Ravi Singh  
If I was looking at my boss, my boss was giving me feedback, what feedback? What words could come out of his mouth that would feel kind, that he's connecting with me, that he's on my side, that he cares about me, and then I give that feedback to my team members as best as I can do. More.

Jeff Ma  
Hello and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. We want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff MA and as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories from real people, real businesses, talk about real life. And my guest today is Ravi Singh. Ravi is a design executive with over 25 years of experience in UX, UI, marketing, development, product and user research. He's developed high performing research and design teams at multiple organizations, and he's championed ux by proving its value to both end users and businesses. Ravi is known as a people focused leader who is highly engaged in building team culture and coaching at the individual level, and as I've recently learned, he's also a professional pizza chef, which he didn't include on his bio, but I'm adding. So welcome to the show. Ravi, how are you doing?

Ravi Singh  
I'm doing great. Pizza life can't escape me, apparently.

Jeff Ma  
I mean, when you're on podcasts, and you have podcasts, when you're teaching the stuff, teaching people how to make it around the Houston area, I mean, you can't really run from it, but one of these days, I have to try some of your pizza. So we'll have to arrange that pretty soon. Well,

Ravi Singh  
I think it is on topic, because pizza is love, and love is a business strategy. So it's all on topic. We're gonna love it. 

Jeff Ma  
I love it. We're gonna connect. We're gonna circle back by the end. I promise pizza will come up again. We'll get there before the end. But before we do. I'd love to start with a very much more personal question, I suppose, and it's around your passion. So my question is, what is your passion really and how did you get to where your passion is today?

Ravi Singh  
It's very interesting. So Right. Today, I'm an executive in a software company, and there's nothing in my life that I thought was going to lead me there, because when I was younger, I was I was an artist, actually. So I was a painter, and the creative flow was what my life was all about, like being in that type of flow. But I think also teaching was a big part of that too. So I used to teach a lot of people how to make art and do that through graduate school. So art and design and kind of connecting with people through aesthetics and creativity and flow I think was fundamentally the passion that's driven me for years and years. There's a period of time also when I was in corporate for a few years that I was also a DJ, and now in the last seven years, I'm a pizza maker. So there's this thread of creativity and flow state and connecting with others through creative acts, that I think, is what drives me. And of course, you got you could ask, well, then how did you end up being an executive? Where does that thread continue forward? And I would say it does, in the fact that I'm driven by design, by connecting with users and connecting with my team and motivating my team. So it's, it's a very similar kind of vibe.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, I love that. And I invited you here today because I think that's something that we haven't touched here, at least, you know, not directly here on this, in this conversation, in this show around, not really even just use user experience and, you know, end users type conversation, but just the idea of love and empathy in general, and how that engages with like the human experience, or just how people what it means. It's a big word. We we talk about empathy a lot, I think for me, in a lot of conversations, it's one of those often used, but less like well understood concepts at a deep level, and it's hard to practice, in my opinion, as well. So I wanted to pick your brain around where, where it all fits in for you as a topic as empathy, and even how it fits into your work and like you mentioned your team like, so all of it. So I'll let you pick where to start. But empathy, yeah, let's

Ravi Singh  
talk about empathy. Yeah, it's interesting, because the word empathy and sympathy are kind of close neighbors. I always think about sympathy as like. Feeling sorry for someone, it just that's how it sounds to me, whereas empathy is more about feeling what they're feeling, kind of putting yourself in their shoes, right? And I have interviewed a lot of UX people. So user UX is user experience, and that's kind of the domain I work with. And user experience is all about connecting design to people's experiences. So whether it's a product design of a coffee mug or a door or design of a website and how people interact with it, we're trying to connect the design to them and the feeling it creates, the experience it creates for them. So over the years, I've interviewed a lot of UX candidates, job seekers, people who are on my team now, and they often ask them, What do you think is the most important attribute of a UX designer? And the number one response is empathy now so much so it's predictable like I think they teach this to folks now is that empathy is a thing that drives UX design. Do I mean to be controversial in what I want to say next? Perhaps I think that it's a good answer, but I think imagination and advocacy is probably stronger than empathy, and I want to kind of explain why I think that so for a UX designer, I think imagining what an experience is like for somebody else, and then advocating for the best experience and best design outcome is what they do. But empathizing, I think, gets way more to the heart. And when you have a million end users of an E commerce site, or 300 employees using an internal site, it's really hard to really empathize with each one of them individually. So I'm kind of saying I don't know how empathetic UX designers truly are, even though we wear the empathy badge. And where I look for empathy, the evidence I look for with empathy, with within my own team, is how they empathize with their neighbors. So how do they connect with treat, respect, you know, feel what their neighbors feel, meaning other designers and researchers, but also the engineers, also the product managers, because it's very easy for us when we get frustrated, to demonize others while we're empathizing with a user who we don't actually see. So I think it's a very important conversation around what does it really mean, and do we really practice it, and what could it look like if we really, really practice empathy with our colleagues that we work with?

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, and that's a very valid question. I think it's hard for me to even clearly articulate, what does it look like to practice empty? Like, what is the action associated with empathy? What's your what's your take?

Ravi Singh  
Interesting. So I am a manager, right? So I have employees who report to me. I've been manager for over 15 years, and one of the jobs as a manager is to support people in their performance and sometimes give them feedback when needed, when needed, and I'm just being very cautious with my words, because I don't want to say negative feedback or constructive feedback, performance feedback, because I think all those things add judgment To the word feedback. So let's say I have an employee who shows up late to every meeting or struggled in giving a presentation or struggled with a certain deliverable. I think giving them direct negative feedback, at least that's the way they're going to take it, direct feedback on those on that those performance issues is probably going to undermine them, and it's going to undermine their future performance. And so when I think about it from a perspective of empathy, or definitely from a perspective of love, I try to put myself in their position and say, if I was looking at my boss and my boss is giving me feedback. What feedback? What words could come out of his mouth that would feel kind, that he's connecting with me, that he's on my side, that he cares about me, and then I give that feedback to my team members as best as I can. You know, I can never really see the world from their eyes, but I think there's this kind of Gail Carnegie approach of tending to be positive all the time. And if someone's really weak in one area, don't focus on that. They're weak 99 times in this area where you want them to get better, focus on that. One time they killed it. They did a great job. And. And just praise them on that. And I think that that's a place that comes from love, because you care about how they feel afterwards, and that will grow, that that'll like water that seed. So that's kind of how we think about empathy in a very practical way, and connecting with love. To my team members,

Jeff Ma  
I do an exercise with some folks that we do workshops with things like that, and we ask, we ask participants like, how do you like to receive feedback? And one of the questions, one of the answers we get, I want to say, 30 to 40% of people include and these are like leaders, and they higher ups, usually in organizations, and their answer is typically going to be along the lines of, I want it direct. I want it to the point I want it, you know, you know, just give it to me, like, give me the feedback straight on. Don't dance around it all this stuff. And you hear that a lot. And so there's this, I guess, picture they're trying to paint that like, hey, that's how I want my feedback. And then kind of exploring more the environment that they work in. You learn that, man, people don't want to give them feedback that way because of how they react to direct to the point feedback. Yeah, and, and it's, and it's kind of like, how do we practice empathy when there's I guess, is it more about what they say they want or what you think they need?

Ravi Singh  
Like because a lot in terms of behavior, right? If I give someone direct feedback, even though they asked for it, how are they really going to respond? Right? Because now you're forcing them to look into a mirror, and I want to be sensitive to that response. So even though they may ask for that, there's generally always a kinder way, like I can respond to any question 100 different ways. So there is a choice in that, and there's a choice to breathe a little bit, pause a little bit, and think about what the kindest way is to give them that feedback. And maybe, actually, the technique I typically use is I don't really give the feedback. I ask them, I ask them a question. How do you think it went today? What was the best part of that? Oh, I totally agree with you. That was amazing. Is there anything you would have done differently? Oh, that's the thing you would have done differently. Yeah, I guess I see that too. Why would you have done that differently? How do you think you would approach it the next way? So I'm never really criticizing them or critiquing them directly, coaching them to get to that answer themselves, and I think that's a much more loving approach, actually, because we're helping them get into a safe space where they can self examine and be vulnerable and talk talk through it, without also having to deal with their bosses or some colleagues negative feedback. You know, you can call it constructive all you want, but ultimately, if it does feel like it's negative, your defenses go up and then you can't really receive what might be well intended loving feedback. So I just, I really think about that a lot, about not triggering someone into a place of being defensive.

Jeff Ma  
Do you find sometimes we kind of consider empathy to be being in their shoes, or walking a mile in their shoes, or a form of that. And yet, I think part of what we do naturally is instead ask the question like, What would I do in that situation, which is a different question than, what would they do in that situation? Right? Like, like, how do you bridge this tendency where I'm like, Well, if that happened to me, I would have just wanted this, or I would have wanted that, which is kind of where our like, kind of our perspective and our bias, kind of like, and we call it empathy, because we're doing what we think is the kindest or the most, you know, helpful thing in that situation. But is there a way to kind of overcome, like, like, get to true empathy, where you're doing what they would want, which may not always be the same? Yeah, and

Ravi Singh  
it's very interesting, a lot of the words that I heard were words that I would so she more with judgment versus empathy, what I would have wanted or the way I think they should have done it, you know. And how can I help them do it this other way? And I think that see empathy and judgment, to me, are very intertwined, because you have to drop judgment in order to empathize right, to truly emphasize and empathy doesn't mean I empathize so much, I'm going to coddle somebody that's not in it at all, right? Because if we approach those relationships with love, we actually want to help the folks grow, not even necessarily heal, but grow,

Jeff Ma  
right? Yeah, that'd be sympathy,

Ravi Singh  
I guess, right? Anymore like sympathy, right? And there is this dark side to empathy, where. You start coddling so much that you actually end up disabling a person rather than helping them grow. But the judgment piece of it's really important because, like you said, we can think about expectations or woulda, shoulda, coulda is how it should have turned out instead how we might have done something which definitely is not empathetic, because now we're making it by ourselves. And I think training yourself to manage your judgment and manage your own ego is an important I guess, door you you have to open in order to be empathetic with somebody else. I had a boss a few years ago who asked me to coach our sales team and how they did presentations and demos with prospects. And while I said, Yes, Boss inside, I was in a bit of turmoil, because I thought, well, I've never been a salesperson like who am I? It was even beyond impostor syndrome, I felt it was almost disrespectful for me to give advice to folks whose job I've never done, who's, you know, shoes I never I walked in, right? And so I went through a couple sessions. I gave some of this feedback. I thought I was kind of on the right path, but I went back to my boss, and I confessed that I felt very uncomfortable with this, you know, I felt really uncomfortable. And who am I? And he's an amazing guy. He's like, one of the greatest leaders I've worked with, and he had a very kind of, like Papa Bear type of vibe around him, although he could also be a commander as well. And the thing that he said, that kind of threw me off, because I never really heard anyone say this in leadership position, was, if you give your feedback with love, then they can receive it with love. And two years later, after that experience of coaching sales folks, they do still call on me to get some coaching and support, whether it's design or feedback on on their presentations or demos or or even their strategy. And I think that advice I got was good because those folks did recognize it was coming from a good place. I wasn't telling them how to do their job. I was really there to help them win.

Jeff Ma  
Is there? I guess I've practiced things like stating your intentions very clearly. Is that the kind of thing that is included in that, or is it more of a style and a feel?

Ravi Singh  
You know, in my approach, which I adopted after think we were as a team. We were reading. Believe it was crucial conversations. I believe was that book or it was another one. Radical candor is one of those two books. There was just a little bit in there that said, before you give feedback, ask if you can give feedback. And that has served me so well. From the day I heard that, moving forward, it's served me so well. So simply saying, Would it be okay if I gave you some feedback? Not Do you mind? Like, would it be okay if I gave you some feedback? Then, of course, you wouldn't be sensitive. Like, don't give feedback too quick. Like, if someone's already in a world of discomfort, like, that's not the time to give feedback. I give it a little moment, but ask in advance, and then nine times out of 10 at a minimum, they're going to say, It's okay, yes. And then you give feedback, and all you've done is help them lower their walls and be open to it.

Jeff Ma  
I'm trying to imagine the one out of 10 that said no. I feel like rare but, but I guess, if it's a question, is the question itself, what's opening up the door? It's kind of a rhetorical Yes, largely,

Ravi Singh  
largely. But, you know, there might be that person who's actually still very raw from some experience, and that's not the time to give them feedback. You know, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, just give them some time first.

Jeff Ma  
That makes sense,

Ravi Singh  
but it's such a respectful thing to do. And of course, respect is love, isn't it? You know, I think that's one, one component of love,

Jeff Ma  
absolutely, do I think, yeah, I think a lot of this is stuff that you you say you practice in your teams. Is this something that you feel very connected to, kind of your like, the passion that you, I know you stated it in your passion, but kind of like, obviously, you're working in in the UX kind of space and design and very creative space. Does that connect for you? Like, is this a creative endeavor in in working with your teams this way?

Ravi Singh  
That's a that's a that's a really good question. I mean, I think my motivation on this probably goes way beyond UX, to be honest. Because I do think that if designers have enough data, they can and the data might also be observed. So observing people looking at analytics. Surveys, whatever that data is, they could probably design something that's pretty solid, pretty it's going to be pretty successful with end users. Now you should actually still vet that with end users. You should still interview them and ask them how they feel about the experience that we delivered and all that. So I'm not saying you don't need to include end users in the process. You absolutely do. But even if you just had good facts and you had a good designer, they could probably come up with a good solution where empathy matters the most is actually in the team dynamics that deliver the solution. So if the UX folks are really connected with end users and the customers, but they're not really connected with their engineers and product managers and leaders and everyone else, and they're living kind of on their little island where they're advocating for users, usually, the thing that's delivered isn't going to be that great. You know it? I think you need to have some love in the product team to care about that common goal, about what you're delivering and why it matters to the business and to the customers and to their end users and but you have to have that care in the product team, like people of different roles can't afford to silo themselves and act as consultants to each other. They really need to live together, breathe together, and be part of a team. I was gonna say a family. I'm not gonna use the word family. It's a team. You know, we think a lot about how teams operate on the field in real time, the amount of trust you have to have and care you have to have. I mean, it's incredible. So be because we're comfortable in a corporate environment making software, sometimes you can get a little relaxed about how you're operating in terms of routine work, you know, because it's not the stakes aren't as high second to second as they are on the football field or on the soccer field, but if people can bring that and start to hone those types of relationships and connections with their engineers and product managers and sales folks and all that stuff, then your outcome is going to be amazing.

Jeff Ma  
A lot of I think what I've learned and heard from you. Today revolves around, I won't say all of it, but a lot of it had a central core in your style, around centered around kindness. It like you. Seems like you choose, when in doubt, you choose the approach that's more kind. Try to help, encourage or or motivate in positive ways. I feel that when I talk empathy with certain leaders, they struggle with the idea of too much kindness. I guess I won't. I don't think they word it that way, but these tough, tough conversations, performance issues, things that they view, you know, is some of their regular kind of things they have to do with their team. They view it as something that they struggle. They struggle basically with, with figuring out what empathy looks like in that in that context. Because maybe they've, they've said, Hey, here's that one out of 100 that you did great, but the person comes back and still does not do it. Or they have, you know, it's, it's getting they always think of these, not just think of but they also live through in their minds these situations where there's no more room for, I guess, sugarcoating it in their minds, their words, what is, what does empathy look like? I guess, in like a tough, tough love situation for you, have, you, have, you had to encounter that. I understand the kindness piece. It's definitely where I feel everyone should start. But I also feel like there's, there's, there's, there's a concept to talk through where people feel like Empathy means being a doormat or being kind of like too soft. What is What do you say to those competitions? There's

Ravi Singh  
a couple things here. So one is in terms of the I want to get to the word Trust, so don't let me forget that. But in terms of kindness and tough love, when we're only focused on work performance, you almost know where I'm going with this now, then we never really get to the root of it. You know, more often than not, when a team member or a colleague of mine is struggling, or when I'm struggling, you know, by the way, I feel like I'm talking like I'm some kind of a group. But all these are lessons from 25 years of making mistakes and stuff, right? But what, even when I'm struggling, or someone on the team is struggling, usually has very little to do with work. Usually has very, very, very little to do with work. Work problems are, are always pretty manageable, you know? But it's the things that are usually happening outside of work and. So I think the kindness might be that, hey, you know, for example, if somebody, again, had a major performance issue at work, or maybe, for example, he snapped at somebody at work, you could pull them aside and have a talking to if you wanted to. You could do that. And I've done that in the past. They didn't feel better about it, and I didn't feel better about it, and it just hurt the relationship, taking that approach, but backing up and saying, Hey, that was really out of character. I get a sense something might be going wrong. Like, do you want to chat? Like, how's everything going with you? That's kindness, right? Asking, like, how are you feeling like? I open up so many conversations with, how are you feeling, just how are you feeling, you know, and people go, Oh, I'm okay. But if you're not okay, you can use it as an opportunity to actually talk about how you're feeling. And I think those tough love conversations are way easier when you realize, oh, this person's parents suffering cancer and they just found out yesterday, or this person is having some issues with their child, you know, or this person had some other type of issues. So I think getting to that root cause is the place to start before you go into tough love, because it's work is manageable for all of us, it's really manageable life that usually gets unmanageable. So I with my one on ones, I tried to spend approximately half of the time talking about life, not about work. I think it's just super critical. And then you asked, you made another comment, or asked a question, and it got me thinking about trust. So there's a story I tell myself, and the story's changed over the years. There's a period of time, many years ago where I had managers who were very authoritarian, and at the heart of that was a lack of trust of the people they hired. Yet they would say openly, this is the best team ever, greatest talent, so and so forth, but they really didn't trust folks. And there's a big, I think, psychological route to all of that. But for where I'm at right now, I remind myself that if I truly believe that my direct reports are the best that I could have on my team, and I, I believe in their capabilities, their intelligence, they have an amazing track record up to the point where they've joined my organization, and their team members are amazing too, then my behaviors have to follow suit, right? If I trust you, I'm going to give you more space work. If I trust you, and things are going a little off the rails, then it can't be because of your capabilities, you know, because you already have a track record that that you are capable. So if things are going off the rail, I just generally assume it's time for some type of a personal conversation, and I'm a relatively vulnerable leader, and I hope that creates space for my team members to be vulnerable as well. And there's probably some team members who worked for me 10 years ago who might see this interview today go going, that's how the Ravi I know too, because we all have that room to grow, and that's another thing I trust with my team members, is when you're empathizing with folks, you also have to have belief in them that they're not stuck, they're not stagnant, they're not crippled, that empathy and love and kindness and concern can lead to, like a more caring approach to coaching that can then lead to growth, and like that, manager of mine had pushed me like right out into the sales organization. That made me very uncomfortable, but I grew a lot through that experience, and I knew he had my back. I'm

Jeff Ma  
glad you brought that up. That's a great ad and a great kind of top off of this conversation, because I think at the end of the day, yeah, I think there's this element of trust that's underlying that we hadn't brought up till now. And like, I think when you add that to the equation, it all makes a lot more sense. That's great. I promise to bring back up pizza. So here it is. So best pizza topping, or best, you know, obviously, I'm sure you make very pure and kind of traditional, from what I saw and understood that you're a bit of a purist. But best pizza topping outside of cheese and sauce,

Ravi Singh  
extra basil, simply extra basil, extra Basil with some finely grated Pecorino Romano, and it just, it just brings everything to life. There's a pizza maker in Brooklyn, Dom DeMarco, at the far as pizzeria, who really made that kind of going overboard with basil. A thing, but it brightens everything up. It brings fragrance into the mix, and it's unbelievable. So I'd say don't be shy with the basil, though extra if you're a meat eater, I 100% would say hot honey. So if you have sausage pizza or pepperoni pizza, drizzle hot honey all over it, and it's unbelievable. That's like a chili honey, a spiced honey.

Jeff Ma  
Oh, my God, I'm so hungry. Also, I don't know why I asked that question.

Unknown Speaker  
I'm hungry. Not so hungry.

Jeff Ma  
Robbie, thank you so much for the time you spent today. I really enjoyed the conversation, and just bringing your perspective over 25 years of experience, just bringing it all to this conversation, has been awesome. So thank you so much for joining us.

Ravi Singh  
It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me here, and I've been looking forward to this conversation. Awesome.

Jeff Ma  
Listeners. Hope you enjoyed it. We've been trying to regulate our posting schedule, and as of this episode, I assume we've been still posting every two weeks. Let us know what you think of that, because I'm still back and forth on the every week, two week thing, and we'll figure it out together, but until then, please check out the book love as a business strategy. Appreciate the support, subscribing, subscribing and rating, the podcast and all that good stuff. So with that, we'll be signing off, and we'll talk to you all soon. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai