The Role of Empathy in Leadership with Steph Porter
Steph Porter, Founder of Ink and Iron PR, joins The Bliss Business Podcast to describe people first crisis response from the inside: the day a shooting killed an employee and a customer, why the executives went to the site, and what empathy costs when the clock is running.
People first crisis response is easy to put in a values deck and hard to execute at 9am on the worst day a company has ever had. In this episode of The Bliss Business Podcast, Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa welcome Steph Porter, Founder of Ink and Iron PR, who has spent more than fifteen years running communications and crisis response for brands including Walmart, New Balance, Playtex Baby and Tim Hortons, and in-house at Canadian Tire and SpartanNash.
In this episode we explore:
• What a people-first response actually looks like in the first 48 hours
• The difference between hearing your team and listening to them
• Why speed and performance are not the same thing
• How self-awareness and 360 feedback change what a leader can ask for
• Why internal alignment has to come before external messaging
• What love in leadership looks like when someone is not succeeding
Steph's definition of empathy is operational, not sentimental. It starts with listening rather than hearing, “actually listening to them, actively listening and taking what they're saying and actually taking it into consideration and acting on it,” and extends into anticipation: sensing when someone on the team is underwater before they have to say so, and knowing when a client needs reassurance rather than a push. Her hardest ongoing discipline is the pause. She is fast by temperament and fast by trade, and she works at slowing down before she engages, because in her words pace and speed do not always equal performance.
The story that anchors the episode is one she never trained for. A shooting at one of her employer's stores killed an employee and a customer. Her recommendation was immediate and physical: the executives go to that location tomorrow, and the PR team drives the two and a half hours to be there too. There was a memorial the next day, and the leadership was present at it, with the affected families. She contrasts that instinct with the reflex she sees elsewhere, where the first questions are financial exposure and insurance posture. Those questions are real. They just cannot come first.
On systems, Steph pushes back on the show's own framing, which makes her answer more useful. Systemize empathy too far and it turns performative. What she does keep is rhythm without ceremony: daily team check-ins, weekly one-on-ones, and standing permission to skip both and just talk when something cannot wait. Her hot take, which she knows is unpopular, is that high-pressure teams understand each other better in person, and that new hires should be in the office as much as they can early on, because trust is hard to build with someone you have never actually met.
Her warning about alignment is the one most brands should read twice: companies chase external coverage before doing the internal work of deciding what they are, and internal moments now become external ones routinely. If you market people-first, you have to be people-first in the rooms nobody was supposed to see. That is the same gap Zero Company works to close for clients, because no amount of good storytelling survives contact with a company that does not live it.
Key Takeaways
• (2:32) Steph Porter on what empathy actually requires: “it's all about listening, not just hearing people, but actually listening to them, actively listening and taking what they're saying and actually taking it into consideration and acting on it.”
• (2:32) Steph Porter on empathy as anticipation: “you're sensing when your team is stretched before they have to say anything.”
• (2:32) Steph Porter on the order of operations: “you need to make your people happy first before you make anybody else happy... your team needs to feel safe with you.”
• (6:41) Steph Porter on the myth of pace: “pace and speed, super important in PR. I'm not going to say that it's not, but it doesn't always equal performance. It doesn't always equal success.”
• (6:41) Steph Porter on the in-store shooting that killed an employee and a customer: “the executives immediately, like tomorrow, need to go to that location. And we, as PR people, need to be boots on the ground at that location.”
• (6:41) Steph Porter on what most companies reach for first: “a lot of leaders would sort of instantly jump to, what does that mean for us as a company, from a financial standpoint or from an insurance standpoint... for me personally, and for the team, it's very much the people and the human aspect of it first.”
• (13:55) Steph Porter on why self-awareness sets the ceiling: “You need to set the precedence as a leader to be vulnerable, to be transparent if you want your team to be the same way. You can't expect your team to be that way and not be that way yourself.”
• (16:20) Steph Porter on the limit of systemizing empathy: “I don't want to systemize it too much, because I feel like when you start to systemize it, it becomes inauthentic, right? So it becomes performative.”
• (19:41) Steph Porter, who also teaches the next PR generation, on why in-person matters: “How are you gonna trust someone that you really don't know?”
• (21:08) Steph Porter on the work companies skip: “what a lot of companies forget to do first is do the inner work and really establish, you know, what their mission is, their why... and creating that story internally first.”
• (36:28) Steph Porter on purpose during a crisis: “it becomes the anchor... If this is a people first company, you got to have a people first mindset and handle crisis in a people first way.”
• (40:10) Steph Porter on a leader who asked every new hire their love language, and on what love in leadership really tests: “that love and support needs to carry on on the good days and the bad.”
• (42:54) Steph Porter's one thing, if a leader does nothing else: “check in on your people, and don't just check in on them from like, what are you working on? No, check in, how are you? How are you doing? How are you feeling?”
FAQ
What does a people first crisis response look like?
Steph Porter, Founder of Ink and Iron PR, describes it as showing up physically and prioritising the affected people before the corporate exposure. After a fatal shooting at a store, her recommendation was that executives and the PR team be on site the next day and present at the memorial with the families, ahead of any financial or insurance discussion.
Can empathy be built into a company's systems?
Partly. Steph Porter warns that over-systemizing empathy makes it performative, so she keeps light structures instead: daily team check-ins, weekly one-on-ones, and an open door so nobody has to wait for a scheduled meeting to raise something urgent.
Why does internal alignment matter before external PR?
Steph Porter says companies chase outside coverage before deciding internally what they stand for, and that internal moments now go public routinely. If the external story says people-first and the internal behaviour does not match, the gap becomes the story.
Learn more about Steph Porter and Ink and Iron PR. Guest profile: Steph Porter. More from the Featured Guest Series. Read the companion post, Empathy Under Pressure Is What People Remember.
Founder
With over 15 years of experience in public relations, corporate communications and social media - spanning both agency and in-house roles - Steph has made a career out of helping brands show up loudly, proudly and with purpose. Her roots in public relations were forged working in PR agencies where she ran multi- million-dollar campaigns for clients like Walmart, New Balance, Playtex Baby and Tim Hortons. She also crafted award-winning experiential and marketing communications while in-house at Canadian Tire Corporation, Canada’s largest retailer. Before launching ink&iron PR, Steph led external communications and social media at Midwest Fortune 400 company SpartanNash, overseeing a high-performing team and all corporate storytelling across earned and owned channels. From executive communications and national media placements to high-stakes crisis response, she’s been in the trenches and thrived there. A reliable partner to both C-suites and her creative counterparts, Steph is known for her relentless follow-through, A+ client service, sharp instincts, fearless storytelling and most of all, her empathy-driven leadership style. Steph is based in Grand Rapids, Mich., with her husband, two kids and her golden retriever.
