Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:00:00] Burnout isn’t a badge of honor, and empathy isn’t just a soft skill. In this week’s episode, two innovative business thinkers share strategies for avoiding exhaustion while cultivating meaningful connections the type of connections that elevate personal and professional performance. First up, Founder of GreenX7, Tim Jack Adams introduces his practical guide to restoring sustainable energy through sleep, mindset, relationships and rhythm. Then Daniel Murray from Empathic Consulting challenges traditional leadership thinking by explaining why empathy is a powerful performance multiplier. Daniel reveals how real connection can reshape culture, boost influence, and drive results in today’s demanding workplaces. From Sound Cartel. I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist, and this is Business Essentials.
The empathy gap
Our first guest is Tim Jack Adams, founder and CEO of GreenX7 and author. If your battery’s constantly draining and the harder you push, the emptier it gets. Then Tim has the book for you. It’s called ‘Energized The Daily Practice of Connected Leadership and Sustainable Well-Being’. And it’s not about hacking productivity. It’s a system for restoring your energy from the inside out. Tim shares how sustainable energy in everything from sleep to mindset isn’t a luxury. It’s your foundation for leading with clarity, connection and real impact. So how’s your battery? And could asking that question be a more honest energy check in? Tim begins by telling Nicole Goodman why he thinks it is.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:01:41] Well, when I’m asking about how’s your battery? What we’re doing is we’re bringing awareness to your well-being. And one of the reflection tools that we have is a 62nd battery check, which literally does give you a snapshot on your well-being, how you’re going and where you need to actually improve to gain more energy.
Nicole Goodman: [00:02:00] Yes, I’ve done it. Oh, we can talk about that. Oh. You have.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:02:04] Oh, interesting. How was your battery, Nicole?
Nicole Goodman: [00:02:06] Um, it’s running a little low.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:02:09] Come on, be vulnerable. Where’s your battery?
Nicole Goodman: [00:02:14] It’s. It’s sitting at about 60. I’m tired. Yeah, sitting at about 60.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:02:19] Okay. How do you feel about that?
Nicole Goodman: [00:02:21] Oh, look, even as I was filling it out, it was a good kind of reminder to go. Actually, Nicole, you need to maybe go outside a little bit.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:02:28] No. That’s okay. And look, just because it’s where you’re at now, it doesn’t mean it’s where you’re going to stay. Right? So this this battery is not a representation of who you are. It’s just where you’re at the moment. But obviously what it has done is it’s allowed you to have a nice little reflection session on where you’re at and what you need to do to recharge. So what was one of those areas that it said that you needed a little recharge in?
Nicole Goodman: [00:02:50] Oh look, sleep’s looking a little low sitting at about four. What else was low? My fun level. No.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:02:59] Well, not surprising if you’re working yourself to the bone. This is a really good, honest, vulnerable conversation, isn’t it? The ones that I have with lots of leaders and I love watching people. Sorry, but this is such a great thing, right? Because you’ve filled it out. You’ve brought awareness to how you’re going. You’re not exactly impressed with it, but you know you need to do something about it. And I think this is one of the things. Right. Like as leaders, you know, and running entrepreneurs and running things, we’re constantly busy being busy. Right. And so we do kind of forget about our own energy levels, our own well-being until typically what happens is we burn out, we get sick, and then all of a sudden, you know, we give ourselves time to actually start to reconnect to what matters. But what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to prevent you going to burnout in the first place. So at 60%, you know, you’re okay, you’re functioning. But we could definitely move you a little bit higher into that momentum zone or even thriving if we can get there and, you know, sleep and fun. Now this is very normal because the average Australian, which is sitting at around 64% battery, the two lowest that we’ve been doing this over seven years has been sleep and fun. It’s no surprises for me there.
Nicole Goodman: [00:04:13] I’m average. I always knew it.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:04:16] All right. What I want to do is I want you to reflect on two things. Number one, how are we going to get more sleep? So this is the first thing, and this is about creating a sleep routine and making sure we do get seven eight hours. And the other thing is the interesting one about fun is it has been sitting at the lowest area for seven years since we’ve been measuring it, and the thing that we don’t take seriously enough is actually fun, because what we know, the more fun we have, the better our mental health. And interestingly, I was just having a conversation about this to a leader of mine who doesn’t take fun very seriously whatsoever, doesn’t think it’s important for himself or his team. So what? I had to remind him that at the moment in Australia, loneliness. Fastest growing epidemic, you know, spending less time outdoors and maximum security, prisoners, chronic disease, illness, I mean, all of the things. And from all the data, all the research, one of the greatest things that we can do, even for our team and team culture, is to go outside and play. And there’s so much research behind it. So if you need an excuse to have fun, all I can say is it’s going to make you better at your job. That’s just all I’m going to say. And now we can move on from your battery so we don’t have to talk about it anymore.
Nicole Goodman: [00:05:26] And continuing this particular thread to many of us, just to have accepted that burnout is the cost of success. What is the first sign that people should listen to before they hit empty?
Tim Jack Adams: [00:05:37] Um, should I ask you this question?
Nicole Goodman: [00:05:40] Nicole? You should.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:05:42] How are you feeling right now? Tired. Lack of energy. A little fuzzy on what’s next.
Nicole Goodman: [00:05:51] End of the year. You know what I mean? Coming to the end of the year, like, these things just creep up and this is the time of year a flashing red. You know.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:05:59] All the excuses I get to hear every day from everybody I work with are there’s not enough time in the day to look after myself. Oh, I’ll recharge on a holiday. Oh, it’s so good. I love all this. And this is the thing, right? This is what I come across every single time when we’re, you know, bringing on a new organisation or working with a new leadership team. It’s it’s the same old questions. It’s number one, you know, we work hard and that’s that’s what we do. I’m like okay wonderful. You know I don’t need the same 7 or 8 hours sleep that everyone else thinks they need. I’m superhuman. I get all of this. And unfortunately, most people come to me when they’ve burnt out. And this is the issue, right? They’ve they’ve gone for the eight old prescription model that they actually do something when it’s too late. I honestly wish people would actually call me when they knew that they were starting to get down that road. And and I think this is the issue with Eaps. Right. The employee Assistance program. Is that what we’re doing is we’re kind of giving them something when it’s too late, when they’re already burnt out or already sick, or already having mental health days or already taking days off work.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:07:05] And then we go, oh, hey, by the way, we’ve got this great thing to help you try and, you know, come back to life again. So look, our organization sits at the other end. We’re trying to sit there and say, hey, maybe what we need to do is we’ll create an employee empowerment program to actually help empower your employees to look after their own well-being and to make sure that they recharge each and every day. So they don’t need an EP, right? And therefore, better culture, better productivity, better PNL at the end of the quarters. And these are the things that, you know, when we talk to leaders and they say, oh, burnout is just a sign of success. Actually, no, burnout is a sign that you’ve been unsuccessful. That’s what burnout is. So unfortunately, as a leader, you’ve been unsuccessfully role modeling bad behaviors in your organization and culture. And so if you think that, you know, your employers are burning out because they’re not looking after themselves, well, they’re just role modeling your behavior.
Nicole Goodman: [00:08:01] Well, let’s talk a little bit about this framework, because it’s your energy revival framework. And it covers eight areas. Can you tell us a bit about what they are and what happens when we patch up the one that maybe is the most overlooked?
Tim Jack Adams: [00:08:15] Yeah. So we came up with this in 2017. We’re doing a lot of work with wellbeing, especially with Wellness hotels, six Senses Alila. So we had another framework, green X7, which we still roll out. It’s all about reconnecting to self and others through nature. We knew it was amazing. It was really working from all the case studies, but the same old thing was, you know, when you talk to CFOs, you talk to the board, they’re like, yep, this is great, Timmy. Everyone loves it, mate. But how do we actually measure if this is working and we measure everything else in business? Like absolutely everything. And it’s hilarious that we actually don’t measure our people in terms of their productivity and wellbeing. We do these staff engagement forms every quarter or every six months, which is just ridiculous because our well-being changes daily, especially weekly. And so what we created was, number one, we had to find out what wellbeing actually was. So we had to take it from this pie in the sky carebear kind of thing and go right. Wellbeing is just being well. What is being well? There’s eight things in our life. It’s purpose. It’s about sleep, physical health, nutrition. Our mindset has a massive impact on how we show up each and every day.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:09:22] Funny enough, fun has to be in there and we can explain why a little bit later on. And then the most important things that actually get overlooked in organizations more than anything is our relationships and friendships. But yet they have more of an impact on our wellbeing than everything else. And you hear employees saying this all the time is that my work is burning me out, right? But work is not necessarily the problem, because if you’re working hard, but then you’re also going home and you’re pedal to the metal full throttle. Constantly on social media, watching TV, doing all the things. Then your personal life is also attributing to your burnout as well. And so what we have to do with, you know, wellbeing programs and eaps or whatever it is, we have to start to understand that looking after people at work is just a part of the problem. We actually needed to give them the right tools and knowledge to actually look after themselves personally, because at the end of the day, if you want your staff showing up, being productive, creative and doing their best, then they really have to do their best in their personal life at the same time.
Nicole Goodman: [00:10:28] Yeah, well, for a lot of us, we kind of tend to choose the quick reset. So things like caffeine screens or try to reset on the weekend, you know, the big weekend reset. What does a more sustainable battery recharge actually look like?
Tim Jack Adams: [00:10:44] Um, and this kind of reminds me of a really good organization compared to our Australian government, where we always think in four years short term stouts, where a good organisation has a long term sustainable plan, they don’t think in quarters, they don’t think in years, they think in five years and ten years, right. Some, like our company, thinks in 15 years, that’s how far we’re thinking ahead. And what happens is when you’re actually thinking long term and not just reactive in the short term, about thinking about how much profit are we going to make for this quarter? But actually, what is our purpose and how do we actually get to that purpose? Still maintaining profit and actually our culture along the way. It’s almost like a marriage when you think about it. And so what we start looking at is when we look at, you know, not even just my staff, but any staff is that you have to start putting in things that support you. So let me just reframe this. We need to build a life that supports us and not one that we’re constantly having to support. So what does that mean? If I looked at your calendar, I could tell you straight away If your life is supporting you or you’re having to support your life. Okay.
Tim Jack Adams: [00:11:53] Because the things that are in our calendar are the things that we value. But sometimes we forget about the things that we value most in life because we’re so busy being busy. So here’s the thing how do we create sustainability? How do we thrive sustainably? Not just personally, but professionally as well? And for our companies, the thing that we’ve created is what we call a rhythm. So each and every single day I do one thing for myself. It takes about 30 minutes. It combines these tools together, and I know that every single day when my head hits the pillow, I’ve done enough for me to continually to recharge my batteries. So when I wake up the next day, it’s not flat, it’s fully charged, and I’m productive, I’m creative, and I’m going to stay like this year in, year out. And so, you know, in the next year or five years, I won’t burn out because I’m doing the things that we need to do to actually sustain that energy. So coffee is a great quick fix. Sugar drinks. Great quick fix. But success to me is actually how do you be successful not just for this quarter or this year, but ongoing for the next five years, ten years, 20 years of trying to outlive that purpose of yours.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:13:02] That was Tim Jack Adams, founder and CEO of GreenX7.
Energised: Building sustainable wellbeing to avoid burnout
Now let’s turn to empathy as a superpower. What if the secret to real results and influence isn’t sharp a strategy, but deeper empathy? Daniel Murray is an author, speaker, leadership trainer, and CEO of Empathic Consulting. In his new book, ‘The Empathy Gap The Bridge to Real Connection and Lasting Influence’, he argues that empathy isn’t a soft skill, but is actually essential to strong performance. Daniel also covers why empathy matters in the rough and tumble modern workplace, how it can reshape organizational culture, and why it might be the most essential leadership tool we’ve been overlooking. In The Empathy Gap, Daniel suggests that many leaders misunderstand empathy as just being nice. He begins the interview by explaining to Nicole Goodman what he means by that.
Daniel Murray: [00:14:00] The Being Nice piece is a really challenging one, because that is the perception people often have is I either have to be hard and cold and clinical, or I’d be really nice and pandering. And really what we’re talking about with empathy is trying to build the midpoint there, which is I want to understand you. I care about you. It doesn’t mean I agree with you. It doesn’t mean I give you everything you want, but it means that I have to understand your experience and how you see the world. And I think that’s having real human connection is about having that ability to, to see you, to for you to know that you’ve been seen and that you’re important and meaningful. And I think we sort of forget that in relationships, not all relationships are the same, and meaningful relationships are what we really crave.
Nicole Goodman: [00:14:46] One of the things you also say is that empathy isn’t a fixed trait, but it is a skill that we can develop. What are some of the internal barriers that typically hold people back? Do you think? And how might they overcome them?
Daniel Murray: [00:14:58] Yeah. The challenge with empathy is if we think it’s just some magical ability that these mystical unicorns have and that some of us don’t, uh, it undermines the fact that we can all develop it as a skill. And I think there’s few skills that humans can’t develop. The thing that holds us back, and there are many, but one of the biggest things is just being busy. Yeah. We have a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of stuff to get done. And because I’m so focused on the tasks and the activity and the the ticking boxes and checklists, slowing down to actually understand another person seems hard, if not impossible. So this is where we talk about that time it takes to build the understanding is the thing you need to invest in, because that gives you the trust in those relationships to be successful. But I think the busyness and also I think the other big thing that holds us back is we like to think we’re right.
Nicole Goodman: [00:15:50] So true.
Daniel Murray: [00:15:51] We like to believe that our assumptions are accurate, and sometimes understanding someone else means we have to suspend that for a little bit. And we don’t often like to do that.
Nicole Goodman: [00:16:00] It’s such a good point. So very true. You actually have a four step process to empathy. First, leadership which you explore in the empathy gap, your book. Can you talk us through what the steps are and which are the most immediately impactful?
Daniel Murray: [00:16:15] Yeah, the the four step process is something that I had to build because I was sort of confronted with this issue that I wasn’t naturally empathetic, and I wanted to learn it, and I needed some steps. So the first step is probably the most important is to be what we call consciously curious. And what I mean by consciously curious is I need to acknowledge that I have beliefs, I have biases, I have heuristics, I have mental models that are there about anyone and everyone I’ll ever meet. But if I really want to understand them, I have to put those aside and enter this conversation with pure curiosity. So I walk in with a blank sheet of paper. I don’t know, but I’m really interested. And that is really important because the second step in the process is to what we call openly explore, which is to ask questions to to sit with people, spend time, experience with them. And if I am not consciously curious, what I’ll do is I’ll ask questions to validate my pre-existing assumptions. And we are very good at doing this. So that exploration now enters spaces that I would never usually look for. I might not ever experience or see, or it allows me to explore more deeply. And then that leads us to the third step, which is okay, now I can I can use this new information.
Daniel Murray: [00:17:31] I can interrogate those mental models I had previously and I can adjust them. So before I thought this person, uh, was being rude or arrogant. Okay. But after that, I just spoke to them. I tried to understand them, and what I found out was they were holding a lot of frustration and they were holding a lot of anger. Okay, now I might still see their behaviors as rude and arrogant, but I can see a justification or a driver of those which I didn’t see before. And then the fourth step is now what we call leading with empathy. So now I can make decisions and I can make make a call on something. I can do all sorts of decision making processes with better information, with a better view of the world and more knowledge about what could be going on. And that that’s why this, this process is so important. Because if we don’t do that, we tend to just validate what we already think is true or look for validation. And the internet gives us all the validation we’ll ever need for anything we ever want. And then we make decisions based on just this tight little mental model or perception we had before, instead of being able to explore more broadly.
Nicole Goodman: [00:18:39] Yeah, if we take the focus of a small to medium business, how can leaders balance staying empathetic without losing the ability to be decisive and maintaining momentum, especially when they need to make some tough calls, which they do?
Daniel Murray: [00:18:55] Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I stress in the book is I do I do not recommend someone be empathetic all the time with everyone. That’s exhausting. It takes a huge amount of effort, and you’ll probably suffer a significant amount of cognitive dissonance trying to do it. But I think the thing you said there, which is really important when we need to make tough calls, and so often I see leaders in small, medium, even in large corporations, when it comes to making a tough call. You you hear them say phrases like, I’ve got a bunker down, I’ve got to, I’ve got to, you know, focus. I’ve got to ratchet my perspectives in. And this to me is the mistake we make here, which is I would recommend when you do have to make a tough call. That’s the time to go. Better make sure I look broadly. Better make sure I’m taking in as much new information. I better get some different perspectives. I better anticipate how this might impact lots of different types of people, because that’s that tough call is the thing that I want to get right. And so I want to capture as much data as I can. And this is where I think a lot of small medium businesses are using a lot more data, a lot more data driven decision making. I love it. I agree, it’s a good thing. The thing is, you can’t capture all the data that’s important in a spreadsheet. How someone feels about their child could be the most important thing that will impact your decision. But you could put a number down in a spreadsheet. It just won’t mean anything if you talk to the person and get that sense of why and how and what’s driving them, that’s going to position you much better to make that tough call.
Nicole Goodman: [00:20:34] Is there a particular story that stands out for you where applying empathetic leadership has led to a breakthrough.
Daniel Murray: [00:20:41] Yeah. Look, there’s a story. I tell this quite often. I was working with a project manager really early in my career, and we’d run very large programmes of work that almost always ran over time and over budget. And I know that would be a horrible shock to you, Nicole, to hear that the projects running over time and over budget, when we were trying to understand what might be driving this, a colleague of mine said, well, it’s because they stuffed up the implementation or because, you know, there’s politics. There was sort of these basic ideas. And it struck me one day I was working with a project manager, looking at their project plan, and there was a list of names, and in a column next to it had the letters FTE at the top. And this was how assigned these people were to the project. And I looked at the names and I looked at the numbers, and I said to the project manager, hey, what if they don’t want to do the work? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, look at this guy here, George at the top. I’ve worked with George. George is a good guy. You’ve got him as a one fully allocated six, five days a week for six months. Now, I can tell you some days, having worked with George, some days he’s won, some days more like a point.
Daniel Murray: [00:21:51] Two other days he’s like a 1.3. And so how do you manage that variability? And he said well I don’t know. It just doesn’t fit in the spreadsheet. We sort of ignore it. And for me this was a classical example of using. We get comfort from numbers that don’t have any meaning behind it. And we use that comfort to ignore the thing that’s really important, which is if I can understand George, if I can understand what drives him, what motivates him, what he cares about, what he loves, what he hates. If I can understand more about what’s going on inside of him as a person, then I might be much better at managing the variability in that number. And if I can manage that as a leader, if I can manage that variability, wow, we’re going to have a way better opportunity to do really well on this project. And so again, I appeal to leaders all the time. This isn’t about woo woo. This is maths right? This is numbers. It’s just that we we have to step out of the idea that I can plug George into a machine and get an understanding. I have to take the responsibility to understand George as a human. And to do that well, I need to have empathy.
Daniel Murray: [00:23:01] The data from organizations like Gallup shows that about 20% of Australian workers are engaged at work. Now there are 13% that they class as actively disengaged. So these are hostile, angry, upset, those sorts of people, only 13% there. The vast majority, two thirds are apathetic. They just don’t care at all. And, you know, I hear people say things like, oh, let’s leave your emotions at the door. That’s the stupidest thing you could do as a leader, right? Because the emotions you want them to bring are I care about my work. I’m passionate. I’m committed. I want to go the extra mile. I want to feel successful. I want to celebrate how awesome we are here. If you’re a small or medium business owner, you can’t afford to have two thirds of your people turning up going, oh well, it’s another day and I’m going to walk out. It’s just going to destroy your productivity, and you’ll be beaten by any organisation that can turn the dial up a little bit and get a few more people engaged and caring and passionate. And this is where I think there’s a huge opportunity for leaders to really outperform any of their competitors just by having an engaged workforce. But that takes stepping into the messy, uncomfortable world of emotions and navigating that is really tough.
Nicole Goodman: [00:24:23] Well, finally, Daniel, as the world becomes increasingly complex and polarized. And now, of course, with AI entirely reshaping the way that we work, what role does empathy play and how important is it to maintain?
Daniel Murray: [00:24:38] It’s probably more important as a skill than ever before. And I want to break this down in a few ways, potentially. One of them is if you just think about the work that we had to do, a big chunk of it was technical work, calculations, algorithms, whatever it was you did, uh, physical work. What we know is that increasingly AI and and machines and robots are going to take most of that work. So what’s the work that we haven’t been able to outsource? Well, and if you think about things like AI, you can’t outsource ethics, you can’t outsource moral decision making. And there’s lots of examples of where we’ve deployed AI to perform an outcome. It’s done something terrible or done something destructive. Youtube had a big challenge around this, uh, through many years where the algorithm found that people really liked to like to watch things that are right wing conspiracy theories and violent and aggressive sort of content, which obviously then.
Nicole Goodman: [00:25:43] It fed the algorithm and kept kind of sending more of that content, which led people down the rabbit hole further and further.
Daniel Murray: [00:25:49] This is where I think the real challenge of AI is. Humans are incredibly susceptible to manipulation, being controlled. Coercively. You only have to look at our inability to control things like gambling and drinking, and we’re very good at getting sucked into things, and AI will accelerate that like nothing ever before. What I want to see, and what I really hope to see, particularly from my daughter, is a world where we actually look across these divides that that are drawn out for us. We’re sort of we’re getting pushed into these boxes rather than these boxes being real. And we want to look across as humans, across that divide and go, hey, tell me, what are the things that drove you? What’s going on in your world? Why did you do what you did? I’m really interested. And the alternative is going to be assumption led chaos and conflict. And I don’t think anyone really wants that. I think it comes back to understanding when I type into a Google search or ask ChatGPT a question. I’d love people to ask themselves this question. Do I want it to confirm what I already believe, or am I really interested in learning something new? Someone cuts me off in traffic. I can get angry because they must have done it on purpose and they hate me. Or I could go, well that’s interesting. I wonder what’s going on in their world. Maybe they’re running late. Maybe something else is going on. Maybe they just didn’t see me. It was a complete accident. What I know is that whichever choice I make here, it won’t impact that person one bit. It’ll have no influence on them unless they take some bad action. But it will absolutely influence on me. And so the more I think we can have that, that conscious curiosity and look for different alternatives, the more we can see the world in its complex beauty, then being pushed into these algorithm LED boxes that make the world sort of cold and hard and black and white.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:27:49] That was Daniel Murray, CEO of Empathic Consulting. Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode. Follow Business Essentials Podcast across social media and head to www.BusinessEssentialsPodcast.au for more. Business Essentials is a SoundCartel podcast. Producers are Nick Schildberger, Nicole Goodman and myself. Technical production is by Pete Letts. I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist thanks for listening. We’ll bring you more business essentials next week.
