Why Leaders Need To Be Empathetic w/ Dr Melissa Robinson-Winemiller
AI, for all of its wonders, and all of the great things that it can do, has no empathy. It can mimic soft skills, but it doesn't actually have them.
So I think people are starting to figure out that the more we integrate these things that don't have soft skills, that don't have empathy, the more the people who actually have these skills are going to be in demand.
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With our guest today joining us from Oklahoma, Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller. She is the author of The Empathic Leader, which is an Amazon bestseller.
She's a TEDx speaker, empathy and leadership expert, who's here to help us with emotional intelligence and high performing cultures. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.
Empathy Expert's Path
Hi, Dr. Melissa.
Hi, Roberta. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here with you and your audience today.
My absolute pleasure.
Welcome. Please introduce yourself.
Sure. So, Dr. Melissa, I speak about all things empathy, emotional intelligence and leadership.
I am an expert in that field. I'm finishing up my dissertation. I'm doing my doctorate in interdisciplinary leadership because I'm that serious about it.
And I came to it because I had been in some very toxic work situations.
And the more I was around other people and I did consulting with my husband and coaching in health care and that kind of stuff, the more I saw patterns that these situations come up all the time.
And I decided I wanted to be the one to do something about it. Because if we don't talk about it, if we don't discuss it, if we don't try to fix it, who's going to do it? You can either curse the darkness or you can light a candle.
So that's what I'm trying to do. I speak about it. Last year, I got to speak in the UK and here in the US.
I write about it. Anybody that stands still long enough, I'll talk to them about it. I do coach in organizations and one on one.
And that's what I do.
Just out of curiosity, Dr. Melissa, were you in the health care industry, you said?
I've done work in the health care industry. Yeah. My husband is the CIO of a health care facility.
So I kind of get pulled in on things with him every so often. And he and I did coaching and consulting together before that.
Right. Because my next question is, if somebody is in health care, does it automatically mean that they have empathy as a person? It's one of their main qualities?
No, absolutely not.
And in fact, a lot of people that are in medicine, because they are around patients and they're having to try and use empathy as a skill and as a tool, suffer from what's called empathy fatigue, which means that they just can't anymore.
They end up having to kind of shut it off because it's too much.
The other side of that as well is if you think of like surgeons or people that are very much patient facing and having to deal with traumatic situations, they're actually trained not to use what's called emotional empathy, because it does drain them.
They just get burned out. I mean, you can't be someone who's going to do surgery on people and cut on them and do things that are really horrific sometimes and have empathy for every single patient.
You know, super deep feelings and come out of it whole. So our health care system actually trains a lot of these people not to have that kind of emotional empathy for all of their patients.
Because I used to ask therapists who've been on the show as well. And I'm thinking, if you see five people a day and they tell you about all their traumas, how much of that do you absorb? How fatigued are you by the end of the day?
Yeah.
So empathy is interesting because it's a lot broader and deeper than people realize. And there's more than one kind. So the one where I feel what you feel empathy, that's one kind, but there's 42 other kinds.
And the one that I talk about a lot is cognitive empathy, which means I logically understand what you're feeling, but I don't feel anything.
And for those in leadership positions, those in health care, those that are at risk of absorbing a lot of these other emotions, if you're immersed in them too much, cognitive empathy is really a good way to go.
Because just because you have empathy, it doesn't mean you don't have boundaries. And you have to be able to think coolly enough to be able to put these boundaries in place and make sure they stay there.
So we can get the job done because at the end of the day, something needs to be done. We need the outcome, we need the results. So we feel all on our feelings all day, then nothing's going to get achieved.
Right.
You just end up with people that are burnt out. They're not any good to anybody. They're not even really good to themselves because they're just burnt out.
And that's no good. We don't want to do that to people. That's not right.
Do you say that since you're doing your studies that there's data that supports the talking points about empathy, what are some of the results that come from leaders who display these kinds of qualities to the team members?
Empathy Drives Results
So there was a study put out.
It was a survey by Ernst & Young, which is one of the big four consulting firms internationally. And this came out in 2021. It was a reaction to the great resignation.
And the questions they were asking was, how do organizations function under a leader who has empathy? What do you think of empathy in organizations? It was centered around empathy specifically.
And what they found out is that leaders that use empathy within these organizations can raise productivity by 87%, innovation by 86%, and profit by 84%.
And this study was so important that Steve Payne, who's the vice chairs of America for Ernst & Young, said that empathy is the glue and accelerant for the next era of transformation in business. So, I mean, the data is there.
And the good news is, it's not my opinion. I mean, this is Ernst & Young. This is a top company.
And they're saying empathy is what you're going to need if you want to bring your business into the future.
Acceleration in the 80s, that is big numbers. Is why you say that soft skills, which we love talking about on the show, that soft skills lead to hard results.
Yes, yes, because people have this idea that empathy is this fluffy thing that's all puppies and rainbows and feelings. That's part of it, but it's not all of it. And it has a place in organizations to get hard results.
These are things that are affecting the bottom line, especially right now when we're dealing with employee attrition. We're dealing with the age of AI, which has no empathy. We're dealing with big tech and big data, which have no empathy.
We're dealing with generational friction, which needs some empathy. So we're in a place right now that we need it more than ever.
And speaking of leaders who need to have empathy, have you had clients who come to you and say, Dr. Melissa, can't I just throw money at the problem? It's going to get solved.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And my response is no. If you could throw money at the problem. Yeah, if you could, you most of them already would have.
But the thing with number one, with leaders, they are always on stage. So if you don't lead with empathy, but you're talking that talk, oh, yes, we have mission, vision and values around empathy, but they don't actually show it, your people know.
And there was a second Ernst and Young study that came out two years later to follow up on the first one talking about empathy. And what they found were these organizations who talked a game that they used empathy but didn't.
Their profit, productivity and innovation plummeted because their people knew better. Their people know when they're not being authentic about what they're saying.
The other thing is because culture drips down from the top and it always comes from these leaders. If you're leading with empathy, your people will see you leading with empathy, and pretty soon you'll have an organization that works through empathy.
That's just how culture works. It's like Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Please say that again.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, my new bumper sticker. I love it. Because when you talk about the evolution of leadership over the years, I started working in the mid-90s, it was a very different culture than what we have now.
Does this generation have more confidence and are they more outspoken? And like I said, the great resignation that they leave, if the environment is toxic, because we used to stay.
Yeah, I think they did. I think they are more centered in what it is that they want out of a workplace.
I think right now we're having enough environmental problem with slowing of the job market and rising inflation that maybe they can't leave as quickly as they could before. And this is causing problems.
But I think all things being equal, and once the job market picks up again, because it will, it's just a matter of time, that they will be willing to leave these toxic situations and just, I'm out. Because why live like that?
Because I think during our era, it used to be this sense of, when I come to work, I'm one person, I put up with everything so I can have a paycheck and pay my bills and take care of my family. And when I go home, then I can be me.
But now this seems to be this merging of, I'm still the same person when I walk in here. Leaders, please see the human in me still.
Yeah, I agree. There should be because I think we're missing so much of the human capital that people present when we don't recognize that authentically human piece. For me too, that's how it was.
You go, you do your job, you suffer through it because some days that's how I felt. I mean, when I was in my really toxic work environment, I can remember wishing that I would get into a wreck on the way to work just so I didn't have to show up.
I mean, I didn't want to get like hurt. I just didn't want to go to work. I know I'm not the only one that feels that way.
Maybe not to that extreme, but some people may be to that extreme, you know, and our generation did put up with that.
The thing is, is when we went through the pandemic, employers suddenly had to show empathy to their people because we were all in unprecedented times. And all of a sudden people woke up and they saw this and they were like, oh, you can do this.
This is possible. And now when these employers are like, nope, can't do this, can't show empathy, can't have feelings, employees are like, wait, we saw you do it. It is possible.
Let's figure out a way to bring it back.
So when the times called for it, you were able to bring that out. And now you think let's go back to business as usual.
Right. And people just aren't quite willing. They weren't happy in business as usual before, and now they can see it could be different.
Superpower Soft Skills
You call soft skills a superpower.
Why?
Because businesses, organizations begin and end with people. Soft skills, especially through the lens of empathy, are what allow us to interact as people person to person.
So that's the thing that's going to supercharge all of the other skills, all of the other technical skills, all of the other hard skills, any kind of intellectual skills.
Through that human connection, we can create a synergy that goes far beyond what we're able to do just as machines.
And it doesn't matter if your organization deals in AI or tech or things that are patently not human, it begins and ends with people, even if the only people you're thinking about is your customers or your board members or those kinds of
stockholders. If you can connect with people, you can supercharge your organization.
Everything boils down to people. So then how do you apply emotional intelligence in this tough, very complex business environment that keeps changing right now? You know, they call it VOCA.
How do you apply those skills while at the same time you have goals, you have things that your team needs to achieve?
Well, business has to get done. I mean, at the end of the day, businesses are there to make money. If they don't make money, they don't stick around.
So first of all, empathy isn't necessarily about feeling. It's about understanding and connection. As long as we understand that, we can use it to connect with emotional intelligence.
And I'll loop back around on that.
But if you don't understand and connect with your people, you know, that they have to work, you have to have a paycheck, and this business goes under, well, that's not really empathic because you've let the whole organization down.
Business has got to get done. If they don't make money and the whole thing goes under, you're not really doing anybody any good.
So if you understand that empathy is about understanding and connection, and you take empathy out of the emotional intelligence tool bag, right?
You think of emotional intelligence as filling this big tool bag, and you've got communication, and you've got motivation, and you've got hammers and saws and drills and all of these different tools in here.
Empathy is what you use to understand and connect with your people first.
So now that you have empathy and you understand and connect, you know when you reach into that tool bag, if you want to pull out a hammer or a left-handed screwdriver, you know which emotional intelligence skill to use to be able to connect and
If, say, for instance, one of the leaders that you coaching, if they hadn't had these skills before, is there resistance when you recommend some of the things they need to do?
And do you find that if they start to implement what you recommend to them, is it also satisfying for them or are they just thinking, oh yeah, it's part of my job, so when I come into the office, I need to be empathetic towards my team members.
Is it something that they embrace and become or it's just another to-do list item?
You know, it really depends on the person. I've had some that have brought me in, like you were talking about and thought that as a consultant, they could throw money at the problem and fix it, but that they didn't have to do anything.
And it's like, no, this is a practice. Practice is something you do every single day. Performance is something you do once.
This isn't a performance, this is a practice. There are those that are kind of like that, but there are also others that will stop and go, you know, we could do better with this.
I've really wanted to grow into being this kind of leader, a transformational leader, a charismatic leader, a servant leader, but I haven't quite been able to figure out how. Maybe this will be the key.
This will be the catalyst that I can become the kind of leader that I want to be and really bring everything up, starting with my people. So it just depends.
Usually the ones that are really set in their ways that are just like, yeah, I'm doing this because I have to, I don't work with them because they don't necessarily want to get better themselves.
The people that genuinely want to change and want to be that supercharged leader for the future, those are the ones I want to work with. Those are the people that have it. They can make it.
And since you told us earlier, the data shows that there are these more than 80 percent increases in productivity and profits from Einstein Young.
Do team members as well start to treat each other that way if the leader leads by that example?
Yes, they do. And in my experience, the ones who don't, once they're immersed in this culture that doesn't really suit them anymore, self-select out because they're no longer comfortable.
One of the beautiful things about empathy is if it's done right, it works in both directions.
So, if as a leader, you're leading with empathy, you're showing this understanding and connection, over time, your people will see this and will start to show it to you as well. And now it's working both ways.
Book and Research
Now, let's talk about your book.
You are the author of the latest Amazon bestseller, The Empathic Leader. Yes, congratulations. Please tell us more about it.
First of all, what was the motivation behind the book?
I really wanted to have kind of like a primer, because I would have people ask me about it, and how I do what I do, what's my framework, how do I teach it, what is empathy, how does it connect emotional intelligence skills?
And I could explain it, but by putting it in this book, now I actually have a primer that I can say, you can use this as a reference.
I'll explain it to you, and then you can go to chapter four, if you don't remember, because there's graphs in there, and there's some ideas and some templates in there.
This will give you something to hang on to, so that you can really use these skills. I want something more than just to coach and consult.
I want something solid that I can hand people and say, here, this will help you, check this in this chapter, take a look at this in this chapter. If I'm not here, you could still come back to this.
You can still continue to practice in my absence. Also, you don't gain a skill by practicing it once over time, so that it becomes your lifestyle, it becomes something you embody.
So yes, the book is really, if you have it, it's really going to make you keep checking and saying, how am I doing on my empathy scale, so to speak?
Yeah, absolutely. And some people learn better that way besides. I mean, I'll learn in different ways.
So for those kind of visual learners that like to be able to read, they have a way to do that. I'll have an audiobook version out in about a month. So our listeners, the ones that do it by ear, they're going to have that as well.
Very good.
Now, doing your PhD studies, I had a podcast guest who also when she was doing her PhD, she also talking about empathy. She says her PhD guide one day just sent an email with an attachment and said, you need this. That's it.
That's all she wrote in the email. And when our guest opened the email, the book was about empathy. What are some of the things that your PhD guide has said about empathy to you?
So my doctorate is in interdisciplinary leadership.
It's about leadership. And my dissertation itself is about leadership and empathy.
So a lot of what we've been looking at right now is empathy in organizations, how it can be taught, how we tend to think of empathy in our culture now, because different countries do can think about it differently.
There's different ways to approach it. But also how it's been handled in the past, because even as we talk about soft skills, empathy is something that really hasn't been considered as separate to that.
So there isn't a ton of research on this integration specifically of empathy into the health care space, like C-suite and above. There's a lot for physicians. There's a lot about empathy and education.
But in leadership that is administrative, not necessarily patient-facing, there isn't as much.
So a lot of what we've been looking at is how leadership and empathy really fit together and how they interact and how they've been seen as interacting and what kind of framework might be usable to be able to really teach it and make this a usable,
It's very interesting that you say that because when we list soft skills, we haven't made that separation of saying empathy.
We always list it as one of the soft, you know, communication, people, critical thinking, conflict resolution. Why is it that there's this specific emphasis on empathy and that it should be a separate study?
The original, you know, that lumping, that section of soft skills goes back to Daniel Goleman's book. It was titled EQ and Why It May Matter More Than IQ, something like that. But it was published in 1995, so it's been around for 30 years.
What he had to say was very seminal. And this is just kind of how we've carried it forward. This idea that we need to tease empathy out as a separate component is mine.
That's where I'm bringing something different to the conversation. And I really believe that we need to take it out of that soft skills bucket and start with it. Because we've been talking about soft skills.
The first study on soft skills was printed in 1990. So we've been talking about this for 35 years, and we still can't seem to get it the way we want it. Why is that?
Where's the disconnect? And I think that might be it.
That is the first time that we have categorized it in that way on this show. So thank you, Dr. Melissa.
You're welcome.
Yes, go ahead.
You probably won't have anyone else categorize it like that.
That's strictly my theory. That's kind of what I'm working on now. But my studies so far are pointing in the direction that this might really be the case.
Right.
And you say soft skills are the future of leadership. We keep saying leadership is evolving. I mean, in the 90s, it was very different from what it is now.
Leadership is evolving and you say soft skills are the future of leadership. Do leaders in general in the workplace, are they realizing that as well? Not just their technical expertise, but this is the way to go as well.
AI Versus Empathy
I think some are, especially the ones that are coming up from some of the younger generations.
And I think the advent of AI in the workplace is speeding it up. Because AI, for all of its wonders and all of the great things that it can do, has no empathy. It can mimic empathy.
It can mimic soft skills, but it doesn't actually have them.
So I think people are starting to figure out that the more we integrate these things that don't have soft skills, that don't have empathy, the more the people who actually have these skills are going to be in demand.
Because now we can have AI all day long that doesn't have soft skills, that doesn't have empathy.
So the people who really can have it and harness it are going to be the ones that are really going to be set apart as kind of leadership craftsmen and women. They're going to have a different skill set and it's going to be something that's in demand.
And speaking of AI, have you found that because of AI, more of the workplace, is it becoming less empathetic because they're now talking to the computer or more empathetic? And here's why. Let me give an example.
Chachipiti. At first, we used to just think Chachipiti is like your new Google. You just ask it, who is Dr.
Melissa Robinson-Winemiller? And it will give you a whole resume of the doctor. But now somebody said, oh no, Chachipiti is my therapist.
I ask it questions, I tell it that, almost like when I'm lying on the couch of a therapist, and it gives me back and forth of this therapy session, literally.
Yeah.
In the scope of a lot of humans thinking, oh my goodness, AI is here to replace me. Is that where it's going? Because you just mentioned that AI is not going to be empathetic.
Is that where it's going, if somebody says, it literally is my therapist now?
It's not. And for two reasons. The first is that there's a lot of studies going on about all of these people using it as therapy, and AI is leading them into places that's causing worse mental illness and worse outcomes.
I mean, there's a couple of cases now where AI has led people to harm themselves or commit suicide because it has no empathy, because it doesn't understand humans. I think they've outlawed the use of AI as therapy, or they're looking at it in the UK.
There's a lot of repercussions from this right now, so absolutely not, at least not right now.
But the flip side of that, and I think the thing that we really need to consider, is that the reason why people are turning to AI for therapy is because it mimics empathy better than the empathy they're getting from humans.
We as humans should be taking a look at this and going, why are they turning to a computer?
What is going on with us as a society that people would rather talk to a computer because they feel they get better empathy, even though there's none there, than they do from a human being? I think it says more about us than it does about AI.
Please repeat that last part. We need to ask ourselves why they are turning to the computers. That means we are not doing a great job of empathy?
Yeah, the computer looks like it has better empathy than the people who actually have empathy.
So it says way more about us and how we interrelate as human beings than it does about AI.
Wow, because at first when I had this person talk about how AI has become his therapist, I thought, hey, that doesn't sound too bad.
Because some people say, I don't have time to go to a therapist or I don't have Medicare to pay a therapist, whatever it is, but it just sounded like it's this additional tool that helps them to be calm, to deal with their feelings, etc.
So I had no idea that sometimes the opposite is true, which means it can have some serious repercussions.
Yeah, very serious repercussions. I mean, I mean, on the far end of things, people that already have a big degree of mental instability to psychosis, it will push them until they actually spiral out of control completely. AI is a fantastic tool.
I'm all for it as the tool that it is, but being human is nothing it's good at. It can mimic human emotions and it does it very well, but it's not human.
I think we just need to remember that last part.
Judgment and Empathy
Yes. Any last words of wisdom, Dr. Melissa?
You know, the one thing that I do talk about, I mean, we kind of touched on in a roundabout way, was that empathy and judgment, any kind of judgment, can't really exist in the same place.
So whether you're talking about empathy for others or empathy for yourself, if you feel that judgment creeping in, it's not empathy. So when you're working with your employees, if you're being judgmental, you can't have empathy.
If you're working with yourself and you're being judgmental, maybe because you don't feel you're the kind of leader you should be, maybe because you don't feel you're doing the job you should be, you can't have self-empathy.
So just keep in mind that if you want to have this empathy, you've got to be able to take judgment out of the equation.
Take judgment out of the equation if you want to have empathy. Words of wisdom from Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller from Oklahoma.
Dr. Melissa, before you go, where can we find you online if our listeners want to reach out to you?
You can catch me at my website, which is EQVIA, and that's VIAs and Victor IA Empathy. I'm always available on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram.
And I have a podcast called The Empathic Leader on YouTube.
Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-empathic-leader/id1796715528
artwork representing URL
So you can catch me there. And then my book, which is on Amazon. It's at Barnes and Noble.
It's on the online websites. And I'm so excited. I think we had talked just before that as of today, that book has gone to Amazon bestseller number one in four countries.
Yes.
So congratulations.
Yeah, I'm so excited. You heard it first here.
Yes, you heard it first here on The Speaking and Communicating Podcast. Congratulations. Great job, Dr.
Melissa Robinson-Winemiller. EQ via empathy. And you can find the doctor on other socials as well.
I'll put all those details on the show notes. This has been so much fun and very eye-opening. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. And I just really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and your audience.
We thank you as well for being here. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.
