154: Empathy That Works, with Dr. Helen Riess

What if the fastest path to better outcomes is a renewed commitment to empathy you can actually teach, measure, and scale? 

We sit down with Dr. Helen Riess—Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, founder of Empathetics, and author of The Empathy Effect—to unpack the science that turns the so-called soft skills into hard results.

Helen shares the journey from lab to classroom to enterprise, including a rigorously tested empathy curriculum that improved patient experience and shifted workplace dynamics. The numbers tell a powerful story: in a cohort of 500 clinicians, those who completed empathy training had an 83% higher retention rate. 

We dig into why that happens and talk about the elephant in the room: a healthcare system straining under factory-like pressures, where new nurses often arrive unprepared, mentorship is thin, and burnout feels inevitable.

Helen explains why culture change starts when leaders practice self-empathy and model curiosity, perspective-taking, and honest optimism. We map practical moves that make empathy operational: structured feedback, micro-recognition, mentoring time, and training. This conversation applies to any business that prioritizes the customer, while treating employees as mere functions; caring for people isn’t a detour from performance—it’s the engine.

If you’re ready to replace cynicism with connection, and checkboxes with real behavior change, you’ll leave with a roadmap grounded in neuroscience and proven in practice. 

Helen Riess, M.D. is the founder and Chief Medical Officer of Empathetics. She is also a clinical professor and research psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, the author of The Empathy Effect, and is a core member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. She has devoted her career to teaching and research in the art and science of the patient-doctor relationship. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 3:30 Founding Empathetics From Research
• 6:45 Why Empathy Matters In Care
• 11:25 Training Results And Retention
• 15:55 People Over Products
• 20:05 Challenging “Soft Skill” Myths
• 23:45 Scaling Empathy: From Workshops To App

Transcript

Helen Riess: 1:14

Your people are your most valuable asset, not even what you deliver, because without appreciating what the people in your organization are doing, you're not going to get good outcomes.

Manya Chylinski: 1:30

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. My guest today is Helen Riess. She is an MD and the founder and chief medical officer at Empathetics, the author of The Empathy Effect, and a professor and research psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School who developed empathy education based on neuroscience research. We talked a little bit about that research, about empathy, why it's important, why people are paying a little bit more attention to it these days? We had a really good conversation. I know you're going to enjoy it. Hi, Helen. Thanks for being here today. I'm so excited to be talking with you.

Helen Riess: 2:12

Good morning, Manya. It's a pleasure to be here.

Manya Chylinski: 2:15

All right. To get us started, question I ask all my guests this year. What is one thing that you have done in any area of your life that you never thought you would do?

Helen Riess: 2:27

Well, I think the answer to that would be I never thought I would found a company.

Manya Chylinski: 2:33

Okay.

Helen Riess: 2:34

Yeah. I knew I was going to work in healthcare. I decided early on I wanted to become a psychiatrist and got deeply interested in doing research on really made human connection more powerful. And so all those trajectories seemed quite aligned. But when the results from the research led to something really powerful, that's what led me into founding a company.

Manya Chylinski: 3:03

Wow. Well, I love that it came from the results of the research that you did that made you realize how important it was to share the message. And the name of your book is The Empathy Effect. And so I imagine the research was around empathy.

Helen Riess: 3:19

Yes. I mean, I've done many research projects throughout my career, but the last, I would say 20 years was very focused on empathy because I saw that there were many challenges to providing empathic care, both within my own profession and across medical professions in general. And the the need for patients to feel valued, seen, heard, and understood is so fundamental to everything I learned about being an effective psychiatrist. And I realized those same skills of seeing and valuing and hearing people really need to be part of any caring relationship.

Manya Chylinski: 4:05

Right. Absolutely. And those are the kinds of words I use too when I talk about this subject. You've got the data to back it up. Right before we started recording, you shared a statistic with me from one of your case studies, and it was incredible. So can you share a little bit about what that was and how you came to that conclusion?

Helen Riess: 4:25

Yes, like many things in science, some of the results are what you don't expect. And so the empathy research that I've done with my amazing teams at Mass General and also at Epathetics all started focused on improving the patient experience. Because as a clinician, of course, that's what I was really focused on. And then during the pandemic, I realized that we also need to focus on empathy for the caregivers, the doctors, nurses, coaches, everyone, because everyone was suffering. And the research so far had shown definitively that we could improve the patient experience with empathic care. And then as we moved into empathic training for staff and clinicians, we started to see data on reduced burnout, improvement in communication skills, improvement in teamwork, and improvement in safety. So these were all very exciting signs that the workplace was actually changing with empathy training, not only the provider-to-patient relationship. And then one of the CEOs that we were working with in California sent me an email in late December and said, We have some results that I think would really interest you. We have found that in our cohort of 500 clinicians, that the empathetics trained clinicians, which was about half, we had an 83% higher retention rate. Wow. Yes. And um, he said this is a phenomenal finding because keeping people in healthcare today is the biggest challenge. And through empathy training and through care for the caregivers, we're seeing that people actually get reignited into the passion of their job. They start focusing on the positive. And this is tremendous. So that's what I shared with you.

Manya Chylinski: 6:34

That number is amazing. And I would think anybody listening to this would want to see those kind of numbers in their organization as well. What is it about, you know, without giving away your secret sauce, what is it about the training and the concept of empathy that's so important to be embedding into the culture of the workplace, you know, not just the services you're providing, but for the actual employees.

Helen Riess: 7:02

The first key is realizing that your people are your most valuable asset, not even what you deliver, because without appreciating the people in your organization are doing, you're not going to get good outcomes. So the first thing is just valuing all the employees and realizing that they have full lives. They are not just functions. And I think that is probably one of the biggest pitfalls is thinking that the person is just the person who manages that team or who takes care of those operations. But you forget that no, that's a full person. And making sure that person feels valued and fulfilled in their job is key to keeping people. And in healthcare, and I mean, I'm just gonna go on here. Um, the fact that the jobs are so demanding of both knowledge, skills, and interpersonal skills and caring means that those people need a lot of recognition and appreciation. And that has been largely neglected in healthcare. Like it's just assumed that you're going to be a caring person. And we know it can get beaten out of you.

Manya Chylinski: 8:22

Right. And we also there's this underlying assumption that because you're a caring person, you will give more, you will give 200%, you will you will go above and beyond because it's so important. And some people do that because the caring piece of it is such a big part of them. And then, as you mentioned, that leads to burnout and so much unhappiness.

Helen Riess: 8:48

All through my medical training, and I think most nursing and and medical training, we are always taught that the patient comes first. And that is a very important kind of perspective, that it's really about the patient. However, a few years ago, an author came out with a book called Patients Comes Second. And that that raised a lot of eyebrows, as you can imagine. But it was along these exact same lines of thinking that you cannot get empathetic and compassionate care out of burned-out people who've lost any semblance of resilience. And that book was by Paul Spiegelman. I just want to say that that was pretty groundbreaking because that would have been considered almost blasphemy in the time that I was in medical training.

Manya Chylinski: 10:39

As you were saying that, I was thinking there could be a book for the business world, which is the customer comes second, the very same thought of you need to take care of your employees first. But also, that would be blasphemous to say that because you're supposed to say that your customers come first. So, you know, when you're working with organizations, talking to leaders, what kind of resistance do you get to thinking or talking about the concept of empathy? Because it's it's gotten such a bad rap that it's a soft quote unquote skill, and as if that makes it less important?

Helen Riess: 11:21

That's a great question, Manya, because I I do think that there's enough in the business literature now that leaders understand that having some degree of empathy is important. I think one of the biggest challenges, though, is either not believing you can teach people to be more empathetic, which was definitely the case 10 years ago. No one thought you could teach empathy. And that is actually one of the reasons that the research that my team at Mass General did was so powerful, because we were the first study that showed you could actually improve empathy through training. And that was in a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of research. So nobody could really argue with that. Some leaders don't believe you can teach it, and others don't believe you can change a culture. Because if you talk about a workforce culture and everyone's grumbling and negative and cynical, many leaders just throw up their hands and say, well, that's just how it is here. You know, what can you do? You can't change, you know, everybody's attitude. So it feels very daunting. And then some people actually don't value quote people skills. They they just want to get the widgets out the door. And I think that's less true in healthcare, but maybe in other businesses, it's like get the product out, you know, make the revisions, take in the customer feedback, improve the product, but you lose the fact that they're actual human beings doing all these things.

Manya Chylinski: 12:55

Right, right. And it feels in some industries that they just wish that it was just robots and just AI who was doing the work because they're treating their people as if they are robots or AI. You mentioned some, the idea that leaders might see the culture or see the level of dissatisfaction or distrust and kind of throw up their hands not knowing what to do. What do you think leaders like that misunderstand about empathy or about their role in building that environment of empathy?

Helen Riess: 13:33

I think, as with most things where very smart people are not kind of implementing things that could improve their culture, it's usually due to a lack of information and education about what is out there to actually, what tools exist to start changing a culture. And this is where empathetics comes in because when I first started creating empathy training, I knew I had to test it in a really rigorous way for anyone to say, okay, we'll we'll try that because it's been tested at a leading institution in a in a really rigorous study. But there's a lack of knowledge about studies like this that you can actually implement a training. And when when I first developed it, I was delivering the training myself and literally trained thousands of people through in-person workshops and live training. And a businessman actually is the one who tapped me on the shoulder and said, You need to start a company if you want to scale this up, and I'm gonna help you do that. And so it was really an outsider seeing that this needed to be scaled to actually reach the goals of not just changing one institution, but healthcare writ large. And so that meant scaling it into online formats. So instead of a single person, we actually started finding people who could tape and do instructional design and make make the training highly scalable. And since that time, we also have just come out with an app to put this training right in the palm of people's hands so that they can get lessons and empathy just with the tap of a finger, you know. So finding scalable ways to implement a training is, I think, the secret, instead of thinking like we can't do a personality transformation with everybody in the organization, but we can give them tools. And I've I still find that live workshops where people get to practice the skills, they they learn a lot by watching our videos and seeing scenarios and being in a workshop where we can train facilitators to lead these workshops. It helps people identify where was my empathy really challenged here. And and it it takes a set of skills to sort of notice where things started to go south.

Manya Chylinski: 16:15

Well, I think that's fabulous that you've been able to scale and you've got the app and the programs. And you're right, those are important as is the personal touch when it's possible, but it isn't it isn't possible to run around and trade for you or even your team to train everybody. But the in-person is also the gold standard still, even though we're leaning so much towards um online, there's there's benefits to both. And you know, I imagine coming from your background of neuroscientific research and Harvard and MGH, that that maybe washes away some people's initial trepidation about doing this kind of work because you're able to show really substantively why this work is important and how it can make some changes.

Helen Riess: 17:08

I do think that being, quote, raised in in a well-known institution with a good reputation definitely helps because the standards are high. And you know, to get a to even get study approved in in these systems is is not easy. And the rigor and scrutiny and also just being able to work with fantastically smart people, like great statisticians, great thinkers, it really has made the journey so rewarding and pleasurable. And I'm so grateful for all the people on my teams.

Manya Chylinski: 17:46

Yes. Well, and you have access to resources that other folks doing the same kind of work just don't have access to. So I just think I just want to say, I just love it. I love that you've got this background and this really robust research that talks about how important empathy is. What kind of policies or organizational structures do you think are really important to help shore up the concept of empathy within an organization, healthcare or otherwise?

Helen Riess: 18:17

I love that question because many people think, oh, to just get the leaders to say we're going to become a compassionate organization or that it's some kind of top-down policy or initiative. We have found that the real secret is getting leaders to actually take our training and to experience, particularly the part about self-empathy, because leaders are just people too. And, you know, many people look to them to have the full responsibility of making all the right decisions and then everything works. They also need to know how to take care of themselves, how to like widen their perspectives, how to self-regulate, how to reframe things. Like these are incredibly important for everybody, particularly leaders. And when they have an exposure to a type of training and experience, I really like to think about it as an experience rather than a training. They start to understand, oh, this is how you work with someone who's challenging, or this is how I reframe things when I start going totally negative, you know, or this is how I continue to inspire people, even when I have my own trepidation about the direction of things, because without hope, there's just not much. And I don't mean false promises or Pollyanna thinking, but always finding a way to keep people engaged even through turbulent times. So I think it starts with leadership. And I can tell you that some organizations that view empathy training as something, quote, for the underlings, it doesn't work because the the rank and file people they can sense when this is just take this training. It's kind of a do this next thing instead of we're offering you a gift.

Manya Chylinski: 20:20

It's sort of the checkbox. We've done the training so we can say that we are, we have empathy, we are an empathetic organization without doing the really hard work that underlies it.

Helen Riess: 20:32

And you know, to be fair, everyone is sort of at a different stage in their own journey. And maybe that's where people start because they have to do something. But we always hope that a little fire is lit where somebody says, Oh, I got a lot out of this. This we've heard people say, this hasn't just changed how I behave at work, it's helped me in my personal relationships with my family, with my teenager. These skills are not just meant to be used at work.

Manya Chylinski: 21:05

Right. And you know, what you were just sharing is a thought that's come up a lot in my recent interviews with folks, which is the importance of self-awareness. So self-empathy, self-compassion, trusting oneself, all of those things that we're asking leaders to act or model for the people they work with, how important it is for them to feel those things for themselves. So I appreciate the reminder because we do look to leaders, and in some ways they are separate from the employees in the organization, but in many ways they're exactly the same and they're dealing with exactly the same motivations and challenges that everyone is.

Helen Riess: 21:47

Exactly.

Manya Chylinski: 21:48

What do you think is the biggest risk to an organization? You know, if they don't adopt empathetics, empathy, compassion, any of these kinds of skills where they're really valuing and and validating the people that work there?

Helen Riess: 22:09

Well. I can tell you that having been working in this field for really two decades, this has really moved from a nice to have to a must-have. 15 years ago, people were like, oh, that's oh, that's so nice. You're doing empathy training. Like it would be like patting a kid on the head, like, what a nice idea. And now some of the same organizations that had that attitude are now calling us to say, we are looking for tools. We need to do something at scale. And we want to talk to you. And it because the shift is that, like most things, when the pain is acute, that's when you go to the doctor. And the pain now with people really exchanging passion in healthcare for cynicism and negativity, focusing only on the drudgery. And also, I mean, the truth is medicine has become much more of a business. I think it always had to have business models, but now it's kind of adopted in many cases almost a factory mentality, like how many products can we get out, how many people can be seen in the shortest amount of time. And people feel like they're kind of more on an assembly line than really having that warm, trusting relationship with caregivers. I think the current crisis with people quitting in droves. I mean, one statistic is that 56% of new nurses quit their jobs within the first two years. They just don't like it.

Manya Chylinski: 23:55

Like that's startling. That's a bright shining light on the problem.

Helen Riess: 24:01

Yes. Um, many of them are coming out of school feeling very unprepared. And then, you know, if you get people who are already somewhat burned out and exasperated and unhappy in their jobs, they don't have a lot of patience with new nurses. And so the lack of preparation and then the lack of mentoring and really trying to like recognize you've got to bring people along. They're not coming in ready-made. And especially if you were trained during the pandemic, you definitely didn't have as much exposure to patients.

Manya Chylinski: 24:35

Right. Absolutely. Helen, we are just about out of time. And I want to make sure we talk about your book, The Empathy Effect. So can you share a little bit about what's going on with that?

Helen Riess: 24:48

Yeah, I'm really excited to share that the book, which was published in 2018, is coming out in paperback in sometime in November. So it may already be out by the time your listeners hear this, our conversation. And I'm just happy to get it in the hands of more people. The book has been really well received, and the demand for it is climbing. So I think empathy and just in our whole world right now seems to be quite challenged. And the empathy effect is not for really for the healthcare sector solely. It addresses empathy in parenting, in business, in education, empathy in the arts and the power of the arts to imbue empathy into people's lives. And it has a beautiful forward by Alan Alda, like who I consider a national treasure. And so I just hope everyone who reads the empathy effect does not skip the forward because it is really beautiful. And there are many tools in the book that can help people get started. And Empathetics was built to really fill out the training because you can't contain a whole training in, you know, in a book that's kind of meant for everybody.

Manya Chylinski: 26:13

So well, congratulations on the book's success and the paperback version and landing national treasure, indeed. Alan Alda, um, he's amazing. So I love that he's involved in this in any way. So how can folks get in touch with you if they want to learn more about you or the company or the book?

Helen Riess: 26:36

If they want to learn more about empathetics, info at empathetics.com. You can go to our website, empathetics.com. I am on LinkedIn, as is the company. Um, and people who want to find me, just remember my name is spelled R-I-E-S-S. Sometimes it's hard to find if we if those letters get mixed up. So um people can find us on LinkedIn and all the other ways. Thank you so much for having me.

Manya Chylinski: 27:06

Yeah, thank you so much. I'll add those links to the show notes. And I really appreciate your time today, Helen. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. And thank you to our listeners for checking out this episode, and we will see you next time.