Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

The Empathy Metric: Why Most Managers Fail at Retention

28 May 2026 · 1 min

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Managers who understand what's happening in employees' lives retain them better. Caring about the whole person, not just output, matters because personal challenges directly affect work quality. Real listening and knowing each employee's current season creates the safety people need to do their best work.

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The leading with empathy part is, is probably undersold. I care just as much about the person and how they do the work as I do the output of what the work is that they do. If someone's not well, if they're not whole, you're probably not gonna get the best work product, the best outcome because of whatever it is they might be dealing with personally, professionally, et cetera. I really find that you have to take the time to get to know individuals. You have to take the time to understand where they are. In that respective season and really support them to help ensure that they are going to be in a safe environment, an environment that they can thrive in, and really just connect as best you can with those individuals and really hear people out. Everyone's dealing with something. Internally, I always say life is undefeated. Whatever it is, big or small, you're dealing with something. There's 3 types of people: you're about to go through something, you're going through something, or you just came out of something, whatever the something is. And so building those personal relationships has definitely been invaluable to getting the work done.