Erin Patchell [00:00:00]: Welcome, beautiful humans, to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, the show where we are exploring the extraordinary potential of ordinary organizations. I'm your host, Erin Pachel, and today we are chatting with our friend Maxine Budou, an exceptional leadership development coach. She has a private practice called exceptional leader, literally. And also Maxine is an award winning risk manager and compliance professional with over 21 years of corporate professional experience. Welcome to the show, Maxine.   Maxine Budhu [00:00:31]: Thank you. It's lovely to be here, Erin.   Erin Patchell [00:00:34]: And what are we talking about today?   Maxine Budhu [00:00:36]: Today we are talking about empathetic leadership and moving the needle from drab to exceptional.   Erin Patchell [00:00:45]: Amazing. Stay tuned.   Erin Patchell [00:01:06]: So, Maxine, my first question for you. As a risk management and compliance professional, over your career, you've developed this real passion about empathy in the workplace, and sometimes we don't always correlate risk management and compliance with empathy. I'm really curious, what has led you to become so passionate about this topic?   Maxine Budhu [00:01:31]: To understand and take a step back that all corporations are being led by human beings. And I would say that my mind, my eyes, my heart was veiled before life happened when I was 25 years old, about 16 years ago, I got married, I had my first child. A lot of life, right? And so there's a lot of joy and happiness around that, but it's definitely a lot of change for someone who's the youngest child of her family. Siblings, three siblings, the youngest of three children, the only girl who was constantly doted on. I didn't understand what life was about until I got married and had children of my own. And it was when I had my first born, I went out on maternity leave, but I hadn't been with my organization long enough to get, say, multiple months of maternity leave. I believe I only got twelve weeks. And so coming back, returning to work, was very difficult for me. I actually suffered from postpartum depression and not someone to take a lot of medication. I tried to manage it on my own and with spiritual support. I went to church every week, but that didn't even help me. It got to a point where I wasn't going to church. It got to a point where my routine, as I knew it, had shifted. You're a new mom. And my husband was a new dad and didn't really appreciate what it meant to give birth and have postpartum depression. He didn't know about that being a real thing, although the doctors did prep us for that, and we were thinking, we'll be fine. You're young, you're in good shape, I'm here for you. But it wasn't fine for a very long time. I would want to say, like, maybe for a good 18 months after my child was born. And just imagine I had to go into a mental state where I was just trying to get through the week. And it was like as if I was not even seeing or being in myself. When I was going to work, I would just go to work, come home, get through the week Friday, take a shower and not leave my room until Monday morning. And not to even shower was like, Monday morning, take a shower. It was like a routine, it was like a robot, no emotion. My parents stayed with us for some time because of that, to take care of our son, and it was tough. And when I started to come out of it, I was working in the audit field with people who were adults who had multiple children living their lives. And I started to take a look and I'm like, well, you know, what if I'm getting up and coming into work and I have all this going on outside of work, how many other people are dealing with things outside of work? It never occurred to me until I had a life of my own, not being Miss 20 something year old, just living for myself. I was living for other people now.   Erin Patchell [00:04:45]: Right.   Maxine Budhu [00:04:46]: I'm like, there are other grown adults here who are doing the same thing. And then the veil was unraveled and I started to see people for who they really were. And compassion grew up in me, and that's where the empathy, the thought of empathy started because it's so important. Everyone's bringing their baggage to work, but they still have to show up because they have to show up, right?   Erin Patchell [00:05:11]: Absolutely. I think we try to compartmentalize these things, but we really can't because it ends up spilling out of us in some way or another. Do you think that being able to get up and have that shower on Monday morning, did that help support your process in any way, support you to move forward or how did that work for you?   Maxine Budhu [00:05:36]: At sometimes, yes. I think that it kept me from going deeper into a depression, but at times it was very hard because the expectations at work were increasing. My manager at the time was not great, and so it was like ebbs and flows where at times I would have a good week and then another time, there was no understanding for why I was late, there was no understanding for why I needed to leave early so much. So I had to change. I organized a switch in managers and I was able to work on a different team, but I didn't even want to have to do that because of the shame that was associated with, oh, what's going on there? Why is Maxine working for him instead of him? I stress him instead of him because at that time, not a lot of women in leadership, in internal audit and all of that. And that was back in 2009, 2010. It's changed a little bit for the better now, but all of that, like just having to speak to a man and not having to have him understand, oh, I need to leave early because I got to breastfeed and I just don't want to breastfeed here, I don't want to pump here, I want to go home. I've had enough. Sometimes I had to keep my mouth closed and just suck it up. But I say all that to say that working kept around people perhaps kind of saved me in a way because it kept me from going into a deeper depression. It was a tough time, but I just wish that I would have had more time to be at home. Yeah, probably would have been better.   Erin Patchell [00:07:22]: I have this kind of… maybe it's an idealistic way of thinking… but I have this sort of vision of organizations. I think that organizations have the potential to become spaces of healing for people like you and me. In the past, I've had similar situations in my past that have been really traumatic. And then I think that having the stability and the routine almost of having to get up out of bed and go to work and something that's like motivating myself outside of myself because I couldn't do that on my own, it helped. But it can be better, it can be done well, it can be done even more well. And so I'm curious what you think about that and how empathy plays a role in that as well.   Maxine Budhu [00:08:13]: It got better. After I had my second child, I was with the same organization under a different completely. I went into it auditing, joined a completely different team. And you talk about them being a space of healing. That's what it was because they actually approached me about my breastfeeding plan or oh, do you know there's this room now available? There was an initiation and that is why empathy is so meaningful and it's so basic. We all have the capacity for this, being empathetic and compassionate towards each other. It's just that external things that happen to us through our lives harden our hearts and disable us from even wanting to go that route. But they did it. My management team at that time, they approached me and even that kind of softened me up to say, oh wow, okay, they're on my team, they're going to work for me. Back then, if anyone is listening from the audit field, they know you have to count your hours. You actually have to keep track of the amount of time you're spending on each audit that you're assigned to. And they allotted time for me to take time away from my audit and go and pump for my child and all of that. Just that alone helped me and it sustained me and I did not have such a hard time integrating myself back into the workplace that I did the first time.   Erin Patchell [00:09:38]: I know that you focus on different elements, so you are a leadership development coach. You work with individuals and teams to support different kinds of emotional and empathy transformations and help this evolution. The different ways that you mentioned that you do this, sometimes it's through teaching and coaching about self awareness, blind spots, and triggers. So how do you integrate this? What's your philosophy around the actual development process of people?   Maxine Budhu [00:10:11]: It's the recognition, and I primarily begin with recognizing that trauma happens in the workplace. But how we deal with that trauma and how aware we are of ourselves helps us to get through it and helps us to thrive beyond it and actually appear. Provide not appear, but provide the reputation that supports us in promoting ourselves and moving forward and elevating ourselves within the organization. So being aware of yourself is primary to being a strong leader, and that support is supported by the foundation of empathy. So what I do, what I try to focus on, is I try to focus on approaching your leadership development style by looking at yourself first and understanding who you are, identifying things that trigger your behaviors, both negative and positive, and really exploiting your blind spots. And sometimes we don't take that time to do that introspective work to understand who we are. What are our blind spots? What's triggering our behavior? Why are we even acting out in this manner? What is it in the workplace that enforces this manner and this behavior? Because once we get past that, you can seriously thrive as a human being. I know I've done it for myself. I literally, through some really meaningful hard work for myself and recognizing who I am and what I enjoy and what triggers my anger, I was able to revamp my reputation. Not that it was in the toilet in the first place, disclaimer it was good. But I was able to elevate myself within the same organization, revamp my reputation in the organization, and thrive and be promoted.   Erin Patchell [00:12:02]: I sometimes think that the walls that we build around ourselves in order to protect us from harm, actually, it's creating more harm, not just for ourselves, but for the people around us as well. What do you think about that?   Maxine Budhu [00:12:17]: Yeah, absolutely, Erin, and you don't even realize you're doing it. And it can cause roadblocks for you in your career. It can cause people to not want to be around you as often as you would want them to. It can cause you to miss opportunities for leadership or growth in the organization. It is so imperative to just be aware of your thoughts and the types of things that you're thinking about throughout the workday, what you're saying about others around you. Those are all little building blocks that build up, like those blind spots that cause you not to soar in an organization, sometimes you're looking around and saying, well, they're being discriminatory towards me. And I'm not doubting that that happens in a workplace, but at the same time, I think it behooves us all to just look at ourselves, to see what we can do better to knock down those blind spots and triggers that are enabling them to be discriminatory towards you, if that makes any sense. You have to take some responsibility for how you show up. That's the type of leadership development, and that's where I'm coming from. That's where my teaching is based on. We're going to focus on you because you can control you. You can't control them and just believe that and know for a fact that even if they intend to be discriminatory towards you, it won't even have an impact on your growth or your promotion because of who you are as a person.   Erin Patchell [00:13:51]: Yeah, I'm totally all for radical accountability, just like the idea that it is. Whatever the situation, I have some control over it, whether I think I do or not. And I'm going to take accountability for the parts that I do have control over. And I think we definitely have way more control over things than we think we do. And we're not powerless at all.   Maxine Budhu [00:14:15]: Amen.   Erin Patchell [00:14:16]: Yeah.   Maxine Budhu [00:14:17]: Amen.   Erin Patchell [00:14:19]: Yeah. I'm curious, do you work with mostly aspiring executives? Executives, I believe. Is that correct?   Maxine Budhu [00:14:28]: Well, I would like to say that not so much executives, but those who are new to corporate or have spent at least four to five years in corporate and really are looking for just wanting to revamp their career, wanting to understand more of what's been happening. Perhaps they've experienced some workplace traumas and they want to grow past these traumas and they want to reevaluate themselves and become better so they could show up better and be promoted in their workplace. Those are the individuals I tend to work with.   Erin Patchell [00:15:04]: So for your clients, how does your focus on empathy help them make smarter decisions, either personal decisions or decisions in the workplace?   Maxine Budhu [00:15:17]: Because they're coming from a place of mindfulness and understanding who they are first, having that empathy for themselves. They're making space for them to have empathy on others towards others. Right. And so it's in everything that they do. I teach about how to reach out to someone via email. What do you consider when you're scheduling time to meet with someone? If someone's calendar looks completely booked and they have one little half hour available, you do not book that time. You reach out to them first and ask them. These are the little subtle things that cause you to stand out, that keep you memorable in people's minds when you're doing a presentation. I mean, even the most profound leaders consider their audience first. That's an act of empathy that current leaders are trying to denounce because we don't have time for that. But you're doing it. You're considering your audience first. And so I try to bring that to the forefront in how they make their decisions, how they communicate with others, the type of emails they send. Communication is so important, and so I just try to hone in that it influences everything that you do every decision that you make, you must consider your stakeholders and how the consequences that they would have to embrace as a result of your decision. Think of that first. And even if the consequences are bad, I inform them that if you express that you understand the consequences and the impact that your decisions make, that alone gets people on board. The acknowledgment of the impact of your decisions with your stakeholders, that alone people appreciate that being recognized. And so that's how I communicate to my clients that empathy, having empathy for others as you make your decisions as leaders is very important.   Erin Patchell [00:17:16]: Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. I love that you're not just talking about empathy as like a philosophical concept, but actually the practice of empathy, like the actual actions of empathy in the workplace or within a relationship. That's something that's a little different, I think.   Maxine Budhu [00:17:38]: Yeah. Because I feel like we get so caught up in the work and the goals and the vision that we forget that you're working with people, you're serving people. I think you've said it best in a recent post on LinkedIn. You said, let's start integrating our work in life. It's not about balance, but you're really integrating your work into your life and your life into your work. And I hear a lot of companies say, show up as your authentic self. Well, let's walk the talk, right? And let's put stuff into practice, not just talk about it.   Erin Patchell [00:18:14]: Heck yes. It's got to come from the top. We have to demonstrate leadership, empathetic leadership principles in the workplace and practices in the workplace and lead by example. Absolutely. Yeah. So leaders out there, are you walking the talk? Ask yourself that question.   Maxine Budhu [00:18:36]: There is room for you to walk the talk. It's in your everyday. I mean, we're hardwired to be kind and to feel how our kindness impacts each other and we enjoy that at our very core, there is science to prove that we are happy when we make other people happy. And no, you're not trying to design this utopia of a place in your work, but at the same time, it's just about consideration. Not everything is going you're not going to be able to please your team all the time, but if they know that you're coming from a place of consideration and empathy, they'll understand.   Erin Patchell [00:19:17]: And maybe some real talk, like if you don't feel like you have the energy to go out of your way for somebody else, you might be just doing a little bit too much and maybe think about prioritizing, right? A little bit, maybe invoke some self.   Maxine Budhu [00:19:34]: Empathy and settle down. We talk about the difference between management and leadership and balancing the two. You have to know how to balance the two because sometimes when you're in a leadership position and you get too much in the weeds of management and execution work, you can burn yourself out because then you have to turn back and strategize and be visionary and have the energy to do that. And you don't have any more energy because you've been in the weeds with the managers doing the work. So you have to be able to balance the two. And I support my clients in that type of work. I just remember being new to corporate and always looking around thinking, who can I talk to about this? I just had a weird exchange with one of my lead auditors and he said something that really made me feel bad. Who can I talk to about this? Who can I talk to and ask, well, is this okay to say? Is this okay to approach another manager on? Can I raise this at my next team meeting? I had no one really. I didn't have a mentor. And I just find meaning and so much joy in work, in coming alongside and mentoring in a mentoring capacity. My clients, I think it's my life work to do that, to just be that person that I was looking for when I was in my early twenty s and I was new in corporate America. It was tough.   Erin Patchell [00:21:04]: One more question and then almost done, I promise. Is empathy optional?   Maxine Budhu [00:21:14]: No, it is no longer an option. Because while people and organizations are not speaking about empathy per se, all the time, they are speaking about emotional intelligence. And just take a look at the past five years and what we've had to experience, whether it was in person or on the television through newscasts. There is no room to be unempathetic in the workplace because we are coming to work with a lot, with the consideration of a lot, with looking at what's going on in the US. And huh, that's all racial based. I wonder if Mark, who sits right a cubicle over from me, feels the same start. Things that we never had to consider before, we have to consider now about the people, the very people we're rubbing shoulders with. Seeing schools being shot up in and seeing children who look like your children suffer and have to run out in a drill because there's a gunman loose in their school. There's a lot of stuff to consider right now in the world. And the emotional intelligence that you need to support your team is paramount to getting them to move forward. I mean, sometimes it's just not an option anymore to not consider people as people. People go home, people read, people see things on TV, people have their own experiences of things going on. I'm not saying it's all a sad story, but it's life, right? Sometimes life happens and we have to recognize that.   Erin Patchell [00:22:57]: Yeah, I completely agree. Oh my gosh, it has been so much fun having you on the podcast. Just leave the listeners with a little bit more information about how they can get in touch with you if they're interested in this type of support. With developing empathetic leadership how do they go about that?   Maxine Budhu [00:23:19]: I am currently on LinkedIn exclusively. Look me up. Maxine voodoo. M-A-X-I-N-E-B as in boy, u D, as in David. H u. I'm on there. And all my information and ways to contact me through email or otherwise, that's on there as well. Through my link in bio. Please reach out to me. Even with a question, I'm just always so open to hearing from people and supporting them, meeting them where they are.   Erin Patchell [00:23:47]: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming.   Maxine Budhu [00:23:50]: Thank you, Erin, so much for having me. I loved talking with you, and I.   Erin Patchell [00:23:54]: Have so many more questions for you. I feel like we could talk for hours.   Maxine Budhu [00:23:57]: I'd love to come back.   Erin Patchell [00:23:59]: Maybe you could come back in a couple of months. Awesome.   Maxine Budhu [00:24:02]: Let's do it.   Erin Patchell [00:24:02]: Let's do it. Okay.   Maxine Budhu: Take care.   Erin Patchell: You too.   Erin Patchell: That's all for today.  In the words of the great Dolly Parton, "If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours." Thanks for tuning in. Stay weird, stay wonderful, and as always, don't stay out of trouble.  

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