In this enlightening episode of Truth, Lies & Alzheimer’s, host Lisa Skinner welcomes Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller, an insightful author, speaker, and clinician, for a heartfelt discussion on the true meaning of empathy and how it differs from sympathy.

Together, they explore how understanding this difference can profoundly impact the way we support those living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia — as well as their care partners, families, and communities.

Dr. Robinson-Winemiller also shares highlights from her new book, offering practical tools and real-world examples that help people connect more deeply and communicate more compassionately.

Listeners will learn:

• The key distinctions between empathy and sympathy — and why they matter in dementia care.
• How empathy builds connection, while sympathy can sometimes create distance.
• Simple ways to practice empathy in everyday interactions with those living with dementia.
• The inspiration behind Dr. Robinson-Winemiller’s new book and how her work empowers both professionals and care partners alike.

This episode is an inspiring reminder that small shifts in understanding can make a world of difference in the lives of others.

Mentioned Resources:

• Book by Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller – The Empathic Leader:
• Connect with Dr. Robinson-Winemiller: EQ via Empathy: Transformative Leadership Training  https://eqviaempathy.com/

About the Guest:

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller isn’t just talking about leadership: she’s challenging us to do it differently. With over 20 years of cross-industry experience, she helps leaders build emotionally intelligent cultures that don’t just feel better, they perform better. A TEDx speaker, EQ coach, and author of The Empathic Leader, Melissa blends research, real-world insight, and lived experience to make empathy actionable at every level of leadership. She’s on a mission to prove that the so-called “soft” skills are the ones driving the hard results — and the future of leadership depends on them.

About the Host:

Author Lisa Skinner is a behavioral specialist with expertise in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia. In her 30+year career working with family members and caregivers, Lisa has taught them how to successfully navigate the many challenges that accompany this heartbreaking disease. Lisa is both a Certified Dementia Practitioner and is also a certified dementia care trainer through the Alzheimer’s Association. She also holds a degree in Human Behavior.

Her latest book, “Truth, Lies & Alzheimer’s – Its Secret Faces” continues Lisa’s quest of working with dementia-related illnesses and teaching families and caregivers how to better understand the daunting challenges of brain disease. Her #1 Best-seller book “Not All Who Wander Need Be Lost,” was written at their urging. As someone who has had eight family members diagnosed with dementia, Lisa Skinner has found her calling in helping others through the struggle so they can have a better-quality relationship with their loved ones through education and through her workshops on counter-intuitive solutions and tools to help people effectively manage the symptoms of brain disease. Lisa Skinner has appeared on many national and regional media broadcasts. Lisa helps explain behaviors caused by dementia, encourages those who feel burdened, and gives practical advice for how to respond.

So many people today are heavily impacted by Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. The Alzheimer's Association and the World Health Organization have projected that the number of people who will develop Alzheimer's disease by the year 2050 worldwide will triple if a treatment or cure is not found. Society is not prepared to care for the projected increase of people who will develop this devastating disease. In her 30 years of working with family members and caregivers who suffer from dementia, Lisa has recognized how little people really understand the complexities of what living with this disease is really like. For Lisa, it starts with knowledge, education, and training.

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Lisa, welcome back everybody to a brand new episode

of the truth lies and Alzheimer's show. I'm Lisa

Skinner, your host, and I have with me today a very special

guest. As a matter of fact, she and I belong to a speaker's

bureau, and we both ended up going to Oxford, England a year

ago to speak at an event, and I want to tell you I was so

excited to invite her onto my show, because she is an expert

in empathy and empathy is a very foundational part of the human

connection in general, but also in dementia care. So I thought

that she and I could have a really dynamic conversation

about empathy, and we both agreed when we talked the other

day that it seems to be a lost art form of human communication.

So I'm sure we're going to talk about that. But anyway, let me

introduce you to my friend and colleague, Dr. Melissa

Robinson-Winemiller, and Melissa is not just talking about

leadership. She's challenging us to do it differently. With over

20 years of cross industry experience, she helps leaders

build emotionally intelligent cultures that don't just feel

better, they actually perform better. Can't wait to hear about

that. She is an internationally known TEDx speaker, an emotional

intelligence coach and the author of the book The Empathic

leader, Melissa blends research real world insight and lived

experience to make empathy actionable At every level of

leadership, and she is on a mission to prove that the so

called soft skills are the ones driving the hard results, and

the future of leadership depends on them. Welcome, welcome.

Welcome to the show. Melissa, I'm so happy to have you here

today. Oh,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Lisa, it is my pleasure. Thank you so

much. And just you know, like we were saying before we started

recording, the timing is perfect, since we were live and

in person together just a year ago,

that's right, we had a good time, didn't we? That

was fun? Yeah. So my experience being in the 30 years that I've

been working with families

the core

of successful communication and a harmonious

relationship with people living with Alzheimer's disease and

related dementia is empathy. It's foundational to

compassionate dementia care. It informs how caregivers

understand and respond to the lived experience of people who

are living with dementia, guiding interactions, decision

making and the overall quality of life. And I have found that

to be so true in working with these folks who are living with

constant, progressive cognitive decline. How does empathy fit

into our world in just a general sense? Because you and I talked

about this in our first conversation about having you

come on the show. And I think we both agreed that in the last, I

don't know, at least 10 years, maybe more empathy seems to be

coming a lost art of communication. You want to

elaborate on that for us?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So first

you're feeling that there is a lessening of empathy is actually

being backed up by research. There's a longitudinal study

that's been going on since the 70s, and what they looked at was

empathy, specifically in college students. I mean, just that's

the population they chose. And between the 1970s and 2008 they

found a decrease in the amount of empathy in this population by

40. Percent. Oh, that's huge. Yes, it is. I mean, so could you

define empathy for us and maybe even tell us what

the difference is between empathy and sympathy? Because I

think that people may be aren't quite sure what the difference

is between actual empathy and actual sympathy?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yeah, no, that's a great question,

because I that's actually one of them. I get a lot because it

does. We kind of think of it all in one big ball, you know,

empathy, sympathy, compassion, and they're really different

things. So empathy, as far as to define it, it's understanding

and connection by taking the perspective of the other. And a

lot of times we think empathy is just about feeling, about I

feel, what you feel. And, yeah, that's part of it. But over the

years, there's actually been 43 different definitions of

empathy. So the feeling is part of it, but it's it's a small

part of it. It's more about perspective, taking

understanding what it is to be that other person and seeing the

world through their eyes. That's the difference between empathy

and sympathy. Empathy, you're trying to see the world through

that other person's eyes. Sympathy, you're seeing it

through your own which means that you always end up with a

comparison. You know, what must this look like compared to what

I do? And that can bring in an element of judgment. That's why,

when we're talking medical people and people in the medical

establishments, they're actually trained not to use sympathy,

because of that reason. If you're dealing with patients and

you know, they're having a hard time, if you come at them with

anything that even kind of seems like judgment, you're going to

get a negative response. So yeah, that's the big difference.

Empathy. You're always trying to see it through their

perspective. It's taking the me out and putting the we in is

really what it comes down to.

And that is exactly what I teach to family

members and caregivers, is to Yeah, and it's actually a matter

of having to retrain our brains to think that way. Do you find

that to be true?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: You know, it kind of depends on the

person, because empathy is another one of those things, you

know, with human behavior, where it's on a spectrum, and you're

going to have some people that just take to it really

naturally. I mean, on the far end, you have dark triad, which

are people that have no empathy at all, and those are

Psychopaths, sociopaths, machiavellians and narcissists.

So there's a small part of humanity that doesn't have any

but then on the other side of that is the light triad, which

are people that have a lot of empathy and that ability to

relate to other people. So but most of us are going to fall in

the middle, right the bell curve and stuff averages in the

middle. So most of us are going to have to work at it a little

bit, but we're also going to have a little bit of innate

talent to be able to build on. It's just a matter of actually

building it as a skill which you can empathy. Isn't all inherent.

There's part of it that's environmental and that you can

work on and get better at.

So do you have you seen in these studies that

you're talking about that have supported it, have you seen the

instinctive, inherent part of our DNA, our human being, that

just inherently is empathetic towards others just waning.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Not the biological part so much. And

there is a biology biological part. It's more the

environmental and socialized part where we learn as kids, you

know, well, how would you feel if you were that person? Well,

how would you feel if someone hit you with that stick or, you

know, that kind of thing.

Why is that disappearing?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: There's a lot of scholars that think it

goes back to the iPhone and social media and too much

technology. It's called main character syndrome. You get that

limelight on you dealing with social media and that sort of

thing, and you kind of forget there are other people out

there. Well,

that would make sense, since it seems to be an

emotion that's waning since we've been adopting and adapting

all this high tech stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how does

compassion, then fit in to the spectrum between empathy and

sympathy.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So sympathy is kind of its own

thing out on an island. You know, it's it's just the

difference in the viewpoint, like we were talking about,

whether you see it through your own eyes or through the eyes of

the other person. But empathy, there's no action. You're just

feeling it. So you're not taking responsibility, you're not

passing judgment, you're not doing anything. Compassion is

the action you take. So empathy is what you feel and compassion

is what you do. So the two are linked.

Oh, that makes complete sense. Can you give us

an example?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Sure, so let's say that you are

dealing with a family member that has, you know, a medical

condition that that is, you know, like my father, he's, he's

recently gone through some stuff. He had prostate cancer,

he had all this other stuff going on, and because of that,

he kind of went into a depression. Well, you know what

empathy said is that I needed to be in that feeling with him, and

that doesn't mean I needed to take that on, necessarily, but I

needed to try and understand, from his point of view, why he

was facing some of the mental health challenges he was why he

was having problems, you know, just even doing day to day

stuff, because he was just kind of, it's what Brene Brown calls

being in the suck. And that's, that's very much what he was

dealing with. But I wasn't doing anything. I was just in it with

him. But then the compassion part of that was, okay, he's

having trouble getting through I'm trying to see this through

his point of view. So forcing him to try and get up and be

happy and Woo is not going to be compassionate. What's going to

be compassionate is going to be to meet him where he's at and

take the small steps with him that he needs to be able to

maybe just get out of bed today and get dressed. Maybe today is

just, you know, well, let's clean up the house just a little

bit. Well, maybe we'll just, you know, sit and watch TV together

and not say anything, but I'm going to be here with you, you

know. So that's the difference between the empathy, just being

in that feeling with him, and the compassion, where I'm trying

to actually give the help that he needs, not the help that I

think he needs, the help he needs.

And it's so ironic, that's exact same

approach we take with people living with Alzheimer's disease

and related dementia, I think it's just part of our our human

being, yeah, and it really, you know, based on Maslow's

hierarchy of needs, it falls right there at being one of Our

very, very basic human needs that we all have, regardless of

whether you're functioning, you know, 100% cognitively or you're

not. You agree with that? Yeah,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: absolutely. That's the foundation that's

like the bottom

really, is it really? Is it really? So was

there anything in particular that inspired you to write your

book? The Empathic leader?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Well, part of it is just that there's

so many myths out there about empathy like that. It's all

about feeling or that. Empathy, you know, is the doing part of

things that you're taking responsibility and you're doing

all this other stuff. And I kind of wanted to set the record

straight, because in many of the conversations that I've had so

my doctorates in interdisciplinary leadership,

and I'm finishing up the dissertation, which is actually

on empathy and leadership, and a lot of the conversations that

I've had with people in leadership positions had to

start with actually figuring out definitions and making sure we

Were talking about the same thing. So part of wanting to

write this was, this is what empathy is. This is what empathy

isn't, and this is how it fits into leadership. The other part

of that is that, you know, through working on this

dissertation, I've kind of developed my own methodology as

far as being able to apply it in leadership for better, profit,

productivity and innovation. And I wanted to write it down so

it's kind of a handbook and a methodology too, so that if I'm

working with clients, they have that they can look at and people

that I'm not as well. I mean, you know, it's there, it's all

in there. It's just a matter of applying it. And the third part

of it, too, is just this reminder that we're all leaders.

You know, even if we're only a leader of one and we're trying

to get ourselves through there's stuff in there that's applicable

for everybody in any situation. So that's kind of what happened.

So let's talk about integrating and applying

empathy, just in daily life in general. How can someone

cultivate more empathy in their everyday interactions? Because,

as we've both mentioned and agreed, it seems to be

disappearing from our culture.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yeah, I think the number one place to

start is to start with self empathy. Because,

Oh, that's interesting. How do you do that?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Well, there's, there's four basic

steps. Because if the idea is understanding and connection

through perspective taking, you need to create a better

understanding and connection with yourself by understanding

different perspectives, right? Because if you can't do

something for yourself. How are you going to do it for somebody

else? And that's true, yeah, yeah. So the way I teach that

actually is in four steps, and the first one is self

observation, being able to step outside yourself and objectively

watch what you're doing without judgment, without you know.

Adding any emotion. You're like a computer. You're just taking

in information, you're trying to understand what you're doing,

but you're not putting an emotional value on it. You're

just watching, and that's hard for us to do, because we

immediately leap to judgment. You know, that was stupid, or,

Why did I do that? Or, well, so and so does it better, you know,

imposter syndrome, that kind of thing. So just understanding

different perspectives, right? The second thing is self

reflection, which is where we turn the lens in and we try to

connect. Why are these things happening? What's happened that

makes me respond this way? What is it about this person that's

triggering me? What is it about this situation that's triggering

me? You know, you're actually asking some of the hard

questions at that point. Once you begin to understand

yourself, you turn the lens outward into self awareness,

which is hard, and I think that's one of the things that

we're missing most when we talk about how the world is kind of

losing this skill, because we're not aware of what our actions,

our inactions do to the people around us. We're not taking

their perspective, because we haven't figured out what our

perspective is. So, you know, we can actually start to say, Oh

yeah, when I was triggered by that person, I completely shut

down the entire room. We got nothing done. And I'm still not

exactly sure why that happened at all, because, you know, we

were supposed to be working together. And now all of a

sudden, everybody's scared of me, and then at that point you

can move to self empathy, meaning that you can actually

start to understand and connect with yourself. And like that may

be where you need to actually use self compassion, that may be

where you need to use some self forgiveness, that may be where

you need to actually make some changes, but always within the

understanding of I'm a human and I'm doing the best I can with

the tools I have at the time, and I can get better. So when

I'm talking to two people, those are the four steps we go

through, which I mean that sounds easier than it is,

because it's a iterative process, right? We're doing it

over and over and over again. But you know, practice doesn't

make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So if you're

practicing it over and over and over again,

okay, well, what have you found are some of the

common barriers to empathy, and how can we start to overcome

them?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: You know, one of the biggest things

I see is just that people get very caught up in themselves,

their own stressors, their own life problems, their own this is

what I feel. This is what I think. This is, you know, again,

putting the me in front of the we instead of the other way

around. When you're busy looking through your own eyes and

putting this judgment out into the world, it becomes hard to

see through somebody else's eyes because you get blinders on,

yeah, you know. And sometimes it's just a matter of slowing

down and saying, Okay, I think I know what this is from my point

of view. What is it from their point of view? What is it that I

may be adding gasoline to this fire? You know? How am I adding

more to this by being sucked up into my own head? And it's easy

to do Life is stressful. I mean, you know, it's not to say that

every

single day in my world of Alzheimer's disease and

dementia with family members and caregivers and I, you know,

there are just so many parallels to what you've been sharing with

us and what I see. And they're, they just, they're just so

connected. So it doesn't matter if you're living with

Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I mean, this is a,

really a fundamental core part of our being. Yes, from what I'm

hearing you say, so and I can relate this to my world, because

this is really difficult for family members and caregivers.

So let's speak to this. How does one stay empathetic when they

are in challenging or really high stress environments? And

this kind of falls back to what I was saying that we have to

practice and work on retraining the brain, especially in

situations like this, because your gut reaction, your

instinctive reaction to stressful situations, is based

on emotion and not On logic, and it sounds like we have to really

fall back and understand empathy through a logistical lens, not

an emotional lens, where sympathy is more through an

emotional lens. Would you agree with what I'm saying there,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: you know, it's, it's actually

interesting, because what, what you've put your finger on, and I

appreciate this is, at first, that there is such a thing as

empathy fatigue. Medical people deal with it all the time, where

they reach the point that it's just like, I can't take anymore,

which is why we talk about what's called. The dual root

model of empathy in that there's two ways to experience empathy,

and one is emotional, but the other is cognitive. You know, I

logically understand what you're feeling. I just don't feel

anything. So a lot of times, you know, when it emotionally, it

gets to be too much. We can move away from that emotional or

affective version of empathy and move into this cognitive

empathy, which is a different thing. It takes it's a different

part of the brain. That's why it's called dual root, because

neurologically, it hits the brain in different places. But

when empathy is really at its best, those two kind of work

together in tandem. And if you're in a situation where

you're dealing with someone with a long term disease, you know,

like Alzheimer's or dementia, sometimes you have to rely on

cognitive empathy so you don't end up with empathy fatigue,

true, and I equate empathy fatigue in my world, I

see it being synonymous with caregiver burnout, which is

very, very common it, and I think it has a lot to do with

what you're just explaining,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: yeah, and I can imagine, because, I

mean, talk about a long term, high stress, really difficult

situation. I mean, you know that's, it's, it's, you would

almost have to rely on cognitive empathy if you didn't want to

burn out.

So how do you go about doing that? It's not easy,

because your emotions will kick in before your logic, right?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yeah, they will, and that's part of

it, because, like, the the affective or emotional empathy

is fast. It's instinctive, and it's just like, boom, there it

is. Cognitive empathy is slower, but it's iterative. So you can

go back and think about it again and think about it again. So a

lot of times, if you feel that emotional snap, you know that,

Oh, there's the empathy, oh there's the feeling. And you can

kind of step back out and go, Okay, now let's think about

this. Let's actually tease this apart cognitively. You know,

we're back again to the self reflection and the self

awareness. Over time, you can start to integrate this, and you

can actually make it a skill. The interesting thing about

empathy too. There was another study that was done on this, and

what it showed is that people will tend to shy away from

things that require empathy, because neurologically, it's

harder, it's a lot harder to give empathy. And they actually

broke it down that if people were given two tasks and one had

empathy and one didn't, they would only choose the one that

needed empathy about 35% of the time, especially if there was a

chance that it would be rejected or that they wouldn't get any

kind of feedback out of it, which I think may speak, you

know, directly to some of the Alzheimer's and dementia

patients you talk about, because they're not always in a position

to have a lot of gratitude or be thankful for what's going on,

you know. So I think in this case, cognitive empathy, even

though it might take a little more skill to learn, would

definitely be the way to go, especially in the long run.

So could you maybe tell us so this would be

relatable to people listening to this episode in a caregiver's

world or a family member's world that they've been thrust into

with a loved one or caring for somebody with dementia. What

would it look like for them to do what you just said, to take a

step back and tap into the logical aspect of the situation,

versus reacting completely on the emotional side of it,

because that definitely would lead to The caregiver burnout

and the resentment and, you know, the the even the way they

respond to the people, to their loved ones. So what would what

are some exercises or practices that people could use to help

them be able to accomplish what you just described?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So the when I'm working with

medical people, and I'll admit that I haven't done a lot of

work with Alzheimer's and Dementia Caregivers, so you're

probably the expert on this more than I am, but in dealing with

the medical professionals, the first thing is just that ability

to take a step back without guilt or judgment, because a lot

of times they're, they're really wrapped up in the caregiving,

right? I mean, and it can be a 24/7, thing, even when you're

dealing with nursing or physicians or that kind of

thing, they get very wrapped up in their career, and because

it's such a big thing for them personally, for them to take a

step back almost. Leaves them feeling like they're not doing

the job well enough, that they're guilty, that they're not

giving enough, or they're not stepping in like they should,

and that's going to lead to burnout. So the first thing is

to be able to take a step back without emotion, like we were

talking about no guilt, no judgment, no. Oh, I should have,

or I could have, but actually, okay, this is going to be better

for them in the long run. If I take this step back, if I take

these 10 or 15 minutes for myself, if there's a day that I

have to step aside so that I can take care of myself, you know,

if I don't let myself get forgotten in the middle of all

of this, you know, that's one of the first things, is just you

have to take care of yourself first, which may mean taking a

step back, which may mean not throwing yourself in emotionally

all the time, which may mean doing some journaling and

actually writing out why. You know, how could I have related

to this in a cognitive way so that my emotions didn't get

involved? What can I do to kind of separate this out? Because

after a while, those neural pathways will shut down. I mean,

the effect of empathy, if you get just fatigued for too long,

it's like burnout. Eventually it just, it's like we're done. So

if you can take a step back, if you can start writing it out,

this is how cognitively I could have dealt with this, now that I

have time to think about it, that I'm outside of the

situation, you know, I'm not, that's a great idea. I'm not in

an emergency, stressful kind of thing, I can actually stop and

think because as we think about things that way, then they're

ready for us to put in place next time. Because we're not

creating new neurological ways of dealing with it, we're

recreating something we've already thought about.

Now I see with a lot of medical professionals

that they actually become desensitized to being empathetic

towards family members, what they're going through, and the

pay their patients, because it's almost overwhelming and too much

to bear to to to put themselves in the emotional funnel, piece

of having to tell that them the diagnosis and all of that so but

I don't think quite as much desensitization occurs with The

caregivers of the family members, I think it might

actually intensify their them being sensitive to, well, what

they're going through, not so much. We have to kind of switch

turn things around and kind of retrain them to have more of a

perspective of what the person they're caring for is going

through, or their loved one, that's not an easy thing,

because that's not the way we're wired.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: No, no and it's but there you are

again. It's about perspective, taking right? I mean, not only

the other person, but also in touch with your own that you

know, we're back to self empathy, that you know, maybe I

snapped in that place where I shouldn't have, maybe I've been

pushing too hard, and it's pushing me over the edge, and

these emotions are getting too much, and that's okay. I'm a

human being. It's okay for me to take a step back. It's okay for

me to try and figure this out. You know, you're you're looking

at the perspectives through your own eyes as well is through the

eyes of the other person. Empathy is fascinating in that

way. I mean, it encompasses so much. It really

does. So can we take that a step farther? And

let's say they were journaling what happened, and they

acknowledge how, how, what they did to maybe exacerbate the

situation. What if we took that a step farther, and they

actually included okay, if this situation comes up again, how

would I handle it better next time?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Absolutely, that's precisely, yeah, you

know, but, and it allows you to think about it cognitively

outside of the actual event.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, how can someone

distinguish? This is an interesting going to be an

interesting question. I'm curious how you're going to

answer this. Can someone distinguish between genuine

empathy and performative, or pretending to be empathetic?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So you know how we said that

actually using empathy takes more effort, because you're

actually trying to see it through the other person's eyes.

If you're dealing with someone with performative empathy,

they're probably not going to put that effort in. So you know

you're going to understand that they're not really seeing it

from the other person's perspective. Might layer their

own perspective in it. That's when you get things like, oh,

when this happened to me, Oh, I know how you feel, because when

it happened to me, you know, as opposed to, well, I don't really

know how you feel, but I want to know more. Can you explain your

side to me? They're not going to want to put in that extra work.

So I would think that would be a dead giveaway, if you're really

listening, you know, are they talking about the other person,

or are they talking about themselves in terms of the other

person?

The other thing, I think, that probably would not

carry forward, would be the compassionate component that you

spoke about, like what you ended up doing with your dad. That

piece would completely be missing. Is that pretty

accurate?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yes. Funny thing, well, just the

funny thing about compassion is, if you don't plug in empathy

first, sometimes you can do things that look compassionate

but aren't compassionate. You take, like completely the wrong

route, because you haven't actually plugged the empathy

piece into understanding connect first.

You're not understanding things from from

from their side of the fence. Yeah, that makes total sense to

me. Yeah, wow. This has really been powerful and dynamic, and

you have given us such, you know, a different look at how to

communicate with people, how to relate to people. How does this

fit into the workplace? Because I know that you know you

actually work a lot with in a leadership environment to

probably bring into the workplace to enhance

communication or relationships within that type of environment.

So how does what does that look like in more of a corporate

structured environment?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So when I'm looking at corporate

specifically, a lot of times I talk about how to take empathy

and plug it into emotional intelligence skills. Because for

a long time, we thought of emotional intelligence kind of

as this big bucket, right? And it's got motivation, and it's

got communication, and it's got technical, you know, it's got

all this stuff in it. And for a long time we put empathy in that

tool bag. But what I actually talk about is how we have to

take empathy out of that tool bag so that we can understand

and connect first, before we reach into that tool bag,

because otherwise we don't really know which emotional

intelligence skill is going to be the best to use. We don't

know if we're going for a chisel or a left handed screwdriver

without first understanding and connecting. So when I'm in

corporate and I'm dealing specifically with leaders, we

talk a lot about the connection and human to human aspect of

empathy in terms of being able to grab those emotional

intelligence skills to communicate better, to be able

to motivate better, to self motivate better. You know, we're

back to the self empathy side of things again. You know, that way

they're able to actually lead better. And there are studies

that show that if you can lead with empathy, that you are going

to create better profit, productivity and innovation,

profit to the tune of like 84% you know, so that that's a lot

of what my work in corporate looks like. In a nutshell,

that's that's almost a double edged sword,

because leaders tend to be very numbers driven. They're under a

lot of pressure. They have to answer to shareholders the

bottom line. And you know, so they're driven. They want to

drive the people who are underneath them. So how do you

accomplish being empathetic when those are completely almost a

contradiction within itself.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Well, first of all, I mean empathy

does not mean you don't have boundaries. Having empathy

doesn't mean you don't get business done. You know, it's

like we were talking about earlier, that empathy, you don't

actually do anything. You seek to connect and understand. So

the better you're able to connect and understand with all

people like you were talking about, right? Any stakeholder,

whether it's the board of directors, to, you know, middle

management, to the people below you, the better you're going to

be able to understand how to direct them, to be able to move

them into the best possible, you know, version of themselves

within this organization that you that you can

so they want to remain driven, versus feeling

like they are being bullied into being driven Nice. Okay, that

makes total sense.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Yep, it's a difference between

management and leadership. Yeah, management

self motivation, Yes, precisely because they feel

somebody understands them. Yeah, that's the root of of my

methodology and what I've been trained to. Teach is, you know,

validate, acknowledge, let them know that you hear them. And I

think that probably applies to people in general, part of our

just being, yeah, absolutely the workplace. It works with, you

know, people living with cognitive decline. Yeah,

anything else we've talked about a lot, and we've covered a lot

of really important points. Um, what's the one piece of advice

you would give to people listening to this show today

that might help them break the unempathetic barrier that a lot

of us, you know, may have developed over time to get

started on a new path to trying to be more empathetic with other

people in any given situation,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: you know, I think it helps just to

remember that it isn't an all or nothing kind of thing. You know,

if you can take five minutes today and just think, well, what

would the perspective be through the eyes of that person? What is

that person actually seeing and feeling and thinking? You know,

and you can raise your empathy by 5% then that's 5% it isn't

like everything has to suddenly be puppies and rainbows, but you

can work on it just a little bit every day. And if you do it

every day and every day and every day, that's how you build

a skill. That's how you become Michael Jordan and the greatest

basketball player of all time, is you work on those skills

every day, and empathy is the same, so just a little bit every

day,

we see a lot of anger in the world now. So how

do you stop yourself from feeling that way and pivot to

trying to understand a situation from somebody else's point of

view.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: That's, that's precisely where I would

switch from emotional empathy, because you can feel it, I mean,

and it is, it is hard not to give into it when you feel it

strongly, you know, into cognitive empathy and understand

that. Cognitive empathy doesn't mean I have to agree with that

person. No, no, and it, you know, I definitely have

boundaries. You know, I don't like what someone's doing, but

at least I'm like, Okay, well, they're probably doing this for

this reason or this reason or this reason, and I don't have to

give in to that. I have control over my empathy and how I want

to react to those emotions, and if I want the world to react

with empathy, then I need to be the first one to do it, even if

it's 2%

I like that. I like I love that. So Melissa,

how do people find your book and find out more about your area of

expertise and what you do.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: So the easiest place is my website,

and that's EQ via, that's vias and Victor IA, empathy.com, you

can order my book there, or you can get it at Barnes and Noble

or Amazon, or, you know, the usual places. And my TEDx talk

was just released a week ago, and we are up to 31,000 views.

Congratulations, thank you. I'm sorry. Where

did you do your TED Talk? Tulsa? Oh, in Tulsa. Uh

huh, yeah, exciting, yeah, go ahead. Oh, just say I did mine.

Gosh, it was about a year and a half ago in Canada. Oh, cool,

yeah, in Grand Prairie, Alberta.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Oh, how cool is that? So we got that

at coming too. How cool is

that? That off the bucket list, right? Such an

amazing experience. It really was, of course, I did mine on

Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I was drawing

parallels with a story that we can all relate to, to how that

is similar to living with Alzheimer's disease. Because I

wanted people to be more empathetic to what it's really

like to live with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I imagine

you did yours on empathy, huh?

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I did, I did mine on self empathy

and self judgment. Because, Oh,

beautiful, congratulations.

Congratulations. That's that's a huge accomplishment. Anything

else you'd like to share with our with our viewers, with my

viewers, before we come to a close today.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: I just think that you know what I

the way I break it down for my people is because you're using

cognitive and effective empathy to just remember to keep a cool

head and a. Warm heart.

I like that. Yeah, it's not always as easy done as

it is said, but it's yeah, it's doable. It's quite possible,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: yes, but anything worth having is

worth doing the work for. I agree.

All right, my friend, thank you again for

coming on the show today, this information you've shared to me

is absolutely invaluable, and I appreciate you taking the time

to come on and share this. So for now, you take good care, you

stay happy and healthy, and you keep up all your just invaluable

work.

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller: Thank you, and thank you so much for

having me. And I hope your audience gets a lot of use out

of this.

Oh, me too. I'm sure they will. I have no doubt,

actually. All right, we'll talk. Be talking to you soon. Melissa,

take care. All right. Thank you. Well, that'll do it for this

week's episode of the truth lies and Alzheimer's Show. I'm your

host. Lisa Skinner, thank you again, Melissa, for being such

an amazing guest. And we will be back next week with another

brand new episode of the truth lies and Alzheimer's show. So

don't go too far, because we will be back next week. Bye for

now.