N.B. Premier Susan Holt has ’empathy guidelines’ for senior staff, officials – Yahoo News Canada
N.B. Premier Susan Holt has ‘empathy guidelines’ for senior staff, officials CBC Thu, December 25, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. UTC 6 min read
A document shows empathy is a key principle of how New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt is trying to shape her government. (Allyson McCormack/CBC – image credit) Instructions given to Susan Holt’s staff reveal efforts to present a kinder, gentler premier.
A document obtained through a right to information request by CBC News instructs staff to use “an empathetic and personal tone” in responses sent to members of the public from the Premier’s Office.
The document says the public should feel that Holt “genuinely listened” and wants to help, noting that people who write to the premier are looking for an emotional response as much as they are seeking information.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “People who meet the Premier in person will see her as warm and caring. The same feeling should carry through her email responses,” the document said.
The document also includes examples of phrases with empathetic language, such as:
“Thank you for sharing”
“I can see how challenging that must be”
“This is helpful feedback”
“We are working hard to address issues like this”
“I understand”
In the document, writers are instructed to avoid adhering strictly to a template but to “give each individual response the thought and attention it deserves.”
The guidelines, written by the premier’s policy adviser Mackenzie Pond, are not just for staff in the Premier’s Office.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In an April email, Pond told provincial officials the document was to be sent to “correspondence co-ordinators for the departments.”
It includes examples “they can use to write more empathetically/ in the Premier’s voice that they can reference & share with the other writers in their department.”
The document also includes examples of what doesn’t work. One is about a response to someone who has written about their daughter’s experience as a student.
Instead of this first sentence in the response, “Thank you for taking the time to share with me your concerns regarding your daughter and her school experience,” the document suggests the less wordy but more emphatic, “Thank you so much for sharing your daughter’s story with me.”
‘Everyone is struggling with something’
There are also emails from Pond and others about getting deputy ministers involved as well.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement CBC News requested an interview with Holt about the empathy guidelines and did not get one. But during a year-end interview with Holt, a CBC reporter asked Holt to explain why she developed empathy guidelines.
“I think one of the best ways to start a conversation with someone is to try to put yourself in their shoes and to imagine the position they’re in and what they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing,” she said.
“And then to build your policy or your response or your solution from a place of understanding and empathy for what that New Brunswicker is going through.”
When asked how mandated empathy can be genuine, Holt said a lot of people working in government are doing so because they want to serve the province and the public.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “I think that it’s just a reminder really to folks that everyone is struggling with something,” she said. “And government shouldn’t be a cold, heartless institution that executes things.
“It should be a caring, empathetic institution that can recognize what New Brunswickers need and build flexible solutions that are a bit more personalized to that New Brunswicker’s experience.”
Political scientist finds guidelines fascinating
Alex Marland, a political scientist at Acadia University who studies political communication, said he was “fascinated” by the empathy guidelines.
Marland said normally governments are “very robotic, very processed, very cold and distant and worried about creating any sense of bias.”
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Holt’s way of communicating empathetically could give people a “sense of less detachment from government” and make them feel “that they’re actually being treated as humans and not as numbers.”
Marland said there’s a possible downside — people who get a response like this might try to strike up a relationship or a friendship with the premier or whoever is writing them.
This could lead to more work and more communication for the civil servant
Political science professor Alex Marland said there can be benefits to a focus on empathy. (Submitted by Alex Marland) “This is a reason why governments are often just very flat in their information — because they don’t want to engage in a conversation.”
But the overall challenge, Marland said, is that empathy has to be real and genuine.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “If you were telling public servants to communicate messaging in this way, and they’re following a script and a template or guidelines, but they don’t personally feel it, then that’s not going to work.”
He likened the interactions citizens have with the provincial government to customer relations.
“It makes you feel better when you think that the person on the other end is a real person who’s actually talking to you as a person instead of kind of telling you to get lost.”
Marland said the empathy guidelines say good things about Holt’s intentions to make the government appear less distant.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It comes down to aligning the government with a premier who is still new and making sure communications align with her leadership values, he said.
There’s also a clear difference between Holt and her predecessor, Progressive Conservative Blaine Higgs.
“[Higgs] often had a media persona sometimes of abrasiveness, including with ministers,” Marland said.
“And whereas the current premier, obviously it’s much more about being concerned about how things land and how things age.”
A way to bring out the best in a team
Another expert said empathy guidelines could also improve internal dynamics in a company or government.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Lobna Chérif, an associate professor at the Royal Military College, commented on the general principles of empathetic leadership, but not on any specifics of the Holt government’s communications strategy.
She described empathetic leadership as a “core competency” to emotional intelligence and a bridge between self-awareness and social effectiveness.
“Empathetic leaders create those environments where trust and psychological safety thrive because people trust leaders who genuinely care,” said Chérif, who teaches in the department of military psychology and leadership.
When senior leaders demonstrate empathy, people working under them can learn how to do the same just by modelling their behaviour, she said.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement These employees would “give their best and they are really trying to do everything they can to help with the organization or with the team.”
The more someone practises the skill of being an empathetic leader, the easier it comes naturally, she said.
Chérif said she’s aware of empathetic leadership training not only in corporate environments but also in government. It’s a type of leadership that hasn’t always been encouraged, she said, but is becoming more popular now.
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