Leadership Empathy: The Good and the Bad

Empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Research has shown over and over again that empathy is a critical element for leaders to exhibit emotional intelligence, design thinking, high performance, effective teamwork, healthy relationships, and clear communication. It should come as no surprise then that empathy is the cornerstone of a leader’s effectiveness in keeping stakeholders confident, employees engaged, and customers loyal.

Psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman break down the concept of empathy into the three categories. 

• Cognitive empathy helps a person understand what someone else is thinking in feeling, as when you relate to a character in a novel or understanding someone else’s perspective during a crucial conversation.
• Emotional empathy is when a person puts themselves in someone else’s shoes and they actually feel their emotion. This type of empathy, if left unchecked, can lead to burnout.
• Compassionate empathy is where a person feels concern for another’s challenges and feelings, but from a distance and with a desire to help the person in need.

We all have natural tendencies for how we demonstrate empathy. It is important for leaders to understand that there are different types of empathy and which type of empathy is their most natural response. This awareness allows leaders to make adjustments, if necessary, to best fit the situation.

TOO MUCH EMPATHY

All leaders have a baseline responsibility to be respectful and kind in their daily interactions with others. Just like all strengths and habits there are negative consequences with expressing too much or the wrong type of empathy.

Leaders have to constantly make tough decisions for their organizations to keep up with the rapid pace of change and to meet stakeholder’s demands. There are too many examples of organizations that didn’t make the hard decisions that were necessary for ongoing success and how quickly they became irrelevant. Overly empathic leaders can lose the ability to know what they want or need to do in service of the greater organizational good. Empathy doesn’t serve organizations, teams or employees when it gets in the way of leaders making necessary tough decisions.

Paul Bloom shares in his book, Against Empathy, that empathy does have the power to hurt judgement and can lead to poor decision making in business. Bloom says, “business leaders need to be able to balance what is best for the whole organization with being kind and considerate to individual employees”. Too much focus on empathy can leave leaders feeling emotionally drained and can hurt their ability to effectively perform their roles.

HEALTHY AND PRODUCTIVE EMPATHY

Effective leadership requires understanding other’s needs without sacrificing the ability to make tough decisions.

From a leadership perspective it is important to understand how to balance being empathic and making the tough decisions that serve the overall good of your team and organization. For example, having to fire a person should be a hard decision for any leader to make, as there are many potential negative implications. Displaying healthy empathy might look like taking the time to understand if the person has received adequate coaching, feedback and training to succeed in their role. Empathy might also take the form of ensuring that there are no systemic environmental issues that have stopped this person from being able to meet the roles expectations. If the leader concludes the employee was given a fair opportunity to perform but didn't - it is then time to make the decision to transition the employee out of their role.

Leaders that demonstrate healthy empathy when making their difficult decisions create a culture where employees feel safe, valued and capable of doing great work. 

What are ways you have seen leaders demonstrate healthy and productive empathy when making difficult decisions?

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About the Author: Tony Gambill is the CEO of ClearView Leadership, an innovative leadership and talent development consulting firm helping executives and managers bring their best leadership self to their most challenging situations.