Leadership

The Problem with Empathetic Leadership

Empathy became a buzzword somewhere around 2021, and buzzwords are where good ideas go to stop meaning anything. Here is what it actually costs to lead this way.

Jenn Quader 10 October 2022 2 min read

Dozens of pins on a white board joined to one another by blue thread into a dense web. — As published, October 2022

There’s a word that has floated its way to the forefront of American business society in the post-2020 era: #Empathy.

Coinciding with an alarming rise in mental health issues and a flat-out surprising labor shortage, the whole business world has empathy on the brain.

But there’s a problem for effective leaders.

Let’s look first at what the problem is not:

Talent Retention: In fact, 90% of Gen Z workers report that empathy is the reason they stay with their employer.

High Productivity: 61% of people with empathic leaders report being consistently innovative at work, compared to just 13% with less empathetic leadership.

Strong Financials: Companies with engaged employees are more profitable. A 2021 Gallup report showed only 36% of U.S. employees are currently engaged in their workplace, while a recent study revealed that 76% of people with empathic leaders are highly engaged.

So, what in the world is the problem with Empathetic Leadership?

It’s the word pathetic.

Defined as “miserably inadequate,” we all know what pathetic means. And it’s no one’s goal.

So….as my dear husband would say, “It’s all semantics.”

When a strong, powerful leader steps up to the plate to lead, they don’t want to be anywhere near the feeling of pathetic or inadequate.

They must feel strong, shored up, and steady.

The challenge is, the #OldAmericanWorkforce taught us to do that by lying. (eek, but true)

We lied to ourselves (i.e., “I’m the leader. I never make mistakes.”);

We lied to each other (i.e., “What you think doesn’t really matter here.”); and

We lied to the world (i.e., “To be a boss, you better not show weakness.”)

The result was that icky feeling in the pit of your stomach.

But the word empathetic is SO MUCH MORE than pathetic.

The English word “empathy” emerged a century ago from the German word “Einfühlung,” which literally means “feeling-in.” At the time (the early 1900s), empathy was defined as “enlivening an object” or “projecting one’s own feelings onto the world.”

Over time, the definition has evolved to now mean “showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”

It is here the true key is found – it’s the “leaning in” to understand why others are behaving as they are that makes all the difference (and achieves the talent retention, high productivity, and strong financials mentioned previously.)

No matter what we do, the word ‘pathetic’ will always be a part of the word empathetic.

It’s up to us as leaders to distinguish and look beyond the semantics to the truth of it all, which is:

We’re better together. For real.