At Braintrust, a colleague recently wrote about the misunderstood skill that helps anyone master any conversation: empathy. Today we look at that skill through a different lens, because the most effective communicators aren't just speaking empathy. They're living it.
The Numbers Behind The Great Resignation
Over the past several months, one phrase has dominated the conversation about talent: The Great Resignation. It's a popularly coined term, and it's backed by sobering data. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021. That number is striking on its own, but there's a more revealing one beneath it: voluntary quit rates have been climbing by nearly 10 percentage points per year since 2009.
This isn't a pandemic anomaly. It's a long-term shift. And Harvard Business Review identified five forces driving it, what they call "the 5 R's": retirement, relocation, reconsideration, reshuffling, and reluctance.
Why Reconsideration Is the Signal Leaders Cannot Ignore
Of the five forces, one stands out: reconsideration. It means employees are actively reconsidering the role of work in their lives. Not just the job, not just the pay. The role of work itself.
If your people are carrying that question, ask yourself: how are you connecting with each of them, every day? Because if you aren't connecting, someone else is. As leaders, we can no longer afford to wait for the exit interview to discover what mattered to someone. There's an old adage that gets at this directly: when should you tell your partner you love them? Before someone else does.
What Empathy Actually Means at Work
Empathy gets thrown around often enough that it risks becoming a platitude. So let's be precise. Empathy is two things working together:
- Connecting with others to identify and understand their thoughts, perspectives, and emotions.
- Demonstrating that understanding with intention, care, and concern.
The second part is where most leaders fall short. Understanding someone privately isn't empathy. Demonstrating it, through your words, your questions, your follow-through, is what creates the connection that actually retains people.
And crucially, empathy is a skill. Research from the Catalyst organization confirms this. It can be cultivated and developed. That's genuinely good news for every leader who feels like they're still learning how to do this well.
The Neuroscience Case for Empathic Leadership
Here's something worth sitting with: every conversation you have modulates the neurochemistry of the person you're talking to. That's not a metaphor. It's neurological fact. Which means every 1:1, every team standup, every hallway exchange is either building trust or eroding it at a chemical level.
A Catalyst study of nearly 900 U.S. employees quantified what happens when leaders lean into empathy versus when they don't. The results are hard to argue with:
- Innovation: 61% of employees under empathic leaders reported feeling innovative, versus 13% under less empathic leaders.
- Engagement: 76% reported feeling engaged under empathic leadership, compared to 32% under those who demonstrated less empathy.
- Retention: 57% of white women and 62% of women of color said they were unlikely to consider leaving when their leaders valued their circumstances.
- Inclusivity: 50% of employees felt included under empathic leaders, versus 17% under those who showed less.
These numbers describe the difference between a team that stays and a team that leaves. Empathic leadership isn't a soft skill. It's a retention and performance mechanism.
Do You Know What Your People Value?
When working with leaders, two questions reveal the depth of a team's real connection:
- When you think about your current employees, what's one thing you can do right now to demonstrate empathy with each of them?
- If your direct reports were standing in front of you, could you name the top three to five things each one values?
Most leaders, even strong ones, can name one or two values per person. Very few can name three to five. And here's why that matters: if you don't know what someone values, you cannot communicate with them in a way that lands. You're speaking at them, not to them.
Values are the language of motivation. When you speak someone's values back to them, through your questions, your recognition, your decisions, their brain registers trust. When you don't, the disconnect accumulates quietly until someone hands in their notice.
The Values Exercise That Changes Teams
At Braintrust, we run a values exercise with both sales and coaching clients. The room changes when it happens. People understand each other differently when they know each other's stories at the level of what they actually care about. Here's how to do it with your team:
- Provide a list of 50 values (integrity, family, achievement, security, creativity, and so on).
- Ask each person to identify their top five.
- Share those top five around the table as a group.
- As the leader, document what you hear. This step signals that you care enough to remember.
- Inject this understanding into your 1:1 conversations, your feedback, your recognition.
The magic isn't in the list. It's in the conversation that follows, and in the leader who actually uses what they learn.
The Conversation Is the Culture
From the water cooler to the boardroom, every conversation shapes the chemistry of your team. Leaders who don't change how they communicate will not acquire, develop, or retain the best people. That's not a prediction. It's the direction of the data.
The Great Resignation has a coaching response. It starts with knowing what your people value, demonstrating that you do, and building a practice of empathy that shows up in every interaction. If you want to explore what that looks like for your leadership team, we'd welcome the conversation.
