Being a Great Leader Is About More Than Empathy

This article from Julie Holmes, co-CEO at Virginia Tire & Auto, also appears on Medium.

Someone recently asked me what the key to Virginia Tire & Auto’s success is. And while we certainly do provide exceptional service for a great value, the core reason for our continued growth and success is much more basic than I think most people might realize. Many of the decisions that my leadership team and I make and many of our interactions are focused on meeting people where they are at and putting ourselves in their shoes. To put it simply, we lead from a place of empathy.

Now I know that in business, empathy has become somewhat of an overused buzzword, but I truly believe that we’ve been about 45 years ahead of this current-day trend. This is not something that I learned from a business school class or a book that I read, it’s the way my father approached running the business when he started it. He always focused on treating people the way he’d like to be treated. And while I think empathy is vital to running a business and should play an important role in working with customers and team members, I don’t think that I could be a good leader without going beyond empathy and making real changes that make working at Virginia Tire & Auto an even better experience.

In our business, our main responsibility is to serve and take care of our customers. And I can’t expect our team to serve customers well if we aren’t serving our employees well. With that in mind, as I’ve focused on recruiting more women to work at our company, I’ve looked at why women might not want to work here. Once they get past the obstacle of car repair stereotypically being a man’s job, I needed to look at our work environment and ask myself, “Would a woman want to work here?” Unfortunately, there were some scenarios that I encountered where the answer was, “No.” And the only thing left to do is to address the issue. For example, our stores lacked dedicated dressing rooms for team members to change into their uniforms, which is obviously not ideal. So, we are now in the process of adding separate changing rooms in our stores, removing one barrier that may prevent a woman from feeling comfortable in her working environment.

We also review our benefits regularly to make sure that they are meeting our team’s needs. We currently provide zero-cost health insurance for our full-time employees, we post our schedules two weeks in advance, we don’t change schedules, we promote from within, and we have standards and protocols to make sure that we have a fair and safe company. While we haven’t come up with all the solutions, and we may not have a program for every situation that a team member may need help with, we are a small enough business that we can almost always find some way to help.

I also think it’s important to mention that we can have all the programs and benefits imaginable, but if I can’t show up for my team and listen to them then it’s all meaningless. Sometimes, the most important thing I can do is listen. And I don’t mean listen to my leadership team or others in the corporate office, I mean take time to talk to and listen to anyone in our organization who needs to talk.

I believe it’s important that everyone on our leadership team has an opportunity to develop the skills critical to empathy. Recently, we held a 3-day leadership program with our store managers, where we watched the Bréne Brown video, The Power of Empathy. In the video, Bréne calls empathy feeling with people and being willing to take their perspective and stay out of judgment. It’s simply not possible to be a good leader of people without feeling with people and having a willingness to understand their perspectives.

And as Bréne explains so well, there is a certain amount of vulnerability that comes with being willing to take other people’s perspectives, and having that vulnerability and empathy is how we build connections that make great leaders. In my time as CEO, I’ve learned to become comfortable going to that vulnerable place. I don’t always have to be right because I know other people’s opinions and perspectives matter.

When I’m talking with the people who work at Virginia Tire & Auto, sometimes I can offer advice, provide a recommendation, or make a change to how we do things, but most often I am listening and providing space for someone to talk through something they are struggling with, which may or may not be directly related to their role at the company.

I know that much has been written about how the impacts of the pandemic further blurred the lines between personal and professional lives, but I’d argue those lines were artificial to begin with. Running a business is and has always been all about people. And those people, regardless of whether they are customers or employees, want to be treated just like I want to be treated.