Welcome to shameless leadership. I'm your host, Sarah Dean. This show is for women, transgender people, non-binary folks, as well as allies, who are committed to advancing their leadership while also advancing the leadership of those around them. In each episode, we will offer practical tips, leadership strategies, and inspiring

stories to help you become a more confident, compassionate, and inclusive leader. The truth is,

you were born to lead. What might happen for you if you were to wholeheartedly embrace that

part of yourself? So let's start now together. Hello, shameless leaders. Today we're going to talk about the empathy tightrope.

And so the empathy tightrope is really the considerations that you make around

giving too much empathy or not enough empathy. And I'm talking about this today because I work

with leaders who often find themselves in one camp or the other. And so either they're so heart-centered

that sometimes it gets in their way and undermines leadership or that they're so head-centered that

they're not leading with enough empathy and then they get in their way because that undermines

their own leadership. So we're going to be talking about how to find that middle ground in terms

of being empathetic enough that we're not considered cold and disconnected, but not so

empathetic that we're always so heart driven and

emotion driven that we potentially lose some of our effectiveness or maybe feel emotionally

overwhelmed by situations. So we're going to be looking at kind of like, what's this like

a Goldilocks sweet spot? What's the just kind of just right zone for being empathetic and

demonstrating empathy in those professional environments and in your leadership.

Let's first talk about the power of empathy and why this is important.

And so it's important to understand that your ability to be empathetic is going to be critical in your role as a leader.

And when we talk about empathy, we're really talking about the ability to

understand and share the feelings of others. So this is being able to first acknowledge and

be self-aware of your own feelings. And then it's also about being able to read the feelings of

others. This doesn't mean mind reading, but being able to read and understand people's perspectives

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