The Role of Empathy in Leadership with Glenn Poulos

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
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 where we explore how empathy, connection, purpose, transforms business from the inside out. I'm Stephen, joined by my co-host Tullio. And according to a 2024 study by Catalyst, employees who report having empathetic leaders are more than three times as likely to be happy at work and over twice as likely to stay. And yet, many leaders still treat empathy as optional rather than essential. Today's conversation is about challenging that mindset. We're joined by a guest who has built his leadership playbook around listening deeply, staying curious, putting people first, and even in high performance environments. Tullio, introduce our guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:00)
Yes, very excited to have our guest today is Glenn Poulos, a seasoned entrepreneur. He's a keynote speaker and also the author of Never Sit in the Lobby, as well as 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career.
Glenn draws from over three decades of experience building high performing teams and scaling businesses, including his role as a co-founder and vice president of Gap Wireless. Throughout his writing, speaking and leadership, Glenn helps professionals move beyond service level tactics to develop lasting success rooted in trust, empathy, and consistency. His approach blends actionable sales strategy with a human first mindset that challenges conventional leadership norms. Glenn, welcome to the show. To kick things off, we'd love to learn a little bit more about your journey, especially behind the Never Sit in the Lobby. And what brought empathy to the forefront of your leadership philosophy?

**Glenn Poulos** (2:04)
Sure. Well, thanks for having me, Tullio and Stephen. I can't remember how you pronounce it exactly, but I'm originally from Canada and half of them are Stephen, the other half are Stefan.
So the first part of your question was, can you just repeat it? Was it about how I got into the business?

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:29)
Tell us about your journey that led to your book, Never Sit in the Lobby. Oh, the book, right.

**Glenn Poulos** (2:34)
Yeah, sorry.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:35)
Brace Empathy is going to be for you. That's right.

**Glenn Poulos** (2:38)
Yeah. So the book came out of, I joined the sales world and now I clicked over in 2025 to 40 years, four decades, because I started in sales in 85 and it's 2025 now. So prior to that, I was a failed government civil servant. I got kicked out of the government for working too hard.
My boss said, you got no business being here, you're making everyone look bad. He said, go get a job in sales, right? So I did and essentially back in, starting in 85 and from then on, I started learning from mentors and co-workers and competitors, and I'd see what they were doing and I would take note of the things they were doing well, the things they were doing wrong. I started writing them down, I started making up stories, started relating those stories, and when I tell stories, I try to tell them in an over-the-top, funny way because I find that usually leads to the biggest impact. People remember the punchline and then they end up remembering the lesson. So I started writing them down and people asked me to start repeating these stories at their sales meetings or what have you, and they were suggesting I write a book over the years, and I never really did until the pandemic came along, and at that time I was in Canada and we were really locked down, and so had nothing to do, and I thought, hey, what better time now than to get those words down on paper, and that's when I wrote the book, and I published it, and coincidentally, my second major business that I had founded and run, the same week that I sold the business to Private Equity was the same week the book got published on Amazon in February of 2022 And, you know, and yeah, it was a good week. And that's kind of, you know, what led me to writing the book, and when the book, you know, sort of came about, and I can fill in little bits and pieces about the book as we talk, and then regarding empathy, you know, it's just something that sort of evolved naturally. My, I had a business from 91 through the early 2000s, and then I got an opportunity to start Gap Wireless business, and I really wanted to change some of the ways we interacted with customers and people, and I have this sort of philosophy of always wanting to be a pleasure to do business with. And so, and like I always tell people is that, you know, we grew, myself and my business partner, we grew the business, you know, to be, you know, quite successful and we were able to sell it. And, but we had competitors that also had very successful businesses. The key difference was they were not a pleasure to do business with. They were equally successful. Like, you know, it's not like, you know, being a pleasure gets you more money or anything like that. I don't, but it makes me feel better, right? And I'm very attuned to how people feel, how I make them feel, how, you know, and that is really the crooks behind empathy and what have you. And so, you know, I'm a big proponent of it. I talk about it in the book. And then the adjuncts to empathy about how you practice empathy and, you know, listening and things like that and what have you. And so that's kind of how empathy came to be in my, you know, vocabulary, right, and my day-to-day practice. And happy to dig in to any of the details of any of that, and, you know, as you see fit, so.