April 25, 2026 | Read online
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The one thing AI can’t do
I was listening to David Senra's interview with Marc Andreessen on the Founders podcast a few weeks ago. If you haven't heard it, Andreessen says something that stopped me mid-run.
"I practice zero introspection."
Zero. Not low. Not minimal. Zero.
This is a guy worth $2.1 billion, who co-founded Netscape, built one of the most powerful venture capital firms on earth, and he's proudly telling the world he never looks inward.
WTF??
So I did what I always do when something bugs me. I went down the rabbit hole. I started looking for billionaires who actually lead with empathy. People at the absolute top who give a shit about the humans around them.
Know what I found? Almost nobody.
Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, and Gates in their early days. The pattern is consistent. The higher people climb, the less they seem to care about the people below them. And this isn't opinion. UC Berkeley ran a study that found that as wealth increases, empathy measurably decreases. People with more money literally become worse at reading others' emotions. Scientific American published similar findings showing that higher social class predicts lower empathic accuracy.
That struck a nerve for me. I've spent my entire career in Sales, and Sales is fundamentally a human profession. Great Sales professionals read people, listen, adapt, and actually care about solving someone's problem, not shoving a product down their throat. And the people who are shaping the future of our industry, building the AI tools we'll all be using, are telling us introspection is a waste of time.
That's dangerous. And it matters more right now than it ever has.
I've been talking about the "Give a Shit" factor for years. It's the one thing that separates good salespeople from forgettable ones. It's the reason a buyer picks up the phone when you call instead of letting it go to voicemail. You can teach someone a framework. You can drill objection handling. You can optimize a sequence. But you cannot train someone to care.
And the best part? It’s the one thing that AI can’t do.
AI can write your emails. It can research your prospects. It can build your call plans and summarize your meetings. I use it for all of that.
But AI cannot give a shit about your customer.
It can't feel the weight of what's at stake for the person sitting across the table from you. It can't read the room when someone's tone shifts and know that the real objection hasn't been said out loud yet.
That means empathy isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's your competitive advantage against other reps AND against the machines.
So I started thinking about what empathetic leadership actually looks like at each level. Not theory, not a framework you pin to the wall and forget, but real questions you can ask yourself TODAY to figure out where you stand.
If you're a CEO or founder: When was the last time you changed a decision based on how it would affect your people, not your numbers? If you can't remember, that's your answer.
If you're a VP or CRO: Do your directors tell you bad news fast, or do they hide it until it's a crisis? The speed of bad news is the best measure of psychological safety on your team.
If you're a Director:
- Can you name the biggest personal challenge each of your direct reports is dealing with right now? Not their quota attainment. Their life.
If you're a Manager:
- When's the last time you coached someone on something that wouldn't show up in this quarter's numbers but would change their career? If all your coaching is about pipeline, you're managing, not leading.
If you're an IC or SDR:
- Do you ask your prospects questions because you care about their answers, or because your playbook says to? Your buyers can tell the difference.
The Center for Creative Leadership surveyed over 6,700 leaders across 38 countries and found that empathy directly correlates to job performance. Not "soft skill." Performance. The more empathy, the better the results.
One more thing.
When I look at the leaders I admire most, the ones who combine real results with real humanity, a disproportionate number of them are women. And I don't think that's a coincidence. The data on empathetic leadership overwhelmingly points to women outperforming men in emotional intelligence, team trust, and employee retention. If we want a different kind of leader at the top, we need to actively create space for them to get there.
Andreessen can keep his zero introspection. That's his choice. But I don't want a generation of sales professionals, founders, and leaders thinking that's the only path to success. Especially now, when the thing that makes us irreplaceable is the one thing these billionaires and their AI tools can't replicate.
Give a shit. It's your edge.
Pick the question that matches your level. Answer it honestly. If you don't like your answer, that's not failure. That's awareness. And awareness is the first step to being the kind of leader people actually want to follow.
If you want to go deeper, pick up Maria Ross's book The Empathy Edge. She makes the best case I've seen for why empathy isn't soft, it's strategic.
#MakeItHappen
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