Esther Perel, Psychotherapist; Author and Host, Where Should We Begin
Interviewer: Reshma Saujani, Founder, Girls Who Code; Founder and CEO, The Marshall Plan for Moms; Author, Pay Up

Most Powerful Women 2022 - Working Toward A More Empathetic Workplace

Esther Perel, Psychotherapist; Author and Host, Where Should We Begin
Interviewer: Reshma Saujani, Founder, Girls Who Code

Working Toward A More Empathetic Workplace

Our next guest is one of the foremost experts in modern relationships. She's counseled couples and families on relationships and written books on erotic intelligence and infidelity. She's a podcaster, public speaker and master class teacher. I could listen to her voice forever. We are thrilled to have her with us today to talk about building relationships because doing so in our professional lives perhaps is perhaps most important, more important than ever. As the world of work continues to evolve. As she said, we cultivate our relationship resume at home and that influences how we interact at work. She's psychotherapist, bestselling author and host of Where should we begin Sarah parole And she's teaming up for a conversation today with M. P. W. Summit co chair johnny who is also the founder of girls who code founder and ceo of the marshall plan for moms and author of the book. Pay up. Please welcome stare and Reshma to the state. Hello everyone. Uh it's an honor to be here with my friend fair. Um they called it a wonderful introduction of her. But you are a world renowned relationship expert. You've got over 40 million views on ted uh Most importantly though, she was my couples therapist and saved my marriage which I got a little I do so I might need a little tune up but that's another conversation I have an opening on um but I want to start because last night we were sitting together for dinner and you were saying wow! Like I've never been invited to a conference like this with so many incredible women in business and so why is that? And why empathy? So what I was telling you is that it's been about five or six years that I am going from one business corporate conference to another. But probably 10 years ago, I would never have been invited Why? Because relational intelligence or relationship skills were basically considered feminine skills and feminine skills. You can idealize them in principle and disregard them in reality and basically it's considered soft and it doesn't meet the bottom line and therefore it has that quality that was just alluded to before about nice. I think what has profoundly changed is not my work. What has changed is the meaning of work. Work used to be primarily a production economy. It then became a service economy and it is today an identity economy and work as an identity economy means that we bring to work a host of needs that are relational and existential. We want purpose meaning community, belonging, Identity work meets relational needs like it never has before. Mass not just for a few of the privileged and that is what is profoundly shifting Now, what is the problem of empathy is that it's not a problem we of course want to lead with the heart and all of that. But if you reduce relational skills of relational intelligence to empathy, you you you take out the whole systemic aspect of understanding relational systems. Power is intrinsic to relational systems. So is the way that we communicate The way we share information. The way we collaborate or compete. The way we ask for help or try to experience only self reliance. Those elements are part of relation intelligence. If it's just empathy, I'm afraid that we're gonna just think we're changing something and we're gonna end up keeping women exactly in the position that they've always been in my trap. I think that the best way to explain this is by playing a game. So Esther and I are gonna play her game. Her game is called. Where should we begin? All of you should get this. I feel like a couple of you told me that you have two or three of these already. Um and I think let's start and but I want to tell me why are we playing this game? Why are we playing the game? So everybody in this room has an official CV. It's what you've been talking about before, the boards, you're sitting on the history of your careers, etcetera. But everyone in this room also has an unofficial resume which is your relationship history, which are the messages that you received about how you are in the world, whether you have had focus that emphasizes autonomy and self reliance or whether you grew up with a focus that emphasizes loyalty and interdependence. When we listened to ross yesterday, she told us a little bit about her official resume CV. But she told us and she gripped us with her relational stories about her dad, about her siblings, about going to college, about the community of Spelman. That unofficial resume is our story and stories is what binds us to people. That's what is the connection, that's the bridge. And so I thought I'm going to create a game that's gonna help us tell stories so that people actually know who they are working with and not just what do you do? Yeah, I'll never forget that image of Roz three years old. She said peeking in the window right while the other siblings were waiting for them to come to school. And I think that it was interesting in hearing her speak. I don't think we would have heard a female ceo feel comfortable or vulnerable enough to share that about themselves a couple of years ago. But that is what I think all of us in that room, especially when that image just fell in love with her like at that moment. And you identified because I think a lot of us probably in this room are latchkey kids. Right? Or as you say, are you interdependent or are you write self reliance, self reliance? I think a lot of us really resonated with that. Um okay, so we're gonna play a game and the other piece was why a game because play, I've loved you for a continue to take risks so that you don't, the goal is not to make people be vulnerable, but what you explained with roses that she grabbed us, but by reconciling what always traditionally and certainly under patriarchy seem like irreconcilable dimensions. You can either be powerful or connected, but you can't be both. This is the challenge for women in leadership or I would say this is the challenge for everybody in the today's leadership. Yeah. Um so these questions are very vulnerable. Not sure why I basically volunteered for this, but I did, especially given that you're my therapist. Um This is many years, so we are clear not much has changed. Um So I'm gonna give you no, no, no, Alright, I'm gonna read them and you um you know what we're gonna do very quickly raise your hand. I'm so proud. I'm proud. I stood up for myself. When? Yeah, okay, if I could whisper something in the ear of my younger self, I would say anybody know you don't have to answer them, Do you like the question? Oh, you're oh you're voting for me? It would be nice to me. Yes, yes. Which one you want to hear my answer? Okay. Start at the beginning very quick. I am proud. I stood up for myself. When if I could whisper something in the ear of my younger self, they all like him. I spend too much time worrying about. Okay in my family. My role is my latest crush is lately I've been getting better at, okay, I've spent too much time tell me you worry. Um Well, so the question is I spent so much time worrying I spent, I have a two year old and a seven year old and I spent too much time worrying about whether I have the right to do something for myself, you know, I again felt so guilty that I came here for three days, How many of you resonate with that torn about? Um trying to figure out whether I should take the red eye back and cut it short, right? Because God forbid I get eight hours of sleep and maybe get into run or you know, do something for myself. So I think that I spent too much time worrying about and this is what roz I worry more about one than the other. Um I worry more about the older one because I feel like he's like a little walking Gandhi um and Ross said this yesterday when we were sorry, it was actually the conversation, I can't say um but we're talking about how I do think that I'm going to feel like when they're older, that they're going to resent me for the my ambition and the fact and even my seven year old will say to me, mommy, you care more about those girls than you care about me. And so that that sense of guilt is already kind of seated in me and so I'm always watching to make sure that I'm not messing him up, right? And I think that one of the ways you bridge this is by telling the stories of what you experience when you leave, how hard it is when you go rather than I'll be right back and kind of false reassurances. It does involve, you know, it's hard for me when I go. How do you think about me when I'm gone? This is how I think about you when I'm gone and I look at pics, right, right. You create a way to maintain a threat and a connective tissue in the absence. Everybody understands that notion and when it is shared because what is what do you worry about on the other side? You worry that you miss the other person more than they miss you. So the way you equalize it is by actually creating a shared experience of it. I love the cards because it actually gives the if you can play it from eight years on and it gives you a legitimate way of asking the questions that are usually challenging of telling the stories Melinda was talking before about you bring your whole self to work. Of course we all bring our whole selves to work. We often do it unconsciously. We bring our intel relationship history, how we've learned to relate to people how much we trust them, how much we feel that we can rely on them, how much we can ask for help, how we lead, all of that history does not stay at the door when we walk in. This notion that we've had all along that we have to keep our life outside only let people and with all kinds of leaking do all kinds of things that we then did not understand where it came from. So we've always brought our whole selves to work. I don't think that is a new story. Yeah. I think what's also we were talking about last night was powerful. I'd love for you to share is the sense of that. So for so many of us, I think we were raised with working, you know, working mothers. My mother certainly worked all the time. Um, they were refugees. And so she had to work all the time. And so, but that but but so much I think who we are today is because we actually were allowed to have that independence and that resiliency. But ironically we're raising our kids exactly the opposite. Right. And I find that part of my relationship resume, right? So, so fascinating. Because I intuitively know like you said you when you were raising your kids, you intentionally would push them away. But I think so my parents are also refugees. I grew up above the store. Um, but I think that what's very interesting is that we have developed a new science these days called the science of grit. And it's how why why do we need grid only because we have created mush. It's like one thing response to the other, you know, and there is something about people who have had to work hard for something and struggle that they hope that the people who come after them won't have to struggle in the same way that if I can give you something is that I can diminish the hardship for you. And then they, but at the same time as they do that, they keep saying you have no idea how hard I work for this and things come so easily to you and you are entitled and you think you are old. So you find yourself in this constant conflict with what you want to change, but also with the resentment that the other people don't understand what it actually took and that they take it for granted. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We're playing another card or am I off the hook. Okay. What was the other one that people wanted? Um, um, okay. I'm, I'm proud when I stood up for myself when, so I daughter of refugees, grew up as the only brown girl and um, a very white working class neighborhood. And so I, my house was regularly ppd and spray painted. Go back to your own country. And when I was in seventh grade, this girl called me a name and challenged me to a fight and little me said, all right, I'll meet you and I got beat up with a baseball bat. And um, I realized at that point that I was not and I never could be white, that I had to stop hiding from my identity. And that is what that moment was. The day that I became an activist. A year later I launched, you know, had my organized my 1st march. I've been marching ever since, but I was the proudest I've been is when I stood up for myself at that moment, that was the moment that my whole life changed. So imagine you played that card with your seven year old. Mm Because how old were you when this happened? I was probably 11, 12. Okay. So maybe like a little bit older. I think that one of the things that we miss is the sharing of exactly those stories at work when we do team meetings as well as at home. And because they give a whole different sense of you. You are working with the amount of assumptions we make about people that we can spend years with and we project onto them a whole bunch of things and we don't really understand that maybe they became a little bit like this or like that. I'm not even gonna name the qualities because there's a whole history that mandated that and they still think that this is really crucial as a survival strategy. And when you tell the stories, it's, you can tell them in playing a card game or you can tell him in fun facts. It doesn't matter. But what you get is the story, the unofficial resume that comes to work and that determines the person that you are and that you are working with relational intelligence at this point is very much a part of the bottom line. The thing is that because it's much more difficult to measure, its not like processes or production, it is much more amorphous. And so we think of it as an extra or something that is needed in times of crisis. But in times of crisis, you need to solve something quickly and you are contracted because there is a tension and you cannot think creatively. So you have urgency. But you don't have creativity in times that are not crisis. You have creativity and you have less urgency, but you have much more latitude to create lasting change. Is the problem of relationship awareness is that people only think about it when the ship hits the fun said with my accent. So we have three minutes only and I want to I want to get to some closing. I want to wrap this up a little bit and and so as you're talking, I think this is a room full of the most powerful women in the world, literally. And when they hear you, one of the things that I hear is you know, how do you reconcile this vulnerability, authenticity, sharing your most personal secrets to allow people to learn about you with reconciling how we see power. Power is supposed to be a little bit of swag right? You don't actually show that much about yourself because you're supposed to show strength. Power is not an individual attribute. Power is systemic. Power is part of any relational system. The moment you depend on somebody, they have power. Every little one knows that. But equally, you understand that power doesn't always come from the top down. Everyone who's ever seen a two year old understands that, you know, this idea of looking at power from this very linear thing. You know, only vertical and it's from the top going down, Power is necessary. It's not a negative word. It and we cannot always use power with abuse right attached to it because then we delude the whole concept where agency is power power to its power, its power from its power. You know, power over is a different story. So, I really want us to round that thing then, you know, I think one of the ways that I can illustrate how you reconnect when people deal with conflict in the workplace, for example, we are continuously driven to think that it is about what it is that we are fighting about. We are very much focused on the content. The issues, the vast majority of things we fight about are not about the issues, they are basically about three major categories and these are relational dimensions. We fight about power and control who has priority, who matters most. Who gets to decide. That is relational. We fight about trust and we said about care and closeness. I can I trust you who has my back, Who can I rely on? And we fight about respect and recognition. Where is the validation? Who recognizes me and who sees what I am about. These three dimensions are relational dimensions that are part of every argument that you have in your homes with your partners, friends, family members and that you have at work. But we are almost sapiens and we keep thinking that is the subject the issue that we are fighting about when in fact generally you can summarize it into one of these three pieces. This is relational intelligence within a larger framework that is systemic, that is power influence. And that has relational intelligence. Wonderful! This is why I am still married. So thank you so much. This was such a powerful conversation. I really encourage every single person in this room um to um Sarah's one of the most is the most profound person who has ever whoever kind of teaches on this idea of relationships and power and work. And I think it all blends together. And there's so many of your teachings in your master class and your ted talk in your books and you are one of the most wisest women I know. So I'm in such gratitude for everything that you put out there in the world because you have helped me become the person I am today. So thank you. Thank you so much.