The Role of Empathy in Leadership with Holly Golebiowski

**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** (0:16)
We have Atlanta in the house once again today, representing, welcome back to the show everyone, where we explore how empathy, connection and purpose transform business from the inside out. I'm Stephen, joined by my co-host, Tullio. According to a report by Catalyst, 76% of people who experienced empathy from their leaders reported they were engaged compared to 32% who experienced less empathy. Empathy isn't just a human value, it's a business advantage. And we know right now worldwide, only 21% of the population is engaged at work. This is terrible. Let's see what we can do to improve their people.
So today, we're diving into the role of empathy in leadership and why it's a foundational skill for high-performing cultures. Tullio, introduce our guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:05)
Yes, that disengagement is absolutely the worldwide worst epidemic. So our guest today is Holly Golebiowski. She's the partner at LeaderSkills, where she works with mission-driven leaders to develop emotional intelligence, navigate conflict and build high trust teams. Holly brings a unique blend of non-profit leadership, education and deep facilitation to her approach. Holly, welcome to the show. We're excited to speak with you today.

**Holly Golebiowski** (1:33)
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:36)
Excellent. So to start us off, tell us a little bit about LeaderSkills and what brought empathy to the center of your leadership journey.

**Holly Golebiowski** (1:46)
Well, first of all, LeaderSkills, the easiest way that we describe ourselves is we are no bullshit leadership training. I hope I'm allowed to swear.
But pretty much it is just a three month process where every two weeks you learn a new idea and you put it into practice right away. It is nothing. It's not high level ideas or base level, just like cross it off your list, too easy to really be a big deal. It's somewhere in the middle. And we have had great success. I have 100% money back guarantee nobody's ever taken us up on it. And our participants have been very happy and have said it's something they'll use the rest of their life, not just personal or not just work, but personal as well. So that's in a nutshell, a little bit about LeaderSkills. But I think you'll get a better idea of it with my journey. Since you asked about that, I think it explains a lot and actually speaks to empathy very well. I was, in my career, made the jump from on-site manager to regional manager, and I completely failed. I really, if you think about the Peter Principal, I got elevated to that role that I really didn't have the skill set to do, and I was about to be fired. I was the A-plus kid my whole life. This was like traumatizing. I was like, what? I can't believe I'm at the bottom of the list that had never happened to me before.
I had heard through the grapevine, Holly, you might be getting canned. I, of course, wanted to find a solution. I ended up with an executive coach, Nan O'Connor, who created LeaderSkills. We spent about six months, and I call myself student zero because everything her and I went through in that period of time was what we train on LeaderSkills now. I went from being almost fired to at the top of my peer group and training other regional managers within a year. So it was a very long journey. I'm happy I was open to it and I learned a lot, but it all started with self-awareness and empathy and understanding where people are and where you are. So I think it really fits well with this topic today.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:50)
Well, Holly, you can be an A-plus student, but I know business schools and stuff, they aren't teaching empathy. And it's like, hey, I miss this class, right? What happened was, I think that. But so I think leaders, their talk to priorities like prioritize results and efficiency.
But you've seen how empathy can actually enhance performance. What's the business case for empathy and leadership?

**Holly Golebiowski** (4:16)
Well, I think the biggest one is turnover. I mean, if you are an empathetic leader and that's your culture, then you are going to have employees that stay longer and are happier while they're there. You won't see quite quitting that you keep hearing about. It's the biggest thing I see is turnover dramatically goes down when your leaders are empathetic.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:37)
Yeah. I tell people, if there's a business problem that you have, just look up empathy and related to that problem. There's probably some study now that's backing it up as the best approach is taking this empathetic approach. Whatever that problem is, there seems like there's, we've got pages and pages of stats that back up taking that kind of approach. So I'm glad we've got someone out there doing the good work in companies to help spread the word on this.