Why Kellogg dean Francesca Cornelli believes empathy is the skill every leader needs now

Francesca Cornelli 's background is hard economics, with imposing papers titled things like, The Capital Structure of Firms in Central and Eastern Europe, Risk Arbitrage in Takeovers, and Stage Financing and the Role of Convertible Securities.

But her focus these days is on a much softer skill: Empathy.

As dean of the Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management , which placed 6th in our inaugural list of the 50 Top MBA Programs in the U.S., Francesca has been championing the school’s focus on building leaders who are just as adept at reading emotions as building decks. 

Other schools on our list have courses on the subject, but Kellogg has gone all in. Last year, the school debuted its Leading With Empathy course and created a prize, the Kabiller Science of Empathy Prize, for faculty who publish research on empathy’s role in the workplace. Before students start classes, they have to attend a “culture camp,” where international and domestic students meet and are forbidden from talking about their past jobs or future jobs or which cities or countries they come from. The focus is on talking, “at the personal level about what they think, instead of switching immediately into the work of networking,” she said. “What are your true beliefs? What are your aspirations?” Through those conversations, real connections are formed — and that can lead to business success.

“We are polarized in so many dimensions, which is not good,” she told me. “But at the same time, we don't want to say that difference of opinion is not good. We want to keep the disagreement. Disagreement means richness of point of view, a wealth of ideas. So we want to keep that. But we want to prepare people to listen to different points of view.” The goal isn't consensus — that’s not good leadership — but buy-in and respect. “Make everybody feel respected and then say, well, this is my decision after having listened to everybody,” she said.

Francesca sees empathy as a key trait for any manager leading through change. You may not know the outcome of any experiment or initiative, but learning how to manage people through it is true empathy. And change is coming fast: AI stands to upend businesses and roles. Making sure your team and company is ready for it (and, frankly, that you’re ready for it) is going to require both business intelligence and emotional intelligence. LinkedIn data shows that the skills that are required to do any particular role have changed, on average about 25% in the last few years. That’s slated to cross 60% in the next five.

Francesca gave me an example of how empathetic leadership might look in a company trying to implement new Ai initiatives: 

“Scientists [often] don't understand how their skills fit into the business. We need people able to be the bridge, and that is another version of empathy,” she explained. “It takes a certain type of person to respect the fact that the scientist is the person at the frontier, and yet you have to make them see the business point of view. You have to have a dialogue with them.” Understanding the technology is also key, but understanding the business even more so — and being able to bring people together to solve the business problems is where empathy pays off.

Not that the scientists and the AI specialists get to be automatons. Francesca argues it’s in their best interests to also be building empathy as a muscle. Being able to read and relate to people is a skill that often pays off years after graduation: “I also said tell the people who are in a job at the frontier, I'm saying, ‘Well, you're at the frontier of AI now, but 5 years from now, there will be new graduates who are more advanced than you. So you will need at that point to be able to be the bridge, rather than to be the one at the frontier.' Few will remain at the frontier forever.”

I asked her if empathy is something that is actually teachable — particularly if you’re a few years into your adult working life, like most Kellogg students. She said it is, but it’s not easy.

“I have a faculty who said, ‘People call it soft skills, but they're actually the harder to learn.’ And that is so true.”

So what exactly then does empathetic leadership look like and how do you flex your empathy muscle at work? This article might help. But your lived experience is even better, so let me know in the comments.

I talk to Francesca more about the downside of stubbornness, her best career advice, and how to make the most of one-on-one on our rapid-fire, This is Quick segment of the This is Working with Daniel Roth podcast. That’s out today anywhere you listen to podcasts. 

And next week, check out the podcast to hear my co-host and LinkedIn senior producer, Nina Melendez Ibarra and I peel back the layers of what it truly means to be an empathetic leader in today’s workplace.

On LinkedIn’s video series, This is Working, I sit down with top figures from the world of business and beyond to surface what they've learned about solving hard problems. You can subscribe above and see past interviews here:

Spike Lee • Sir Richard Branson • Kristalina Georgieva • Dany Garcia • Gerald Chertavian • Stephanie Linnartz• Bobbi Brown • Toto Wolff • Al Roker • Vas Narasimhan • Barack Obama • Oscar Munoz • Coltrane Curtis • Sally Susman • Gina Rometty • Christine Lagarde • Ray Dalio • Corie Barry • Ryan Gellert• Everette Taylor • Jesper Brodin • Chrissy Taylor • Niels Christiansen • Terry Crews • Tarika Barrett • Bill Gates • Kimberly Bryant • Mark Cuban