The Importance of Empathy in Leadership with Alain Hunkins

For this week’s Inspirational Leadership Podcast I spoke with Alain Hunkins. Alain is a sought-after leadership speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach. His recent book, CRACKING THE LEADERSHIP CODE: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders launched as the #1 Bestselling New Release in Business Communication on Amazon. Over his twenty-year career, Alain has led over 2,000 groups in 25 countries. Clients include Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Citigroup, General Electric, State Farm Insurance, IBM, General Motors, and Microsoft. Alain has designed and facilitated seminars on numerous leadership topics, including teambuilding, conflict management, communication, peak performance, innovation, engagement, and change. Alain also serves on the faculty of Duke Corporate Education and has published over 400 articles on leadership.

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

  • Why it’s so important to shut up and listen as a leader
  • Understanding that leadership is not about a job title, power or control, it’s about a relationship forged on connection
  • The power of connection + communication + collaboration in leadership
  • Why we need leaders who lead from a sense of purpose and are facilitators instead of directors
  • The value in getting real feedback in real time from people who will tell you the truth
  • Why empathy is a master superpower for leaders
  • How companies are getting it backwards: There is too much focus on the numbers instead of the people when it’s the people who produce the numbers
  • Why we need to eradicate complexity in the workplace and create more simplicity

Listen to the podcast here:

Watch the video here:

Show Notes:

Alain’s Book Site

Alain’s TEDx Talk

Connect with Alain on LinkedIn

Book Recommendation in this episode: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

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