The Role of Empathy in Leadership with Katharine Manning

**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** (0:18)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. We are live and we're here to explore how empathy, connection, and purpose transform business from the inside out. I'm Stephen, along with my co-host, Mike, as usual. So Gallup reports that 36% of US employees feel engaged at work. And I know that number drops to 21% when you're thinking worldwide.
A lack of empathy and leadership is often a key driver of this disengagement. And today we are shifting from quick fixes to the deeper work of building cultures where people can thrive and we've got someone who's been in the trenches and the front lines when it comes to dealing with even the harder aspects of trauma and things at work. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (1:06)
Stephen, I am absolutely delighted to introduce our guest, Katharine Manning. Now she is the president of Blackbird, which provides training and consultation on a topic that we love on this show and that we really feel that the world needs more of, and that's empathy at work. She is also the author of The Empathetic Workplace, Five Steps to Compassionate, Calm and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job. And so we'll learn a lot more about that today on the show. And she teaches at American University as well. Now, with more than 25 years working on issues of trauma and victimization, including 15 years at the Justice Department, supporting cases like the Boston Marathon bombing and the Pulse Nightclub shooting, her work has been featured on Harvard Business Review, Fast Company as well, Newsweek, CNBC, Business Insider, Thrive Global and even CEOWorld in the list could really go on and on. So Katharine, we are so delighted to have you with us today. Welcome to our show.

**Katharine Manning** (2:21)
Thank you so much, Mike and Stephen. It's really such a pleasure to be here talking about this topic.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:27)
So Katharine, you've seen leaders at their best and under pressure and extreme pressure. What first crystallized for you that empathy is not optional for leadership effectiveness?

**Katharine Manning** (2:41)
Gosh, that's a great question.
You know, I think that sometimes there's almost a misnomer around empathy. I think there are some leaders who worry that if they are seen as empathetic, they'll be seen as weak. You know, there was actually a study that I read a few years ago that most CEOs simultaneously thought empathetic leadership was important, but also for themselves, feared that if people thought they were empathetic, they would view them as weak. And to me, that comes from a basic misunderstanding of what it means to be empathetic. Empathetic doesn't mean that we are giving in to everybody else's wishes. You know, it doesn't mean... It means understanding what other people need, right? So, you know, the definition of empathetic leadership, I mean, I use in my work, is that it means understanding, you know, striving to understand what other people need to thrive, right? And trying to give them what they need to thrive. Understanding that what somebody else needs to thrive might not be what you need to thrive, right? People need different things in the workplace in order to thrive.
And it might be that what this person needs to thrive is something that is different than what they have right now. It might mean that you need to switch their role. Maybe they need to be in a different kind of format, or they need to, you know, it might mean some sort of change in their work environment or their work responsibilities. It doesn't mean that we avoid facing difficult decisions at all. It means being clear-eyed about those decisions and willing to confront them head on. But with that goal of understanding what is really going on in this situation, including what it is that this person needs to thrive. And I think particularly right now, given what we've gone through over these last five years, I like, I sometimes say it's like the 2020s. It feels like trauma is just everywhere. It's like the air that we're breathing ever since the 2020s started with COVID and George Floyd and like all these, you know, environmental disasters and political upheaval and global violence and mass violence, you know, all these shootings and everything. And it's just over and over and over again, we've had all of these incredibly traumatic events that have shifted our workplaces and really, I think, brought mental health into our work environments in ways that it hasn't been before. I mean, particularly the pandemic, we were literally seeing into each other's homes. You know, you hear the baby crying in the next room in a way that you didn't in most work environments before. So, I think it's hard to just go back to what it was like in 2015 now. And because of that, I think it's really essential at this point for every leader and really every person to understand that we have to develop a sense of the humanity of the people that we're working with, a desire to meet them on a more human level, to try to support them on a more human level. And the thing that is pretty incredible about that is when you do that, three pretty amazing things happen. One is individually, we do better, right? When we feel supported as humans, not just like, hey, can you get me that thing by Friday? But like, actually, I care about you as a human. You know, individually, we thrive, we do better, our well-being goes up. Two, trust between us as colleagues skyrockets, because if I believe you care about me as a human, then I trust you a lot more. And then three, our organizational mission, whatever that is, also skyrockets, because when you have individual well-being and trust, the mission is obviously also going to soar. So, if you can lead with empathy, all of those things that you really want, all of those deliverables that you're trying to get to, all of those things will fall like dominoes. It all comes along with it.