What you'll take away from this chapter:

In this chapter, we'll explore the ways in which you can leverage your high EQ to build customer personas, continue to develop and improve your product, and make your teams work more effectively together.

As Starboard Grew

With Jill's coaching, Maria was able to update her company documentation and tell a better story to investors. In addition, the work she had done empowered her to gain clarity on her business and gain additional traction in the market, completing initial software development and landing key customers. She had leveraged that momentum and, after several investor pitches, she was able to secure a modest amount of funding, or a seed round, for her company, which enabled her to scale more quickly.

In just one year post-funding, Maria's business was growing at an incredible pace. She'd hired multiple people, including Hannah, who not only led multiple development projects but also served as a key customer support contact. Hannah was convinced that at some point she would probably start her own business, but joining Maria's team as an early hire enabled her to see how a startup could work and build her leadership muscle across multiple domains. Starboard had sold her initial software solution to multiple medium-sized businesses and was preparing to scale into enterprise accounts (accounts for large customers where the average order size may be significantly more because there are significantly more licensed users for the account).

Jill now served as a formal member of Maria's advisory board and stopped by the office, which was in a small office space downtown, about once a month.

With her bobbed brown hair tucked neatly behind her ears, Jill straightened her collar before entering the office. Maria had worked hard to make it feel like an inclusive environment for the 20 employees now working there. While still a modest space, there was a small waiting area with a few chairs and a table, along with coffee, water, and a small Lego table for visiting children. The office abounded with natural light, and there were open desks throughout the center, with a few strategically placed areas for private conversations. There was a small kitchen with plenty of sparkling waters and healthy snacks for employees. There was also a room with yoga mats for employees who wanted to take a break to meditate or stretch. The gender-neutral restrooms were stocked with feminine products, mouthwash, and all-natural hand creams and soaps.

One of the newer hires, Christine, greeted Jill as she walked in. “Would you like me to show you to Maria's office?” Christine was a recent college grad who Maria had hired to handle event planning and logistics.

“Thanks—you're Christine, right?”

“Um, yes.” Christine smiled, surprised but thrilled that Jill remembered her. “It's not a big place, but it's right down this hallway.”

“Maria, Jill is here.”

Maria glanced up from her computer, and walked over to greet Jill.

“Thanks, Christine. Jill, thank you for coming over.”

“Of course, how are things going? It looks wonderful in here.”

“Thank you. It's going really well. I mean, we're gaining new customers every week, and things are in line with that plan I created.”

“Fantastic.”

“But I'm also starting to field so many support calls now, and I don't have as much time to give to each person the way I did before.” Maria sometimes felt that things were unraveling beyond her control, and wasn't sure how to keep things running smoothly all of the time.

“Well, that's actually a good problem to have. If no one's complaining, they aren't actually using your software.”

“Fair!” Maria smiled as she thought of all the people actively using her solution.

“I think this is an opportunity for you to really start to scale your team and think about how to use your compassion and empathy as a way to build better results for the business.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you can standardize the quality of care you put into each relationship, you can use the feedback to improve your product development and increase sales through those follow-on deals we talked about.”

“I'm not sure what you mean. How do I standardize the quality of care?” Maria asked.

“I mean, 1 on 1 you're working closely with everyone, and your deep-dive into your customer's needs early on is what led to your success. But now you have to figure out how to standardize that behavior, so it's a norm across the organization.”

“Oh…okay.” Maria was following.

“You already have Hannah here, right, leveraging her experience in delivering projects on time, to make sure development is going well, coupled with your strong product vision. And you have a full-time software development lead now, too, right?”

“Of course!” Maria knew she had built the foundation for a strong team.

“Well, I'd do an all-hands meeting every week while you're still small, to go over the support needs, the sales questions people are getting, and the development needs. You can also use that to enhance your product.”

“That's a good point. I've been doing an all-hands meeting, but more to report to everyone on what's happening across groups—not to have them share the product cycle.” Maria realized that although she was having large meetings, they more or less had served as vehicles for top-down communications.

“Right—I know you're doing agile development with your software team, but consider bringing the customer support and salespeople into the loop to make sure you're really getting all the needs understood.

“You are already empathizing with the customer. You want to build that into your corporate culture so everyone else here does, too.” Jill knew that in the digital age, customer experience was king. Maria had naturally understood and developed user personas to figure out what product features to deliver. Now she needed to translate that understanding to the entire company so people knew how to market, sell, and support based on the individual customer profile.

“That will make your teams stronger, your customers happier, and ultimately your company more successful.”

“But isn't there a slight concern that I'd be wasting people's time? Is pulling a salesperson or support person off the phone to meet with the whole group just potentially reducing their impact?” Maria really wanted to get this right.

“I can see why you think that, but I think you'll see that by connecting the dots among your teams, you'll actually make everyone more efficient. Making sure that the engineers really understand the challenges that the customer support person faces will enable them to approach problems differently. Likewise, as salespeople learn about what's already being worked on in real time, they can be more strategic as they talk to customers about features and when they'll really be available.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

“Right—and when people feel known, they feel safe. And when people feel safe they learn better. It's rooted in science, and will actually make your overall company more productive.” This was one of Jill's favorite stats she'd learned while researching how people learn and the importance of psychological safety for creativity.

“Super interesting, Jill—so if I bring people together to share their experiences, we'll actually have a higher-performing, more empathetic team…”

“Exactly.”

Creating an Environment Where People Want to Work Starts with Knowing People

Studies show that across the general population, EQ (emotional intelligence) and levels of empathy are likely statistically equal among men and women. Researchers Peter Salovey and John Mayer originally defined emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.” Their studies showed that if you develop and leverage your emotional intelligence, you can have better interpersonal relationships because you have better self-perceptions and awareness. You may also be perceived more positively by others, have an easier time negotiating, improved self-esteem, and make better decisions combining rationale or logic with emotion rather than being responsive.

While studies show that men and women are just as likely to have high EQs, women who make it into leadership positions often have higher EQs than men who did. That's likely because EQ is needed to navigate a landscape that isn't biased toward women, but rather against them. If, like Maria, you managed to receive investment and get your business off the ground, there is a pretty good likelihood that you have a strong EQ. As a leader of a growing organization, this will be critical in managing your teams and your board of directors.

Understanding the implicit motivations of others and relating to their experiences makes it easier to navigate team dynamics, understand positioning within a board, and ensure that you are supporting your customers in an effective way that will make them more likely to renew. This ability to relate also allows you to more easily incorporate customer needs into your product roadmap.

But this doesn't mean that you must rely only on your intrinsic interpretation of a situation to make improvements. In fact, that's not really scalable as your business grows and your time is crunched.

Understanding Your Employees' Working Styles

HR leaders often leverage various personality tests to better understand team dynamics and make suggestions to improve communications, which in turn an improve overall team performance.

It's critical to ensure that you comply with best practices and guidelines if you are deploying a test to employees. Most tests require administration by a trained or certified professional. Some to consider include the DISC assessment, which is designed to let you know how people work and react. Another is the Myers-Briggs, which helps you understand people's basic tendencies. With either approach, some key things to consider is what gives someone energy and what depletes them.

The point of asking employees to take these types of tests is not so that you can personally judge them. The point is to make sure you uncover their natural or preferred working styles so that you can empower your teams for success. If you know you have several introverts in your company who are, by definition, energized by being alone and depleted by being in group settings, you might consider creating more quiet spaces for them.

If you have several extroverts in your team, by definition, you know they are more energized by being in groups, and their energy is depleted when they are alone too long. So in that case, you would want to create more opportunities for group engagement.

Little Things Lead to Bigger Success

At a high level your objective is to create an environment where people want to work.

In addition, although you are working to create the environment that yields the best results for the company, it's important to be tuned in to what makes people likely to succeed or not. For example, sometimes in an attempt to be “nice,” employees will tell a co-worker struggling with being able to attend a meeting to “just not worry about it.” But in reality their efforts to be kind might result in making that person feel excluded, as if their work doesn't matter. Try not to schedule meetings for times when you know key leaders or rising leaders can't attend. Aim for important meetings in the middle of the day. Many organizations have emerged that focus on best practices in inclusion. One example is MOR (https://morismore.com/), a consulting firm focused on helping companies navigate inclusion opportunities.

You'll also recall that Jill made a point of saying Christine's name. When people hear their names, they automatically feel safer. It's part of our tribal roots. When we are known we are safe, and if we are safe we can learn and be creative. Teachers know to greet each student by name at the start of the school day, because students who feel safe learn more easily. Likewise, if your employees feel that you know them, and you can call them by their names, they will feel safer and be more able to perform.

Working Together to Improve Outcomes and Customer Satisfaction

In the narrative for this chapter, Jill and Maria also discussed the importance of cross-collaboration among teams. Collaboration among diverse groups actually leads to more efficient outcomes, as well as an increase in innovation. As you work to build your teams with specific functions like sales, engineering, and customer service, don't lose sight of what you used to manage when you were first starting your company. In the early days, you, as the founder, likely handled first sales, first customer support inquiries, and may have built the first product.

Feedback and understanding from each division yields better results for everyone. If your customer support team continuously reports on a similar bug or customer challenge, one of your engineers may quickly realize that it relates to a new feature they recently pushed out in the code. Likewise, if a salesperson gains a clear view into the long-term product roadmap, she can more easily articulate that vision to customers to build long-term meaningful relationships.

These are just a few examples of where an increased focus on cross-collaboration and empathy among team members and for customers can lead. So while the term “empathy” is sometimes used in a subversive way to imply that those who possess it are somehow more emotional or prone to irrational decision-making, I'm confident that an emphasis on empathy can lead to a better customer experience and stronger, healthier team dynamics.

You can do this!