Empathy Expansion Kit: Empathy in Leadership Training

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show. This episode is part of our Empathy Expansion Kit series. I'm Stephen Sakach here once again with Tullio Siragusa. Hi, everyone. Today, we quickly dive into empathy and leadership, how to incorporate empathy training into leadership development and sustain it in high pressure environments. So some quick thoughts here. So companies with empathetic leaders often report higher employee satisfaction and lower turnover rates. Teams led by empathetic leaders tend to have higher productivity and creativity levels. And according to a 2021 study by DDI, empathy was rated as the most important leadership skills by employees. And that was 15,000 employees, and they said empathy and leadership was the most important skill. Tullio, I think sustaining empathy in these high pressure situations is the real key. That's when we're tested the most. And I think what's most helpful, starting with yourself and developing some self-awareness. For me, that starts with a meditation practice, so that I'm not in my emotions, but I kind of see them as they arise. And I've said this before, those who are leading a team, they don't want to deal with your baggage, right? So work on yourself.
Leave it at home. Yeah, leave it at home. But outside of meditation for leaders, where do the cracks get exposed? And what areas of training should companies focus on?

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:56)
Well, there are a few areas, but they're all rooted into the same thing. As you know, we've been doing an internal series about these 12 principles of what makes an authentic leader. And they're really tied to this idea of what is necessary to operate at a high emotional intelligence, which is necessary to be an empathetic leader.
So, there are a few things that will get exposed when someone's under pressure. When under pressure, perhaps, instead of stepping into the no problem context that a good leader usually does, they might start to see problems, they might start to push back. So that's a telltale sign that the empathy is being eroded. Then there's also a telltale sign that perhaps they're stepping out of grace a little bit. So, gratitude plays a big part in staying in that no problem context. Tied to that is being tied to some self-actualization system, which really is what activates wisdom for leaders. All that is tied into something really critical, and this is something I've spent a lot of time studying, and that is the level of the individual self-worth. It is really a worldwide epidemic. It's the truest, biggest epidemic. There is this sort of roller coaster of just feeling good about yourself when things are going well, and not feeling so good about yourself when things aren't going well. We're very externally directed. So, as a leader, when you're under pressure, that is an externally directed situation. If that affects you, then the question is whether you have enough of a self-worth to realize and to separate yourself, to realize you shouldn't change who you are because of the external circumstances. They should not affect you. I use the word should not because that's realistically or aspirationally the way it should be. But the truth of matters, we're human. So we carry all kinds of baggage with us. Whether we've treated it or done work around it, that's a different story. And so a leader who normally is empathetic is of service naturally. They have the level of humility in realizing, I'm here to serve others. And it's not like a chore for them. It's a calling. It's a higher purpose calling in their life. That's who they are. They love to serve others and it's part of the fabric of who they are. And that comes from a high sense of self-worth, right? You want to believe that you have something to give to something to serve. And that also allows you to be very genuine because people with high self-worth don't feel like they need to defend themselves or fight for themselves. They're not constantly looking over their shoulder. They're comfortable in their own skin. So that transcends into how they deal with other people. So they can deal with other people who respect when someone perhaps has a different opinion than they do.
And then most importantly, it's the ability to inspire the team to work together versus having to sell the team to work together. And there's a difference between pushing an agenda or selling an agenda, i.e. we're going to go through some changes, we've got to go sell this to the team versus enrolling the team into the change. And the empathetic leader knows that you don't just do those things and push them down, you get the team involved and you get by and along the way so that they're actually contributing to that change. And that comes from, you know, what we talk a lot, a great deal about, you know, in this podcast, the whole purpose of Bliss, you know, build love into scalable system. So one of the key traits of an empathetic leader is that they're loving, they naturally are loving people and they want to serve others because they have a love for people. And so the question is, what happens if you discover when you're on the pressure that these things, these aspirational things just kind of go out the window. And so you've got to go through each one of these scenarios. Like, you know, am I in the problem?