In this episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast we talk to a leader at the forefront of the biotech industry, Genentech’s Vice President of Litigation, Mary Riley.
In this interview, Mary shares with us how leading with empathy not only improved her team’s dynamics, but it also led to major breakthroughs for the business too.
“Our group had existed for a number of years and thought they knew each other well,” explains Mary. “But it turned out they didn't actually know each other as well as they had thought. And as a result, we were unable to tap into the team’s full capabilities and potential. Getting over this hurdle was an essential part of achieving Genentech’s many accomplishments over the past few years.”
Mary Vice President, Litigation at Genentech
Mary started her legal career in law firms, but it was only when she moved to Genentech 15 years ago, that she realised she needed to be more strategic and thoughtful about people management issues. That’s when she started exploring the Enneagram, a human development framework that allows people to become aware of their own automatic patterns of behavior.
Wendy Appel is the author of InsideOut Enneagram: The Game Changing Guide for Leaders. She’s also an executive coach, consultant and one of the founding partners of Trilogy Effect. She explains, “We often don't know how we, as individuals, come across to others. The Enneagram helps us understand how people experience us, what drives our automatic patterns of interaction and what drives and motivates others, so we can respond more thoughtfully, rather than become reactive to people and situations.”
In this podcast episode Mary shares how empathy has been the key to leading her world class team at Genentech successfully through rapid growth and expansion in the fast-changing biotech industry. She also shares her predictions for the future of work in the post-pandemic era. Listen and learn:
Why empathy in leadership is crucial
The role of team dynamics in making decisions
How to use the Enneagram framework for team leadership
What Enneagram Type 1s are like as leaders
How people may work together in the near future
Listen to the podcast here:
Links to helpful resources and information about some of the tools and concepts mentioned on the show:
How to use the Enneagram to become a better leader
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MACHINE GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. It may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.
Being Human Is Good For Business Podcast with
Genentech’s Mary Riley
Mary Riley: I knew, intuitively, that to try to reach people, you can't just give it to them the way I would want to get it, but I didn't always know how to figure out how the other person wanted to receive it. So for me, that was a powerful moment in terms of, wow, I can really help people hear the message if I understand how they want to receive it.
And I think it was a powerful moment for the rest of the team as they heard how their colleagues wanted to receive the information. It was powerful and amazing and an insightful which I think was surprising for a number of folks.
Announcer: Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. In each episode the leadership development experts at trilogy effect explore how the process of self-discovery unleashes the potential in us all. Now here’s your host Sherrilynne Starkie.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Hello, I'm Sherrilynne Starkie, welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. Today I'm joined by leadership development expert, Wendy Appel, who's one of the founding partners at Trilogy Effect and we are welcoming as our guests, the leader, who is at the forefront of the biotech industry Genentech’s Vice President of Litigation, Mary Riley. Welcome to the show.
Mary Riley: Thanks Sherrilynne.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Let's start with you telling us a little bit about yourself and your career background.
Mary Riley: So my current position I lead the Litigation Team at Genentech. Genentech is generally recognized as the founder of the biotechnology industry more than 40 years ago.
I came to this position by way of a fairly routine legal background, which is a partner at a law firm and various law firm positions over the years and a previous stint in-house at a public utility company. So that's how I ended up at Genentech and along the way I started by leading the Employment Law Team and then expanded my leadership roles over the last nearly 15 years that I've been with the company.
Sherrilynne Starkie: So you've been in leadership roles within the last 15 years. What do you think is the key to being a successful leader?
Mary Riley: Well, I think the key is, for one thing, never stop growing and learning because I feel like the minute I actually feel competent in this, something else comes up and jumps up and I realize, boy, do I need to do more.
I think fundamentally the things that I've really learned are, number one; wisdom comes from the group and not from the top of the house. Being empathetic and really understanding, first yourself, and then the others on the team makes great teamwork possible. Then clarity of communications, because no one can really achieve what they need to if they don't understand what the expectations are or where things went sideways. It’s in those areas where I like to think that I’ve contributed quite a bit, but I find everyday I can continue to do better.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Do you think that reflects what you hear with your other clients Wendy, the need to recognize that you can always grow and do better?
Wendy Appel: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I certainly find it in myself and I think that's why our clients bring us in. It's this constant wanting to grow and develop. The world changes, the context changes, and we're constantly having to learn to adapt and that causes us to develop new skills and new abilities and new awareness and all of that. So, yeah, I think it's what makes life really interesting.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Agreed. Mary can you tell us a little bit about when you first thought about well I'm a leader here, I feel like I could use some training and development beyond my role in litigation, but as a team leader. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about?
Mary Riley: Yeah, you know, I've described to people that I came to leadership a little bit later in my career than most people do just by virtue of having spent so much time in law firms. Today law firms are very different from when I was in the law firm environment, in terms of focusing on leadership capabilities. At the law firm, it's your technical competence, your ability to generate business and your client-relations skills.
So I will say client related skills definitely carry over to some of the activities as a leader, but I was fortunate enough when I first joined the company that I participated on a very high functioning leadership team. I sat with the head of HR and her leadership team and what I observed and I picked up along the way was, ‘wow, I need to be a lot more strategic and thoughtful about people management issues.’ Some of it I was doing intuitively, but I wasn't really focused on, ‘how do I look at this holistically and how do I pull these nascent ideas and good intuitive dynamics together in a much more holistic and strategic manner.’
So then I started looking around to get more exposure to great leaders and how they think and along the way I started attending various programs that the company offered. Then ultimately I got into coaching and more focused support because I thought that was the key to breaking through, especially with the litigation team, when I took it over a few years ago.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Was it the key?
Mary Riley: I think it was essential to our ability to take a group that had existed for a number of years and thought they kind of knew each other. Yet, it was interesting as we did our work, and Wendy and I had the chance to work together, as we began the work, the team expressed surprise that they didn’t actually know each other as well as they thought. As a result, I don’t think we were tapping into the full capabilities and potential of team members, and absolutely that was the key to breaking open some of the stuff we've been able to accomplish the last few years.
Sherrilynne Starkie: What are some examples of the kind of ‘aha’ moments that they would have in this situation?
Mary Riley: Well, I think for us, what was so powerful and I'll defer to Wendy as the expert on this, but we leveraged the Enneagram and I had really stressed to people that it's not to put people in a box, it was intended to open each of us up to both who we are, how we act, and what motivates and drives us both consciously and subconsciously. Then we can control parts of how we respond to things when we understand what’s driving it and what’s doing it. I think that if you never explore yourself in this dimension and you engage with others around you, you just assume that what's motivating you is what's motivating the person you're talking to, or the rest of the group, without really thinking that they're operating at different planes and in different dimensions entirely.
So when you hit an impasse of some sort or a disconnect of some sort, people then struggle on how to move past it because they don't understand how they got there. I thought, for the team, what they expressed, was that they sort of knew each other on a very surface level and liked each other, so it wasn't a bad thing, but they didn't really understand how they differed from one another in terms of intrinsic motivations and how they operated and what was important to them, so I thought that was part of the breakthrough.
Sherrilynne Starkie: That sounds like a real ‘aha’ moment. It's like turning the lights on, right?
Mary Riley: Absolutely.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Would you say that's kind of how it usually works with the teams that you work with Wendy?
Wendy Appel: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think each team is different, they’re different people with different levels of maturity and different levels of self-awareness.
It certainly keeps my job interesting because it's always a new experience when I walk into a new team. There's the, the light bulb moments, the ‘aha’ moments, the heart connections, the ‘oh wow I didn't realize that five years ago or four years ago,’ and moments where there's an understanding and an empathy that gets developed and it’s a really special moment when that starts happening.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Mary you said, I think the word you used was impasse that, your team could have been at an impasse and not understand why they got there. Could you give us an example of maybe a business challenge or an impasse that you were able to navigate more easily or overcome once your team had this knowledge and they started working in different ways.
Mary Riley: Yes, a number of dynamics come to mind, but I'll focus on one small one and one larger one. I felt one of the great ‘ahas” that we had, when in digging into the work, was watching individuals reflect on circumstances where they had interacted in the past and were kind of at loggerheads and the realization that, how they were approaching the work and what was important to them was so radically different. They really couldn't understand why the other one was holding onto stuff and one was trying to push to just move forward and they couldn't understand why there was so much tension.
As Wendy said, a moment ago, the light bulb, the ‘oh my gosh they just look at this completely differently and now I know how to interact with this colleague in an entirely different way.’ I thought of Wendy's point a moment ago about empathy. It just opened up empathy in the person who was willing to break free and move in a new direction. Like ‘this isn’t important, we can move on,’ and the other person was so anxiously hold on, thinking ‘we haven’t finished examining this,’ and the first person is thinking ‘oh my God, I had no idea how much anxiety this was causing you, but now I know how to interact with you more to help you break free.’ Then the other person who was holding on recognizes that this wasn't a personal exchange, it was just a difference of opinion on how to move forward, but this person had taken it very personally. So right on the personal level, that empathy and insight just helped to break things open and bring on the conversation, not only for the two of them, but because of the team dynamic, everybody else is watching and, in their own minds, beginning to apply it to their own experiences with people in the group.
So I think that sometimes those small moments are very profound in terms of opening people up to, ‘oh my gosh, there are other things going on here.’ I think another area where this was very helpful for us was that part of the team had some longstanding dynamics that they were struggling to break through. It turns out that as we explored the Enneagram, we were able to learn that a lot of people on the team were very passive and their types were such that they were holding everything in and they wouldn't confront some of the issues that were there. It took some really hard work for the group to really push through that and get on the other side, but it was essential to building the platform so we could go forward more productively.
Sherrilynne Starkie: So Mary, can you tell us how going through this process has impacted your business?
Mary Riley: It has definitely made us more focused and more productive in terms of being clear on what is the work, and then where are we getting in the way of the work, as individuals and as collective participants, in the team endeavour. So leaning into, ‘no, this is what we're doing and how we're going to do it,’ with a level of clarity that I don't think we had done before.
Ten really trying to also maximize the skills and talents of the various people in the group and doing that together with clarity of purpose, objectives and expectations, and then really trying to position people to do the best possible work. I think that has really helped us to be more efficient, to be more productive and to get more out of the individuals and the collective team.
Wendy Appel: I’m going to want to point to something here that Mary, among the leaders that I've worked with, is a standout around really, really focused on elevating the performance of the people on the team. By her understanding their strengths, how to bring out their best, how to get them to play to their strengths, you know, succession planning and really setting people up to grow and take over her position for instance. She’s very selfless in that way, I mean it's selfless, but it's also that she has a vested interest in that. A lot of leaders don’t try to build the team up to replace them and Mary does, and she does it in a very exceptionally thoughtful way and I've always been impressed about that.
Sherrilynne Starkie: It sounds like an almost seismic shift in thinking, a paradigm shift really in how you approached leadership, just not only yourself, but your whole leadership team.
Mary Riley: I think, for me, I found digging into the Enneagram to be, in many ways, transformational. As I alluded to earlier, there were some things I had observed others doing and, or intuitively knew was right, but I didn't perhaps have the paradigm or framework to help me do it more thoughtfully and strategically. So that’s where I found that digging into this gave me a whole lot more tools at my disposal to help me go through it. I remember Wendy facilitating our first offsite and one of the great ‘ahas” I had was when we were talking about the various types and how people wanted to receive feedback and, on the fly. I was listening to one of the people on my team who, in the Enneagram, is a Type 1 and really has a strong streak of, everything is perfect, you know, they're very conscious of doing perfect work and she was describing how she wanted to know how this manifests. So I asked the question, ‘well then how do I give you feedback if I have something constructive to say to you’?
It was just fascinating to hear both her response and then to hear everyone's reaction. I knew intuitively that to try to reach people you can't just give it to them the way I would want to get it, but I didn't always know how to figure out how the other person wanted to receive it. So for me that was a powerful moment in terms of, ‘wow, I can really help people hear the message if I understand how they want to receive it.’
I also think it was a powerful moment for the rest of the team as they heard how their colleagues wanted to receive the information. It was powerful and amazing and insightful, because I think it was surprising for a number of folks.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Wendy, can you explain to us, so Type 1 is the perfectionist the Enneagram. Can you elaborate a little bit on how do these personality types tend to want to receive feedback and constructive criticism?
Wendy Appel: Yeah, sometimes the Type 1 is called the perfectionist, and sometimes the reformer. Often they are much harder on themselves than anyone else can be so they’re already beating themselves up in many ways, so you don't want to pile on. They're very direct and they can pull back and be quite objective, so being clear, being constructive, and pointing to what you do want. They're very responsible and they want to please, in many ways, so I think it's just pointing them in the right direction with care, kindness and clarity is one of the ways that a Type 1 would want to receive feedback.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Can you give us, just for our listeners that don't know about the Enneagram framework, a quick explanation about what is an Enneagram?
Wendy Appel: Sometimes it helps to contrast and compare. A lot of people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs type indicator—16 different types that have letters. Largely the Myers Briggs type indicator is describing thinking processes, analytical processes and how people process information, but the Enneagram is distinct in that it really gets to nine fundamental worldviews. They are really archetypes that exist around the world and these nine fundamental archetypes are people who have, fundamentally, worldviews that are undergirded by different beliefs about themselves and about the way the world is.
Underneath those beliefs are their motivations, such as fears and desires that drive a whole life pattern, a whole life script. So you're getting at really the whole person, because it sees automatic ways of relating to self and others through the head centre, the heart centre and the belly centre. So you get feelings, thinking and acting patterns, and the Enneagram helps to shine the light on that and help you see your own automatic patterns.
I think Mary talked about the subconscious, some is conscious and some is subconscious and a lot is subconscious. I mean some people, they have these amazing ‘aha’ moments of pulling back the curtain on themselves and having no idea what was really going on in there. We just do what we do because we're inside of our worldview.
Wendy Appel: I was also curious Mary do you have, around the Type 1, in terms of receiving feedback, do you have anything to add to what I said?
Mary Riley: Well, I think the only thing I would add was that I totally agree with the already beating yourself up. But, the ‘aha’ I had when we were together, doing this process, was the one on my team who had articulated their preferred method of getting feedback was sort of a warm up in what she was saying is, ‘I want you to tell me on Friday that you want to talk to me on Monday, because there's something you want to talk to me about X project or whatever.
Yet, literally the entire rest of the group is listening and thinking, ‘oh my God no, whatever you do, don't do that to me.’ But, what she was describing was ‘I've already thought of everything I've done wrong and I've already beaten myself up for it, so I need to be prepared that you're going to lower the boom on me again and I need to kind of bolster myself before I get there.’
I thought, ‘oh dear God, had she not said this I never would've done that because I would have reacted like everyone else in the room. Don't give me a build-up because I'm going to angst all weekend over this.’ Yet she wanted the angsting over the weekend to kind of get prepared because, ‘how could anyone else think of something that I haven't thought of?’
I don't mean that critically, I mean that's how much she thinks through things. So that, for me was an incredibly powerful moment. Since that time, every time I get ready for feedback, whether it's the formal performance review process, or even in my one-on-ones, when I want to convey another perspective, I try really hard to think about how is this going to land and how are they going to receive it in a way that for their type, they can incorporate it, hear it, and then figure out how to move forward. That’s just an exponential growth for me in being able to tap into that by virtue of some of the work we've done.
Sherrilynne Starkie: So, it comes back to the empathy thing. Like you're really approaching all these conversations from a centre of caring and empathy and really thinking about how this information will land with each of the individuals. You can almost set them up for success to make sure that you have the best outcome for the conversation.
Mary Riley: It's also so much more efficient because you don't go through the multiple layers of trying to convey something and it doesn't land right the first time or the person doesn't get it.
If I'm able to give them messages in a way that they can hear it, they start to incorporate it almost immediately and so the change can happen faster. They can then look at the situation with a fresh eye and so it's actually a more productive and more efficient way to do it.I try very consciously to provide those kinds of nuggets of feedback in all of my one-on-ones with folks just so that feedback, when needed, is sort of a regular part of our communication rather than that build-up to, ‘now I'm going to give you feedback.’ I mean, I think all of us want the benefit of, ‘if I could have done something better I'd like to know it and adjust on the fly as opposed to waiting for time to pass and then to tell me, well, I could've done that better, but was six weeks ago, and there's not a darn thing I can do about it now.’ That's not helpful for anybody.
Wendy Appel: Or waiting until the annual performance review; worst-case.
Mary Riley: Yeah.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Why is that the worst-case Wendy?
Wendy Appel: Well, I mean, you know, ‘I've been doing this thing all year and now you're telling me about it. I mean, I couldn't course correct and now I’m getting evaluated for my bonus or pay raise or everything is riding on some of this feedback that, if you had given it to me in real time, I could have been course correcting all the way.’
Mary Riley: So I think it's incumbent on leaders and teammates to help each other in that, otherwise there's a lot of dust bunnies under the carpet that teams can trip over. What I found by using the Enneagram to explore self and better understand others, really, where I thought this helped both me, personally, and the team to grow was on thinking more about impact. It's not just my intent, I can count on everybody on my team generally having good intent, but it's the impact of what we're doing and awakening people to both impact, in terms of when I'm pushing something out or when I'm reacting to something and really trying to stay on a more positive trend and to recognize that how I respond to this has repercussions for the other people, with whom I'm working.
Again, in the moment, this is both empathetic and caring and thoughtful, all of those good people dynamics. But it also translates into being good for the business because you don't have the huge crash and burn. You're able to work through conflict more quickly and you're able to see, perhaps, if you can let go of your own view and be open to what the other person is saying you can get to resolution that much faster.
I do think it's helped us in terms of how we interact, not only with each other, but how we interact with others across the business, because I’ve watched some of my team members applying the techniques in their dealings with others, which is just so gratifying and so exciting.
Wendy Appel: That's so great. I think the other thing that Mary's pointing to is that we can be really unaware of ways that, when we're working with somebody else or in a team, that we can shut down conversation by some of our behaviours. Everybody wants to contribute and if you shut down people's contributions you're not getting the best thinking out there, but when you become aware of your style and recognize that perhaps your style is shutting down somebody else's contribution, you can dial it down a little bit, dial it back.
It's really understanding how to modulate your own participation and where people can feel bowled over by you. Often, we don't know how we come across to others and this really helps us understand so that we can maybe sit back and and dial it up when it's needed, as opposed to, here's my style, here’s my reactive patterns. ‘I’m a hammer and everything is a nail.’ We have the ability to really flex how we show up, so that we can be responsive to the situation rather than constantly in a reactive pattern.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Do you feel the pandemic is changing the way you approach leadership?
Mary Riley: On some levels yes, absolutely, because the way we connect has changed. I’m someone who walked the floor, who popped into people's offices, who got a lot out of running into people in the cafeteria, in the coffee room, in the hallway, both within my team and across the department. Now I schedule coffee chats with people to try and simulate some of that.
I now hold virtual office hours so people can pop in, but it's not, it's an office. I think I've gotten better at the virtual meetings and I have had an ‘aha’, because I have team members who, the bulk of us, are in one location at our headquarters in south San Francisco and I also have a team member who's in New Jersey and a team member who's in Los Angeles.
Now I look back at embarrassment at the way I led team meetings because the bulk of us would be in the room and the long distance people would be on the phone. How horrible was that? How inconsiderate was I? But I did it because I wasn't thinking about what was the impact on them and how could they participate. So, whatever we do going forward, if we can’t be in the room together, we'll do some version of this. I don't know exactly what it will look like, but I'll never again put some people on the phone and some people in the room, that's awful. A painful lesson from the pandemic, I must confess.
Wendy Appel: Do you see that when people are able to be in the room together, do you have a sense of how your leadership will change other than what you just said and how your work will change?
Mary Riley: I think we'll be far more conscious of recognizing that the time together is precious and how we make the most of it. I think reflexively, and we are a consensus-based organization, and being together is very important. I think we will be much more intentional about this to say, when we get together, this has to be rich and meaningful and we have to get something out of it. So what are the things that we need to be in the room to do versus what we don’t need to be in the room to do? I think some version of remote working is here to stay forever at a level that someone like me, who started work when no one worked from home and everyone went to the office, we're never going back fully.
We have a strong campus preference by virtue of the way we operate, so I know we’ll have some of that, but I think it will be much more intentional about the moments we’re together. I'm still thinking about, we're still thinking about, as a legal leadership team, what that means, but I do think that's going to be one outcome.
Sherrilynne Starkie: I think you're right. I think that people say we can't wait until things get back to normal, but we're never going back to normal, which is we’re going to do things in different ways, I think, going forward.
Mary Riley: Some of which is fantastic and great and some of which, ‘yeah, I can't wait to get back and complain about my commute and all of the rest of it,’ but even there we've found silver linings in the pandemic, and there were silver linings, some of the other things like, from commuting, what I had was a build-up to the day and a come down from the day, with the commute. But when you roll down the hallway and back, you don’t have that. You have to work at trying to create that. I think some people are very adept at that, or they've done a lot of working from home and that comes second nature. While for others that's been incredibly challenging.
Wendy Appel: Back to something you said about, ‘we're going to be much more intentional about what do we want to be together for,’ and all of that, we've been hearing from most of our clients, people are just longing for meaningful connection.
Mary Riley: In my team, I have a number of parents with younger children and the pressure on them has been enormous, but I also have some people where I worry about the loneliness and the isolation. I think that's very real and I think we'll talk about mental health in the workplace at a level and with a depth that we never did before. I mean, we already are, and I don't think that's going away. Thank God, because I think it's much more holistic. I mean, we all have different dimensions, and we have to address it. But we, as a society and certainly in the workplace, we ran away from these conversations and I don't think that's going to happen anymore. I think it's so obvious how much effect that has on people's well-being, not only their general well-being, but their well-being in terms of how they can show up and contribute in the workplace.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Because being human is good for business.
Mary Riley: I've heard that before.
Sherrlynne Starkie: That’s good! Thanks to all you leaders out there who are listeners and see the show notes for links to information and some of the resources and the tools that we discussed today on the show. Please make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to this podcast. Please also leave a rating or review and do share us on social channels and recommend us to your friends and family or anyone, you know, who wants to become a better, stronger, more effective leader. I’m your host Sherrilynne Starkie and this is the Being Human is Good for Business podcast.