Where Should Empathy Rank Among Best Leadership Skills?

Empathy is about being able to understand and recognize the feelings and perspectives of others. If you’re in a management position, you have likely been told that you need to develop empathy because it’s one of the best leadership skills you can employ. This makes sense since it’s virtually impossible to lead someone you don’t understand; the need to motivate and inspire others requires that you understand “where they’re coming from”.

While a strong sense of empathy can definitely increase life satisfaction, self-esteem, and emotional intelligence, some argue that it can also lead to problems with decision making, lack of diversity, stress, narrow mindedness, and poor follow through. Huh?

According to an article at Entrepreneur.com, titled The Dangers of Being an Empathetic Leader, the limitations of this leadership characteristic are fairly serious, with “some pitfalls that every leader should understand”. Let’s try to dissect this interesting viewpoint!

The Art and Science of Empathy for Leaders

While being empathetic will frequently lead you to do what’s right for your team, it can also lead you astray, resulting in unforeseen problems with negative results. This puts limits on the effectiveness of empathy as one of the best leadership skills you can develop.

• Empathic Decision Making – Research done at Yale University claims that “empathy triggers our altruistic impulses, resulting in poor judgment that could harm many people for the benefit of one person. As leaders, empathy may cloud our moral judgment. It encourages bias and makes us less effective at making wise decisions”.

Yes, poor judgement is definitely not a desired character trait for any leader. That is why a well-balanced reality testing is so important to develop for empathic leaders. (That is, not wearing rose colored glasses; being mindful of what is driving your decision making process in times of stress; developing effective emotion regulation strategies via mindfulness training.) In other words, your goal should be a well-balanced sense of empathy vs. the kind of emotional overwhelm that will cloud your judgement. (For more on this, I invite you to register for my Free Leadership Webinar.)

• Empathy Inhibits Diversity – Another argument is: It is a simple fact of human nature that like attracts like and that people empathize more easily with those like themselves. This can lead to a lack of diversity in hiring, assigning tasks, and awarding promotions. The resulting lack of diversity can lead to a paucity of thought and creativity.

Although most of the workplaces and organizations I have encountered have quite the opposite problem – lack of diversity driven by privileged groups of individuals – unhelpful empathy can, in fact, lead to avoidance of confrontation. This can, in turn, lead to an inability to work with diverse groups of people with differing opinions. A well-balanced empathy implies an ability to create safe environments where team members can agree to disagree and still feel valued, appreciated, and respected.

• Empathetic Stress – As a leader, there may be situations that are particularly difficult for team members. Taking on the anger, frustration or impatience they are feeling can be emotionally draining for a leader. Developing new ways of being with difficult emotions start with yourself. Then, you can hold a space for other peoples’ difficult emotions and stay in your power, instead of jumping onto that emotional roller coaster.
• Short Term Effects of Passion – Emotions can be fickle things and, the more intense, the more fleeting they may be. Because of this, it can make you fiercely passionate in the short term, “[But] studies have found that this energy often dissipates before we can take any meaningful action.” In other words, empathy must be combined with committed and inspired actions to have real impact.

Limits of Empathy as a Leadership Skill

While empathy is one important component of emotional intelligence, it needs to be balanced by emotion regulation, skillful decision making, assertiveness, and the ability to take consistent steps toward your vision. In fact, by learning to combine your capacity for empathic leadership with wisdom, vision, and creativity, you will become far more emotionally literate – which will enable you to be the leader you’ve hoped and imagined you could be.

Would you like to find the help you need to improve your list of best leadership skills, through the enhanced use of emotional intelligence in the workplace? If so, let’s chat. Click here to schedule your FREE Discovery Call.