The Role of Empathy in Leadership with Steph Porter

**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)
Well, welcome back to the show everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach along with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest today. We'll introduce in a moment. So empathy continues to emerge as one of the most important leadership capabilities in today's workplace. According to Catalyst Research, employees with highly empathetic leaders report significantly higher levels of engagement, innovation, and retention. At the same time, many leaders operate in this fast-paced high-pressure environments where performance expectations are high and communication is constant. In those moments, empathy can be overlooked, even though that's when it often makes the biggest difference.
Today, we are exploring what empathy in leadership looks like in practice, especially environments where stakes are high and communication matters the most. Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:09)
Very happy to introduce our guest today. Our guest today is Steph Porter. She's the founder of Ink&Iron PR. Steph has more than 15 years of experience across public relations, corporate communication, and social media. She has led multi-million dollar campaigns for major brands, including Walmart, New Balance, Playtex Baby, and Tim Hortons. She has also held in-house leadership roles at Canadian Tire Corporation and SpartanNash, where she oversaw executive communication, national media strategy, and high-stakes crisis response. Known for her fearless storytelling, sharp instincts, and relentless follow-through, Steph is also recognized for her empathy-driven leadership style and her ability to build strong, high-performing teams in demanding environments. Steph, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. Looking forward to speaking with you today.

**Steph Porter** (2:07)
Thanks for having me. What a great intro.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:10)
Yeah, I'm looking forward to some fearless storytelling here.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:14)
Yes.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:16)
So Steph, empathy, it's often discussed in leadership, but it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So what's it mean to you as far as leadership and how does it look like in action in your world?

**Steph Porter** (2:32)
Yeah. So there's many different, as you said, there's many different definitions of empathy and people have different perspectives. My own perspective of it is truly understanding people and learning to lead them through how you understand them and how they operate. For me, I always say this to people. I'm always like, it's all about listening, not just hearing people, but actually listening to them, actively listening and taking what they're saying and actually taking it into consideration and acting on it. So I feel like there's a few things as a PR leader that are super important to me when it comes to empathy. So one of the things is you're sensing when your team is stretched before they have to say anything. So really understanding when somebody is feeling that itch or feeling that they're underwater, knowing that before they can even tell you. So being two steps ahead of your people, knowing when, and this is from a client management perspective, knowing when a client needs reassurance and needs like a pat on the back, and just needs a friend, rather than a push, right? Like we can be hard, PR people can be hard, but it's about knowing when those times are that you need to be hard, versus when you need to be a little bit, you know, softer. And you recognize when a moment calls for speed, and when you need to take a pause, which in my opinion, you know, this is something that I'm always working on, is taking a pause. I'm very quick. I'm very quick. That's why I love PR. I'm very quick. And so for me, I always make sure that I'm taking a pause before I engage with, you know, people who work for me, people who, you know, are stakeholders, executives, clients, whomever. That's something that I'm very intentional with. So I think a lot of it too is, I feel very sensitive, especially with the team. Like, you need to make your people happy first before you make anybody else happy. That's my perspective, that your team needs to feel safe with you. They need to feel that they need to trust you. And so all of these go hand in hand with empathy. And I mean, we're going to go into trust and authenticity and all these things later on. But I think that it's important to really focus on those things when you're talking about empathy and leadership.

**Stephen Sakach** (5:08)
Yeah, and I think a lot of leaders kind of focus on how can I get more out of people? I mean, that's like the question they're asking all the time, right? And it's...