Trust feels more fragile than ever right now, and I believe leaders are being asked to navigate change, uncertainty, and higher expectations in ways we have not seen before. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller, EQ expert, TEDx speaker, and author of The Empathic Leader, to talk about empathy as a practical leadership skill that builds trust, improves culture, and drives results.

Melissa helped me broaden how I think about empathy. It is not only about “feeling what someone feels.” She explains emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and self-empathy, and why leaders can take another person’s perspective even if they do not experience the same emotions. We also talk about the difference between real empathy and performative empathy, and why curiosity is one of the clearest signals that empathy is genuine.

One of my favorite moments was hearing her simple leadership reminder: trust is often built through visibility and small actions, one person at a time. If you lead a team, manage from the middle, or you are stepping into leadership for the first time, this conversation will give you both insight and real-world tools you can use immediately.

Key takeaways

1. Empathy is both a gift and a skill. You can learn it, practice it, and get better at it over time.
2. Cognitive empathy matters. You can understand someone’s perspective without taking on all the feelings, which helps prevent burnout.
3. Trust is built through visibility and consistency. Culture forms in the everyday moments when people are watching what leaders do.
4. Performative empathy is self-focused. Genuine empathy is other-focused and includes curiosity.
5. Empathy and judgment cannot exist in the same space. The more we compare through our own lens, the harder it is to truly empathize.

You can find Melissa at:

https://eqviaempathy.com/

melissa.a.robinson@gmail.com

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Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: That's all right.

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's

episode of relationships rule. You know, in today's business

world, trust feels more fragile than ever. I actually, really

believe that. I think that so much has changed and we have to

be and I love that it's moving back around to that in a way,

because it's about people and relationships, and we're coming

back to that even in this world of AI teams are navigating

change, uncertainty and higher expectations, yet, many leaders

are still relying on outdated models that prioritize control

over connection. What if the real competitive advantage today

is empathy? Well, I'm joined today by an expert in that

field, Dr Melissa Robinson wine Miller. She is an EQ expert, a

TEDx speaker, and author of the book The Empathic leader. We

explore how empathy is not a soft skill, but a strategic one,

and how trust is built moment by moment through emotionally

intelligent leadership. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so

much for having me. Janice, this is fantastic. Oh, no, I'm

excited. I am. I mentioned before we went on air that I

watched your TEDx talk, and I'm always in awe of people who

actually do those and yours was a brilliant story and also

really spoke to the importance of empathy. And I see, I don't

know this isn't even on my notes, I kind of see empathy,

and I could be totally wrong, but I see it as a gift. I think

people who are empathic or empathy, I don't know which word

to use now, empathic or empathetic anyway, empathic. I

think I like that word better.

I think that's a gift. I don't know. But is it a skill or Okay,

yeah, it's both. There's some research that shows that we, I

mean, we do have some biological hard wiring. You know, they

start with, like, infants and seeing how, when, when they're

in, like, an ICU, and there's a lot of infants together, when

one starts crying, others will. It's called emotional contagion.

So it's the same idea, if you're in a room and or, like, at a

sporting event, and everybody's like, whoa, and you feel that

energy and that excitement. So it kind of starts there

biologically, but it's also a skill, which means we can learn

it and we can get better at it. So I agree it's a gift, but I

also think it's a gift you can give yourself.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Tell me about that. Well, if it's not

something that you have a talent for I mean, like, it doesn't

ooze out of you, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, like for me, I am

never going to have a talent for basketball no matter what I do.

I'm five foot three if I really try,

and I'm just no good at it, but I could take whatever talent I

did have and get better at it, if I would practice right,

which, which, as far as basketball is concerned, I'm

not, but Right. But same thing with empathy. I mean, you may

not have a huge talent for it, but if you practice it and you

do it over and over again, you're going to get better at

it. So Well, okay, but is it a? Is it a? Is

it a matter of how you perceive things. So you know how some

people are numbers people, and some people are are words,

people, some people right, and some people are

project oriented, and some people are people oriented. So

same thing. How you look at people? Do you look at them with

that warm, fuzzy of empathy, or do you look at them in a more,

you know, matter of fact way? Oh, that's such a good question.

I don't know where that came from, but that's okay. Go for

it. It's fantastic, because it actually goes to the root of

what I teach. Because a lot of times in society, when we think

empathy, we think feelings, I feel, what you FEEL, and that's

one kind of empathy, but there's 43 different definitions of

empathy, goodness, yes, and that one that's about feeling, that's

one of them, but it's not all of them. Empathy is about taking

the perspective of the other person. And you can do that with

feelings. You can do that through thoughts. You can do

that. Talk about empathy with nature. Talk about somatic

empathy, where, like you physically think you know feel

what they're feeling. So if your style is is more cerebral, there

is something called cognitive empathy, which is, I logically

understand your situation, your feeling, where you're at. I just

don't feel anything. You know, there's different ways to

approach this, so just not being a warm fuzzy doesn't mean you

don't have empathy, or that you shouldn't have empathy. Ooh,

that's interesting. I would never think of somebody who's

not a warm fuzzy having an.

Empathy. So I guess that opens things up in the sense of

defining empathy in a business context, because not everybody

at the top in the leadership positions are that way inclined

or feel or seem that way, right? So

I'm going to read this question because it's two

parts. Many leaders still equate authority with control. What

shifts when a leader moves from command and control to

connection and collaboration? So I'm I'm sensing that the

authority the control is, what that type of person at the helm

is, is

seen as not empathic and not warm fuzzy, right? So

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: could they still be, and how does that

look? Oh, they absolutely could be. So when you're thinking of a

command and control style of leadership, that kind of goes

back to like a managerial approach to leadership, where

you look at the organization is a machine, and the people are

cogs, which means that if they're broke, they're broke in

the air quotes, they need to be fixed, and that means pulling

cogs out and putting cogs in and hammering it into whatever you

need it to be. And that kind of command and control doesn't

allow for the fact that things move, they evolve, they grow,

they contract, they do all these different things. So as long as

you keep that kind of ham fisted authoritarian control on

organizations, you're not actually giving room to grow.

The best you can hope for is to keep it clicking along. And

that's not going to happen forever, whereas if you move

more to an empathic style of leadership, one that you know

leans towards servant leadership, or transformational

leadership, or some of these other things. Now you're looking

at the organization as an organism. It's going to grow,

it's going to get bigger, it's going to get smaller. The

components and the different systems within are going to

change it. The thing is, is a machine cannot evolve, but an

organism can, and especially in this age of AI and tech and

everything that's going on, we have got to be able to evolve or

become extinct.

It's so true, isn't it? Okay? So let's just

back up for a second. So when I listened to your and watched

your TED talk, we you talk about the three kinds of empathy, or

you say there's 43 types, but the three base, I guess the

three main ones, right?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: They're the three that I pull out

specifically for leadership. Yeah. Okay, so tell us about

those. So the Yeah, so the first one is emotional empathy, and

that is that I feel what you feel. And that's the one that's

usually fast. It's instinctive. You know, the people that that

do it well, like, just look and they know, you know, they're

they read people really well. Yes, it's intuitive, highly

intuitive. Yeah, yeah, precisely. So that's, that's

more the emotional side. The cognitive side is the logical. I

don't necessarily understand your feelings, but I can see the

situation and understand it, and it's slower, it's iterative.

Usually you're thinking about it, you're kind of sussing out

the situation. It's going to be a lot more, you know, the

engineering types and the mathematical and the numbers

people, where you can really get a hold of what's going on, but

there's no real feelings involved. I don't get those

people, so, okay, but, but I do understand, I can recognize

them, yeah, yeah. Positions sometimes fall into this, which

is funny, because they're in a field that has so much empathy

in it, you know, that kind of thing, yeah. But leaders,

especially, they, they, if they can get a hold of that, they can

help get away from empathy fatigue and empathy burnout.

Anyway, there's those two, and then the third that I talk about

is self empathy, because we have a lot of these people in these

leadership positions that are really driven, they're

motivated, they're smart, they're high self actualizing.

But they don't necessarily make great leaders, because they've

never been taught to be great leaders. They get into these

positions because they bring in the most sales, or they have the

best clients or the best technician, so now they're in

this position where they're expected to step up and do

something that maybe they haven't done before, and all

those smarts work against them, because that's where imposter

syndrome comes in. I was just going to say the Peter Principle

comes into effect. Yeah, right, absolutely. And without that

self empathy to be able to say, Yeah, I am a gunner, but this

isn't necessarily my niche. Yeah, I'm a fantastic

technician, but I'm going to have to have the self awareness

to understand that now I'm leading other people and when

they're not like me, yes, right, exactly. And that's where that

self empathy comes in, being able to understand your

awareness and where you fit into all this and and not bring in

the man, I'm so stupid. I really messed that up. I can't make

this happen.

You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, it's interesting. And so

many people that are, you know, on that path like I'm I'm not. I

don't talk too much about corporate. But.

But the sense of people, whether it's on the path

for success on your own or in a big organization, you're so

focused and have blinders on about that, that sometimes these

other things get don't get

taught or

even being aware of them, because they're things that will

make you a better leader anyway, if you take those into

consideration, I watched my my daughter in she's in corporate

America, actually, even though I'm Canadian, she's in corporate

America, and she's, she's got a big job now, and it's hard

because she's having To make that jump to be that leader, and

there's things you have to learn along the way that she probably

hasn't yet. So having a coach to help her is really, actually

helping her. So I just, I don't know, I couldn't do it. It's too

I'm

I could never work for anybody else. I was a teacher in my

first life, and I loved that, but it got very bureaucratic,

and I didn't like that. So, yeah, I could never have done

what she does anyway. Okay, let's move on. I know that.

Okay, this is interesting.

Well, I don't know this. I'm not going to say that.

What are okay? First of all, can you share a story, either from

your own experience or clients where empathy transformed trust

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: within a team? Absolutely. Oh, good,

yeah, because that's one of the, one of the big things that

empathy does. It creates those connections which foster trust.

So I had a director that I was working with. I tend to actually

work a lot with middle management, okay, because, you

know, they have the ability to lead both up and down, and

usually they're young enough to see that the way things are

going are not going well, and they don't want to just fall

into that same old command and control model. Got it. And so

this guy knew he was walking in, and of course, these people were

like, well, we want you to change the culture. Never mind

that culture comes down from the top, and they're expecting him

to change this from the middle. But he was like, I have no idea

what to do with this. You know, I'm coming in as an interim.

They expect me to fix this quickly. What should I do? And

I'm like, you've got to start with your people. You have got

to create a, know, like and trust factor with them, because

they've been there for five years, 10 years, 20 years,

they're going to be your best resource, but they're not going

to be a resource if they don't trust you. So it's like your job

is to go in and every day I want you to make your rounds, which

means I wanted him to go out and just walk down to the water

cooler in the core and see his people and say, How's it going,

and walk back 20 minutes, right? Yeah. I mean, plus it means he

got to get up from his computer, yeah, because leadership burnout

is is a thing. So that was it. Did not want him to do, you

know, hours and hours, just so they know your face. They know

you care. They start to trust you. And what happened was,

within a matter of weeks, people started coming to him for ideas,

to correct inefficiencies, things that they had come to the

previous guy before, but he just kind of didn't want to hear it,

or they were scared to talk to him, because the only time he

came out of his office, they thought everybody was getting

fired, you know, so they took them. There was no liaison.

There was no showing interest in the in his staff at all. So in

this case, that made the huge difference, see the people. See

them, right? And understand their people. Yeah, you know,

these are they. They're not cogs, they're people. They're

not inputs, they're people. And that's all it took, because they

did start to come to Him, because they started to trust

him. Their productivity got better when he walked in. He had

employee engagement scores like in the mid 70s. By the time he

finished up this interim thing, which became full time, they

were in the up in the 90s, because they actually trusted

him. They weren't worried about getting the rug yanked out from

underneath them all the time, and his center actually showed a

prophet.

Interesting. So that made me think of another

question.

Um, and I don't want it to sound sexist, I just I'm very curious,

does it?

It could be the exact opposite that what I'm was thinking. But

do women have the same or different

experience, or excuse me, one second

experience. Or

is it easier or not for them on the emotional side, or are women

having to work harder to get to those levels that it's harder

for them to even think about that? Does that make sense? Yes,

it does. And actually, that's really good insight, because

there's, in my experience, there's a little bit of both. I

mean, there are those that do come in with with a little more

emotion.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: All agility, you know, into these

positions. But unfortunately, because it is a male dominated

world, yes, a lot of them do kind of try to outman the men,

which means they actually go to the other side. Yes, that's what

I was thinking. Yeah. Okay, and so do they come for help more

easily? Or do they know that they're being like that, because

I would think that,

I don't know, I think that might be harder for

them to see that they're being like that. Yes, in my

experience, it is for two reasons. I mean, one is because

they've already bought into this idea of this is how I need to be

to excel, and if they've excelled, then it's showing

that, at least to some degree it's working, yeah, you know.

And the other side of that too is, is just that even if they

change the way they are, they're still in the same culture. So if

you're in a culture that isn't going to foster that, it's going

to be really hard to make those kind of changes. Yeah,

interesting. Can you think of like a company where

they're a great example of

empathic leaders,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: you know, the one I bring up, and

this one, it's a little dated, but I don't think so much. Was

Tony Shea and Zappos. Oh, wow. He had his kindness first

philosophy. Yes, he was, yeah, yeah. I mean, what he did with

that company, and actually being able to create a corporate

structure around it was amazing. And he showed that story, you

know, in the end, it was a sad story, right? Didn't he get

suicide? Yeah, I don't think. I don't remember it was suicide or

not, but the stuff he was doing definitely killed him. Okay, oh,

right, okay, right. Anyway, okay, but yeah, I remember that

that was that was quite the story at the time. Yeah. Okay,

so

what would you say are the small you might have

answered this already. What would you say are the small

daily behaviors that either build trust or slowly erode it.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: The big one is being visible and

actually showing that you're walking the talk. You know, when

you're in a leadership position, I mean as a musician, for a long

time. So I tend to think of things in these terms, but you

are always on stage. Someone is always watching, someone is

always seeing what you're doing, and your culture happens there.

I mean, it doesn't matter how much you want to pound a culture

into place. If you're not living that culture, it's not going to

happen. So as a leader, if your behaviors actually say, Yes, I'm

trying to get to know these people. I can't know everybody's

name, I can't know everybody's family, but at least I'm being

visible. They know who I am. I at least kind of know it vaguely

which departments they're in. You know now you're actually

setting the tone for what's happening. For instance, I was

working with a upper level C suite person, and he made sure

that on the name tags they had the first name in big letters,

so that he could read it from across the room and the and the

second name in small ones, just so that he could call people by

name. And it was a small thing. And it isn't like his people

didn't know exactly what was going on, but it's the principle

of the thing that he's making this attempt, you know, and

that's what's going to build your culture one person and one

action at a time, and eroding it is the exact opposite. If you

say my mission, vision and values are based on empathy, and

then you don't show it at all, people are going to be like,

yeah, right. Okay, sure thing. Right, right. Okay. That brings

me to this, I think, interesting question that I sort of, I don't

know, okay. How can leaders tell the difference between genuine

empathy and what one might call performative empathy?

It's a question of where your focus is, okay, if your focus is

on yourself. And what can I get out of this, ooh, performative

empathy. If your focus is on the other person and taking their

perspective, there's curiosity involved, understanding who they

are and where they're coming from, that's real empathy. And

that's my favorite word, curiosity. My audience hear me

say that all the time, and so I love that because it's true,

because your focus is on the other person, and you're showing

that by asking them questions about them. It comes from the

right place. I think, at least I know I think it does so I love

that. Thank you.

So sometimes leaders worry that empathy may

make them look weak if they are empathic. How do you address

that misconception? Well, I go back to definitions, because

they do. I actually get that objection a lot, and it's like,

Okay, so what's your definition of empathy? Well, the definition

is, it's all feelings and puppies and rainbows,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: then, then, yeah, I mean, we're not

running the Care Bears here.

You know, it's a business, and a business has to run, but if your

definition of empathy is taking perspective and understanding

where the other person is at, there's nothing soft about that.

And in fact, it takes courage, because you're willing to see it

through the other person's eyes. So, you know, I think we really

need to understand what it is first,

yeah, and, and accept it, yes, right? And that

meaning of it, okay,

if so, I have to, I have to ask you mentioned this already. I

know that you played the French horn, yeah, and that, to me,

that's a big instrument, and pretty, pretty

powerful kind of instruments. So

do you still use analogies about music? And how did you go from

like music to this, multiple degrees and studying in school,

and then to become this, this expert in EQ from that, like,

it was a wild Lacher, weren't you? You're a professor of

French horn, yeah? Like, I'm totally impressed. Anyway, thank

you. Yeah, no, it's been a, it's been a wild ride, for sure,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: yeah? I mean, I do, I do use music

analogy if I think people are going to understand it? I mean,

one of the ones that I like is this idea of a conductor in an

orchestra, right? Because you have the conductor, and they're

up there as the leader, and they're doing all these

wonderful things, and they're visible, and they're the ones

that the crowd sees. But I have seen an orchestra when something

happens to the conductor finish an entire symphony by themselves

without a leader. And I have also seen conductors practicing

where they're in front of a mirror and there's like nobody

there. So the orchestra is able to survive without the

conductor, not as well, not with the same vision and strategy,

but the conductor has a real hard time surviving without an

orchestra. And I think leadership is the same. You

know, the two are better with each other, yes, but they are,

you know, there is a difference there than what people think

they the orchestra can survive just fine without that

conductor, at least to a certain degree. So I have to ask you,

oh, sorry, were you finished? I apologize, yeah. No, no, that's

fine. So

I have to ask you then. So I think of musicians

again. It could be a cliche, and one shouldn't do this, but I

think of musicians as being

what I would say as numbers people, math people. It's all

about patterns and numbers and so on. And if they're a good

musician, they also feel the music, of course, and they have

both sides. But

when I think of,

when I think of

them being people, like being leaders,

empathic leaders, as your book is called, then they're, they're

not usually that kind of person. It's just me making things up in

my head. But

can you speak to that? Like, did you have any were you interested

in? Like, how did you get to that place where you went and

studied empathy and psych, you know, I guess it's psychology

and people and all those things. And,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: yeah, yeah. Well, I'll circle back to

that one about the about the musicians first. Because, okay,

that's a really cool point. But the way, yeah, the way I got

from here to there was not a straight line.

I mean, yeah, well, I've learned a lot, you

know, I love music. I had done it from the time I was young.

It's like, all I wanted to do, I got to do some really cool stuff

because of it. I mean, I got to play with Ray Charles, and I got

to play with, I'm steamroller, and I got to travel and do

things that that otherwise just probably wouldn't have happened,

you know, but it's, it's not very stable, just gigging. So

went, got the first doctorate, went to actually get a tenure

track french horn professorship, which, ah, there's not a lot of

them. No, I wouldn't think so. No, no. So I ended up, you know,

heading a long way from home, and within my first term, I was

assaulted by one of my colleagues. And

even though that was not good, I mean, it was it was bad and it

was hard. The hardest part was everything that happened after

that, where I was trying to talk to people, and I was trying to

say, look, this isn't right, and I'm not the only one. People

that do this don't do it once, right? No, it's a pattern of

behavior, and like when I went to the chair of my department, I

was told as junior female faculty, if I was stirring up

trouble, I was never going to get promoted. I didn't care

about tenure. I just wanted to feel safe. Yeah.

You know, when I went to the dean, I was told, if I didn't

like it, I could leave. Well, there aren't a lot of French

horn professorships. Where was I going to go? I had transplanted

myself all the way across the country. So this basically went

on for, you know, seven years until, my goodness, denied

tenure, which isn't really a shock, yeah, and I ended up

having to leave that area all together and went to try and

start a new life, and then covid happened after that. So the

music field kind of imploded on itself in a lot of ways, right?

But I just couldn't, I couldn't quit chewing on this idea of

what had happened. Because a lot of people that I tried to talk

to, whether it was in HR or the Union or the ombuds, or, you

know, these different people, for the most part, they weren't

bad people, you know, they they wanted to make connection, they

wanted to understand, but the system had them so squeezed, so

tight that they just they couldn't hear it. The it was,

they're afraid for themselves, yeah, yeah. And who can blame

them? You know, they have to take care of themselves and

their family.

And so I kept trying to figure out, you know, what had gone

wrong. And at this point, I was doing some consulting with my

husband, and we were doing small medical type businesses, and I

kept seeing the same patterns of these people in leadership that

they weren't bad people, but somehow, it's like, once that

intersection of leadership and and, you know, finance happened

profit, for some reason, the empathy just shut off. And I was

like, I don't understand what's going on, but I want to find

out, because this has the potential to really change the

face of leadership and do a world of good for everybody.

And, you know, not just leadership. I mean, I see this

as a societal thing as well. It's something that that we

could all learn from and do better with. You know, come out

of the last 10 or 20 or 30 years better than we went into it. So

that's, that's kind of how I got here. And then it seems like the

deeper I got in, the deeper I got in, okay, fair enough. Well,

I think the timing is like perfect right now. I mean, your

country couldn't be going through anything worse in terms

of all of this right now. And and having some empathy and

being able to stand up for yourself might be a good thing,

you know, in in the long run, without getting into politics,

but it's hard not to these days, right?

Yeah, yeah. It totally is all right. So I thank

you for sharing that. I know that it shaped you in a big way,

and it's also made you though, I think

I I perceive that, that it has made you a better person and

allowed you to understand what other people are going through

when, when you're teaching them these kinds of things, and

what they might be

trying, you know, blocking out or not doing because of fear and

because of things like that. So, yeah, very Oh, and there's one

other thing, actually, I've got a star here that I want to say,

because I think it's something I've been told many times over

my years, and I'm much better than I used to be, I think. But

what I what it's, what this note says here is empathy and

judgment cannot exist in the same space. And,

sorry, why is my phone ringing through this entire thing? It's

okay. We'll take a pause. We'll get rid of it. Empathy and

judgment cannot exist in the in the same space. And I used to be

much my kids still say I'm judgmental, but I used to be

much more judgmental than I think I am now, and I think my

empathy level has definitely gone up. But, you know, I think

that's a great statement. Talk to me about it a little bit from

your perspective. Yeah. So the second we enter into judgment,

it's kind of the same thing as the as the difference between

empathy and sympathy, right? Like we were talking earlier, is

the focus on you, or is the focus on them? When you're

looking at another person and their situation and what they're

dealing with, or what they're feeling or what they're going

through, if you're looking at them through your own eyes,

automatically, you're making a comparison, not because you're a

bad person, because that's what we as human beings do, and the

second you make that comparison, you're judging because one is

going to come out higher or lower than the other. Again, not

because we mean bad, just because we mean we're trying to

help. We think, yes, but we're seeing it through our own eyes.

Okay, that's why you know that if judgment is there, you're not

feeling empathy, because the only way to really feel empathy

is through their eyes. Well, if you're only looking at the world

through their eyes, you're not going to judge it, because

there's nothing to compare it to. You're just seeing what it

is you're in the feeling. It's what Brene Brown calls being in

the suck. It's same kind of thing and the really cool.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Whole piece of that is that empathy

and judgment cannot exist in the same place, whether that's

empathy for another person or empathy for yourself, yeah,

yeah. Okay, that was a big one. Actually. I'm glad I talked

about that, because that actually is helpful for people

like me to

think about that. Am I thinking of it from my

perspective, which is not helping them at all, or am I

thinking of it from their perspective? And it's totally

different. I like that. I love when I learn something like the

light bulb goes on.

Okay?

Last question around this, if every leader listening today

committed to strengthening one empathy based habit. What would

you suggest it be? Start to integrate this idea of cognitive

empathy, get away from this idea that empathy is all feeling, and

start to make friends with the idea that it's okay to not feel

when you take the other person's perspective. And the way I

actually put this to leaders is I always want them to keep a

cool head and a warm heart. Oh, I love that. Keep a cool head

and a warm heart. That's lovely. Thank you. That was really good.

Okay, just a couple of quick questions, just for fun, do you

like to take in your information by reading, by watching, by

listening? Just curious. All of them.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I do do a lot of reading because

of the articles and stuff that i i read. But like, at night, I

can't wait to throw on an audio book. I mean, I'm, I'm still a

musician at heart, so if I'm hearing that's what I like.

Okay, what do you listen to these days? Music wise. Music

wise, I've been going back, so I'm kind of half and half. I

have some really eclectic tastes. So I've been re

listening to some of the Richard Strauss symphonies because they

have such great French horn lines. Oh, I would know that.

No, well,

there's just this big so his father a quick music trivia. His

father was the lead French hornist in a different

orchestra, so when he wrote all these pieces, there's like, all

this big swoopy John Williams film score sound, yes, French

horn stuff. And I just, I love it. And then I've been going

back to my 80s roots, and I've been listening to some Devo

lately. Oh, that's cute. I love it. Okay, that's fun.

Do you still play? I do not as much as I used

to, but a little bit yeah.

Is a French horn similar to a euphonium or not? No, no,

they're both brass, yeah, but french horn is considered high

brass. Euphonium is low brass, like my ex father in law used to

play the euphonium in a band, and I remember that from years

ago, and it was, yeah, but I didn't know much about it, so

that's why I asked.

Okay, I think this has been so much fun. I thank you for your

time. It's also been very informative, and I do hope that

if my audience, I'm talking to you now, if you like what you

heard, please reach out and check out. Dr Melissa Robinson,

wine, Mueller Miller and her work, her book, The The Empathic

leader, can be found,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Amazon Barnes Noble, all the usuals.

And the audiobook just came out. So fantastic. Did you listen?

Did you

record it yourself? Oh, fun. Okay, I would

love to do that someday. I love reading aloud.

Okay, so just a little wrap up. Trust is not built through

policies or position. It is built through presence,

consistency and empathy, and as Dr Melissa shared, the leaders

who thrive in today's business landscape are those who

understand that relationships are the true currency of

success. When we lead with empathy, we create stronger

teams, deeper trust and better results for everyone we need to

care in this world today. And you know, we all need that,

that we need empathy. We need empathy and trust.

And I'm gonna, yeah, I'm thinking about how we teach

children that these days too. So anyway, yeah, so I will put how

to find you in the show notes. And thank you again. Thank you

to my audience. Any last words,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I guess just to remember to keep a

cool head and a warm heart. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so

much, and remember to stay connected and be remembered.

Oops.