The Performance Quotient
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The Performance Quotient
Tough Love in Leadership – Todd White on Why Empathy Without Resilience Fails
Is empathy enough to make you a better leader—or can it sometimes backfire?
In this episode of The Performance Quotient, host Will Lindstrom welcomes Todd White, executive coach and founder of ClearPeg, to explore why empathy in leadership often falls short and what it really takes to make it work.
Todd introduces “the empathy equation,” a framework that blends understanding, feeling, caring, and doing. Each element can build a connection or create unintended consequences if leaders overuse it.
Real empathy requires balancing those elements with resilience, accountability, and trust.
Highlights Covered:
- The four components of empathy and their double-edged impact on leadership
- Why empathy without resilience creates dependency rather than growth
- How “squinting with your ears” helps leaders listen more effectively
- The role of trust, respect, care, and accountability in earning engagement
- Why some leaders inspire teams to follow them into a burning building while others struggle to gain even basic buy-in
Todd’s insights cut through the buzzwords and reveal why empathy alone isn’t enough—and how leaders can combine care with resilience to create clarity, direction, and lasting performance.
Learn more about Todd’s work at ClearPeg.
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Today, I'd like to welcome Todd White. Todd is an executive coach, founder of ClearPeg and a self-described recovering engineer. He's worked across engineering strategy, hr and global consulting With ClearPeg. He's dedicating his focus to professional development. Todd has coached thousands of high-performing professionals, especially in the tech-enabled and systems delivery world. His sweet spot is around advisory, snc and delivery that focuses on high impact, big margins. He's the creator of the five pillars of professional development and is known for helping top talent build clarity, influence and, most importantly, have behavioral fluency without losing their edge. With that, I would like to thank Todd for joining and look forward to our conversation.
Todd White:Thanks for that warm introduction. Will Looking forward to talking today.
William Lindstrom:Yeah, me too, because we always have good conversations. Today, what we want to focus on and what you brought up is kind of one of the bigger areas that's misunderstood in the workplace which is related to empathy. It's got a lot of assumptions, there's a lot of focus on it but not a lot of practical application applied to it. So before we jump into kind of how to develop it and what it means for organizations, maybe you could kick us off by defining what you think leadership empathy is within a workplace.
Todd White:Empathy to a large degree is caring what the person you're talking to cares about. It's a bit of a double-edged sword. Anytime that empathy card comes up in one of my conversations, I kind of look at pushing it back off of the table and we look to navigate what's actually in that hand or what's at play in the game.
William Lindstrom:So in that case, it seems like empathy is more than one thing. That empathy is, how do you describe it? But think about empathy as being one of many pieces. So what are the pieces that make up empathy?
Todd White:Well, there's one of my favorite podcasts is with Marshall Goldsmith. He's evolved his definition or thinking on empathy for quite some time, but he talks about there are four types or four kinds of empathy. And the four types number one is to understand you. Number two is the feeling you kind of empathy. Number three is caring. And number four is doing something to or for. Let me back up and talk through those real quick and he talks about they're double-sided. So in the case of understand you, you should understand me. Okay, well, I understand you and I understand you such that we can engage in a conversation and walk through those elements. But it's also, yeah, I understand you enough that you just walked into this department store. I know what you like, I know what you're going to buy. I'm going to start influencing and manipulating you. So when you look to advertising, you look to marketing, all those things that we're scrolling to grab our attention. That's an example of understanding you, plus or minus. Number two feeling you. I feel your pain. Okay, well, you need to feel my pain.
Todd White:Imagine you're the CEO of a large organization or any place you want to talk about in your community. Well, I feel the pain of everyone, or I feel the joy of everyone. Here's a child that's been brought into the world. Here's someone that's dying of cancer. There's so many things out there. If you walk around with the weight of the world on your shoulders because you're feeling everyone, it's problematic. You just get crushed under that stress.
Todd White:Caring about you, you should care about me. I use the example of a brain surgeon. I want the brain surgeon to be able to do their job and there's a reason they don't let doctors or whatnot, or even a lawyer, represent their own families in a lot of ways or do those types of things. So caring has both. I can care so much about you that I'm paralyzed and can't make the right moves. Or if I don't care about you, that's a whole nother conversation. And then doing something too. You know you should help me or you should fix me, and okay, that's okay. But I'm doing that so much for you that I've created a dependency. As you think, through those elements there's the positive side, there's a negative side, and people do, can and will utilize those all for good, that facilitated level of communication. It can be also utilized to do evil or manipulate you. Let me pause there. I threw a whole bunch out in those four bits and pieces.
William Lindstrom:I think what you're touching on is one of the challenges with empathy. It's a pendulum you can go too far one way or too far the other way. So it's finding that right balance and, as you've gone over the four key factors, which is, as a leader, we need to understand, help the employee understand what's going on and feel a part of it. The feeling you know, understand where they're feeling, are they anxious or not? And maintaining that balance of anxiety, because you know you want a certain amount of pressure, but not too much. You have to have enough caring, but not be so much that it's too much for the leaders.
William Lindstrom:And same thing with the doing. You know, like how can I help, how can I step in? But at the same time you can't always be stepping in otherwise, because the leader can't be everywhere. So if you think about this and you kind of think, use the word empathy equation when we were talking about this a little while ago is what is the equation so like, what's the right amount of? So it sounds like it's empathy equals understanding, feeling, caring and doing. But what's the right amount of balance for each? As a leader looks in the workforce, how do you find or what behaviors? Or how do you approach that balance so that you're providing support but at the same time, you're either not overburdening yourself or underdeveloping the people by doing everything for them?
Todd White:Well, there's a lot to answer in that question, but let's see if we can't crack that nut a little bit. I think the first thing I said was caring about what the people care about. Caring about what the people you care about care about is one thing on that side of the empathy equation. The other is not to confuse empathy with sympathy. And then we've mentioned the empathy equation a few times, or maybe it's just more how my filters work within the world.
Todd White:I look to trust. Do I trust you? The other is do I respect you? The third one I look to is care. Do I believe you actually care about me? And that's truly a differentiator in the workforce.
Todd White:If people feel that you don't care about them, they're absolutely disengaged. No amount of money or anything else is going to change that. If they do feel that you care about them, they will engage at a different level that are likely to stick with you through the thick and the thin, the good and the bad times. And then the other one that I, oddly enough, kind of look to is fear. Do I fear you for the right reasons If I fear that you're just going to stick a knife in my back to move yourself up the chain of command or what have you. That's one thing. If I fear you, like I had a healthy respect, a fear for my parents, specifically my father. I knew he didn't hold back when I needed correcting right. I knew he loved me enough to recalibrate those things. Those are the bits and pieces that make up what I would call the empathy equation, or just the engagement equation. Now, that probably stirred up a few things in your mind.
William Lindstrom:Yeah, because what I was thinking about is the fear. You know, same with my mother. Like my, my mom was the heavy for sure. I think some people mistake accountability with unfairness. I think there's a little bit of that in there. People are afraid of being held accountable. There's a little bit of that in there. People are afraid of being held accountable. How do you connect accountability and trust within this equation without overburdening people? Like you know, I expect you to do everything OK, that's unfair for any one employee or staff member to get but at the same time, I expect you to perform and push through some discomfort.
Todd White:Yeah, now we're into probably some vernacular or what we want to call the difference between a manager and a leader. It took me 10 to 15 years to come to the realization I can't manage anyone. I can lead them. People require leadership. I manage numbers.
Todd White:I manage performance to plan and as a manager, that's your primary function. You have a fiduciary responsibility for the organization. You also have a empathy or responsibility around the folks to make sure they understand what's expected and really it's around. It's setting very, very clear expectations and it's holding people to account. In my experience, everybody likes to see somebody else held to being accountable, but they don't like being held to account for their own behaviors and actions. But we all benefit from having accountability partners.
Todd White:I was just on a conference call in a Zoom meeting with this coach that I use. She's literally like my sales manager. She holds you to account. What are you doing? How are you doing? What leads are you going after? How are you closing those? How are you engaging? You need people to hold you to account, otherwise things just kind of float out there. Performance to plan means establishing clear expectations and holding people to account. I also find that many organizations they do an extremely poor job at setting expectations and, as a guy told me one time, he said, listen, if they don't know what they want you to do, how the hell are you supposed to know? I find people you ask them, well, what are you working on? And they can't really answer the question. You don't stand a chance at meeting the objectives if you don't know what you're working on.
William Lindstrom:So that touches on something that's interesting is how do you set those expectations, which there's more research showing that how do you include the workforce within those expectation setting processes? Because when they're a part of the process they better understand it, they have more confidence. So their adjustments to feeling, so you know, some of these four variables that are in that empathy equation start to come into play, that are in that empathy equation start to come into play. But in your experience, at what level as a manager do you lead? And by including your workforce into those discussions, if you want to talk a little bit about that, because that seems to be, especially with the remote workforce, a growing challenge.
Todd White:Yeah, that's probably a whole nother podcast or a conversation for a week or so Setting expectations. It literally starts way up front in whatever that sales cycle happens to be and depending, like we mentioned early on when you introduced me advisory strategy, consulting, delivery, digital transformation. Well, everybody wants a digital transformation. I defy you to ask 10 people and get 10 consistent answers on what is a digital transformation. And the salespeople are looking to make and position the sale, which pretty much always involves a significant level of complexity and ambiguity. Because if you try to stomp all of that out before you make the sale, it won't happen. You'll price it too high, it'll get too complicated, your competition will walk in and just position it like Goldilocks in a bowl of soup and you'll lose the deal. So salespeople thrive on that complexity, ambiguity, winning the deal and then, between the sales cycle and handing that to the delivery team, you've got a handoff and typically most organizations excuse me, but they suck at that. So the salespeople cannot 100% articulate what was exactly sold.
Todd White:The client is assuming they've bought ABCXYZ because when it was sold, the sky will be blue, the birds will be chirping, you're gonna be knocking everything out of the park once you've implemented this and then the delivery team gets it and they're asking what are the deliverables? What are we supposed to be doing? You get this rub between you, sell complexity, a certain amount of that on the front end and as soon as you win that work. Now the delivery teams have to stomp out the complexity and ambiguity or it's never a done deal. That's why projects keep creeping and creeping and creeping and the clients won't sign off on it because the end user says we can't use this. That's a very heavy loaded discussion. I've seen it breaking in that round for 20 or 30 years. There's nothing new.
William Lindstrom:I think that's where this empathy in the workplace comes into place, because it seems the things start to roll downhill and then it hits the delivery team or the fulfillment team whoever maybe project managers, account managers and then they're bearing the brunt of trying to figure it all out, and that's, I think, where it touches directly in. Do you understand what I'm going through? Are you feeling what I'm trying to deal with? Do I feel like you, as the leader, are caring enough to step in and go hey, how can I help and do something to help you, because I'm just getting overwhelmed? So I think what you're highlighting here, at least where it ties back to the idea of empathy and the empathy equation, is when you have these distortions or you have these inefficiencies amongst teams or between teams. That's really where that need or that feeling of empathy is residing, because there's just confusion and then pressure to perform with incomplete information. It seems like that's what leaders need to lead through and resolve to fix.
Todd White:People hate chaos. They fear the future. They hate chaos. They will push back, but yet they crave authority. A leader is all about clarity and direction and there's some people, their people, will follow them into a burning building. They're not the brightest, most technical anything, but they trust, they respect, they care, they fear for the right reasons, but they'll follow them literally into a burning fire. I know people with PhDs and every credential in the book and their people won't follow them across the street to Walmart, right, but you get into all those bits and pieces. But let's wind this back a bit on the complexity and the ambiguity. We're talking about that internally. The a bit on the complexity and the ambiguity. We're talking about that internally.
Todd White:The clients bought a digital transformation. They're implementing an ERP or a project management information system, or it's a private equity or what have you. Guess what sport. They don't give a rip. We bought this. You can take empathy and throw it out the door. We have to put this in or we're going to get it's a material consequence we could be out of business. You made this promise. We've made this promise to our shareholders, our stockholders. We're not going into this next shareholders meeting and explaining why we're going to go out of business on ABC XYZ.
Todd White:And that comes back to empathy. I'm not poo-pooing empathy. You want to be around people that actually do care, but it's. You can care so much or waffle so much, you don't get the job done. You hear, well, you should manage the client's expectations, todd. I'm like I can't manage the client's expectations. They expect what they expect. They bought a new car. They want a new car, right? But I can align expectations, following right up on the front end of the car, of that purchase or whatever's going on, by getting to their current state. Here's their desired future state, mapping those pieces out. It's ultimately all the decisions that have to be made in between that. But you can want to Rolls Royce, but you've got the budget for a Ford Focus. Something has to align differently, right.
William Lindstrom:Yeah, and I think what you're touching on is something that I've been studying is resilience within the workplace and empathy, because they're not necessarily the same thing. You have to have empathy, but at the same time you have to have resiliency. So how do you develop both? Because I don't think it has to be a, but I think it can be an, and it's just. How do you build resiliency and empathy?
Todd White:no-transcript. Oh, I love that when I come back to this guy, general Perry Smith. He was a commandant at the War College many, many, many moons ago, but he had this saying squint with your ears, listen, listen to what's going on, listen and understand what folks need. Sometimes people need a push, sometimes people need a pull. Everybody's different. The moment you assume somebody wants to be treated or engaged with the same level you do is wrong. Some people need to be pushed, they need to be. There are just so many different things. But squint with your ears.
Todd White:Resilience comes literally from getting knocked back, getting knocked down. That's where growth happens. It's that tension. You build those reflexes, you work hard and it's kind of a consultative term. But that's where growth happens. It's that tension. You build those reflexes, you work hard and it's kind of a consultative term. But that's where the resilience comes in and you need to have empathy. And then other times you need to listen.
Todd White:I've heard enough of this. You get in there and engage in that fight or, sooner or later, you got to grab this ball and you got to run with it. You don't learn to swim by reading a book you it. You don't learn to swim by reading a book. You can read a book and learn A, b, c, x, y, z, but sooner or later the rubber meets the road. Or, as a college professor would say, you're going to have to grab the bull by the horns and go some direction.
Todd White:Right, you need to have good people around you and, as my buddy Dinesh would say, he's like a breath of fresh air or oxygen to me. He'd just say I don't really give a rip if I've pissed you off. You need to hear these three things right. And so if people are afraid to push you or pull you or tell you exactly what you need to know, well really, they're chicken. They're not helping you. They're protecting you from something that you really need to experience. You don't want to be mean and push somebody out into traffic. There's a lot of different ways to slice and dice, but it comes. Squint with your ears. Don't pretend to be interested if you're really not, and that's what I tell people too. Don't think for a moment anybody cares more about you than you're going to care about yourself. It's not possible.
William Lindstrom:So I think those listening with your ears is interesting because I think, getting back to the empathy equation, there's basically four questions that you can ask that will demonstrate that you are leaning into the workforce but, at the same time, provide you the insight as a leader to continue to push the workforce, to continue to develop the workforce and let them be able to take a few bumps and bruises so they can be resilient.
William Lindstrom:But it seems like asking the questions of like, what can I do to help you right now? How are you feeling right now? Let's understand that in context of the job, so we can have a conversation of why. And then also on the caring side, what, demonstrating that you care about their growth and development, because growing and developing people sometimes means pushing them. And then, finally, if I think, if you ask all three of those questions, they're going to walk away with that sense of understanding. But it seems like the performance or the employee equation are creating those questions that leaders should ask and listen to, to your point, that are going to let them move the needle on performance. That's just how I'm seeing their least listening to you and summarizing how I see the empathy equation supporting resilience.
Todd White:Yeah, you got to kick this one back the other way as well. As a leader, as a manager, you got to get your at-bats too. Don't think for a moment you're going to engage with somebody and start squinting with your ears and all of a sudden you're behaving differently. They'll be like oh, what drugs are you on today? Right, you have to get your at bats. You have to practice. You need to probably do some role play and you need to be around some other people. You probably need some you know 360 feedbacks and things like that.
Todd White:If there were some absolute on any of this, I'd package it up and sell it on Amazon. All I know is you got to get in the ring. You kind of get your rear end kicked a few times. That hurt, that felt good. Some people just got to get in a fight. If you're a martial artist, you're going to get in there and have at it in the ring, and I think so many people today. They're afraid to get into the ring and fail, but you learn from failing and getting back up. Every time you're successful, you just think, oh, success was easy. Success was easy and it changes so quick. But you got to get your at-bats. You're going to get your bumps, you're going to get your bruises, and don't think for a moment that you're not being judged at every single swing at the bat. Right, everybody's an expert until you throw them into the ring and they see what it's like to get in there and compete.
William Lindstrom:That's some good insight. I mean, there's nothing like getting in there and doing it, and I think for a leader, some of that is just being open to asking for feedback. How am I doing, like, how well am I helping you understand where you're at, how am I helping with you feeling like you're able to address this, and how well am I making you feel like your growth and development matters and I think that's what you mean by the at-bats as well is like you just got to ask for the feedback and then be open to it, just as well as expecting your staff to be as open to it.
Todd White:Feedback to me is there's a formal feedback at a lot of different mechanisms, but a feedback to me can be you just walked away from a meeting, go. Oh, that didn't go too good. Ok, that went OK. But sometimes the feedback is you're looking at somebody and they just kind of rolled their eyes back in their head and disengaged. Or you're doing a presentation or something. You turn around twice and all these people are on their phone or something. Right, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to catch the feedback, but you've got to be looking for it.
Todd White:Now we're back to squinting with your ears, being self-aware, reading the room, understanding the different personalities and the different profiles. What energizes one and turns another off can be completely the same thing, right? I've had people before. I tell them no, you can't do that. We don't have the resources to do that. You're going to need to go outside and use somebody on a different team. And they're like oh, no, no, no, that's mine. Don't you ever try to stop me from doing that. Right, they're hungry. They're going to go get it and chew it up. I knew this particular person would struggle, but under no circumstances was she not going to build. It literally was a power builder report that she was working on, but she was determined to do it and she did it. If I would have taken that away from her or stopped her, she'd just been broken. I would have said okay, you don't do that anymore. Right, that's wrong.
William Lindstrom:That's a good point. These might be the four variables, but also how you approach people has got to be within context to how they can absorb the information or how they can do it. It's not an easy answer, which I think is why empathy is one of those things that people talk about, but I think empathy in context of resilience, and empathy and resilience built through feedback. Somewhere in there there's a triangulation that I think we're highlighting, which is it's not necessarily easy subject to address, and why empathy for empathy's sake isn't going to get you to the goals that you want.
Todd White:It's a two way street. I've mentioned the plus minus coin or what have you. I was talking with a guy, a really, really sharp guy we were talking about his senior VP reporting with and he's like, well, I don't think he's engaged, and it was one of those things where I could tell there was some tension in the relationship. I said wait a minute, I hear what you're saying and I understand that and I know the guy as well. Right, I know both of them. I said do you ever think he just might be busy as hell? You think he might be getting three or 400 emails a day and he's pulled in a gazillion different directions and you think he's going to be 100% engaged in every single engagement or meeting that he's having with you and the team?
Todd White:I said how about a little bit of empathy going the other way? Right, he's like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. When you're digesting hundreds of emails a day, plus the phone calls, plus all the other stuff that just hits you, too many people. Again, empathy is a double-sided, double-edged coin. There's pluses, there are minuses. The point be self-aware, engage, listen and if you're expecting somebody to have empathy in your direction, I encourage you to have empathy back in their direction.
William Lindstrom:That's a really good summary point. I know we're going a little bit long for this session, but as we kind of look to wrap up, here is there. I think that was an excellent closing point. But if you have the one or two things that to kind of take away with regards to empathy and the empathy equation and how it builds towards resilience and performance, what would you like to close out with or what would you like to leave as your final thought?
Todd White:I would say be mindful of empathy and when that empathy card gets played on the table, whether you're playing it or you see somebody else playing it in your direction, you need to address it and think about what it means. But I think so many people now maybe get guilted into the virtue signaling of what is empathy. You just have to understand it. Back off from it, shut up, listen, squint with your ears and just engage. When you engage with people, they feel listened to, they feel respected and 99% of the time they want to engage and have a solid conversation.
Todd White:Right back to the empathy equation of understanding, feeling, caring and doing 100% Empathy can be used for you or against you and, as I mentioned that, every single person that's listening in on this podcast, I guarantee you can think of at least one player that's using empathy in a negative direction with on or around them.
William Lindstrom:And that's a good warning thing, and I think that's why you just got to tie it back to the expectations and back to the expectations. No, that's a really good insight, really good closing point there. Definitely appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on empathy and particularly the empathy equation in terms of leadership and resilience. With that, thanks again.
Todd White:And thanks Will Always enjoy it.
