N.B. Premier Susan Holt has ‘empathy guidelines’ for senior staff, officials

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.

“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:

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.

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."

There are also emails from Pond and others about getting deputy ministers involved as well. 

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.