This week, we're joined by Heather Braid, Manager of Teaching and Learning at the Alberta School of Business, who took an unlikely path from civil engineering to leading a team focused on student experience and program quality.

Heather talks about what empathetic leadership actually looks like in practice by building it into your structure, your schedule, and your habits. She also pushes back on the idea that empathy is just being nice, makes you soft, and means you don’t know how to have a hard conversation. She also shares honestly about where it gets hard leading with empathy, because it does sometimes.

Her reminder is a simple one: the people you work with are whole people, not just their job titles, and your work as a leader starts there.