The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

The Art of Empathy in Leadership With Sue Ryan

• Jennifer Ann Johnson • Season 3 • Episode 53

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Empathy isn’t fluff; it’s a force multiplier. We sit down with leadership expert Sue Ryan to unpack how empathy, practiced with intention and without judgment, can transform morale, sharpen decisions, and repair trust—especially when the stakes are high. 

Sue explains why you don’t need the same backstory to meet the same emotion, and how a leader’s job is to honor what people feel while still moving work forward. We get tactical: the five-to-fifteen second pause that diffuses tension, an exercise to expose and rewrite judgment, and concrete ways to practice active listening in a world of dings and pings.

If you lead a team, manage clients, or want to communicate with more clarity and humanity, this conversation is a practical playbook. Learn how to model empathy, encourage it among peers, teach simple micro-skills, and recognize it publicly so it becomes part of the culture.

Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!

Jennifer Johnson:

Today, we're tackling a topic that's become increasingly crucial in our interconnected and diverse workplaces: the art of empathy in leadership. Many of us have experienced firsthand how a leader's ability or inability to understand and share the feelings of others can dramatically impact team morale, productivity, and overall success. To guide us through this important discussion, we're joined by Sue Ryan, who is a renowned expert in leadership, and she has been on our podcast so many times. Welcome back, Sue. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me back, Jennifer. Absolutely. I really want to dive into our conversation and uncover the transformative potential that empathy has in leadership.

Sue Ryan:

And I thank you very much for bringing this topic up because it is so valuable and it's something that is, I think, underserved in our space, and it makes a real difference. So thank you very much.

Jennifer Johnson:

Absolutely. So before we get started, I really want you to share with our listeners how you would define empathy in leadership.

Sue Ryan:

Empathy in leadership is our ability to put ourselves not just in the position of someone else, but to put ourselves in their journey and to do it without judgment of ourselves or of them. It is what's their perspective? What's how do they interpret it? How are they feeling? What are their thoughts and what are their opinions of it?

Jennifer Johnson:

So it goes deeper than just put yourself in their shoes. It goes a lot deeper than because we hear that, you know, oh, so-and-so is having an issue. Just can you empathize with them? Can you understand how they're feeling? You know, it goes deeper than that in leadership.

Sue Ryan:

It's much different than just putting yourself in their shoes because when you're doing that, it's like the difference between sympathy and empathy. You tell me a big difference. It's a huge difference. You tell me something happened to somebody, and I say, Well, gee, I really feel bad for you. And I can feel bad. Maybe I've done it, but empathy is I'm right in there with you. How do you feel? How can I help you? Empathy invites us to participate. It's our intentionally giving ourselves permission to be vulnerable enough to open ourselves up to how somebody else is feeling and express experience our own feelings and to be able to move forward from there.

Jennifer Johnson:

So, you know, this is just occurring to me. Someone said to me a long time ago, and now this may be a misnomer, you can't feel empathy towards somebody unless you've actually felt what they're feeling. Is that true? Like, you know, like, oh, I'm sorry that your cat died. Just for a very basic example. Sure. Um, I know how that feels. That's how a lot of people view empathy is, oh, I know exactly how that feels because my cat died too.

Sue Ryan:

Empathy is that you feel what they're feeling. You don't just say, oh, we, you know, you lost your cat and you feel bad because somebody lost a cat and you can like maybe you could relate to it, but then you move on. Empathy, and you may not have ever had a cat. You've had a pet, you've had a friend, you've had some. So we relate to the actual emotion of what you feel. For example, when you, you know, I remember when our dog died, and I remember how sad my just my heart hurt when my dog died. Well, if you've got a cat and you've lost a cat, your your heart hurts. You might have had a gerbil. You know, you had, you know, there's goldfish. There have been things that we have felt in our life. So part of the thing that I say is the difference between sympathy and empathy when you get past what the dictionary definitions are in there, is that when I feel my heart hurt, when you tell me your pet passed away, and I feel my heart hurt, and it takes me back into when our dog passed away, and I feel that. I I'm going then now I'm on the journey with you. And so I'm thinking about what are some of the emotions you're going to be going through. Are you you're gonna you're not gonna be able to just jump right up and be like everything's okay and do a presentation or have have your mind and your heart open to other things. You've got to process it, especially if you've never had something like that happen to you before. And so when we understand the emotions someone's going through and we're in there with them, it allows us to journey with them where they're at. It's being right where they're at in their journey. And so, for example, we'll we'll use the example of the the dog having died. And I actually had that. I was at a meeting at in our work at one point in time, and uh my parents called me. We had they had had to put our dog down, and they were sharing that with me because they wanted me to know. So here I am in this big meeting, and I've just heard that. And my heart is broken, favorite pet, you know, loved, loved, loved them. So all of those emotions. Well, if a leader is coming towards you and you and you're sharing with them and they do that, they understand you're not gonna have the capacity to get right up on stage and pretend nothing's going on, or whatever situation it's in. So as a leader, that you then how do I protect this person? How do I support this person? How do I help honor the emotions? How do I allow them to have the emotions? Give them space, do the things that are gonna help them on their journey. And that from a leadership perspective is so much more than just saying, oh, that's too bad, and walking down and then going back to everything else.

Jennifer Johnson:

Right. So it's not, you don't have to have lived that exact experience, but you know, you're walking on that journey. You feel it.

Sue Ryan:

You feel it. You can also feel empathy even if there's something that you haven't felt. There are people who've gone through some really traumatic experiences that you can't even imagine what they're feeling. And there's thing after thing after thing. What you can imagine, though, is their heartbreak and that they're feeling lost. So you go to something you can physically relate to what that is, even if it's not the exact experience. And don't pretend. One of the things that a leader will do is to say, if they if they haven't had it, I can't imagine how what you're feeling in this particular exit situation. However, I relate to the emotions you're feeling, and I'm here for you. And let's walk through this. Would this be easier or would this be? And have solutions and options for them because sometimes in the moment they don't know how to feel. Right. And when we step in there with them and we can help move them a little bit forward, what would what would give you the most peace right now? What can we do for you? Can we help you go into another place to sit? Do you would some time away and just very gradually be there with them and help them also be in the moment? Because they feel supported.

Jennifer Johnson:

Because they feel supported. Yeah. So can you share an example of a time when empathy really impacted leadership? I will.

Sue Ryan:

It was an example where I learned that the power of empathy is actually in the permission to consider alternative perspectives.

Jennifer Johnson:

Okay, let's unpack that.

Sue Ryan:

How about that? Yes. Let's unpack that. In in my first professional career, I was in computer software sales, and we were working on a very large account. It was complex, a lot of different moving parts. We had a prospect, very good prospect, but they were quite demanding in their requests. As my team and I were gathering, one of the team members was sharing how excited she was about the birthday party for her daughter that they'd been planning. And it was this that coming weekend and all the things that were going on. Very, very excited. During our sales call, the prospect asked for a really complex report to be created, and they needed it by Monday, and she was the one who would be doing it. And I didn't commit to it in there. I said we would talk together as a team and we would get back to them. And they said, Well, this is really important. And I knew that if I asked her, she would say, Yes, I'll do it. And I knew that because I for many years was the one who said, Yeah, I'll do that. I would have I missed family opportunities, I missed friend obligations because I felt how important it was for me, my choices not to do that. I didn't want her to have to do that. And so I called the prospect back and I said, This is what's going on this weekend. My team member has a party for her daughter, and I'm not going to ask her to do that this weekend. I'm glad to ask her to do it next week, but not this weekend. And then I closed my mouth. And for it was probably 20 seconds, it seemed like three minutes. Because at first, what their response was was we need it right away. And I kept my mouth closed. And they came back and said, Well, you know, we probably don't need it by Monday. And we could do it the following week. And I had permission to stay in the emotion of what it felt like, and I did not want that for my team member.

Jennifer Johnson:

You said something really important that really has not a lot to do with empathy, but I I want to talk about the power of the pause. Okay. You said you stayed quiet. Yes. Why is that important?

Sue Ryan:

It's important because when you just react, you're going from the first thing in your head. When you pause and you don't say anything, you allow the other person to consider what it is they're saying, and you also can consider what's next. The pause allows you to get into a deeper emotion and it lets you give the other person space. Does that come with practice? Yes, it does.

Jennifer Johnson:

Because it's so hard to not react and to sit with it for a minute.

Sue Ryan:

I learned a valuable exercise and it's been very helpful in all areas of my life. And it's called don't react, reply, or respond. When someone says something, the first thing that we feel like we're obligated to do is to react to what they've said. We're not. The next thing we feel like we're obligated to do is to give them a reply. Well, we're not. And then the other thing is we don't have to actually do anything. We can choose, we're at choice with what we're doing. And most I didn't used to feel that way or think that way. When we pause, we can sit in it and be at choice.

Jennifer Johnson:

And that's what the pause lets us do. Because so many times we get that email that we think or that text message where we think we have to be on it right now.

Sue Ryan:

And we go to their emotions and we go to their time frame and we go to things that are important to me. And it to them, and it's not that those aren't important, but it's to when we do it like that, it's the lack of our own consideration. And it's also us not staking our own claim and staying in confidence of our space. I knew that I was willing to take the risk that the prospect would have an issue with that. And that was a risk that I chose to take. And the only way I could do it is if I was quiet and allowed them to sit in what it really was and then accept what their their choice was and then deal with it from there.

Jennifer Johnson:

Right. Well, I it's a valuable lesson. I mean, either way, right? To just sit in it, to sit in it. It's hard.

Sue Ryan:

And there's a great exercise to do, which is to get a stopwatch, your phone, get a stopwatch, and be quiet and and t stop the stopwatch when you think it's been five seconds. Oh my. Do it when you think it's been 10 seconds. Do it when you think it's been 15 seconds. I promise you, 15 seconds seems like a minute. However, people need to have the space to go from their head to their heart, which is where empathy comes from. And in order to get into that space, you need space.

Jennifer Johnson:

Right. Oh, I bet that five seconds feels like an hour for those of us that like to talk.

Sue Ryan:

I was gonna say, speaking only for myself.

Jennifer Johnson:

Yeah. So what are common misconceptions about empathy in in the workplace? Because I'm sure there's a lot of them. There are. And we're all thinking them, but let's let's verbalize them. What are some common ones?

Sue Ryan:

Oh, I love this. I actually went out and I looked at a number of them and I considered several of them, and I'm I brought two of them here today. Two of them that are are most common from my lens. First one, empathy is a sign of weakness. Very, very common. Empathy is actually a powerful skill. And it's a skill that for us takes courage and confidence for us to develop. And we don't have great skills and empathy in the beginning, especially if we weren't taught what it is and we hadn't practiced it. And when you do it the first time or something, you might not do it well. And it feels weird. It feels weird. And so you're like, oh, I can't do that, and you go away. It's empathy is being in that messy middle of, you know, I'm not very good at it yet, and yet staying with it. And it's a skill that you build. So empathy is not a sign of weakness, it's actually a sign of strength, of courage, of confidence, and that you care. The second one, this was great. Not everybody's empathetic. I actually used to think this. I when I thought about empathy, I thought, well, yeah, some people are, you know, they can't be empathetic because we have different personality types and things like that. No, empathy is something we all have access to. It's a skill we can all develop. And so we don't have, we got no excuse. We we if we explore it and embrace it, and yeah, go ahead and be in the messy middle of not doing it very well, and yet continuing to try and to get better and to better at it.

Jennifer Johnson:

Practice.

Sue Ryan:

Practice. Yeah.

Jennifer Johnson:

Yeah. I I think that's something that we all needed to to work on.

Sue Ryan:

And that comes from permission. It's permission to be. We think that if we don't do something well, we can't do it anymore. Give yourself permission not to be. Because it's uncomfortable. Yes.

Jennifer Johnson:

You know, if we're not at the top of our game in something, we're like, well, that doesn't seem very genuine.

Sue Ryan:

And judgment. Huge, huge part of empathy is judgment, and we judge ourselves. Well, I'm not very good at this, or you know, I don't want somebody to judge me that I'm not very good at this. Like, stop it.

Jennifer Johnson:

Shut it.

Sue Ryan:

Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't fit, it doesn't serve you.

Jennifer Johnson:

So, in your experience, where have leaders that you've worked with struggled most in incorporating empathy into their leadership? You know, have you seen that? And and and what are your thoughts on this? Yes.

Sue Ryan:

Yes. There are three. And again, I made a list because I really went back and reflected. I love the questions that you were bringing. Uh three things. The first one is what we just talked about, not giving themselves permission to explore what it is for them and to be messy with it in the beginning, not to do it well, and yet, and actually to have conversations. How could I have done this better? You know, it's my to to really learn it as a skill. Uh the next one is not learning from others what empathy means to them.

Jennifer Johnson:

Because it's your journey, it's your journey with empathy.

Sue Ryan:

If if we're being empathetic just from our place, then we are not really being empathetic, we're being more sympathetic. So it's learning from others because empathy is walking in their situation, in their journey, and walking with them in their journey. Well, if we don't ask them and we don't learn about their journey, then we can't really be empathetic. So it's it's not learning from them what it looks like for them. And the third one we've talked a little bit about is confusing sympathy with empathy. And empathy is us being other directed without judgment in the journey of someone else. And that also means we may not agree with their journey, we may not like their journey, their may, their journey may be because they did something wrong. It's still their journey, and we still have the capacity to have empathy, but not if it comes from a place of judgment and not if it comes from our side, not theirs.

Jennifer Johnson:

So judgment. Judgment's, I mean, like you just said before, we judge ourselves, we judge other people. Do you have a tip on how to not judge someone? How to get out of that space of being like, you know, I mean, there's been plenty of times we've all been in those situations where we're like, oh, well, she's this or he's this.

Sue Ryan:

How do we get out of that? I actually have a great exercise that's pretty humorous. I and I assume that this is going to be with the video and the audio, but I'll try to explain it. So you you you literally put your hands out in front of you, facing each other like sock puppets, and you have a conversation out loud with yourself, and you hear yourself, and you give both sides of it, and you hear yourself in it. It's like, really, dude. I want to say that. Like, well, you should see her. I mean, look at the outfit that she had on. Well, I mean, I can understand that. I mean, look at the what her background is. Well, but I mean, she's really, really trying to do a really good job with it. Yeah, but look at how she's doing it. So you literally have your conversation with yourself and you hear yourself out loud and you hear where judgment is, and then you also walk through it from a place of judgment and say, I choose to walk through this without judgment and see what I have the choice to, because judgment takes away choice. So the other side of it is walking through the conversation and saying, What would I say and do if I was choosing not to judge it? So be very intentional about it. And you're raising yourself to your level of awareness, awareness that judgment is in there.

Jennifer Johnson:

Great exercise.

Sue Ryan:

Two great exercises.

Jennifer Johnson:

We look at it and go, that's really silly that I'm doing that.

Sue Ryan:

It is, but when you see it, because because otherwise it's exactly what's going on in your head. You're just not you're verbalizing it. You're verbalizing and you're seeing it and you're hearing it. And it while it may seem comical that your hands are talking to each other and you're going from side to side, it's what you're saying inside and you hear it, and then you start saying, start saying the things that you would be more healthy and how you would do it and how you would move it forward. It's it's actually a really helpful exercise.

Jennifer Johnson:

So don't judge us if you see us in our car driving along the road and we're doing the sock puppet exercise in the car as we're thinking something in our head. Yes. Um, so we hear about empathy and the need to make tough decisions. Yes. How does empathy fit into that process when we have to deliver tough things to people or make those decisions?

Sue Ryan:

Right. So I'm I'm just so proud of your questions. We talked a little bit earlier about active listening. And active listening is where you're intentionally listening, where you're listening not just with your ears, but you're listening with your eyes and you're listening with your heart. You're listening with your head. You're listening with all of your senses that you have access to. So it's when you're when you're really, really listening to what someone else is saying, we get into where they're coming from. We learn the lens that they're coming from and how they feel about it. And it helps us, it's not the absence of making the decision. It's thinking not in the moment of the decision, it's being unquenchably curious about what's next. And when we're really empathetic with someone in there and they're hearing something that's shocking news in any area of your life, and they're hearing shocking news, what are the next things they're going to be doing? And so when we when we have tough decisions that need to be made, and we're doing it from the lens of empathy, we can take some of those steps and address them ahead of time. For example, if you're going to have to let someone go, what are some of the other parts that could simplify the process of what how could we be supportive of what they're going to be dealing with next? When we look at the tough decision that needs to be made, it's helping them understand what brought us to that. So we're not just saying we don't think you're any good anymore. This is what we're doing. So they understand where our journey is. And that also we're a partner in the journey. So it's not the absence of it, but it allows us because we're we're listening more and we hear them and we understand, we're practicing what they were are going to be feeling and what they're going to be saying before we do it. And so as we deliver it, we're delivering it through how they're going to be receiving it. And we're able to then not just deliver the news, but deliver some of the journey.

Jennifer Johnson:

That makes sense. You mentioned active listening. Yes. Hard thing to do for a lot of people, especially in a noisy world like today. Your watch is going off, your phone is going off, you're getting dings and pings and rings everywhere. How any suggestions on how to actively listen?

Sue Ryan:

You're going to find this very interesting. It's something you practice. Think about your day, how many things you're doing. We're on a Zoom call, we're checking our phones, we're doing this as you mentioned. Take time out in your day, and you start doing it about a minute at a time, which seems like an eternity. Concentrate on one thing. Think about what you're hearing. What am I hearing around me? What am I sensing around me? What in what I'm reading or watching am I capturing? If you're watching TV, what are all the different things that you can see in the room of where the person is? When you're reading it, how is it touching your heart? What are you getting from what it is? Be very, very intentional about it. Have a conversation with someone and think of being like in this room and you lock everything else out. You're so focused on them. If something else comes up, it really does require practice, especially in our world, because we've gotten so used to taking shorter and shorter amounts of time to gather information. We have all these things to get done that we don't honor one thing at a time. It requires practice.

Jennifer Johnson:

Yeah, like everything. Like everything else. So in the journey of using empathy and getting better at it and all of that, how can we use that as a tool in our toolbox when it comes to conflict resolution? In a professional setting, in at work.

Sue Ryan:

Empathy and conflict resolution, empathy, period, is our ability to be open to considering alternative perspectives, to be in the journey of the other person. I was on a debate team, and part of what you do in debate is you have to debate both sides of something. And empathy is kind of that way. An example that I had is I had, and I'm by the way, I've been benefited in my life of having a leader who was so not empathetic. Like on a scale of one to ten, it was minus 50. And that bad who really it oh yes, it's it was really bad. However, I learned a lot from that. So I learned a lot from you know all kinds of opportunities. The other one was from a leader who I went to because I was having trouble working with someone else on the on a team, and it was a gentleman, and we just could not see eye to eye. And he didn't prefer, and this was a few years ago, so it's I'm I'm gonna say it. He didn't like the fact I was a woman and he had to work with a woman. Well, it was my account, and there wasn't anything he was gonna be able to do about it because I was doing a really good job. So it I was not being taken off the account, and we were gonna have to try to figure out a way to work around it. So I went to my boss because it was frustrating. He was holding me back, he was trying to kind of sabotage things a little bit, whatever, all those things. And my boss listened to me and he asked great questions. And he really got into it. I mean, I felt like he really felt me and everything was in there. And he said, Have you already had this conversation? I'll call this person's name Bob. It wasn't, but I'll call him Bob. He said, Have you had this conversation with Bob? And I said, Well, no. He said, Now that you've had a chance to practice and now that you have a chance to understand, and you really you understand how you feel and the exact situations, and you were able, I asked you questions so that you couldn't come from a place of judgment. It's now time for you to go have that conversation with Bob, recognizing he may not want to have the conversation, but if he's open to having the conversation, I want you to have the conversation with him before the three of us do anything together.

Jennifer Johnson:

Okay.

Sue Ryan:

And what was very helpful in that, in the conflict resolution of it, was empathy was modeled, so I could see the importance of it. It allowed me to consider Bob's side, where I had gotten closed off and judgmental on his side rather than empathetic to him. And so in the questioning, it helped me understand the lens he may have been coming from. So I was able to ask more valuable questions to Bob. We ultimately had a good conversation. While we weren't ever best friends, we were able to work together from then on because both of us were able to come to a place where we stepped into each other's journey.

Jennifer Johnson:

That's a beautiful example of how it works.

Sue Ryan:

It can work, not every one of them is going to work. Of course. And yet what was most impactful for me was really stepping into Bob's journey, even though I didn't agree with it.

Jennifer Johnson:

You mentioned something else. Um, it was it it was in the last tidbit where we were talking about, and it's our and we've had many personal conversations about this, learning from other people. Yes. Seeing how someone else may react or do something, if we pay attention, it could give us the lens of, hey, that's what I I want to make sure that I practice to not do that.

Sue Ryan:

Yes.

Jennifer Johnson:

Important, right?

Sue Ryan:

I think every experience in my life is to teach me what I choose to or not to do. And I don't shy away from challenging or even bad situations because there's something in there for me to learn. And I love the lens of what is there here for me to learn? What is there here for me to know? And when you do it from the lens of empathy and without judgment, and I think empathy and no judgment are just like integrated. When I do that, I have the capacity to consider the perspective of the other person. And I will say that again requires practice because I am the so quick to want to step to judgment, especially in defense of someone else. And it's really challenging for me to step back to a place of neutrality and step into empathy when there is that. So you're exactly right. It it requires practice.

Jennifer Johnson:

It does. So, how can leaders within their organizations encourage a culture of empathy within their organization or their team?

Sue Ryan:

I wrote down the words. I thought about the words. I did, I wanted to give it, make it and actually I started for simply quite simply model it, encourage it, teach it, recognize it.

Jennifer Johnson:

Simple. Very simple, but not easy all the time.

Sue Ryan:

It's not easy, and it's giving ourselves permission to be perfectly imperfect and to see when we struggle to have access to empathy. And then it's also reaching out to other people. You're like, you and I, let's practice being empathetic about something. What would that look like? Right. We practice a lot of different things. Practice empathy.

Jennifer Johnson:

Right.

Sue Ryan:

Who says we're supposed to be good every time we have a situation that might come up for it? Right.

Jennifer Johnson:

And and if we can just figure out a way to get our team also practicing it. And that's as we're modeling it.

Sue Ryan:

Encouraging it, teaching it, and recognizing it. And being very intentional, to your point, be very intentional with it and have people really understand the difference between sympathy and empathy.

Jennifer Johnson:

Guys, you heard it here. I mean, you have just provided such great value. We've not really talked about empathy on this podcast before. And of all the people, I just I knew you would be so just so knowledgeable and you shared so much. Thank you. And it empathy is part of every single area of our lives. Yes. Sue, if our listeners would like to get in touch with you, how can they do so?

Sue Ryan:

My email is sue at suerion.solutions. My LinkedIn is because when I joined LinkedIn years ago, uh, it was it was when people still knew me by my maiden name. So my I'm Sue Armstrong Ryan on LinkedIn, and my website is suerion.solutions. Fabulous. Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you.

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Jennifer Johnson

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