Empathetic Leadership for Incomprehensible Times

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Audrey McGuckin and Catherine Sherman of the McGuckin Group delivered a keynote at the EMS Leadership Summit at IPC APEX EXPO 2025, emphasizing psychological safety and people-centric leadership in the EMS industry. Through personal stories, they fostered an open environment, where attendees learned about empathetic management practices. They introduced the popular BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible) model, underscoring the need for transparency and empathy in today’s complex business landscape. 

After their presentation, Catherine and Audrey sat down to talk more about the implications of empathetic leadership.

Nolan Johnson: Audrey and Catherine, what were your intentions for the EMS group in the type of presentation you offered?

Audrey McGuckin: For context, the EMS industry is action-oriented. It's low margins, getting stuff done, and thinking about what we deliver to the customer. Our proposition in the keynote was, “You can't do any of that unless you think about people—talent and alignment.” We wanted to create “psychological safety,” meaning an environment where people would start to take down their guard.

To do this, we told stories about how we got started as a company, who we are, what our legacies have been, and what we struggle with in our lives. By going first, what we experienced in the room was really amazing. As Catherine went around the room with a microphone, we noticed a high level of engagement. Very few laptops were open, and no one on their phones. Instead, people were raising their hand to say they wanted to talk.  We very quickly created this space where people were jarred into the realization that this is something different. 

Johnson: Some of my personal friends work in education, and often talk about getting a student ready to learn. Even at an early age, we learn about black boxes: Certain stimuli into the box will create predictable outcomes. We learn to anticipate that input/output pairing. When you can tweak it so that you don't know what the output will be, students engage.

Catherine Sherman: Yes, it was an invitation for dialogue. We wanted to provide context because their context is important. It’s not us talking about them. What's on their mind? What are they bringing to the room? How do we share in a space where, yeah, we're going to talk business, and how to grow and change your output. That starts with the people engaging together, which is probably new for them. To your point, they didn’t know where we were taking them.   

Johnson: But it changed the room. You tore down that preconceived notion of a strategy and showed them a different definition. Then you walked them through how they can apply that new perspective in their business. For context, tell me about your time at Jabil.

McGuckin: Yes, I was there for 25 years. I started when it was maybe under $100 million in revenue and left when it was $30 billion in revenue. So, I saw those big strategic leaps.

Sherman: I worked there for a decade in finance. I was very fortunate to be involved in corporate and the business. I did a brief stint as a business unit manager, which was a great opportunity. There was so much fertile ground in which to learn about all these different models taking hold.

Johnson: That really speaks to your expertise in the EMS provider industry.

McGuckin: Yes. While we have expertise in working with Tier 1 EMS providers, these models, concepts, and frameworks are equally applicable at a $30 million EMS company.

Johnson: Would you share an example from you keynote that has widespread application? 

Sherman: We often say, “What kind of leaders do we need now?” We know everyone went to college and have many years of industry experience, but what's the environment that you're in? It’s all about context.

In the past, it was this Cold War model, Buca Volatility Uncertainty. Now we're framing things up in a BANI model, which means it's brittle. People are anxious, and things are non-linear—not just complex, they jump here and there. There's disruption and it’s incomprehensible. You can't predict what will happen next. We’ve seen the BANI model used in many places, including the World Economic Forum. What we see is that each of those attributes calls for a different type of leadership capability.

We advise leaders to look at your talent pool—internal and external—and let's not cast aside the folks already on your team. These leaders need to be able to demonstrate transparency, because when things are incomprehensible, you can't predict what will be next; we can only share our perspectives.

Empathy is important because everyone is either struggling with a mental health issue or is one degree of separation away. We all show up at work as our whole selves. This has a direct impact on the effectiveness of your team in running your strategy day by day.

So, we invite leaders to think through that framework, the attributes that cause their team to excel, and where might they need help. 

McGuckin: We knew that many leaders in the room had “aha” moments during our keynote. They came up to us afterward and said things like, “You inspired me to think about this differently, and here's exactly what I'll do when I go back to my location: I will have one-on-ones with each of my team, and I will share how I'm doing.”

In times of possibilities, leaders go last. When we brainstorm, let's not hear from the top of the house. These leaders told us, “I'm going back and talking with the people. I'll ask them how they're doing.” That’s what we call leading with empathy—the ability to walk in the shoes of others.

The paradox is that in the EMS provider industry, we were raised to get things done, to move fast, and to be assertive. But now, you get things done by leading with empathy and vulnerability, and those are the types of attributes that are in high demand but low supply.   

Johnson: By being vulnerable first, you left the whole room stronger. The strength you seek resides right behind the vulnerability.

McGuckin: We call that being courageously vulnerable. In our model, it starts with the belief. People deserve to feel connected, and they only feel connected to authenticity. Authenticity means you have to be vulnerable, and vulnerability takes courage.

Johnson: Audrey, Catherine, thank you for having this conversation.

McGuckin: Thank you, Nolan.