Sally ZimneyFounder & CEO, Be Moved by Sally Z

Leadership: Study Humans, Empathy is the Key!

9 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief talk, the speaker challenges the conventional focus on decision‑making, processes, systems, and KPIs as the sole foundations of effective leadership. While acknowledging the value of strategic thinking and metrics, she argues that leadership reaches its limits unless leaders also become students of human behavior. By actively studying and empathizing with all people—not just a subset—leaders develop the humanness needed to truly understand, motivate, and move others. Empathy is presented as a non‑obvious but essential foundation for any leader who wants to go beyond technical competence and genuinely influence people.

Chapters

All of us leadership experts, right? We talk a lot about what it means to be a leader. Decision-making, processes, systems, KPIs. And truly all of that is super valuable and important, right? Your great strategic brain, part of why you are where you are. Awesome. But your leadership has limits if you aren't also a study of humans. Great leaders study humans. They seek to understand them. And not just, you know, some humans, all humans, right? We seek to get them. In other words, your humanness, your empathy, is how you're going to be a better leader. That's how you're going to understand other humans better. It's kind of a no-duh, and it's the foundation of how we move others.