, and then you come back each time and you, each time you reiterate, I'm saying this because I could say nothing, but then you're going to go around continuing to think that all is going swell

Didier Elzinga: when it's

Esther Perel: not. And I would think that that's a terrible thing to leave you in this place. So you're not going to have a good night. I know that. I didn't have a good night when people did that to me. But I thank them till today. And I'm not gonna tell you that you're gonna thank me. But I am gonna know that I did the right thing by you.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah.

maybe to bring this all together, you used a specific word that I would love to just get you to elucidate. Expectations. Expectations. Because you and I were talking about this before, and I think very much, In the conversation you just framed, in the way of speaking you just spoke, what's your phrase on expectations? Because I loved it when you shared it with me.

Esther Perel: I have two views on expectations. The one I just gave you is very much there too, which is stated expectations. In this context, not all contexts, but in this context, a stated expectations means I respect you.And therefore I think you can do better.And I respect you. And therefore I'm telling you what I think is really going on. And I'm taking the time togive you a version of what's happening that may be different from the one you carry. That's stated expectations that are realistic in a particular context. Unexpressed expectations. Are often premeditated resentments.

Didier Elzinga: Unexpected, sorry, unstated expectations are often premeditated

Esther Perel: resentments.

Didier Elzinga: Resentments. All right, unpack that. I love it.

Esther Perel: I expect you to do something that I've never told you that I expect from you, and then I'm resentful that you don't know about it because on top of it I have the notion that you should know what I expect without my having to tell you. You should know. And this, you should know, comes in, in romantic life is very big. If you knew me, if you loved me, you would know, you would be inside my belly, you would figure it out. You know, there's this idea that being known today means that you are inside the other person rather than that you're curious to sit next to the other person and listen.So if I expect something from you, and this also is if the leader expects something from the employees, but they've never really clarified it. And then they get all upset because the employee didn't, or vice versa, but you know, we know that the leader has the permission to state expectations in a way that the employee doesn't necessarily.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah.

Esther Perel: They can't say what I would like from you unless the leader says,

Didier Elzinga: yes.

Esther Perel: So it, there is a hierarchy, there is a power dynamic and that's, how it is. But if I, as a leader, have expectations from you or from my team. And I've never made them clear, but you see me all upset or resentful, you know, huffing and puffing or, you know, because they didn't get met. You have to take responsibility for this, you the leader. And understand that in this context, you need more explicit, stated expectations. You can't expect people to just know. And that happens all the time. And then be resentful because they didn't. And then want them to take responsibility for something that you should take responsibility for. Much of relationship mapping in companies and in all systems is seeing how people deflect responsibility to others that they should carry. That's the accountability.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah, and it starts with yourself.

Esther Perel: It starts with yourself. It's you taking responsibility over your part in a system of interdependent parts.

Didier Elzinga: Yeah.

Esther Perel: But you should at least own yours.

Didier Elzinga: And it ties to the, I have a, not a mantra, but a line that I have been using for the last six to nine months, which is, I don't know where I heard it, but when I heard it, it resonated and it became the thing that I write at the top of my list. And it is, everything that I want is on the other side of a difficult conversation.

Esther Perel: That's beautiful.

Didier Elzinga: And it's a reminder to have the courage to go do it, but also to recognize that if I choose not to have that conversation, I'm also choosing to walk away from the thing that I think is important. And it's actually been really powerful in So

Esther Perel: this goes directly with the conversation we just had before when, where you do radical candor is to say, and sometimes I think it's okay for the leader to say, these conversations are difficult. They're difficult for me too. You know, it's hard to say the truth to people.It's hard.But if I don't, I will not sleep well, and you will be left floundering.So everything I want, I want you to do better, is on the end, is on the other side of a difficult conversation, to tell somebody difficult things that you know, Are either gonna upset them or they're gonna be angry at you because the leader has feelings too. Mm. Some leaders don't wanna be disliked. Some people wanna be seen as nice, some people, you know?

Didier Elzinga: Mm.

Esther Perel: So you become a manager, not because you have good relationship skills. Often you become a manager because you are good at the task.

Didier Elzinga: Yes.

Esther Perel: And you've been promoted because of your excellence in the task. And you should be getting training on how to become better in relationships.

Didier Elzinga: And that's why we brought you on this show, to actually have this and make this available to managers and leaders. And we could talk for hours. we've probably already spoken for the editors will be complaining when they talk to us. But, this has been just an incredible pleasure. Thank you. And there's so many sentences in that. Even I want to go back and listen to the transcript because sessions I've had, interviews I've had, meetings I've had, I'm like, I could have done that better. So thank you. You send me the transcript. We'll send you the transcript and we'll both use it. All right. Thank you. It's a pleasure.