Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Empathy itself has no action. Empathy is passive, completely passive. The actual action is compassion. So, what happens is, you see somebody in a bad situation, you experience what's called empathetic distress. You know, it's something that makes you uncomfortable, which makes you want to take that compassion, but you don't have to, you can just feel it and let the feelings wash through you.
Amy Lynn Durham: Hey, it's Amy. Welcome to Create Magic at Work, where we cast visions for a future of work where business decisions ripple outward to our teams, our communities, the planet, and humanity as a whole. If you're ready to edge walk instead of sleepwalk through your leadership, you're in the right place. So, let's start making magic at work. Welcome back to Create Magic at Work. Today's guest has one of the most fascinating dual perspective backgrounds ever. For over 30 years, she lived a life of elite artistry, performing as a professional musician alongside icons like Ray Charles and Mannheim Steamroller. Despite her immense talent, toxic leadership eventually robbed her of that career. Instead of letting that break her, she used that profound pivot point to transform leadership as we know it today. She's an international best-selling author, a TEDx speaker, an executive coach, and a leading global voice on emotional intelligence. She's the author of the new book,
The Empathic Leader, and the host of The Empathic Leader Podcast. She bridges the gap between lived experience, academic depth, and a sharp, data-driven approach that proves empathy isn't just a soft, fluffy, nice to have, air quotes, it is a strategic driver of innovation, talent retention, and bottom line profit. Please welcome to Create Magic at Work, the Empathy Queen herself, Dr. Melissa Robinson Weinmiller. Melissa, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Thank you so much for having me, Amy. I'm so excited to be here.
Amy Lynn Durham: So, we kind of have to start off hearing about your music first. I mean, I can't, I can't gloss over that. Tell us a little bit more about that before we get into this spicy empathy conversation that we're going to have,
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I sure, so because that was, I mean, I thought that's what I was always gonna be. I thought that's what I was always gonna do. I was a trained French hornist. I played in orchestras. I got to play solo in Europe. I got to play with people like Ray Charles and David Ogden Stiers and Mannheim Steamroller, and it was awesome. I loved it. Did my master's and my first doctorate in it. The problem with music, though, is that it's not always very stable, and I really like food, shelter, and clothing. So I decided to go and become a professor, and you know, have things like benefits. And I moved cross country to take this professorship, and within my very first term I was assaulted by one of my colleagues, then it got worse, because when I went to our boss, I was told that as a junior female faculty member, if I was stirring up trouble, that I was never going to get promoted, and like I really cared about promotion at that point, yeah, and then when I went
to his boss, I was told if I didn't like it, I should just leave. I mean, all of the leadership red flags of what you're not supposed to do, right? Especially when somebody brings something to you like this, because the problem with people who do that kind of stuff is they don't do it once. This is a pattern of behavior. So, long story short, over the next six years, basically my career just dissolved, and I finally had to leave. I was, I was drinking, I was numbing, I was doing, you know, all this stuff that's just self-destructive. If I don't leave, this is going to destroy me. At that point, I had just remarried. My husband and I were doing some consulting in the medical field, and I kept seeing these patterns happen again and again in leadership,
Amy Lynn Durham: where there just seemed to be a real lack of human connection, so I decided, well, either I can sit and complain about this, or I can try and do something about it. So, back, I bolstered my business chops, got the MBA, and a Master's of Science and Data Analytics, and I'm completing my doctorate in Interdisciplinary Leadership with the dissertation on empathy and leadership, it should be hopefully published by August. So that's what I do. I talk empathy and leadership, and how that relates to emotional intelligence, and why we need it now more than ever. Thank you for sharing that story with everyone. I know you're not alone, and I can't speak for your exact experience, but I've seen been in that world where it's almost like this is a bother, it's almost like you're a bother something when you're saying, hey, this happened in that space was. It different in the music space comparably, was it kind of a shock seeing what the corporate energy was like, that
type of hierarchical energy was like, or was it the same on both?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I would actually say it was maybe worse on the music side of things, and my naivety, I'm like, oh, I'm going to the university. These are forward-thinking, progressive people. This is open discourses. Yeah, no, none of that, not even a little bit, because unfortunately, when you get into the arts like that, a lot of times people that are narcissists, are psychopaths, are do have destructive tendencies are protected because they're just so talented. Oh, it's like Jesse Levine with the Met out in New York, and how there were some accusations of pedophilia and stuff after he left, but he was in that position for a long time, and a lot of times these things tend to be kind of open secrets, and he's not the only one, but I've seen that happen over and over again with musicians. Oh, they're just so talented, he just has his little ways, or whatever it is. But I think they do that in corporate too. Oh, he brings in so many big clients, he
just has his funny little way. We can't get rid of him because he's just such a big revenue maker. So there's a parallel there.
Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, I think so. I think so. Tell us about your work with empathy. You say it's no fluff. What do you mean by that?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So, empathy has this rap for being all about feelings, right? That it's always I feel what you feel. Yeah, there's actually 43 different definitions of empathy, and there's more than one kind. So, I think to pigeonhole it just into the feeling side of things, you're missing the breadth and the depth of the subject, which means you're missing how you can strategically use it
Amy Lynn Durham: from the spirituality lens. I immediately, and my algorithms are flooded when it really started becoming popular is when people were recognizing that they felt like they were an empath or that they were empathic, and that they could walk into a room and feel all the feelings in the room, and then because they could pick up on all the feelings in the room, Dr. Aaron Tobacco and I did an episode on empathic distress and the shadows of empathy, and so I'm speaking on the shadow of empathy that we discussed. Walk into a room, you feel everything that's going on, you understand what might feel off or distressing, and you immediately step into this fixer role to level out the energy or calm whatever this disturbance is that you're feeling inside, and then it becomes exhaustion for you, so Dr. Aaron Tobacco calls that empathic distress, and I see that a lot in the corporate workspace. Couple years ago, I had a client that was in a session, and they were
talking about how they walked into some company event, and immediately could feel how things were off, how something wasn't working right, how so and so was upset, and they immediately stepped in because they felt all of that going on to start fixing what was going on, and I said, Was that yours to fix, and I'm kind of taking us down this road right now, but and I do want to also, we'll get into what is this overarching thing of empathy, but thoughts on that, like just give us your musings on on all of that.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Well, I listened to Dr. Tobacco's interview, and I thought it was really good, I enjoyed hearing what he had to say. Empathy, as it is, you are taking the perspective of the other person. You could do it through feelings, you can do it cognitively, you can do it somatically, physically in the body, you can do it through mirror. There's a whole bunch of different ways you can do that, because you can take the perspective in a lot of different ways, but empathy itself has no action. Empathy is passive, completely passive. The actual action is compassion. So, what happens is, you see somebody in a bad situation, you experience what's called empathetic distress, something that makes you uncomfortable, which makes you want to take that compassion, but you don't have to. You can just feel it and let the feelings wash through you, or you can also put up boundaries. I did a show on that a couple weeks ago, because a lot of times we blame empathy. Well,
empathy made me feel this, or I took on all that, but really what happened was the boundaries weren't in place to be able to say. This is not mine to fix, this is not mine to handle, this is someone else's distress, because we all know you are going to walk into rooms where you're just like, ah, this is overwhelming, but the boundaries are there, and I am not taking this on, this is not mine to fix, as my dear husband would say, not my monkeys, not my circus, you know, and that doesn't make you cold or callous. It just means you have those boundaries in place, boundaries being the things that keep us healthy and safe, not because we're being mean, because we have to. You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of anybody else, which is where self-empathy comes in, which is another aspect of all of this.
Amy Lynn Durham: So, how do we do that? Because I, I'm just going to use myself as an example. I could be at a party, even outside of work, or at a family gathering, and I can feel and sense everything that's going on, and while I don't take the action to maybe calm myself, which is pretty high self-oriented towards its focus on me. While I don't take that action, I'm still uncomfortable, sure, and feeling this like turmoil inside when I'm seeking this inner peace feeling. So, how do we do that at work? How do we do that at family gatherings and things like that?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I want to make a distinction, though, between being empathetic and being an empath, because what you're talking about is more on the empath side of things, and from what I'm seeing in the research, there isn't necessarily anything to back up that this has to do with empathy. Now I'm a big believer that there's more going on on heaven and earth than we have any idea about, and someday the science will catch up to it. So I absolutely do believe that, but I don't think it's necessarily empathy, because empathy is that ability to take perspective, but it ceases being empathy when you connect yourself
Amy Lynn Durham: to whoever that other person is, and that perspective, when you start taking on their feelings in the research, that's when you start talking about things like mental illness. So I'm not convinced that what we call the phenomenon of being an empath has anything to do with being empathetic. I think it tends to be more energetic, which means now we're talking about different kinds of boundaries. All I can say is there really isn't anything in the research about it up to this point, but then it will never be super interesting. Yeah, I like how you're bringing the research perspective, because the awareness of the limitations of who we are as human beings is really important in the spiritual intelligence space, and I appreciate the research, and I also appreciate that there are limits to what we can perceive as humans, and that there's more, so I like that distinction on that energetic piece, and that's probably why some people do feel differently, and shifts after
energy clearings, or after doing certain rituals that bring them more inner peace. I want to dive a little deeper into this other distinction in the teachings of spiritual intelligence, one of the skills is the wise and compassionate leader over an empathetic one. In SQ, it's taught or shared that compassion allows us to actively ease the suffering of our team without taking on their pain and burning out. You've shared that once we get into the action piece, that's where we are moving into compassion, so that feels aligned with everything. And I think that's the takeaway today, or kind of the aha moment for me is, oh, when this moved into action, it's shifting to compassion, but now what if this is moving into action that's fixing something I wasn't supposed to fix, that's easing someone else's suffering that that I maybe now took on. How is that compassion if I took it on?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Well, that's why compassion has to start with empathy. If you don't take the other person's perspective first and understand where they're coming from and what this is about, you can take misguided compassion, which can actually be destructive. For instance, it's the age of example of the couple, right, where one person comes home, and they just want to be heard. They want to be witnessed to. They want to be able to get their day out. They want empathy. They want the other person to be able to say, I understand. And in this case, it might be cognitive empathy, which means I logically understand everything you're talking about, your situation, your feelings. I just don't feel anything, because that's. You avoid empathy fatigue, but if you have the other person that's like, I'm going to take action, I'm going to fix it, I'm going to do this, I'm going to make it right, they're taking compassion, but they haven't plugged in the empathy first to take
the perspective of the other person and say, I need to understand where you're coming from first. So, if you're feeling this need to jump in and fix and jump in and fix, maybe that other person doesn't need you to fix it, or maybe it's not actually in their best interest, maybe it's not kind for you to fix it, maybe this is something they need to handle. So that's why you have to employ empathy first, so that you can make these distinctions and not just run in all aflame and end up with misplaced compassion and doing something destructive.
Amy Lynn Durham: It's a really great way to frame that. So, all over, I see a lot the human-centered.. this, I mean, there's a trend, right? There's a trend of human-centric empathy leading with empathy. There's all these tag lines now that have sort of sprouted up around empathy at work. What are some of the things that most people get wrong about that in their leadership?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: The biggest one is just that it's all feelings, because these leaders, they're already dealing with leadership burnout at what, 35% 37% I mean, it's a lot. They can't take on everybody's feelings. It's not possible. What they don't understand is that there are these other aspects of empathy, especially cognitive empathy. This comes down to the dual root model of empathy, which they've kind of started developing since about 2018 that we have a choice. We don't have to just rush in and feel everything. The other thing they get wrong is that empathy makes you soft, empathy makes you weak, and that's not true. Not having the correct boundaries in place makes you soft and weak. Empathy allows you to understand the perspective of the other, whether you're a salesman and that other is your client, whether you're a leader and that other is your employees, or your board of directors, whether you're an organization and the other is your customer. I would
actually argue that you can't even have a business that has anything to do with people without empathy, because that's how we connect, and at the end of the day, all organizations are about people on some level.
Amy Lynn Durham: So, let me give you a scenario.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Okay,
Amy Lynn Durham: let's say we're with a coworker or a client, and they have something difficult they're going through, and they have a breakdown of some sort, where they're emotional. What is your viewpoint on the other person that's holding space becoming emotional with them and crying with them. I'm trying to distinguish where's that line, because a lot of the teachings in our executive coaching trainings have been be empathetic, and I can find myself getting emotional with someone that's experiencing emotions, but I also see a lot of people shift in that moment to where it becomes about them and not the person that's in distress.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yes, that's a distinction between sympathy and empathy. Empathy is when you're in the other person's shoes, you're seeing it through their eyes, you're understanding, so you're actually disconnected from your emotions, at least as far as what you're talking about. Sympathy is when you're looking at their situation through your own eyes, so you're bringing your own baggage, your own feelings, your own stuff, because really, truly, we can't feel what the other person is feeling. Again, there's a discussion about maybe there's an energy going on there. I don't know, but as far as like actually I'm going to get into your body and feel your feelings, you can't do that. So what you're actually feeling is your own feelings, which means you're involved in sympathy, and sympathy actually has very negative connotations, that's why they train healthcare professionals to approach their patients with empathy and not sympathy, because with sympathy there's
always this undercurrent of like judgment and pity, right, judgment, because you're comparing the other person's experience to your experience, and oh, I remember how that felt, and when my cat died, and that was the grief, and oh my, and pretty soon you're, you're sucked into it as well. You're a patient, and you're there at what potentially is the worst day of your life. The last thing you want is a medical professional approaching you with pity and judgment. So, there's that distinction again of those are two different things, and we have a choice: do we want to be sympathetic or do we want to be empathetic? Always, yeah, or like there's
Amy Lynn Durham: some of those situational comedy shows where they illustrate that, where the other person breaks down and the person that was in pain is comforting them, and it's like, what is happening here?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yeah,
Amy Lynn Durham: yeah, okay, so I personally. Personally, and I would imagine people listening might start feeling frustrated, like, okay, there's sympathy, there's empathy, there's compassion, like, what is it? What is the right? Just tell us the right way to be for me to have inner and outer peace. So, throwing all the words out the window, yeah, what's a micro step, or what's a way you would frame that for us to where we're like, oh, we get it very simply. Sympathy, that's when
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: you are viewing what's going on with the other person through your own eyes, throw it out the window, because you're not actually taking their perspective, you're throwing your own perspective into it. Empathy, all in all of its forms, is taking the perspective of the other person, no matter how you're doing it. If you're doing it cognitively and just understanding, if you're doing it emotionally, which is the one everybody knows about, you're doing it somatically, which means you're feeling it physically in your body, like when a husband has labor pains for his wife, that's a somatic empathy, could be motor empathy, where you're mooring facial expressions and body movements, and trying to understand their perspective that way. There's so many different ways to do it, but it is always about taking the perspective of the other without getting so entwined in them that it ends up becoming dysfunctional. Empathy is the perspective, compassion
is the action, that's it.
Amy Lynn Durham: Okay, give us one thing we can practice today that can help us skill build in the empathy muscle.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Start with self-empathy, we miss that one a lot, and we are a lot more willing to give other people compassion than we are ourselves. But if empathy leads to compassion, then self-empathy leads to self-compassion, and it's important to start building that skill with yourself before you take it out on the road for anybody else.
Amy Lynn Durham: Yes, for sure. Don't go on the Empathy Roadshow unless you're working on that yourself. I like that. I'm going to pull a card from the Create Magic at Work Journal prompt card deck and see what we get with this conversation. This has been so great. And thank you for coming on and sharing this, and I love your podcast, The Empathic Leader, and you do LinkedIn Lives, where people can come on and tell us a little bit about that. You'll have a topic, and people can literally pop in, and you'll share with them while I'm shuffling the deck. Tell us about that.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So, I was getting so many questions in my DMs and stuff, I was like, well, why not let the rest of the class hear these answers, because you know, obviously these are questions people have. So I decided to do a LinkedIn Live. It's a half an hour, it's Wednesday nights at 6pm Eastern, and anybody can join. First 15 minutes I pick a topic, I talk about empathy, but the second 15 minutes I answer those questions, and I start with any questions that got thrown into the chat talking about that topic, but then I have pages and pages of questions that people have asked me, and so we're never at a loss for content on that.
Amy Lynn Durham: That's amazing, that's so encouraging that people are participating in this or exploring these topics for themselves and starting with with that self empathy, self compassion, and then how it ripples out. One of my biggest takeaways from our conversation today is that while yes, we've have all these words and this language and all these definitions and really great research about these things, so we can have these amazing conversations. The SQ skill of the awareness of the limits of our human perceptions, for me, is just coming up, and there's that. There's room for both. You said maybe not now. There's something there with the power of our belief in something bigger than ourselves, a higher power if you believe in that, and yeah, bringing meaning to your life in that way too, and the research and the helpful language that we share with each other. So that's kind of the theme I'm taking away. Okay, this card is popping out now. Okay, we got mentorship. This
card has come up all year, and I always want some spicy, magical, but it keeps coming up, so there's something here with this message. So the affirmation on the card for everyone listening is, I willingly share this is like what we were doing, I willingly share knowledge with others in order to leave a positive legacy, I willingly share knowledge with others in order to leave a positive legacy. That's almost like your LinkedIn lives that you're just talking about. So, Dr. Melissa,
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: yes.
Amy Lynn Durham: What is your advice for the listeners in the course? Separate workspace on how they can share with their peers with their supervisors knowledge that helps all of us leave a positive legacy. What's something we can do?
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: What I've found as far as mentoring and teaching is that if I can take the perspective of the other person, so that I really understand what they need, instead of just giving them what I think they need. They're going to be a lot more receptive, and they're going to be a lot more open, so really understanding who my student or mentee is, what it is that they want, and maybe what they're not asking for, and then always being willing to be kind and not nice, and what I mean by that, so nice is kind of like a social lubricant. It's what we do to keep things comfortable, to keep things easy. It's getting along day to day. It's kind of like having manners, it kind of smooths off the rough edges, but it's not strictly
Amy Lynn Durham: necessary, and it can be very insincere. Kindness is actually wanting the best outcome for you, for the other person, for the situation, for all of it. And sometimes that means saying an ugly truth, sometimes that means digging in deeper, sometimes that means giving someone what they need instead of what they want, but always, always approaching it through a lens of kindness, because empathy is not always very nice, but it is always kind. I have many takeaways from this conversation, and one that I'm sitting with right now is, well, one checking in with myself if I am being empathetic, because I think at times I rush to the action, so I rush to the compassionate action, and I've skipped over what you said. Where did I have that first step of the empathetic piece for myself or for the person I'm interacting with before I rush, which is the wise and effective change agent in SQ, we don't rush to quick fixes, we uncover root cause, so we stay there, and then if
I am the one to fix it, that's the next question, so it's all in that patience and practicing the pause and sitting with the uncomfortability of it, and then okay, am I going to take action, and is it going to be compassionate action? That's another takeaway I have today, too. I love talking about this stuff. So, random fun fact for everyone listening, too. Melissa has a sister named Amy, and I have a sister named Melissa, which was so random that we discovered that when we met in the pre interview.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yeah,
Amy Lynn Durham: so kismet something energy there. If people want to hop on your LinkedIn lives or listen to your podcast or read your book, where can they go to find all the things? Besides, they will be in the show notes too.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So you can catch all of this off of my website, which is EQ via Empathy, EQ via Viaz and Victoria empathy.com My TEDx talk is linked up there, my book is there, my blog is there, and links to my book, which I have the audio version now, which I bit the bullet and I read it, so it's there, you know, up on Amazon, but all the links are there, and then, of course, you can find me on LinkedIn, and you can definitely find me live and in person on Wednesday evenings at 6pm Eastern.
Amy Lynn Durham: Awesome. Okay, I could keep going on, but I think this is good for everybody for right now. So, thank you, Dr. Melissa, for joining us and for sending some magic to everyone today.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: You bet. Thank you so much for having me. This was a fantastic conversation, and I've just, I've enjoyed myself so much. So, thank you,
Amy Lynn Durham: thank you.