An Interview With Cynthia Corsetti
Ensure that action plans for improvement will be based on better information and therefore will be more impactful on performance. Also, better listening means that options may be identified that otherwise would not have been thought of.
Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is increasingly recognized as a pivotal leadership trait. In an ever-evolving business landscape, leaders who exhibit genuine empathy are better equipped to connect, inspire, and drive their teams towards success. But how exactly does empathy shape leadership dynamics? How can it be harnessed to foster stronger relationships, improved decision-making, and a more inclusive work environment? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Lasselle.
Jeff Lasselle is the Founder and CEO of Boosting Leadership, LLC, a consultancy focused on leadership development through individual executive coaching, group leadership skills training, and customized improvement services. He is an experienced Operations Executive and Corporate Officer, having led organizations as large as 1500 people, across multisite, regional organizations for international firms, in multiple industries, for decades.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about empathy, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I was lucky — I figured out my aspiration early!
I started my career as a Chemical Process Engineer working in a fascinating operation making specialty chemicals. Although the engineering work was “wicked cool” (yes, I’m originally from the Boston area!), I found myself drawn to management and leadership.
I realized quickly that chemical manufacturing was an environment full of inherent hazards with potentially severe and even deadly consequences when things go wrong. I became determined to lead from inside the industry to help prevent deadly accidents. I set my sights on climbing the ladder to Operations Leadership positions where I could directly influence practices and ensure that my teams always worked to ensure process safety.
Over the years, I learned the skills needed to ensure a safe operation were the same skills needed to drive all operational results. Also, the best way to multiply my influence was to teach others the leadership skills they would need to ensure that desired results are achieved.
After decades of running manufacturing and distribution operations across large international organizations, I determined to start my consulting firm to focus my efforts on coaching and teaching leadership skills.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
As a leader new to Sigma Aldrich Corporation, a life science-oriented specialty chemicals company, I was asked in 2014 to join a special team the Chief Supply Chain Officer created to improve safety globally. To that point, most of my experience was in domestic operations, and I didn’t want to be on the team. When I expressed my hesitancy, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was on the team, period! So, I resolved not just to be on the team, but insisted that I be given leadership of the entire effort.
This ironic turn of fate was the single most impactful decision that influenced my personal development and my career path. The international team that we assembled created a Leadership Development program, called Leading Safety Excellence. Two colleagues and I went around the globe and taught senior leaders how to lead. In the process of doing so, I honed my leadership skills and opened my eyes to the greater world beyond the US borders. The effort eventually trained over 1200 operations supervisors, managers, and directors, and strongly moved the needle on operational results for the organization.
From this experience I learned that some of our best experiences are the result of getting ourselves uncomfortable!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I formed Boosting Leadership LLC at the beginning of 2023 as a consultancy focused on leadership development through individual executive coaching and group leadership skills training. I bring my experiences and true-to-life examples into the development of current and future leaders. My ability and willingness to share these real experiences — both successes and failures — help drive understanding and adoption of the skills.
Further, when teaching leadership skills, my true focus goes beyond learning — it is on deployment! Many people have heard it all before, but they have never actually put the skills to use. A skill learned is useless until it is deployed! This is why so many leadership development programs fail — there is no deployment, and therefore nothing is accomplished.
While my experience is focused on Operations and the associated functions, I have discovered that the need for better leadership skills is broad and that even the anecdotes are relevant in any industry or function. For example, I am currently working with top-level leaders in Healthcare, Not-for-Profit Charity, and IT — not to mention different types of manufacturing and aspects of distribution.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I think there are four, sorry! These were impactful for me and today I look for these four characteristics in people wanting to grow in responsibility.
Aspiration — demonstrating a desire to take on tough challenges and working hard to be successful. I actively sought situations where others shied away — or even where others had outright failed. By taking on these sorts of difficult challenges and accepting the risk of failure, I was able to grow faster and get noticed quicker, for the skills or potential I could bring to the table. This translated to faster career progression.
Coachability — being open to constructive criticism, and showing that you will do something with the input. Early in my career, I was not mature enough to handle tough input quickly, but over time I recognized the value of coaching. I tell the individuals whom I coach, ‘You’re not always going to like what I have to say, but realize that as your coach, I have your best interest in mind.’ I have had several ‘ah-ha!’ moments myself when being coached, and fortunately I have been able to lead others to these moments as their coach.
Empathy — demonstrating the ability to truly understand another perspective and to put oneself into the shoes of another person — which is exactly our topic today!
Resiliency — when you fail, can you pick yourself up, learn from the experience, and try again? Sometimes resiliency is just looked at as ‘try, try, again.’ In reality, though, we need to first learn from the failure or setback and adopt the lessons before we try again. I often have to remind myself of the learning step before running into the same brick wall again! Fortunately, I guess I have a hard head.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.
Leadership is not easy. It is important for the health of the organization, and for our mental health, that we always try to make the best decision possible. I have always tried to make decisions that are rooted in values, and when the consequences of the decision are severe, to ensure that we have considered all available information and factors.
Some of the toughest decisions I have had to make as a leader have been the decisions to impact people’s employment. I have had to make decisions to layoff individuals, and even to close sites. These are tough calls no matter how clear the justification.
Approaching these decisions with empathy allows us to make sure we have considered all the possible factors and provide the best support for people under the circumstances.
Having to sit across the table from a good employee, who has done everything right, and tell them that their job is being eliminated, is excruciatingly painful — knowing that your decision led to this moment. Of course, it is more painful for the person receiving the news. I’ve been on both sides of that table, and I always try hard to find other solutions to avoid, or to ease this impact.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define empathy in a leadership context, and why do you believe it’s a vital trait for leaders to possess in today’s work environment?
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and feel what they feel. This is critical to understand another person’s perspective. Indeed, we will not be able to solve any difficult problems without getting good at empathetic listening.
Most people do not listen well. Even when they are fully present for a discussion, most people are listening with the intent to respond with their opinions. Rather than considering what is being said, we are thinking ahead to our turn. Rather than asking clarifying questions when something the speaker is describing is not clear to us, we just rush to fill in the missing pieces with our own experiences and knowledge. We judge rather than understand.
Behaving in this typical manner will ensure that we will not define the real problems to be solved, we will misidentify the root causes, and we will implement the incorrect corrective actions — wasting time and resources — and frustrating everyone involved!
Can you share a personal experience where showing empathy as a leader significantly impacted a situation or relationship in your organization?
One of my strategies when taking over operations that were failing, was to quickly identify a tenured employee who was extremely bitter about the organization and the past leadership decisions. Most people in leadership ignore these individuals due to the severe negativity they emit, however, I have found that they can be extremely valuable in a turn-around effort. These individuals generally are still a member of the organization simply because they care deeply and they want to see the team succeed. Otherwise, they would have left long ago. Somewhere along the way, someone disrespected them, and they became very bitter. If we take the time and effort to listen to these individuals, we find that they have great observations, fantastic ideas, want to see the team succeed, and are craving for someone to demonstrate enough respect to hear them out.
Listening to these individuals with empathy helps turn them into a positive and influential force within the team. It has always been well worth the effort to spend a few hours to listen and truly understand!
How do empathetic leaders strike a balance between understanding their team’s feelings and making tough decisions that might not be universally popular?
Being a leader is not about being popular. At times, I have been deeply unpopular amongst subsets of my team — and this will be true of any leader. We need to make the right decision, not the popular one. Listening empathetically before making the decision can help us identify options, we had not thought of that are better.
Once a decision is made, we must explain the ‘why’ behind the decision. Even when people disagree with the decision, if we explain our reasoning, most will understand that the decision was thought through carefully and that their input was considered.
If we do not first seek input through an empathetic listening process, we will have trouble convincing anyone that their input was even considered! Teams will recover more quickly if they have the opportunity for input and if the ‘why’ is carefully explained. This can turn a devasting event into something that the team will move past more easily.
How would you differentiate between empathy and sympathy in leadership? Why is it important for leaders to distinguish between the two?
Sympathy is using your own experience to color how you view what someone else is experiencing. While this can be useful, it can also be misleading as they may not be experiencing the same feelings and perspectives that you did.
With empathy, we are ignoring momentarily our own experiences and focusing solely on what is being communicated by the other person. We are letting them paint a picture and leaving our own painting and paintbrushes somewhere else. In this manner, we understand better what is happening and what can be done to resolve the situation.
Relying on sympathy, while it may feel good, can lead us to inadvertently disrespect the individual and fail to properly identify the true problem to be solved.
What are some practical strategies or exercises that leaders can employ to cultivate and enhance their empathetic skills?
Like with any skill, practice is required! I think there are two areas where practice pays big dividends and helps develop critical habits.
The first is to ensure you are always mentally present when in proximity to your team. Too often leaders are seen almost running through their operation to accomplish some tasks, and not being aware of what is going on around them. They end up putting off an air of being unapproachable, and they may even be giving silent consent to behaviors of others that they really should have stopped to correct. If a leader is not mentally present, they will fail to set a values-oriented workplace culture. Being mentally present will open all kinds of opportunities to impact the organization and demonstrate empathetic skills. It is a prerequisite for empathy!
The second area where practice is required is in listening. Practice listening very actively, with your whole body. But then, go a step further. Whenever your brain starts switching into response mode, turn it instead into ‘clarify mode,’ by repeating back what you have heard.
These two practices need to become habits and your mode of operating!
How can empathy help leaders navigate the complexities of leading diverse teams and ensure inclusivity?
Inclusivity is all about ensuring that everyone has a voice and an opportunity to be heard. The more diverse a team is, in experiences, communication styles, or cultures, the more challenging it can be for the manager to prevent friction. However, more diverse teams will generally come up with more potential options for solving a problem.
Listening empathetically, and helping other team members to do so, will ensure that all the ideas are heard.
It is important to note that listening to understand, does not mean that we will agree. But by using empathetic listening, we will ensure understanding, see where the common ground is, and properly identify the problems to be solved.
What’s your approach to ensuring that succession planning is a holistic process, and not just confined to the top layers of management? How do you communicate this philosophy through the organization?
Succession planning should address all critical positions within an organization, regardless of how far down in the hierarchy a position resides. I like to identify these positions by asking the simple question — ‘if so-and-so left tomorrow, how screwed would we be, and for how long?’ Then we prioritize our efforts to work on the highest impact first.
If a mid-level technical expert is a critical cog with unique skills that cannot easily be taught or acquired from the labor market, the succession plan better identify some actions to take to reduce the risk and the impact of them leaving! This may be quite a bit more impactful than certain high-ranking leaders leaving, who can be covered more easily.
Identifying these critical positions is often fraught with difficulty as egos get involved. The best path forward for the leader is to make sure the criteria are well-understood and objective.
Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways Empathy Will Affect Your Leadership”?
Demonstrating empathy will;
1 . Help ensure better communication, based on real understanding, takes place. This means that the root causes of problems can be correctly identified. Often, I’ve seen people not take the time to listen to one another. They then put together action plans that do not solve an actual problem — a waste of time and money!
2 . Ensure that action plans for improvement will be based on better information and therefore will be more impactful on performance. Also, better listening means that options may be identified that otherwise would not have been thought of.
3 . Increase the trust level in an organization. Trust is the foundation of performance for any organization and the key to the empowerment of individuals. Therefore, demonstrating empathy will contribute to higher levels of empowerment. Higher empowerment means faster decisions and response times due to decentralized control.
4 . Increase the respect that individuals feel from management and other team members, thereby driving greater individual engagement — a driver for more effort and stronger results. I think I have been able to solve more problems simply by demonstrating respect to a sour employee and their opinions, than any other method I have employed.
5 . Make the workplace a happier one, with a higher level of employee retention! I have inherited some operations with terrible turnover rates, and the first strategy to increase retention is always to go out and LISTEN with empathy. People leave when they think the situation is hopeless and no one cares. Show them you care!
Are there potential pitfalls or challenges associated with being an empathetic leader? How can these be addressed?
If you are a leader who has a strong need for control, you are going to be uncomfortable in an empathetic work culture. The reason for this is that as empathy builds trust and empowerment in the workplace, decisions will be made at lower levels, and faster than ever before.
I can remember one large engagement project I led for Merck KGaA at a key site where we were driving multiple, inter-related, topics to drive up engagement. We called it Project Olympics because it was an Olympic year and the five topics were so interrelated that it reminded us of the Olympics symbol. As the project gained steam, the five different committees acted more and more independently. At one point, I can remember sitting in an update with top executives and realizing that I, as the leader of the operation and the project, was only aware of about half of the actions being taken. The project was soaring forward, and I had to be comfortable being ‘out of control!’ The project was a huge success.
Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?
Being a new entrepreneur, the things that keep me up at night are often the things that I used to delegate and now need to figure out for myself — like why won’t my computer work?
Of course, lining up clients and then making sure I can address their needs are the real challenges. Making sure I understand their need is priority #1 and that’s where listening with empathy comes in! Once I truly understand the problem, then the challenge can be met (by staring at the ceiling at 2 am!).
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This is exactly why I started Boosting Leadership, LLC!
I am at that point in my career where I can have the biggest impact on the world by helping others lead. Indeed, if we as a race ever want to solve the most difficult challenges in front of us — from climate to war, to disease and famine — we must learn to listen to one another. Our world suffers from an atrocious lack of public examples where leaders role model an approach of empathetic listening and true problem-solving. We must get there! Shouting at each other isn’t working.
How can our readers further follow you online?
I frequently post new blog articles and videos on the channels below. You can also follow me on Linked-In.
Boosting Leadership YouTube channel
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.
Jeff Lasselle Of Boosting Leadership: 5 Ways Empathy Will Affect Your Leadership was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.