Building Empathy w. Erin Thorp

In this episode host Justin McMenamy welcomes fellow leadership podcaster Erin Thorpe.

Across the conversation each discusses formative early-career experiences and how they shaped their mid-career focus on leadership. Both reflect on how not fitting within organizational norms can bleed into lowered self-worth, and they discuss a framework of being “refined” versus “consumed” by adversity, emphasizing that not every bad day warrants resignation and that staying in discomfort can build tenacity.

They explore differences between technical and people skills, contrasting engineering’s black-and-white mindset versus the negotiated nature of relationships.

Erin describes her path into podcasting: authoring a book in 2016 and later starting the “Tactical Empathy" podcast. Erin explains tactical empathy as a practical leadership tool that balances understanding self and others while maintaining high standards and execution, countering the idea that empathy is a mask for weakness or lowered expectations.

She offers ways to build empathy as a muscle: frequent self-check-ins, acknowledging feelings, validating others without necessarily agreeing, and resisting the urge to immediately fix problems.