#110: Your Empathy Might Be Making You a Worse Leader
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Release Date: 07/22/2026
#115 The Best Leadership Lessons From My Summer Conversations
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
It’s been a busy summer at Level 52. Rather than publishing our regular August newsletter, we spent the month recording conversations for with leaders, entrepreneurs and coaches who challenged my thinking in unexpected ways. Some conversations confirmed things I believed. Others completely overturned them. This month’s newsletter is a collection of ideas I haven’t been able to shake.
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#114: Leading When Nothing Is Certain
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #114 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by Cathie Saroka, Level 52 Coach and Facilitator and CEO of Goldray Glass, for a conversation about leading through uncertainty without carrying the weight alone. Cathie has spent decades leading through recessions, business volatility, personal challenges, the pandemic, and constant change. Her experience has taught her that strong leadership in uncertain times is not about projecting certainty or having every answer. It is about building a team that can think, challenge, adapt, and solve problems together. Jayson and Cathie...
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#113: Resilience Is Not Toughing It Out
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #113 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by Level 52 coach and facilitator Lara Koretsky for an honest exploration of resilience, adversity, and growth. Resilience is often described as the ability to bounce back or keep pushing when life becomes difficult. Lara challenges that definition. True resilience is not about returning to who you were before adversity or ignoring the toll it has taken. It is the ability to learn, adapt, recover, and create something stronger from the experience. Drawing from profound personal loss, family challenges, burnout,...
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#112: How Transparent Leaders Build Trust in Tough Times
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #112 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by experienced entrepreneur, former CEO, and TEC Canada Chair Mark Terrill for a candid conversation about transparency in leadership. They explore why transparency is essential for building trust, particularly during difficult periods, and why employees create their own explanations when leaders fail to communicate clearly. Mark also explains why effective transparency does not mean sharing everything. Leaders must balance openness with confidentiality, timing, focus, and empathy. When handled poorly, transparency can become...
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#111: The Practice of Curiosity and Why Leaders Default to Certainty
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
A 360-degree review told Tyler Chisholm exactly what was wrong with his leadership: he filled every room, jumped to conclusions, and never let his team finish a sentence. His team had stopped contributing. They were just waiting to be told what to do. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause talks with Tyler Chisholm, CEO and author of Curious as Hell, about the moment that feedback forced him to rebuild how he leads. Tyler unpacks the difference between the leader he was in the boardroom and the host he'd become on his own podcast, and how closing that gap turned curiosity from...
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#110: Your Empathy Might Be Making You a Worse Leader
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Empathy gets treated like a personality trait: you either have it or you don't. Roxana Radulescu, Level 52 coach and facilitator, argues that's wrong. It's a muscle, and most leaders are either overusing it, avoiding it, or using it to avoid the hard conversation instead of having it. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause talks with Roxana about what empathy actually is (her definition: care plus trust), what it isn't (sympathy, agreement, an excuse to skip feedback), and where it goes wrong at the top of organizations. They dig into a Yale psychologist's argument that...
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#108: Why Burnout Isn't a Workload Problem
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Most leaders think burnout comes from too much work. So they respond with wellness programs, lighter workloads, and lunch hour yoga. Then nothing changes. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause sits down with Dr. Tianne Foster, physician, burnout researcher, and author of Reality Check, to unpack what actually drives burnout and why most organizations are solving the wrong problem. Trained across Canada, the US, and the UK, Dr. Foster became obsessed with burnout after a senior physician told her entire class to get out of medicine while they still could. Her conclusion:...
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#109 MML What does high performance actually look like?
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Welcome to The Meaningful Leader — July Edition. This month, we’re looking at the invisible forces that shape how leaders and teams actually perform: the standards we fail to define, the belonging we misunderstand, the thinking environments we create, and the warning lights we ignore. Three of this month’s sections were sparked by great conversations I had on with Level 52 coach and facilitator - Jessica Heafey, Flow state advisor - Dr. Murray Heber, and author of Reality Check - Dr. Tianne Foster. Links to each full discussion are below. But the thread running through all of...
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#107 Why Belonging Is Not About Being Nice
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Belonging gets mistaken for everyone getting along. But what if a team with no conflict is the clearest sign that belonging is missing? In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause sits down with Level 52 coach and facilitator Jessica Heafey to explore belonging, what it is, what it isn't, and the mistakes leaders make trying to create it. Drawing on a career that began in professional theatre, Jessica explains why being hired is not the same as belonging, why the difference between kind and nice matters more than most leaders realize, and why real belonging asks...
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#106: The Science of Flow State and Peak Performance
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Most leaders think better performance comes from working harder. Dr. Murray Heber argues that mindset may be a much bigger factor than effort. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause and Dr. Murray Heber explore the science of flow state, why high performers burn out, and how leaders can create the conditions for peak performance without relying on constant pressure. They discuss the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose, why curiosity is one of the most powerful tools available to leaders, and how confusion can sometimes be the pattern interrupt needed...
info_outlineEmpathy gets treated like a personality trait: you either have it or you don't. Roxana Radulescu, Level 52 coach and facilitator, argues that's wrong. It's a muscle, and most leaders are either overusing it, avoiding it, or using it to avoid the hard conversation instead of having it.
In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause talks with Roxana about what empathy actually is (her definition: care plus trust), what it isn't (sympathy, agreement, an excuse to skip feedback), and where it goes wrong at the top of organizations. They dig into a Yale psychologist's argument that empathy fuels bias and tribalism, why holding more power tends to erode it, and whether "care first" leadership is a real strategy or just a nicer way to describe layoffs.
They cover:
- Empathy defined: care plus trust, not sympathy
- The line between empathy and judgment
- The case against empathy: bias, favoritism, and in-group tribalism
- Why power erodes empathy (and what that means for executives)
- Empathy's role in high-stakes, high-performance teams
- A simple starting point for building the empathy muscle
If you've ever held back a hard conversation because you "didn't want to make it worse," or wondered whether empathy and high standards can coexist, this conversation will change how you think about both.
Follow Jayson Krause
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Voc2qOmcqGKfqy6CDiZOw
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayson-krause/
0:00 - Introduction
0:34 - How Roxana Became a Coach
1:28 - Coaching a Room Full of Experts
2:39 - What Qualifies Someone to Talk About Empathy
4:55 - Defining Empathy: Care Plus Trust
7:39 - Empathy Mapping and the Right Use of Empathy
10:07 - The Opposite of Empathy: Arrogance and Judgment
11:06 - Judgment vs. Appraisal
12:25 - The Case Against Empathy (Paul Bloom)
13:56 - When a Leader Has Too Much Empathy
16:09 - Balancing Empathy With Getting Things Done
21:08 - Naming the Emotion in the Room
23:52 - What Matters More Than Empathy: Feedback
27:14 - What Is Self-Empathy?
28:06 - True or False: Does Promoting Empathetic Leaders Spread Empathy?
29:00 - Power and the Erosion of Empathy
31:08 - "Care First" Leadership vs. Corporate Doublespeak
32:16 - Empathy in the Face of Layoffs
35:02 - The Real Roots of the Word Empathy
36:09 - True or False: Are Women Wired to Be More Empathetic?
38:10 - True or False: Does Empathy Lead to Fairer Decisions?
41:20 - Empathy in High-Performance Environments
42:53 - Can You Have Connection Without Empathy?
45:02 - Would You Rather: Deep Empathy for Your Circle vs. Moderate Empathy for All
49:09 - The Cost of Carrying Empathy
50:40 - A Real Example: Giving Feedback With Empathy
52:16 - Empathy as a Muscle: Where to Start
54:24 - The Worst Advice About Bringing Empathy to Leadership
56:26 - Closing Thought