The Role of Empathy in Leadership with Bren Hennessy

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
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 Skasz** (0:18)
So you're saying that's Stanley, the sausage dog next to you, is that?

**Brendan Hennessy** (0:21)
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
He's lying down pretty close to me. So he's still, I guess he's technically still a puppy. He's three and a half. So he's full of energy and certainly helps me keep my steps up every day.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:37)
Hello and welcome back to the show everyone. We are talking about empathy and leadership with our guests today. I'm Stephen Skasz here with Mike Lusky. We are live. So if you have questions or comments, send them along and we'll try to get them in the mix. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Lusky** (0:53)
Yeah, Stephen, for sure. Happy to do so. Introduce Bren. So Bren Hennessy, he has over 15 years of experience in technology consulting and has been really a trailblazer in data and in the AI space for the last five years. He's built really an incredible company, Spark. You can find them there at sparkhq.com.
They specialize in data, AI, and software delivery solutions, really helping organizations around the world become more data driven. And one piece that I thought was excellent about Bren's organization is they're great at empathizing with organizations that maybe have really complex environments or are struggling to move more quickly. And so Bren's team does a great job at coming in empathizing and delivering on the solution. So as well with Bren's background, he played high level sports, also brings a unique perspective to his type of leadership. As we like to say, striving constantly for that extra 1%. We know that it can make a big difference between success and stagnation or success and pure failure. So we're thrilled to have you today, Bren. We welcome you to the show. Thanks for joining us.

**Brendan Hennessy** (2:13)
Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Stephen. Thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to having an engaging conversation with both of you today.

**Stephen Skasz** (2:20)
Hey, Bren. So you've had a long career in the tech consulting, more recently Data AI, but Mike mentioned your sports background. When you get to a certain level of competition, it involves this intense focus on your own individual performance, but also that fine tuning that teamwork. How has your sporting background shaped your leadership style, especially in terms of like empathy and team dynamics?

**Brendan Hennessy** (2:46)
That's a very interesting question to start off with. I think initially, I think playing, I played team sports at a high level and also individual sports at a high level. I think regardless of being in preferring an individual sport, I think you might be an individual on the court, but there's a team behind you that supports you, right? So you're always in a team environment. But I think early on in my career, I would probably say it was a little bit of a struggle, if I'm honest, to go from the sporting world and be very, I suppose, focused on yourself and a little bit selfish about yourself. And to come in into a corporate team environment, whereby things are a little bit more relaxed. I don't think you can be as direct initially when you're starting off your career, coming from a sporting background into a corporate background. And that's something that I think I was lucky with at the start. I had people empathize with me. They brought me on a journey to understand, to be able to be a little bit more inclusive of a lot of people's thoughts, opinions.
And I think early on in my career, I was very lucky that I had a couple of pretty inspirational leaders, but also leaders who taught me a really good lesson. And that's be comfortable in silence and listening. And all of us can get animated about something, and we can get passionate about something.
But we can talk over each other a lot. But I think it's an ability to be able to sit and listen and empathize actually gets you a lot further along the line. And that's something that I was told early on in my career, and I've tried to keep that. Now, I'll be the first to admit, at times that's a struggle depending on what I've been doing or what we're talking about. But it's something that at least I'm very aware of. And I think that's something around, I think, young people coming into the workforce today. Being aware of what you're good at and what you're not good at is really important because a lot of people, depending on the different areas that you work in, a lot of people can either niche down on what they're really good at, and that's great and they become subject matter experts in that area. But what you're not doing is you're not working on the stuff that you're weak at, because people feel more comfortable to do things that they like, they enjoy, and that they excel at, versus maybe some things that they don't like or don't enjoy, but are also very foundational to be in a more well-rounded profession.